Chapter guides

Compiling

Almost everything you need to compile *Eggman Hates Furries* from its source project file is available in the “EHF Compiling Kit” tool in the [resources section](https://www.speedrun.com/ehf/resources).

Compiling this game requires upgrading the Game Maker 7 installation to the Pro version. The online DRM to do so is no longer functional, but a crack is available, which is usually named “GM70_DrXJ.exe”. **I cannot verify the safety of this software, and as such it could have additional malicious payloads. Modern antivirus software WILL quarantine it, either before or after performing the crack.** (Consequently, it is not included in the “EHF Compiling Kit”; please contact me privately.) **I only recommend executing this file from within a secure, disposable virtual machine.** (Windows 10 Professional’s “Windows Sandbox” feature is a dead simple way to do this.)

You should run Game Maker 7 in “Advanced Mode” when opening any EHF project files.

Because Game Maker 7 queries the operating system to render fonts when compiling executables, you will need to install the fonts in the “fonts” folder in order to compile the game with the fonts intact. (There are two versions of “SF Foxboro Script”: “v1” was used in the original release and is the most readable, and “v2” was used in version 2 and is included for completeness.) You will also need to disable the system‐wide “font smoothing” effects when compiling, or else they will be blurry in the compiled executable. You can find this option under Control Panel → System and Security → System → Advanced system settings → “Advanced” tab → “Performance” section “Settings…” button → “Visual Effects” tab → “☐ Smooth edges of screen fonts”.

The current codepage must be set to 1252 for the fonts to render correctly. (Running “chcp.com” in a terminal will tell you the active codepage.) Windows 10 and later may set this to 65001 by default (UTF-8). You can change this at Control Panel → Clock and Region → Region → “Administrative” tab → Change system locale… → “Current system locale” dropdown. Setting this to English (United States) will work. On Windows 10 and later, you must also uncheck “☐ Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support”. This requires a restart to take effect (note that this means Windows Sandbox cannot compile an executable with proper extended ASCII support for fonts).

Game Maker does not let you compile a debug mode executable directly to a file, but you can click “Run game in debug mode” and then copy the .exe file from %TEMP% while it’s running (it’ll be in the folder starting with “gm_ttt_” that was created when Game Maker 7 was first opened).

When dealing with the Speedrunning Edition project file, the state of compatibility mode and debug mode are controlled by the first code execution event in the “Game Start” event of the “presentation” object. The feature to log errors to “game_errors.log” is set in Global Game Settings → “Errors” tab → “☑︎ Write error messages to file game_errors.log”.

Controls and techniques

## Controls

### Base game

Most of the game’s controls are explained or reasonably obvious:

- **Left/Right**:
    - Move
    - Pitch (“Intro” chapter only)
- **Up**:
    - Prevent crouching
    - Accelerate (“Intro” chapter only)
    - Move (“Battle” chapter only)
    - Change menu selection
- **Down**:
    - Crouch (while standing)
    - Roll (while running, “Ultimate” chapter excluded)
    - Handbrake (“Intro” chapter only)
    - Move (“Battle” chapter only)
    - Change menu selection
- **Control**:
    - Boost (“Intro” chapter only)
- **Space**:
    - Jump (while grounded)
    - Charge Spin‐Dash (while crouching, “Ultimate” chapter excluded)
    - Set up shield (“Battle” chapter only)
    - Select menu item
- **Tab**:
    - Toggle “control help” overlay request
- **Escape**:
    - Quit game (menu, “Intro” chapter if not completed)
    - Return to menu (gameplay, border menu)
    - Unpause
- **Enter**:
    - Toggle pause
    - Select menu item

However, some additional controls are effectively hidden:

- **F4**: switches between fullscreen and windowed mode (common to many Game Maker games).
- **F9**: takes a screenshot (in BMP format).
- **Alt+F12**: spawns a dialogue to enter GML (Game Maker Language) code into, which the game then executes. This gives total control over the game; for instance, entering `goToCreds();` warps to the end credits. This is disabled in the non‐debug Speedrunning Edition executables.
- **Control**: in “Ultimate”, makes all existing inert collision lines exhibit a small upwards force on colliding objects. (This is likely a leftover debugging control.) In practice, this makes it far less consistent to jump off affected solid ground, as it lightly pushes Sonic up and away from it. (Some moving collisions will undo this when calculating their own forces.)

