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@lace193

Me & Namizo unofficially called it Bacon% because Captain Hog = Captain Bacon

@HazelPietro @lace193 @ayden123platypus

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

okay i knew i would have to do 1 more attempt at 3x3

please try to record in 60 fps next time, lags like at 0:17 might be a reason for rejection in some cases

•As of 16/01/2022 all entries for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 place must have a video frame rate of at least 30, the frame rate must be stable.

wow someone actually played it, gg

@ThatRaisinTho this is the link associated with this game's page

wowwwwwwwwww

@Shanezell I have a meme speedrun idea btw - Fastest time to unlock the 15 puzzle minigame / get to the ship, from the start of the game to the minigame activation

I have unintentionally did that like 10 times already, trying different ff1 versions and emulators at multiple platforms, just to speedrun 15 puzzle minigame, now I wonder how fast can it be done and if it has been done before.

I have like 0 knowledge of the game so I was basically doing this:

• go 4 warriors, magic feels completely useless in early game (or at least complicated to use for someone like me)
• buy everyone strongest weapons and armor, you have just enough money for that
• grind nearby monsters up to level 3-4, go sleep to heal from time to time
• go to the castle, and immediately fight the boss
• go heal once again, and proceed to the next city
• go sleep to heal,
• fight pirates, they are not strong at all,
• go to the ship, at last

update: well it is probably would be pretty much the same as any% first split

After some very quick testing with an optimal solver, potentially good boards are:

• 1 15 4 12... (like the ones that close to 57.300 by cambark)
• 6 15 9...... (like 48.633 by deathbychipmunk)
• 15 4 8 0... (like mine or 48.933 by Bison_H)
• 5 15 4 12...

But that's really just a first test on the little amount of data, that I have, and I also used short-moves notation solver, not the long-moves ones, I should probably do that later and collect more data as well.

Bad news is that the shortest scrambles in short-moves notation are 44-movers, maybe there are better ones obviously, but there are probably no extremely lucky boards possible

Some of the notes I want to point out based on that little research:

• It should be OK to do runs on same boards, because otherwise you would just run out of scrambles to speedrun on (although it might Not to be ok to do that using rng manipulation or save states)
• As a result of that, It is worth learning best possible solutions to scrambles beforehand, and reset until getting specific board / group of boards
• Some of the boards are objectively better than the others, you can filter out many of the possible scrambles I think, but finding truly best scramble might be a fun challenge, as you would also have to take obscure game controls style into account when choosing scramble, but I think it should not be very far from just a scramble with a shortest possible solution in wide-moves notation, but not exactly that, also, someone would have to actually find all possible boards, there might be around 100 of them I think, if we include all the 1-move variations etc., maybe even more, my best guess is something nice like "64" or "128"

P.S. I personally would have enjoyed it much much more if boards were truly random, learning solutions for specific scrambles, trying to find them etc., and waiting for them seems very not fun and not how I usually do sliding puzzles outside of this game

Also, I think this issue might be in other version of FF1, because after about 1000 solves done in 3DS version, I could not get very lucky scrambles, and my personal best seem to have a lot of moves, more than I would expect for a personal records, but they seem to be a lot more random than this NES version, at least I could not notice that while playing, and not getting same boards over and over again like in here.

Ok I did some testing.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FY5qzaNUQeLjOWLsSQnc8dSE42sa-mxTfPW4KCh6PmU/edit?usp=sharing

Here are my results

I have scrambled puzzle 100 times, (2 times i closed it by accident before writing down)

So out of 98 boards only 45 were "unique", but many of those "unique" boards are not truly unique, I have tried to get some extra data by normalizing scrambles (solving them by just moving blank to the corner), getting around 35-37 unique scrambles after normalizing blank positions, since many scrambles are just different by 1-2 moves

But even after normalization, there are very few truly different states, many of them can be grouped together even by simple sorting, as they often start with same first row

7/46 start with 1 15 4 12

5/46 start with 1 15 8 9

4/46 start with 13 15 12 8

4/46 start with 5 15 4 12

4/46 start with 6 15 8 9

etc. with a bunch of smaller groups like that as well, some of which, as I already mentioned, are the same exact boards, different by 1-2 tile moves. Some of the differences in the scrambles are harder to notice, because the change is, for example, just one cycle of 3 elements, so it's still possible to combine scrambles into even larger groups

Now just for the fun, let's try to find each boards from the 46 unique I've found to the runs on the leaderboard, including obsolete, and mine not yet verified 38.5s one

(I'm going to use numbers from the 2nd list of the sheet, not from the raw data)

