United StatesAll mods except cosmetics & Ankh are banned.
Nothing to stop you from speedrunning it yourself on your own, of course. If it became sufficiently popular it could even start a discussion as to whether make that its own category or the like.
If it matters at all, there's a guide (for the GBA version) on GameFAQs with some low-score info: link.
RetroAchievements' Low Score set for GBA seems to go a bit further (link), thanks mainly to a few 1-1 warps.
Not proposing these by the absolute lowest scores by any means -- I've not done the research, and even attempting the easier RA achievements got me tilted lol -- but just throwing that info out there.
Frame skip wouldn't matter. The end goal is by in-game year, not time spent (Priere is just estimating how long it would take to reach that year RTA).
For what it's worth, a similar idea was put in play with this old TAS:
While I can't confirm it, I do feel like OP's method is the only reasonable explanation for this video I found the other night. Not that I know for sure, obviously, but it's the only one that comes to mind.
Relatedly, the OOB glitch may be an entry point for possible ACE. (Relevant TASVideos thread.)
Unrelated to Czar's question but since I got nosy and looked at the run:
wish i knew how people could clone presents.. cause I saw someone place in an old video multiple windmills in a 2,000,000 population city, it was in japanese if I recall.. sorry, rambling here.
The gift duplication glitch is at least described on GameFAQs. Dunno how accurate it is though.
Normally, you can only receive a finite number of any kind of gift, but through this glitch it is possible to obtain them infinitely! You'll need two cities saved for this: one which you want the extra gifts in (I'll call it City 1) and one you will use for "create" the gifts for this glitch (I'll call it City 2). Once you want a gift on City 1, load up the file for City 2 and meet the condition for that gift (a list of such conditions can be found in an FAQ): for example, if I wanted a Police HQ, I would build six Police Departments.
Once you meet the condition, go into your Map menu and wait several minutes; during these few minutes, the pop up for Dr. Wright telling you about the gift would normally appear, but you effectively stop that by using the map. After a while, press X to leave that menu, and then immediately load the City 1 file (do not return to normal gameplay in City 2). Immediately on loading City 1, you should receive the gift, even if you're normally unable to.
tbf I feel like 90% of the recent submissions are mine and mostly just because I submit any run that is a PB - and I don't really think I'm doing much new myself.
This game is just easy for me to submit for because a lot of runs are just 80% waiting once you setup a build, which makes it nice for me to do lesson planning and such.
But yeah I'm down to at least see a proper Discord. Though based on the one that already exists from way back, I'm not sure it would be super active.
Alright, thanks for the clarifications, I appreciate it!
Hi. I had a few questions.
- What exactly is meant by "frame skipping," and why is it permitted for the maximum population categories but not the others? I would think it's just how many frames you let an emulator skip, but I struggle to understand why you would want that unless you have low-end hardware - and struggle more to understand why only the maximum population categories get that exception.
- What exactly is meant by everything being allowed for the maximum population category? I notice that Pierre's WR obviously has the Debug Mode on but there is a separate category for the debug mode. So shouldn't that run be moved to the corresponding board?
- (EDIT: I just also noticed their run uses emulator speedup?? As well as Floriaka's Freeland record. Is that also allowed??)
- (EDIT 2: Additionally, as a thought, is turbo (i.e. 30fps inputs) allowed? Might be useful.)
- What exactly is the difference between the maximum population categories? I feel at least one of them has a goal of "beat this population, but faster". Or is the score category purely for population records irrespective of their time?
Anecdotally, the Freeland categories have contradictory rulesets for the maximum population categories, just as an FYI.
Oh, and here's a blank version of the graph above (no highlighting) for anyone who wants it.
But yeah, mostly putting this all here since I got nerd sniped when thinking of an old game I liked lol
For what it's worth, I ran through a script (link) in MATLAB to find a shortest path between stages 1 and 37) and that any% route matches up more or less, though I dunno what the annotations are for. My map is below.
Not a noteworthy result, but I suppose it's nice to know "mathematically you're right."
Those with the know-how could probably make this into a weighted graph using one's IL times to optimize it further (since there are several shortest paths in the unweighted version, as you might imagine; the one below is just one of a handful of examples).
As far as 100% goes, I'm not really sure. From what I can gather, the problem of "travel between nodes 1 and 37, visiting every level at least once" is essentially summarized as a Traveling Salesman Problem with repeats (link), with exact solutions seeming to require at-least-exponential runtime at the moment. Certainly not something one could feasibly do for 64 nodes. Granted, there probably are some shortcuts one could make (e.g., the obvious optimal path in the top-left is 1-9-17-18-10-2), but I'm too lazy to do the work myself right now.
There's such categories up in the category extensions -- https://is.gd/LsdRyY
I was doing so a while back, when I had more time and Balatro single-deck runs were my main way to chill out between classes. School ramped up though and eventually other games replaced that though.
For those who care & know enough to want to volunteer, mod apps are currently open on the Discord server:
Dunno if anyone really cares, but the Discord invite attached to this leaderboard doesn't work anymore. Just felt like dropping an FYI in case someone would want to replace it.
While true,
(1) We time by IGT, and I can't imagine there's a big difference there between the two.
(2) To my understanding, PS2 is just really good, 99.9%-compatible PS1 emulation, with some small perks according to Google. The main benefit you might get is a slightly faster time RTA, especially with the fast disc speed option, but apparently that can cause crashes.
Pretty sure there are some nuances between PS1 and PS2 that the better runners are more familiar with. Though most activity right now seems to be more or less split between PS1 hardware and PS1 emulator AFAIK.