I would recommend to keep the game’s “control help” overlay enabled, because it is useful as both an input display and an authoritative source on whether or not you have control over Sonic at any given time (besides his bike and Super Sonic forms, where it does not display).

### Speedrunning Edition

As discussed in more detail in [Game Versions and the Speedrunning Edition](https://cohost.org/EHF-documentation/post/2094892-game-versions-and-th), the Speedrunning Edition has more features with their own controls. The legal version only has one added function:

- **Shift+Enter**: When using a completed save file, reloads the last chapter that was selected at the menu in the same way the menu would after a 500ms delay, for attempting ILs. (“Intro” is only reloaded if no chapters have been selected from the menu since starting the game, because of how restarting the intro functionally restarts the game.)

Debug mode adds many more controls:

- **F1**: Toggles collision display
- **F2**: Toggles instance inspection and displacement
    - **Left‐click**: Locks‐in selected instance on press, and moves to cursor on release (unless shift is held)
    - **Right‐click**: Copy object name (**+Shift**: Copy id)
- **F5**: Save state
    - **Shift+F5**: Save state using filename (excluding extension) stored in the clipboard
- **F6**: Load state
    - **Shift+F6**: Load state using filename (excluding extension) stored in the clipboard
- **F7**: Restarts the game, toggling “camhack” mode
    - **=** / **-**, **Page Up** / **Page Down**, **mouse wheel**: Zoom “camhack” view (**+Shift**: Zoom faster)
    - **0**: Reset zoom
    - **Middle mouse button**: Pan “camhack” view (**+Shift**: Pan faster) (Without moving: Reset pan position)
    - **F3**: Switch views between “camhack view” and “game view”
- **F8**: Toggle frame advance
    - **Z**: Advance frame

Note that none of these controls function during the end credits.

## Techniques and physics

### Spin‐Dash

Initiating a Spin‐Dash requires Sonic to be crouching in a “grounded” state, and for one of the following conditions to be true (at normal game speed):

- Be moving less than 0.3 pixels per frame, and crouched for more than 14 frames;
- Be crouched for more than 26 frames;
- Be crouched for more than 8 frames while in the “Robot” chapter.

These requirements are the only things preventing Sonic from performing a Spin‐Dash up a wall. The altered physics while underwater actually allow the first condition to be met, although this isn’t really useful anywhere.

The Spin‐Dash speed increases when space is pressed multiple times:

- ×1: 20
- ×2: 24
- ×3: 28
- ×4: 32
- ×5+: 36

So, pressing space 5+ times instead of 1 results in almost twice as much speed.

The state of the space key for Spin‐Dash and Jump is evaluated by whether or not a key press event has been received that frame, rather than if space was not depressed on the previous frame. This makes it possible to charge the Spin‐Dash on every frame. Pressing space on the same frame a Spin‐Dash is executed also charges it one last time instead of jumping.

The velocity achieved with Sonic’s Spin‐Dash scales *inversely* to the game speed. In other words, when the game is in “slow motion,” Spin‐Dashes will actually be slower than normal even after compensating for the reduced game speed. For example, when the game is running at 1/5th normal speed (the usual “slow motion” speed), Sonic’s Spin‐Dash will only achieve 1/5th of its normal speed.

### Jumping

Jump height is fixed; variable jump height cannot be achieved by holding space for varying periods of time. (The only reason to hold space down is for setting up shield in Battle.)

Like most Sonic games, Sonic’s jump trajectory is perpendicular to the angle of the surface he is standing on.

There is always 1 “coyote time” frame where Sonic can still jump after leaving the ground without jumping. This can be difficult to notice casually, given that Sonic doesn’t switch to his airborne sprites until after the coyote time expires. This smooths out some edge cases in the collision detection, like when Sonic technically alternates between grounded and not‐grounded every frame while in sustained contact with a sharp corner.

## Engine bugs

### Switching away from the user desktop

If the PC switches away from the user desktop running the game (the most common way this happens is by invoking the secure desktop, which is done by inputting a secure attention key/sequence like Ctrl+Alt+Delete to bring up the security screen, through a UAC prompt, or by locking the PC), the Game Maker engine’s event execution loop encounters unexpected behaviour when it tries to poll the operating system for keyboard and mouse inputs, as Windows responds differently when the application’s desktop is not in focus. This activates a failsafe in the Game Maker engine that just terminates the current loop iteration and starts the loop over; however, all changes already made to the game state persist. With most games, this will result in only “begin step” (and possibly applicable “alarm” events) being executed, as the next event types in the execution order are keyboard and mouse input events.

