To clarify further, there are currently 4 different ways to run the game, each with their pros and cons:

Original Game, older-GOG

The vanilla game, and what GOG used to have (you can still downpatch). I found that the game's speed was highly affected by other things running on your computer. For instance, even changing what resolution I was recording with OBS from 720p to 480p made the game run faster. Once I got a new computer, I couldn't figure out a way to run the game windowed without it crashing. So it's very inconsistent in my experience.

Steam

The version on Steam is a port by dotEmu. Most notably, you can't skip the description dialog Max says when looking at things, and overall the walking speed feels slower.

GOG

Currently, GOG bundles the game with ScummVM 2.6.0. Speeds seem consistent. I haven't done much testing to compare to whether it's slower or faster than the Steam version.

ScummVM 2.8.x

The most recent ScummVM version adds animation speed controls, described above. This is a feature that players have been asked for since the game released, as Max walks quite slow. However, running the game on maximum speed looks really goofy.

So, I've never quite known what to do with the categories in this game. Any suggestions are welcome.

The latest version of ScummVM added support for variable animation speeds. First, download from ScummVM's website.

Install, run, then click "Add Game." Navigate to the "Data" folder where you have the game installed, then click "Choose." You should see this:

Click "OK."

Start the game, then go to Settings, and you'll see an "Animations speed" option. Press "+" to increase.

Hi! You mentioned that you "found a way to eliminate RNG in the nav code and the self destruction PIN." I had someone ask me how you did that. Was wondering if you could explain the method.

The rule states "Timer starts as soon as inputs are possible." I did some testing, and inputs don't register until about .75 seconds after the walk cursor shows up, slightly after the first screen loads in. (There seems to be some variability to within a tenth of a second.)

Was the intent of the rule to be when the walk cursor appears? If so, then I think that ought to be clarified. If the rule was meant as written, then SantaClaus may want to retime his run, as I think it would be faster than what's currently noted.

Here's a faster way to sneak past the droid at the end of the run. Credit goes to SantaClaus for pointing this out to me.

YouTube user Cowirrie posted this to my YouTube channel:

For speedrunning, is it legitimate to exploit this glitch on the tower at the very end?

1. Climb to the top of the tower.
2. Do not go through the window. Instead, talk to the monks at the top to trigger the joke conversation you're aware of.
3. The scene used for the arcade sequence appears, except you have no control and the knight isn't in the boat. No problem! Before the rock hits you, go into the menu and drop the arcade difficulty to minimum.
4. Robin climbs down into the boat, and the ending begins.

I would also add that the arcade slider needs to be up before going into the cutscene. If it's all the way down to begin with, this won't work.

Snowy then found the following: "further note regarding optimising the new skip: by pressing the UP (or LEFT) arrow key twice after clicking on options, the cursor moves directly to the Arcade slider

so you can do a quick UP -> UP -> Left Click (to move the arcade slider to the bottom) -> Esc immedately after talking to the monks and clicking on the Options (edited)

In fact it moves the cursor to exactly the bottom of the Aracde slider, so a simple single left click is all that's needed there (no dragging needed!)"

I found two small time saves that the existing runs don't use:

1. On the beginning of the Third Day, click on the door to exit instead of talking to Stanley. You have to walk a little bit farther, but this skips Stanley's cleaning animation, so it saves about a second.

2. When you leave Leonard Shoulder's house, tell Father Roache to go ahead instead of leaving together. (He'll ask you the Shakespeare question before he leaves.) This is faster because 1) you can double-click the exit to leave a little bit faster and 2) you don't have to watch Roache walk off the next screen to the left.

Also from sluicebox, here's a way to cheat at Battle Cruiser (only helpful for 100%):

https://www.benshoof.org/blog/space-quest-v-battle-cruiser-cheat

Via sluicebox, a way to skip picking up the fuse from the toolbox:

you don't need the toolbox fuse! ignore it and just pull the two middle fuses and put the good one in the broken socket. the two fuses from each column are the same size and swappable. i think the diagram is trying to convey this. the socket beneath the broken one is "Cockpit Glazing Blemish Removers", suggesting it's unimportant. so yeah just use that. cliffy's fuse is superfluous! the game tracks if you've done this so that it can correctly restore the screen, but it's the end of the game so you can never see this.

Not sure if this would save any appreciable time, but worth testing.

MusicallyInspired (Brandon Blume) mentioned this to me. Space Quest V "allows you to skip the crest-cleaning sequence when playing with the EGA driver."

To enable EGA, go into "resource.cfg" and change the video driver from "VGA320.DRV" to "EGA640.DRV".

The cleaning sequence in QuanVM only takes a couple of seconds, so this doesn't really save that much time. Also, to my understanding, this only works in DOSBox. However, DOSBox max cycles is still pretty zippy, and this may be worth looking into.