• mine is #26
• 00:47.470 by Shanezell - it is 1 short move away from #35
• 00:48.633 by deathbychipmunk - "unique", but 2 moves and a cycle away from #42 (3 2 10 cycle + right column)
• 00:48.933 by Bison_H - #26, as I already mentioned
• 00:56.923 by Leonis07 - #2, exactly that one
• 00:57.093 by Soloyourtrashkid - VOD unavailable
• 00:57.300 by cambark - 1 cycle away from #6 (4 6 15)
• 01:07.133 by deathbychipmunk - 1 short move away from #27
• 01:08.120 by Avin_Chaos - could not really find the match
• 01:09.600 by cambark - 1 short move away from #12 (or from #13, same thing)
• 01:22.494 by buffalax - 1 short move and a cycle away from #29 (maybe 2 cycles?)
• 01:25.010 by Avin_Chaos - ~2 moves and 2 cycles away from #41
• 01:43.297 by mammaru339 - exactly #45

So I could not find exact matches for most of the runs, but almost for all of them there is a very similar scrambles, I think I could have found more matches with a larger data collected than 100 attempts, but it is already very clear, that the amount of possible scrambles is very limited, and those scrambles, which are unique, tend to be split into several very similar groups, in which scrambles are different by 1-2 blank moves or some of the tiles are cycled, so it's hard to say, which is actually a unique one, and since it works this way for everyone, and not just me, it is just how the game works.

So I have tried speedrunning 15 puzzle category recently, and almost immediately noticed, that I'm getting same boards over and over again Like this one: https://www.speedrun.com/final_fantasy_nes/runs/zq35erry I've got that same board in my run as well:

It seems like there are a limited amount of possible boards in the game, and there is a very little amount of them, have not really count them, but I'm getting same ones like every other game, I already improved my time on this by a few seconds (my first attempt was 38.5, now it's like 34, i'll upload soon)

So Is it known how this game rng works for the puzzle game? Can you just submit runs done at same boards? If no, what should I do then? Since I got the same scramble as the other person, it really feels like there are no random boards involved, so I basically have to use the same ones

I might try to write down all of the possible boards to prove/disprove my theory, should not really take a lot of time, as the amount seems very limited

OK, I improved my records, and also recorded them on camera, uploading soon.

But all my points here are still valid.

Just got 3 of my WR runs rejected in Sliding Puzzle category:

• Easy

• Normal

• Hard

• Video in question

The moderator @AidanB gave the following reason: "Difficulty selection screen needs to be shown"

First of all, why? How is that necessary for the verification process? Run does not start until all pieces are shuffled according to the rules. My run clearly shows the shuffling process, I even edited my video, so it includes the frame-accurate timer, and managed to do so without any issue with the timings.

I understand that some of the games may require difficulty selection screen to, well, proof the matching difficulty of the level, but in Sliding Puzzle category specifically, it is Irrelevant, since Easy is 3x3, Medium is 4x4, and Hard id 5x5, without any other changes. Also, I have included all of the difficulties in one video, so it should have been even more obvious in that aspect.

Second of all, rules. There is no such requirement in the rules of the category. And there is no such requirement in the rules of the game.

So how is that a valid reason for run's rejection, If such specific requirement is not mention in the rules?

And lastly, this requirement is not satisfied by other runners of the category:

• Current Medium sliding puzzle #1 run - Does not include difficulty selection screen
• Current Hard sliding puzzle #1 run - Does not include difficulty selection screen

As for other categories of this game:

• Colour Cards Medium by AidanB (the moderator) - Does not include difficulty selection screen
• Colour Cards Hard by AidanB (the moderator) - Does not include difficulty selection screen

A bunch of others examples by different runners and different categories: https://pastebin.com/raw/faUWywhk

So what do we have?

• There are no problems with the timings of my runs, or defining the difficulty of the level during the verification;
• My runs do follow all of the specific category rules and the overall rules of the game;
• My runs show full completion of the game, as required by the rules;
• Rules of the game don't mention the requirement, of showing the difficulty selection screen;
• Rules of the category don't mention the requirement, of showing the difficulty selection screen;
• Other runners, of the same category, don't include the difficulty selection screen in their runs;
• Other runners, of other categories of the game, did not include the difficulty selection screens, (including the moderator himself).

My solutions:

• Restore my runs, as there is no valid reason for them to be rejected;
• Modify the rules, so they clearly include the requirement, but in that case, please make sure to remove all of the runs from leaderboards, that did not satisfy this requirement, otherwise this moderation process in unfair.

Final notes:

In any case, this is very frustrating, doing WR level speedrun attempts requires a lot of time and effort, I will try matching my performance in future attempts, but I'm not sure if I can get same level of luck in a short amount of time, as before. Editing the video into a nice format also took some effort, I did not expect at all for it to just go to waste.

I strongly believe, that runs should not be rejected, unless they are not following the rules of the game, or there are really strong reason to believe, that the runs were done illegitimately.

I also believe, that rules are same for everyone, it should not be possible, that some runs follow the requirement, and other runs don't, including the staff members of the moderation team.

https://discord.com/invite/dDX3ZfSt It says the link is expired

Truly #Insane