When limited to executing code in “begin step” events, *Eggman Hates Furries* only does these things:

- The sonic object displaces relative to its velocity and the game speed.
- All logic for the floater (the floating platform in Hell) executes.
- Most logic for the main Egg boss object executes.
- Most logic for the Super Eggman object executes.
- All logic for the rotating blocks and “fragile blocks” in Ultimate executes.

The Speedrunning Edition will force the game to quit if it detects this behaviour to protect the integrity of speedruns, as there are no speedrun categories that permit abusing this behaviour. Doing so requires interacting with the PC’s operating system in a very intrusive way that should not be required by any speed game. Even besides that, though, it adds vanishingly little value for a speedrun. The effects of this are extremely difficult to control (the rate at which these events execute depends on the processor speed of the host PC, and how long it takes for the operating system to switch between desktops is not precisely controllable) and often result in game errors. The uses are also quite minimal, due in part to how the game dynamically generates most of its terrain, so the main uses would be to displace sonic to activate position‐based autosave triggers and skip chapters (specifically Climb, Hell, and ZigZag) or to move ahead or out‐of‐bounds to skip some platforming (particularly in Water, Grass, Lost, and Ultimate). Activating this “trick” is not technical or interesting to watch (indeed, there is nothing to watch at all), and it’s also not serializable behaviour (as in, not something even a TAS could abuse).

Game Versions and the Speedrunning Edition

## Official versions
*Eggman Hates Furries* has three official versions. There are no gameplay differences between any versions; they only introduce compatibility changes and accidental regressions.

## Version 2 changelog
Released on 2014‐02‐03.
- Playback for all MIDIs except FoxFace and Samwedo was changed to use the Windows Media Player core instead of DirectSound, due to issues with DirectMusic in Windows 8 that caused crashes with most MIDIs. This makes the game freeze when playback of affected MIDIs begins (with a range of about 0.6–1.75 seconds on my PC), and also causes some notes at the very beginning and end of these files to not be played.
    - The playback volume of all MIDIs has also been decreased, sometimes very significantly.
    - FoxFace.mid was changed in some way (including the copy within the Game Maker project file), possibly to make it playable by DirectMusic in Windows 8.
    - The third attack phase of Doll no longer plays a MIDI cover of “Can You Feel the Sunshine?” as the switch to the more limited Windows Media Player core removed the ability to finely control MIDI playback volume, so the game now uses a looping sample lifted from the original song. This also introduces a bug where this sample can play indefinitely.
- Some fonts were altered:
    - ringfont and menuFont were changed from LCDMono Ultra and LCDMono2 Ultra to LCDMono, likely in error.
    - speechFont’s render changed significantly because SF Foxboro Script’s Bold style was properly installed. This actually results in the intro text becoming significantly *more* difficult to read.
    - foxBoro and speechFont’s renders also changed very slightly due to a minor font version change.

## Version 3 changelog
Released on 2018‐07‐22.
- The method for creating the white noise effect used at the end of the final boss was changed from actual randomly‐generated noise to some pre‐generated background images. This fixes a rare crash in some buggy graphics drivers that was triggered by the original method’s utilization of a D3D surface.
- credits.txt was edited to reword the first paragraph, fix a typo in line 127 (it's → its), and update Oddwarg’s email address.
- Several fonts (counterfont, ringfont, foxBoro, speechFont, and menuFont) were changed to Arial, which is almost certainly a result of the font families used (LCDMono and SF Foxboro Script) not being installed at the time of compilation, resulting in Game Maker 7 replacing them with the default of Arial. Besides the aesthetic changes, this notably results in the text in the final cutscene drawing past the edge of the screen.

## Speedrunning Edition
I’ve compiled modified executables based on Oddwarg’s released source project file (which itself is based on version 3). They’re available on the [resources page](https://www.speedrun.com/ehf/resources). As these modified versions add in‐game timer functionality and eliminate uncontrollable variations in timing without affecting gameplay at all, they must be used for speedruns. **Any submitted runs that do not use the Speedrunning Edition will be rejected.**

The executables with “compat” in the filename retain the compatibility code changes made in the two updates to the game, while the others revert to the behaviour seen in the initial release. The executables with “debug” in the filename are “debug mode” executables (which are **not** legal for speedruns), the changes to which are described further down.

