I just beat The Yukon Trail in 28 seconds…
And I can do it even faster… maybe… but there are category and rules questions that will need to be answered. All really exciting stuff!
Last week I discovered a trick that I was fairly sure would break this game wide open, and yesterday that hunch came true. I found a way to skip essentially most of the game. This has resulted in one aspect I knew would come up, and one aspect I did not expect. I am going to get super wordy below, so for those not interested in all the details, here are the basics of what we as a community need to decide:
- We need a new category for load state manipulation runs
- What determines the end of a run? (not as simple as it sounds)
OVERVIEW The basic concept of the skip is that we can use load states to warp a new game right to the last city. It’s fairly easy to do, and results in runs well under 60 seconds. I think this kind of skip should be its own run category because it’s so different than a traditional run.
Additionally, the fastest possibly way to do a load skip run, might not technically be considered beating the game. I think we as a community will need a consensus on this.
HOW THE TRICK WORKS (Again, if you don’t care about the details, you can skip this section) I discovered the trick by noticing when you hit New Game (like after a failed run) that some of the game data holds over into your “new” run. I outlined this in my guide that’s posted here on speedrun.com, and I figured this would lead to something big. Ultimately, the Load Skip was discovered from this concept.
What I found is that hitting New Game carries over some data from the game in progress into the new game it starts. However, hitting Load Game leaves almost EVERYTHING behind data wise. The first useful thing I found was that loading a game leaves positioning data. This let me do something I called Boat Skip.
I could start a game, immediately save, play though until I was almost done with the Boat ride to Dyea, then load back that first save file. This would cause something interesting to happen. I would be back at the start of the game and I would play though normally until I started the board ride. As soon the boat map loaded up, I would be at the end of the boat ride instead of the beginning. The game never cleared my position data on that map, so as soon as I got back to the map, it put me where it thought I already was.
This led to me setting up a load file at the end of the boat ride. I would start a new game, save that game, load my pre-run game that was at the end of the boat ride (therefore telling the game that’s where I was), immediately reload the game I was actually playing, and that would essentially skip the entire boat ride portion of the play through. (there will be a video later showing this in action)
I knew I was onto something, but I thought perhaps there was more that could be done. I really wanted to skip the later boat section with the rapids as that would be the biggest time save. But that was not possible. It turns out every time you are in a travel section, the game records your distance as a value (example: you have traveled 90 units). But that value is NOT the value of the distance you traveled on a CERTAIN map, instead it is value applied to EVERY map. And that value resets to 0 when you complete each travel section.
To try and make this a little clearer, let’s look at how this plays out in the game. When you start a game your travel value is 0. When you get on the first boat ride that travel value ticks up until it reaches 100. When the travel value is 100 on the boat map you are transported to Dyea, and the travel value is reset to 0. When you get on the foot trail the travel value starts ticking up again and will continue to tick up until you reach the lake where it again resets to 0.
The load skip lets us trick that data into a new game. When we load a game file while on a trail, the game keeps that travel value and will just apply it to the next trail you are on. So if we have a travel value of 90 on the rapids and we load into the beginning of the game. As soon as we are on the boat ride, it will position us to wherever 90 travel units is on the boat ride map. There is unfortunately no way to “hold” that value over to a later map, so the trick can only really be applied to the very first boat ride. I did find a fun interaction which is the result of not all maps being the same distance. On the river trail I could get a travel value up to say 150, then if I load into the beginning of the game and hit the first boat map, it will start me further than the trigger that ends the boat ride. This results in the boat just traveling forever, endlessly hitting icebergs. A neat result but not every helpful.
(I should note all these numbers I am saying are made up. I have not seen any of the code, I’m just making deductions from a lot of experimentation) At this point I figured the best we were going to get was boat skip. That could be done predicably and saves like 40 seconds off perfect RNG. That is a massive skip for the run without question.
As I was tweaking boat skip to make it the biggest time save possible, something interesting happened. When I let the boat get all the way to the end of the route (but before I entered the town) if I reloaded into my new game, I was warped right into Dyea. No choosing to set sail, no boat tickets, no gear, not even a partner.
What I discovered is that not only was loading a game file maintaining the location value, but it was also maintain transition data. If I loaded my new game while I was moving from one screen to another, it would maintain that transition process into the new game and just warp me to that screen. Through some more experimentation, I learned this works EVERYWHERE. I could use this skip to jump me right into Dawson. I could even use this skip to jump me right into a claim at the end of the game. This is what really broke the run wide open and turned it into a sub one minute run. The only real problem I found was that you must have a partner. If you don’t have one and you jump ahead, the game will either crash or not let you progress. So you must have a partner to use this skip in any meaningful way.
Here is a video of me doing the skip (twice) and here is a detailed breakdown how to do it yourself.
SETUP Play though a game normally until you are in the river right before Dawson city. Save your game (we are calling this River File) Close out the entire game
RUN Start a new game Select a Partner in the ticket office Save your game (we call this New File) Load River File When you are on the last possible part of the river load New File New File will be warped to Dawson city Complete the game as normal
MAKE A NEW CATEGORY I think this part is self-evident. We need a separate category for this type or run. It involves setup, load state manipulation, and is such a short run compared to a normal any% run. My proposal would be to have any%(no load manip) and any%(with load manip). But whatever people think makes the most sense.
WHAT IS THE END OF THE GAME? Ok so this is an interesting question that came up while working on this skip. In the video I uploaded, you will notice that I do the skip twice into two different locations. First time I skip to Dawson City, the second time I skip right into a gold claim. Everything looks the same about the ending of both skips until you look closely at the details.
In the skip to Dawson city (the slower skip), everything works out normal. No problems at all. I don’t think there’s any question that this is a legitimate run.
In the skip to the gold claim (the faster skip) the ending is actually bad. The prospector says that you never made it to Dawson City and the newspaper says that you turned around and went home empty handed. This is the actually the lose screen. If you were to completely run out of food on a trail, this dialog box is what you get. Same prospector message, same newspaper. The reason we are seeing this here is because the game never recognizes that you made it to Dawson city. All the game knows is that the game came to an end, you have not been to Dawson (because we skipped it), therefore you must of lost. The only two options the games knows is either failing before you get to Dawson, or winning the game.
So is this “failure” really a failure? Or does this count as beating the game? You still got into a claim, mined it for a couple of months, and clicked on the sign post. But the prospector message is the lost game message instead of the win game message. So I’m not sure how to call this. Ultimately it will only affect the run by about 2 seconds, but in a 28 second run that is quite a lot of time.
That’s it for now! I have some full-speed runs using these skips I will submit when we have a new category, and I would love to know everyone’s thoughts on all this!
Okay. First off, amazing work. Congrats on the find.
The way I see it is we can step back from thinking about the loads so much and look at it from a perspective of what traditional category these can fall under.
These both show an end screen. With your score tallied. Okay I'm running late actually I'll finish this thought in a bit. Lol my b
Long story short we have an
Any% new game + (because of other saves used) AnD Any% (bad ending)
Ok edit -
These would be any%, new game + (good ending) and any%, new game + (bad ending), I think. That would keep them as simple and traditional as possible.
That means there's a normal (bad ending) category too in theory (as long as it still shows the hi score screen).
Either way it still would end at the input that brings up the high score screen.
Thoughts? Seems right to me.