Thanks for the response! I brought it up in the KQ Discord, and the majority thinking seems to be to make a new category for runs like this. Do you already have a recorded run?

Also, feel free to join the discord yourself: https://discord.gg/kAPTPTR

Hi! No one's ever messed with the cfg file to my knowledge, and my gut feeling is that it wouldn't be allowed, but that's a discussion we could have. Do you remember what exactly you changed?

We started working on a document a while back on all the zips, but there are so many and they change frequently, so that stalled out. We really ought to make an updated guide, but haven't gotten around to it.

This guide will get you up and running: https://www.speedrun.com/kings_quest_vi_heir_today_gone_tomorrow/guide/jjmmc

The zips just happen as long as you're running ScummVM unthrottled with the speed all the way up.

Important shortcuts:

-Ins switches between Walk and the last cursor selected -Holding Enter is like left-clicking repeatedly -Esc goes to the menu bar and is used to do Gnome Skip and Cataclypse

I'd recommend watching the WR, or maybe 2nd / 3rd place since they're a bit slower and thus easier to follow. Copy where they click for zips.

Gnome skip is performed by facing right, clicking Walk past the gnome trigger, then immediately pressing Esc to go to the menu bar. If Alex isn't facing exactly north, you need to click on the menu bar to advance frames. Go into your inventory, and use the hand on the map.

The skips in the catacombs are done the same way, except Alex doesn't need to be facing north, exactly, and you use the boring book instead of the map.

The tile room is bypassed by holding Alt and clicking Walk at the edge of the screen.

The animation speedups are performed by simply going into the menu, changing the speed, then putting it all the way back up.

I'll see if I can do a quick video guide later this week. If you have questions in the meantime, you can post here or join the Discord: https://discord.gg/kAPTPTR

Sorry that's not more complete, it's been a long, busy day. :) Happy to provide more detail later.

This is an awesome find! I verified it also works in 1.0, and unthrottled as well.

Nice work!

Someone in the comments of my YouTube videos mentioned a faster way to evade the sheriff's men during the chase sequences. if you go to the blackberry grove up and right of camp, you can use the hand code there. instead of turning into a tree, the blackberries part and you can walk away to the right. you don't have to wait for the sheriff's man to walk slowly across the screen. This was the first iteration:

Then the same commenter sent me this, which uses the screen down and right from the Willow Grove, and is even faster:

A few tidbits from alxpnv, who did a lot (most?) of the work on making Sanitarium compatible with ScummVM.

There is another easter egg in Chapter 7 i.e. "The Morgue and Cemetery" found while poking at the disassembly: in the Aztec temple, click 20 (!) times on the statue of an Aztec Warrior. The angelic statue on the roof will start "breathing."

Out of bounds hack: The whole scene can be explored by entering the scrolling mode: in the ScummVM Debug Console (invoked by hitting Ctrl-Alt-d), type use_scrolling 1 and hit Enter. Now you can scroll through the map by moving a mouse and position the player character by left-clicking.

Another useful addition of the engine is the resource viewer: in the Debug Console, type view # [optional resource id], where # is the chapter number + 4. Space/Backspace are used for navigation. I've found some unused graphics in this mode, e.g. view 7 12.

In which I dump information, mainly from sluicebox, so that it doesn't get lost in Discord.

"in act 2 there are 14 conversations to spy on, but you only need to do the first 13 so you can skip the yvette/steve one, not that it takes much time working backwards from the end of act 2... you can start exploring the museum once you've spied on the 13 conversations and met with steve you can meet with steve once you've looked at the dagger and the current conversation isn't in the center rotunda room i think if there's any time to be saved, the party route would be... center, left, center, right, gift shop, center, (so far this is what you do now) then go left, but instead of spying on the gals, immediately return to center room to meet steve. then resume the normal pattern but go on to the rest of the museum instead of spying on steve/yvette" - sluicebox, 12/11/2022

skips: "1. skip olympia; instead of getting the snake oil in her office, get it in the basement in act 4 when you're down there anyway to advance the clock and get ernie's stuff. this is a bug. 2. skip tut; when entering the egypt room after rubbing the notepad, immediately go back down to the armor room before he shows up. you have a second or two before the clock advances so just wait by the pterodactyl door and then see ziggy. speaking of ziggy... 3. skip ziggy in the life mask room. it doesn't affect the run that's one two three cut-scenes with slow walkers you can skip!" - 12/09/2022

"bonus that's probably useless: there is an alternate way to trigger act 5: look at countess close-up a second time instead of walking out of olympia's office. this is a bug. it's technically faster than walking to the bottom of the screen, but that's so blisteringly fast i doubt it matters, and it's easier to walk. countess is a smaller hotspot instead of screen edge, and you can't spam her because each Look will start the egypt music over again (lol)" - sluicebox 12/09/2022