These executables can be used in conjunction with a Python script I’ve created that connects with the LiveSplit Server component for automatic in‐game timing and splitting. Read the [Using the auto‐splitter script](https://cohost.org/EHF-documentation/post/2094928-using-the-auto-split) guide for more information.

## Speedrunning Edition general changelog
- Reverts fonts to their appearance in version 1.
- Adds an in‐game timer to the top‐left, which stops when the last chapter begins.
    - It pauses during the last part of “End” and gains 55.377 seconds. This compensates for the game’s usage of the PC’s system time for controlling the cutscene’s duration to sync to the music, which could otherwise cause random variations in timing as a result of complications with the operating system. (This can be easily observed by clicking and holding the titlebar during this time, which makes the cutscene end earlier relative to the game state.)
- Segment times (yellow) and IL times (green) display in the top‐right at autosaves when valid/applicable.
    - Reloading a chapter by dying is not valid for an IL, as this restarts chapters slightly differently.
- The game’s window title shows the current in‐game time, the last segment time, the last IL time, and the number of splits.
- Using a completed save file makes running ILs easier:
    - The timer restarts when starting a chapter from the menu.
    - Autosave indicators and segment/IL times (when applicable) now always appear, rather than only when reaching an autosave for the first time.
    - Pressing shift+enter reloads the last chapter that was selected at the menu in the same way the menu would after a 500ms delay, for attempting ILs. (“Intro” is only reloaded if no chapters have been selected from the menu since starting the game, because of how restarting the intro functionally restarts the game.)
- The “control help” overlay’s up arrow now shows when space is pressed instead of the up key, to make it more useful as a native input display.
- The “LOW FRAMERATE” message now only appears during consistent lag, and the speed threshold to trigger it has been changed to 7⁄8 normal game speed (up from 4⁄5).
- The hidden debugging function is disabled outside of debug mode (see [Controls and techniques](https://cohost.org/EHF-documentation/post/2094512-controls-and-techniq) for more information).
- Shows an error message and forcefully terminates the game when switching away from the user desktop running the game (such as when pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete, viewing a UAC prompt, or locking the PC) due to a Game Maker engine bug (see the “Engine Bugs” section of [Controls and techniques](https://cohost.org/EHF-documentation/post/2094512-controls-and-techniq) for more information).
- Parts of “Eggman” are reprogrammed to use the game state for timing, rather than using the PC’s system time to sync to the music (similar to “End”). This is the only change which alters the playsim directly, but it just removes the possibility of this cutscene causing random timing variances as a result of complications with the operating system. (Like with “End”, this can be observed in the original game by clicking and holding the titlebar during this cutscene.)
- Fixes a game bug where the menu credits (not the end credits) would use the wrong font if anything else drew text using a different font (i.e. the “LOW FRAMERATE” warning or my timer) after they started.
- Fixes a game bug where, if gameplay is interrupted (e.g. death, returning to menu) while the sample from “Can You Feel the Sunshine” is audible during Doll’s third attack phase, it keeps playing until the Doll boss is spawned again.

