Thanks to people on Reddit, we know how the game determines the items of the Traveling Cart.

The Thing is, we need the Game ID, which you can get by looking on the folder of the Savefiles.

So we discussed a bit and come to the following. (None of this is set, we want you on the Forums to give Feedback aswell)

• Create a File and after the first saving, before you stand up from your bed, close the game. (Now you have a clean Savefile with an RNGseed)

• Setting start of the Timer to Load Game of that Game, so you could copy your seed over to other tries for instance.

We're actually trying to get a programm which would show in which order, on which day, which Items are in the Travelling merchant. When we have that programm we would add a Variable to all Speedruns where every runner can say, with Seed or without Seed.

Banjo-Tooie and Banjo-Kazooie both use similar things.

Banjo-Tooie, uses a save-file which determines the pattern of the jinjo. (Jinjo Patterns are chosen the moment you create a file)

Banjo-Kazooie uses a programm where you can select the answers of the Gruntilda Questions to get the right answers for the questions.

If people are against one of these ideas. Please speak up, we won't decide alone because we are a community.

I'd like to add my support to this, from an All Bundles perspective. The cart's inventory is determined at file creation: UniqueGameID and DaysPassed are variables in each save file. ID is a 9-digit number assigned at creation (appears to be sequential, maybe based on system clock - extremely unlike to be able to manipulate it properly) and what DaysPassed is should be obvious. The situation is that the cart will, immediately, make or break a run - but we won't know until we hit gold or walk away in disgust. With an 8+ hour category, that's unacceptable.

The best example of this comes with animal products - for all bundles you need the top-tier products from Rabbits and Pigs. If you find them in the shop, they'll cost ~2k. If you give up hoping you'll find them, your only option is to build Deluxe buildings and an animal, then wait for them to drop the item - at a cost of 50k each, and a month's worth of coddling. This is a run ender, and it probably won't become clear for five hours or so. A seeded run could either avoid this situation entirely, or at least allow it to be planned for.

I see two viable run types for All Bundles:

1. Seeded, with the runner choosing his or her seed. The risk is that a perfect seed will be found, effectively turning the category into a shopping category - but it would have to be found, first. In practice we'll probably wind up with a selection of pretty good seeds we can chose from and route around.
2. Cartless runs. Removes this element of RNG, again allowing for planning. The downside is that it's guaranteed to stretch the length of an already long run.

A third option would be unseeded runs, with the runner being allowed to project his cart inventory with the tool TrenteR mentioned. In practice this would become a restart fest until you get something on the level of a seed from option 1, and we don't really know if acceptable seeds will come along once every five games or seventy.

As for changing the start time, I'd be down for this, particularly if it allows us to set certain options (keybindings, zoom, music levels) before starting - though this would involve save file editing, I think.

Amazing idea. Taking a ton of the RNG out of the run makes it so much more fun. Also, it should open up the possibility of actually racing the game if anyone is interested, since people would be in the same seed no one would have a huge advantage or anything.

I can imagine a Fish tank seed that sells all of the hard fish (anything over 50 difficulty) in year 1 at the cart making the fish tank category like a 40 min run.

Also would make All bundles a realistic category to run without feeling like you are investing into an 8hour run that may get RNG screwed... with the right cart lady items and only visiting her on the days you know you need it could be a really short run from what we originally thought... If fire Quartz is sold by the Cart it could take less than half of what we originally thought (never seen it there so not sure if its possible, but have seen iridium ore so unsure)

I would love to see the program and hunt for those perfect seeds for each category.

EDIT: Didn't see Asiago's post when I posted this, but agree with everything you said too. Also wondering about rain seeds for 50k earnings... and maybe other earnings runs could be added since it wouldn't just be RNG rain praying runs. It would totally crush the current times if you found a summer with like 20 rains.

i proposed the idea of seed manipulation really early im glad to see it finally come to something, im happy with a seeded run but i feel like because of the outside impact from a program it should be separate from standard runs. maybe have a seeded category and inside that have like all bundles, mines or whatever the mods decide.

The Cart exclude Minerals, Weed, Quest items, Arch and maybe some other Items. Like the code itself tests against these Strings.

Edit:

More Categories? I don't see the point in there because, Who says that our Seed is better than your RNG seed? And adding more categories makes this Speedgame more a joke than a list to compare.

well i was thinking someone find the perfect seed and put it in resources so that there is a category with as little RNG as possible

The prospect of using known seeds (edit: Game IDs) presents a lot of possibilities and some concerns.

Beyond some regular random elements such as weather, daily luck, and cart stocks - imagine the more fringe circumstances - finding a seed where you can dig up a Strange Doll on day 1 (sells for 1000g), and buy 50 extra Parsnips to kickstart the economy. Or knowing exactly which ripened crop locations on various days will yield a gold-star item to complete the quality bundle.

Exploring the game code and solving the puzzle could be a fun community endeavor. Runs might come down to who can plant and pick the quickest, possibly in combination with not fully manipulable random elements (perhaps hooking the right fish on the first cast). It's hard to guess how many people will be interested in competing each time a new golden seed is identified.

I have some familiarity with retro speed-gaming, but I'm not sure how game updates are handled in speedrunning modern games. Will using seed-specific runs increase the potential for making records unbreakable as updates come through?

I don't think we have any understanding of what else is determined by GameID - though, I suspect item spawns on the overworld are based on some other thing (steps taken, milliseconds played, items shipped, etc, all of which is tracked) or a combination thereof and therefore seeds wouldn't really break that. But yes - golden seeds will be a big deal, but it's not entirely unlike breakthroughs in other games. If a significant sequence break or glitch is found, it obsoletes everything that came before it. No one should come in to speedrunning a new game and expect to be king of the hill forever without keeping up with where the game is going.

If ever the game gets an Update which would ruin many runs. We have the option to play on an older version, or to open a new leaderboard for the new Version.

If a new Version opens up a glitch, but changes something, we could add Version numbers to the run.

There is a lot of possibilities.

Anyway, some feedback about the timing would be nice. If you want to make adjustments like sound or Zoom-Buttons (Not actually Zooming out!), that can be fine. But every action needs an adjusted starttime, so it is fair for everyone, even the people who don't zoom.

For Instance, I adjust game sound (+0 Secs, because you could use windows and adjust it before the run starts), and enabling Zoom Buttons, (+1.5 Secs).

If we want to add 3-6 Seconds because of loading from Save-file, that's also an option.

This gets me 1000000x back interested. I watch the runs but I got sick of this after 50k earnings fucking me over from the start with no rain ever

I know we had this discussion on adjustments on the discord, but:

Assigning adjustments seems needlessly complicated. If the goal is to give an equal playing field to existing times - well, seeds are going to bury most of them anyway, but surely it's much smoother administratively to knock X seconds off of the old times than it is to have a laundry list of adjustments for each config option you tick. If we're going to make it complicated, let's just skip the options editing step and hope CA patches in global config some day.

(Also, if we're going to go the adjustments route sound absolutely deserves it as much as anything else - if not more, because those sliders are obnoxious with a game pad. Game audio adjustments allow you to do things like mute game music, keep sound effects, and let your own music play in the background; Windows' volume slider affects everything equally.)