Illinois, USAMy friends! This was the look on my face when I discovered the largest timesave to date in Zoombinis (Old Version)
I will reveal my findings on Monday March 29th :)
This has been nagging the back of my brain for YEARS. I doubt I'll run it but just wanted to say thanks for documenting this game so well on speedrun.com with your runs, I'm watching some now.
Hello Hello,
I have submitted two creative mode runs. They're a bit silly but it was actually very enjoyable to grind out good RNG, I woke up on a lot of neat planets.
There are some judgement calls that need to be made on when timers should start in Creative Mode, and when they should end on a Magnate IL.
Timer Start Discussion Game rules say to start timer on Initialize, but there is no "Initialize" in Creative mode. You see a white screen and you are at your ship. So, I thought that the strictest interpretation of those rules would be, start the timer when the white screen is over, before/as you do you first input. The other contender for me would be when you do the input to start the game file, but I don't think that's great because that starry-sky loading screen can vary hugely in length depending on your PC. TLDR; timer begins after the white disappears, before/as you do your first input.
Timer End Discussion for Creative-mode Magnate In racecar0's Normal-mode Magnate, which I admit I didn't watch prior to my run (oops), they stop the timer only when Magnate appears on the screen naturally. This would be super painful on the Creative-mode Magnate run, because we'd have to cycle through all 10 milestones. What I did was open the Milestone journal page, and split as soon as the screen visible showed we are Magnate. This is much faster and I hope it's an acceptable time to end the run. We could adjust the time on racecar0's run (make it faster) to compensate, or, this may not be an issue since racecar0 states in their video description that there is a lot of other optimizations available, and their run is a starting point.
Thanks all!
OK here is my run!
Yeah it is 23:44:39, lol. It became clear at 2am that the run would take another 5hrs so after a google to confirm that yeah, 20+hr speedruns exist where the runner sleeps, I went to sleep. At other points in the stretch I worked, parented, etc. I have sped up the footage in some breaks and have just cut it out in others. I could upload and DM the full 24hr footage to someone if they really need it for verification but I am hoping you won't because it will take a longtime to upload and youtube can only take 12hrs of footage in one video anyhow.
Notes about the run
- See the description on youtube for some highlights you may want to watch. Interesting crash bugs. A conspiracy theory about the Queen. And my thoughts on category name & timing.
- I used custom software I built called "Treasure Galaxy Helper" which I have made available to all in another thread.
- Don't try this run without saving your game frequently :)
Treasure Galaxy Helper is opensource software I wrote to fill in level 5 satellite codes. It's really only worth using when you get one of those codes in which the first 3 numbers are filled in but no others are. But when you do get that kind of a code, it's very helpful. You can tab over to this, fill in two numbers, all while the satellite opening animation is playing.
The source & download information is here: https://github.com/ProceduralDad/TreasureGalaxyHelper/
This is software for Windows. You will need the .NET framework, which you can get on ninite.com
For more information see the github link.
Watched and was inspired that we should represent the game a little more fully here on speedrun.com.
I am considering a new category (or subcategory of any%) for "Level 5" or "Hardest". Because it would be a pain to start a new game file and do all that menuing with the timer going, I am thinking perhaps we could create the game file, enter the game, set all the customization, and then go back to main menu, and start timer on this second "Start Game". Let me know what you think about that.
And of course there is the possibility of a 100% run, or a "Max Rank" run / "All Prizes" run, but I'm not sure how long those would take, I am probably not interested in any category that takes multiple hours. More research is needed!
Also in the comments of that youtube video the game's original producer describes her time at TLC which is a pretty cool read.