## Speedrunning Edition “debug mode” general changelog
- These are compiled in Game Maker 7’s “debug mode”, which adds a window with various controls, including:
    - Variable watching, including watch list saving and loading;
    - Listing of all variables (local or global), instances, and messages;
    - Arbitrary GML code execution and room speed control.
    - Its controls for save states and frame advance should be disregarded in favour of improved functionalities described below.
- Always draws “DEBUG MODE” in the bottom‐left of the main view area (unless instance inspection and the game view are both active).
- The failsafe that terminates the game when switching away from the user desktop is disabled (though this often crashes the debugger anyway).
- The game window shows the cursor and can be freely resized, to facilitate some of the following features.
- F1 toggles drawing of most types of collision checks.
    - Inactive collisions become desaturated.
    - Radial collisions with a negative radius are drawn as solid circles, rather than outlines. (A negative radius requires another radius to fully overlap it before the collision check succeeds.)
    - Collisions for objDoomKnife, objDoomWave, and objElectricWall (when they have gaps) do not compensate for Sonic’s radius, so a point is drawn at Sonic’s base coordinates when these collision checks are running to properly illustrate them.
    - The remaining leniency on objJawCollider objects is visualized as an added blue tint, so they shift from fuchsia and turn red when they are damaging.
- F2 toggles instance inspection. An arrow is drawn from the mouse cursor to the nearest instance, and its id and object name are shown in the bottom‐left of the window. These controls are added:
    - The left mouse button locks‐in the selected instance when pressed, and teleports the selected instance to the cursor when released unless shift is held.
    - The right mouse button copies the selected instance’s object name to the clipboard, or its id if shift is held.
- Pressing F7 resets the game and toggles “camhack” mode. This increases the draw resolution to the size of the game window when F7 was pressed, and gives a full‐screen view of the room. While active, these controls are added:
    - The = equals and - hyphen‐minus keys, the page up and page down keys, and the mouse wheel zoom the view in and out. Holding shift zooms faster. 0 resets the zoom.
    - Holding the middle mouse button makes the mouse pan the view. Holding shift pans faster. Tapping the middle mouse button without moving the mouse resets the panning position.
    - F3 switches back and forth from displaying the usual “game view”.
- F5 and F6 save state and load state respectively. This stops all playing sounds first, to prevent sound engine crashes and issues like sounds endlessly looping. (These would happen because of the game’s sound being handled by the “Super Sound System”, which is an external DLL, so changes to the game state can make the game lose track of external sound handles.)
    - If shift is held and there is text in the clipboard, it will try to use that text as a filename (not including the “.sav” extension) for the savestate. (The default file used otherwise is “_save716750.sav”.)
    - Loading a state saved while “camhack” mode is active and switched to “game view” can cause the rendering area to be resized. This appears to be a Game Maker bug; avoid saving states with this view active.
    - Other errors when loading states are still possible. For instance, states only work with the current session, and loading a state saved during death will raise errors because the background drawing has since been unloaded, so these should be avoided.
- Pressing F8 toggles frame advance, advanced by pressing Z. (This is different from, and less cumbersome than, the native frame advance from Game Maker’s debug mode, as you don’t have to switch off the main game window to advance frames.) Only F5, F6, and F8 will take effect immediately while frame advance is active. (Be aware that loading a state won’t have any visual effect until the next frame, when the screen is redrawn; for states saved during frame advance, this necessitates advancing a frame manually.)

Note that none of these added features function during the end credits.


## Speedrunning Edition revision 1 changelog
Released on 2019‐12‐26 (the same day as the initial release).
- Improved the logic for the routine that autosaves after completing the “Intro” chapter. It now only shows the autosave indicator and split times when clearing the intro for the first time or when using a completed save file, rather than always.
- Removed an unnecessary call to save() in the routine that autosaves for all the other applicable chapters besides “Intro”. (There’s no reason to update the save file when you’re already using a completed save file.)

## Speedrunning Edition revision 2 changelog
Released on 2022‐04‐17.
- Added more executables that remove the compatibility changes made in the latter two official versions. On at least my Windows 10 system, there seem to be no issues reverting these changes.
    - The use of an actual sample from “Can You Feel the Sunshine?” rather than a MIDI cover (as in the first version) during Doll’s third attack phase was maintained due to stylistic preference and for reduced code complexity. However, a game bug was fixed where it could play indefinitely.
- The window title now shows the current split number at the end.
    - An updated auto‐splitter script is required to work with this version’s window title formatting, as such.
- The internal copy of Foxface.mid was changed to match version 1. (This version is used when not in compatibility mode.)
- The timer in the window title now updates while the game is paused.
- The timer no longer resets if “Intro” is chosen from the chapter selection menu during a run.
- The font changes in version 2 were reverted; fonts now match the game’s initial version 1 release.
- The debug mode executables now draw “DEBUG MODE” in the bottom‐left of the main view area.
- The debug mode executables have several added features:
    - Collision display
    - Instance inspection and displacement
    - “Camhack” mode
    - Improved save state functionality
    - Improved frame advance functionality

## Speedrunning Edition revision 3 changelog
Released on 2022‐04‐27.
- Now throws a fatal error when encountering the Game Maker engine bug that manifests when switching away from the user desktop in Windows currently running the game (see the “Engine Bugs” section of [Controls and techniques](https://cohost.org/EHF-documentation/post/2094512-controls-and-techniq) for more information).
- Collision display: some radial collisions are now drawn more accurately; specifically: objring, objfallring, objBoostPad, objbouncer (springs), ult_bouncer (springs in Ultimate), and objPipeInit.
    - All of these except objfallring (which just drew the interaction radius too small) now show how their collision size scales with Sonic’s speed. (This was probably done to prevent Sonic from going so fast that he passes over them, but also causes issues like when spin‐dashing near the underwater boost pads in Grass, which can now be properly visualized.)
- Standardized shadow colours on debug mode text.
- The debug mode executables now write error messages to game_errors.log.

