Illinois, USAHappy Monday! The undocumented game option "Less Action" can take 10+ seconds off of any Old Version run.
Instructions and Demonstration:
My 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 :)
Interesting idea but since you can enter a level with high stats and items how would it work? The strat would be to make yourself totally insane statwise, so that even if items are forbidden, you can wreck it. Alternatively we could mandate you must have certain stats for each level, sounds hard to set up / administer.
I hope you do a full run of the game tho!! Try it out, it was validating to beat it in one sitting.
I mean the patch makes a pretty enormous difference though in the time you can achieve. Collapsing it might be ok because generally its become possible to go faster and faster, but, suppose the next patch makes a category slower? Then to be competitive you have to play on an old patch (yuck). I don't feel crazy strongly about it but those are my thoughts.
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.
I mean, it's neat promotion for the site. Perhaps it brings more people to the hobby. Hard to hate that.
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!
Don't know. I farmed money about three times in my run I think. The main thing to do is farm money from measure mill / day dock with level1 sundrops selected (1 circle per activity) and then turn sundrops to level 5 so that each satellite costs less to use. THe digit-buying doesn't really reduce price, but satellites do.
They way it works is you can immediately up the difficulty as soon as you start the game. This means your first orbit is 3 crystals, and every orbit thereafter is 5 crystals.
Come play Old Version with us!
Moved to dosbox running windows 3.1, it's way better. I will post setup details some time soon. It can be set up very quickly and the responsiveness I get is way better. Still not good enough for me to get a good time on frogs tho. I do it as fast as I can and am still 25 seconds behind WR! Effing Frogs!
Thanks for the verify! I'm doing runs over at Logical Journey of the Zoombinis for awhile, and WoW Shadowlands drops later this month soooo if I don't talk to you for awhile, it was very nice to meet you!
Thanks all for the warm welcome and I look forward to some the friendly competition :) I just learned that Livesplit can take controller input. I just bound it to the N64 controller I use for Mario64. This is so amazing. This will make it so much better, I can use the controller to split and never leave the the virtualbox. Danzel, what is your setup? I am almost ready to get a Windows95 computer I am so sick of the virtualbox hah.
So many happy memories of this game. I just got into speedrunning and am pumped to play on Old Version. I see that there is an "Older Version" category now. Can I do "Older Version" "4%" runs? I'd really love to and welcome any competition. Will work on setting it up tonight and hope to get goin.
I submitted a speedrun that should be second place, but it claims it is first place.
leaderboards: https://www.speedrun.com/bleak_sword/full_game
Huh, apparently you can upload 24hr video to youtube. Its been "Processing" all night and only at 40% tho :)
edit: Nope... it processed to 100% and then said "too long" lol. Uploading the halves now.
OK, working on that now if you want to set the category up for eventual submission. Will be late tonight or early tomorrow.
Sure- will need to mute/hide-camera at points since I was working and stuff at the same station, does that seem alright? Timer & Game would stay up
