Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reverse engineering this game to try and build something like oddtom’s probability tool, mostly in these threads:

• https://twitter.com/dazabani/status/1454514421603057669 • https://twitter.com/dazabani/status/1457082691262693377

But not only did I figure out how parts are placed, I also noticed that if you open the game and then start a level (and hence do parts placement) as the very first thing, the RNG seed is the current unix time in seconds. This is much easier to guess than the full 64-bit seed space, so I wrote a tool that shows you where your parts will spawn with 100% certainty:

https://bucket.daz.cat/ssgesus/

Set the seed to as close a time to when you open the game as possible, then plug in the locations of parts you can see at the start of the level. As far as I’m currently aware, the game will need to be restarted after each level.

I’m happy to explain or document it in more detail soon, but yeah, feel free to use it how you wish. I’ve used this tool in my Without Chimps world record. Any questions or objections?

I did a 1:40:34 right after my 2:51:18, but I don’t know how. This thread is here to find out if there’s a repeatable trick buried in that fluke. Here’s the video:

I didn’t plan a route beyond prioritising value town and the like. Previously that always meant that I’ve had to unlock so many doors that I complete every single puzzle and then some, but in this run I stayed on Balance the whole time, slowly bouncing my way between a few puzzles at a time. By the end of my run, I must have solved 5(10 + 10 + 10) = 1(10) + 2(10) + 3(10) + 4(10) + 5(10) over twenty times in a row.

Here are a couple of save files from that run, to help us reproduce the fluke. The first was copied after all five plane levels plus ae 1 (38:00 in video), while the second was copied long after I beat the game.

• https://bucket.daz.cat/rng0a.dat • https://bucket.daz.cat/rng0b.dat

• 2:50 — accidentally rebooted by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del a second time while trying to do a loss cancel • 3:15 — deleted ssgwin.dat (this should be a clean slate) • 3:30 — turned New Player Hints off inside the plane workshop rather than in the technology center (to obey timing rules) • 3:45, 3:55, 4:10, 4:25, 4:35 — solved four puzzles and opened a fifth before remembering to back out and set Puzzle Customization • VMware glitch • dumb luck

The game repeats puzzles sometimes, at the very least on the Windows version with Puzzle Customization set to a single type. Whether this is because there are duplicates in the puzzle data is unclear. Eventually the game will decide that you’ve completed the type you’ve chosen, and locks that type of puzzle in the Off state. Rinse and repeat for all puzzle types and the game will unlock everything, but from then on the game will also set everything to On after each puzzle, which makes setting a specific Puzzle Customization annoying.

What’s the difference between PC and MS-DOS, and which should I choose if I run the Windows port (with the MIDI music and Puzzle Customization)? I’m a bit confused, because two of the With Chimps runs are marked PC and one is marked MS-DOS, but all three look like they’re the MS-DOS version.