## Speedrunning Edition revision 4 changelog
Released on 2022‐07‐11.
- The “LOW FRAMERATE” message is no longer triggered by slowdowns from pausing and frame advance, and long pauses that only last a single frame (such as those caused by loading MIDIs when using the compatibility executables) now influence it minimally. It has also been made a bit more sensitive to real slowdown, now using a threshold of 7⁄8 normal game speed rather than 4⁄5.
- Fixed special characters (in particular, the letter Ø as seen in the credits) rendering as ▯ due to the compiling PC’s system locale previously being set to use CP-65001 (UTF-8) rather than CP-1252.
- Minor code cleanup and optimizations.
#### Debug mode changes
- The failsafe that terminates the game when switching away from the user desktop no longer activates in debug mode (though the Game Maker 7 debugger hates it when you do this anyway).
- Collision display now includes all manual collision checks previously noted as absent: robot_lazor, objLavaFall, doll_eyebeams, objDoomKnife, objDoomWave, objDoomRack (Egg phase 2 lazors), and interruptableLazor (Super Eggman).
- Collision display of movingsector no longer draws an entire circle, just the relevant segment.
- Collision display of objElectricWall objects with gaps now accurately reflect their shape.
- The collisions/drawings for objDoomKnife, objDoomWave, and objElectricWall objects with gaps do not compensate for sonic’s radius, so a point is drawn at sonic’s base coordinates to help show where these collisions are checking against when relevant.
- Collision display now includes all important sprite collisions. Precise collisions (drill, objdollbot, and objJawCollider) draw a silhouette overlay of the mask, and bounding box collisions (objdoll, objJawCollider, and objJawWeakpoint) draw the box.
    - sonic’s sprite mask isn’t drawn since it’s not useful in practice (it’s just a pixelated circle the same size as his usual radius).
    - The remaining leniency (variable ’timer’) on objJawCollider is visualized as an added blue tint to their collision drawings (so the hue is fuchsia when timer==0).
- Collision display now draws exploding grenades in a somewhat desaturated red, to try and more accurately convey that they are not immediately dangerous when visible (they only cause damage when they explode, which also destroys them immediately).
- Collision display now greys out hurtboxes for Egg and Super Eggman bosses when they’re invulnerable, like other bosses.
- Collision display now shows when the bouncers in Ultimate are inactive right after being used.
- Radial collisions with negative radii are now drawn as solid circles.
- Swapped the instance inspection right mouse button controls, so the object name is copied by default and the id is copied when shift is held.
- When copying an instance id using instance inspection, the number is automatically surrounded by parentheses. (This syntax is needed to refer to a numeric instance id directly within GML code.)
- Instance inspection text now scales to always appear the same size on‐screen when changing the zoom level in camhack mode.
- End: Fixed 3D mode not being disabled when exiting the scene early in any way besides to the menu (eg. shift+enter, F7), which left the screen blank.
- End: Made the aspect ratio for both 3D projection types match the view size when in camhack mode.

Save file format (dat.dat)

The save file is just a text file with five lines, each storing a value for a variable. (Game Maker 7’s native text file processing functions use CR LF (\r\n) style newlines when writing text files, but it can also read text files using LF (\n) style newlines.)

