Broken Sword 1 is getting a lot of development attention @ ScummVM recently. You can try out the newest changes by using the daily build: https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily
The changes aim to make the game work as close to the original as possible. The most important change when it comes to speedruns is the following: all these years BS1 ran at 12fps on ScummVM, whereas the original played at 12.5fps. ScummVM BS was literally playing slower than the original (DOS/Windows) game. 0.5fps might not sound like a big difference, but it adds up to minutes over such a long run.
There are various small changes to make the game resemble the original more closely, but most are not important for speedruns. One nice thing is, that now you can skip text with the right mouse button as well again. Helps with the mashing. Using animation skips in the wrong place should no longer crash the game.
Another kind of big change is, that in the future the animation skips will only be possible, if you run the game in debug mode. That is how it worked on the original game. Obviously we don't want to miss out on those skips for speedruns, so I think the rules need to state that debug mode is allowed (and basically required). The problem here is, that debug mode also allows you to enable fast mode (enable by pressing 4 on the keyboard) and slow mode (1 on the keyboard). So we'd need a rule that disallows that as well. Although you could also have a whole "fast mode" category, could be fun 🙃️
Key remapping is something else that needs clear rules. In theory you can just make a hotkey on your keyboard, that does both left click + right click, which would make animation skips a lot easier. You could even make 5 of those hotkeys and swipe your hand across them for rapid presses. Turbo/autoclicker is a topic for this game as well, because it is so incredibly mashing-heavy. A discussion is necessary.
That's complicated. Wouldn't want to lose the animation skips, but if the original did run half a frame faster then it'll be good to match that, so yeah debug mode for me. I probably wouldn't want to use the fast mode, but I see the game has an inbuilt speed option now too. I see fade ins are back as well. I've been wanting to use a program for button presses, as long as it's easy and everyone can use it. But I understand if people consider that a not legit way to play, but even two mice plugged in makes it easier.
I don't know what to do about the autoclicker situation either... on the one hand all the text mashing really is not pleasant, on the other hand it would change the game completely. I've been using "XClicker" during testing to figure out all the animation skips and they basically all become "free". At that point the game is only about putting your cursor in the right positions. Maybe allow autoclickers, but only for the right mouse button. But maybe it's also getting too complicated then...
I should clarify, that the ideal software for me is not something that clicks for you, but just lets you assign the mouse buttons. I just tested autohotkey, never tried it before but this script worked to make a button become both mouse clicks. So we have that.
RAlt::RButton
RButton & s::Send {LButton}
For the moment I am done running this game. Happy with my run for now, though it still has big mistakes to make sure I come back to the game later.
I've decided on these opinions regarding the rules questions:
- For key remapping, I would prefer if only one input per key/button is allowed, but I'm also ok with multi-input rebinds.
- I would prefer if no autoclicker/turbo buttons are allowed, but if it is allowed, that's also ok with me.
- What would make me lose interest in this speedrun is, if only the very old version of ScummVM that is shipped with the game were to be allowed. Or if debug mode and therefore the walk skips weren't allowed on the new ScummVM version.
Either way I think it's pretty important that there are rules written down for these issues.
So yes to debug mode. But I'd still allow rebinding with a program, or a second mouse, just so you can use both hands at once.