1. introHasBeenCleared: Stores whether or not the “Intro” chapter has been cleared. Valid values are 0 for not cleared and 1 for cleared. When this is 0, the main menu cannot be accessed before it is completed, and pressing escape will quit the game instead.
2. gameProgress: Stores how far the player has progressed through the game. Valid values are:
    - -10: Dream
    - -9: Cabin
    - -8: Takeoff
    - -7: Eggman
    - -6: Panjan
    - -5: Water
    - -4: Climb
    - -3: Drill
    - -2: Grass
    - 1: Flak
    - 2: Robot
    - 3: Doors
    - 4: Lost
    - 5: Hell
    - 6: ZigZag
    - 7: Doll
    - 8: Free
    - 9: Chopper
    - 10: Hangar
    - 11: Join me
    - 12: Egg
    - 13: Roll
    - 14: Emeralds
    - 15: Saved
    - 16: Attack
    - 17: Battle
    - 18: End
    - 19: Ultimate
    - 20: Love
3. gameCleared: Stores whether or not the game has been cleared. Valid values are 0 for not cleared and 1 for cleared. The game is considered to be cleared when the final ending cutscene concludes and the game resets itself. The only functional change this has compared to a gameProgress value of 20 is that the game will add a drawing of Sonic and Tails in a 69 position to the pool of random images shown in place of the “O” in the “Oddwarg” logo when starting “Intro”.
4. hasStartedAfterClear: Stores whether or not the game has shown the “Oddwarg” logo at least once after clearing the game. Valid values are 0 for no and 1 for yes. When this is 0, gameCleared is 1, and the game shows the “Oddwarg” logo, it will always show the drawing of Sonic and Tails in a 69 position in place of the “O” and then set hasStartedAfterClear to 1. (As such, this is set to 1 almost immediately after gameCleared is set to 1 in practice, since the game starts “Intro” and displays the “Oddwarg” logo right after it is considered to be cleared.)
5. verticalSync: Stores whether or not VSync should be enabled. Valid values are 0 for off and 1 for on.

A save file that is considered valid to start with for a full game run will have values of 0, -10, 0, and 0 for the first four lines, and either 0 or 1 for the fifth line.

Using the auto-splitter script

If you time your runs with LiveSplit, using the auto‐splitter script I created (available in the [Resources section](https://www.speedrun.com/ehf/resources)) is highly recommended. It will generate a proper save file, launch the game, send LiveSplit the in‐game time, and perform splits for you. It will also log split times and IL times to the terminal.

This script sends commands to the [LiveSplit Server component](https://github.com/LiveSplit/LiveSplit.Server). In LiveSplit, make sure to set your comparison to “Game Time” and add a “LiveSplit Server” control to your layout. Before running the script, remember to start the server by right‐clicking LiveSplit and selecting “Control” → “Start Server”.

You can open the auto‐splitter script in a text editor to change some settings at the beginning of the file, including where the Speedrunning Edition executable is located, whether you’re doing full‐game runs or IL runs, whether VSync should be enabled, and what IP and port to use for connecting to the LiveSplit Server. The default settings will work for full‐game runs if you run the script from the same directory that the Speedrunning Edition executable is in.

Running the auto‐splitter script requires [Python 3](https://www.python.org/downloads/). It also requires the win32gui library to read from the game window, which you can install by running `python.exe -m pip install pywin32` from CMD/Powershell. Then simply open the .py file with python.exe, and it will start the game and connect to the LiveSplit Server. When the game is closed, the script will terminate. (Sometimes running the script again doesn’t seem to restart the timer in LiveSplit unless you also restart LiveSplit. I don’t know what causes this; it could be LiveSplit’s fault.)

Version changelogs:

## Version 2

- Fixed splits without IL times logging the last IL time anyway.
- The final IGT sent to the LiveSplit Server now matches the in‐game IGT, rather than the sum of the run’s split times. This was sometimes resulting in a variation of ±0.02s on the final time between the game and the script due to rounding errors, so this variation now applies to the final split time instead.
- When completing a full‐game run, the script now terminates and logs the final IGT.

## Version 3

- Fixed several logic issues, including one where sometimes all splits would be set to the second split time immediately after said split.
- Compatible with Speedrunning Edition version 3’s window title formatting.
- Added a configuration option to not use LiveSplit at all (just set up the game and log times to the terminal).
- Disabled VSync by default.
- Reformatted the way times are printed to the terminal.
- Pauses after the script terminates, so the terminal remains open for review afterwards when using python.exe directly.

Nome	Autor
Chapter guides	GFD 9 months ago
Compiling	GFD 3 years ago
Controls and techniques	GFD 9 months ago
Game Versions and the Speedrunning Edition	GFD 2 years ago
Save file format (dat.dat)	GFD 2 years ago
Using the auto-splitter script	GFD 2 years ago