The other day, I was messing around with Appel’s replay system and graphing random runs in Appel when I came across something odd. All of the Level 5 runs looked similar except for Sir Farcelot’s. His inputs were very robotic and unnecessarily precise, with every sidejump being identical down to the frame. This level of precision is not necessary to tie the TAS on the human route for Level 5. This oddity led me to investigate his runs further, resulting in the following findings.

Findings:

• On his Level 5 personal best (PB), he presses and releases the right key while sidejumping, despite it being optimal to hold the key down. This is not definitive proof, but it is an odd deviation from standard techniques.

• I graphed the time intervals between keypress changes and observed a perfectly repeating pattern throughout the sidejumping sequence. Other top players (except Michael Chan) exhibited natural variations in their inputs. This strongly suggests a scripted TAS loop.

• In nearly all his runs, the replay releases all keys after completing the level. This is not possible without modifying the replay system. Normally, the keys that you were pressing when you finished the level are the last recorded keypress in the replay code, but Sir Farcelot’s replays let go of the keys after the end.

• While not direct evidence, Sir Farcelot has experience with TASing in the game Appel, meaning he possesses the necessary skill to create a convincing TAS run.

• He has only submitted any% runs, which may indicate that other categories are too tedious to TAS, though this is not conclusive evidence.

• He acknowledges that his sidejumping method is unusual and claims that he thought it was optimal when he TASed the level, so he implemented it. However, it isn’t faster, so this doesn’t make sense.
• He says that he used pause buffering to achieve his perfect sidejumping. However, I believe that would be just as difficult and as unnecessary, so it doesn't change much.

Based on the evidence, I remain convinced that Sir Farcelot used TAS methods in his runs. The robotic input patterns, impossible replay behavior, and lack of natural variance strongly indicate external assistance. If he wishes to clear his name, I have requested that he submit a video demonstrating his technique under controlled conditions. Until then, I believe his runs should be scrutinized further.

The fact that he is able to do inputs past the lel ending is enough proof

more explanation as to how I got this information:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AvpybTOK6DdX5RzXDEEN7H5KOTcwTGDaIhzdYe598eg/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Most of the discussion is on the discord if anyone wants to join: https://discord.gg/hfUT5eMWGs

I made a script to get every speedrun from this website, and determine weather the last input was after the end, and the only poeple that showed up were Sir Farcelot and dapper's only run. Those are the runs I will be rejecting. I am not entirely sure what to do with dapper's full game run. I think this should be discussed.

Have you realized the similarities between @DapperScratcher's and I's UI on our computers? I'm pretty sure we have the same model of computer that runs on the same OS, which may be causing the problem.

I have a suggestion: I can record a video of myself packaging Appel, playing a level, and then using your tool to show that even in regular Appel, my replay code will still show inputs after the ending flag? This is similar to what Michael did to prove he was not cheating; his Appel was just "different," than most other's, apparently.

Also, I just want to clarify, you mean @DapperScratcher's 27.0 L2 run, right? I'm not sure what you mean by "only run" since she also has some runs in Absurd Appel and Appel Awakening.

Lastly, I'm not accusing you of purposely falsely accusing me, but could you show me how your tool works? I'm interested in using it to test some runs as well.

P.S: Please stop using the "repetitive movements" argument because unless you give everyone the same treatment, (Michael doing the same thing...) I don't see how that's fair.

Sure, Appel may be different across platforms but that isn't really a defense. Turbowarp's compiler is not different based on OS. In the case of Michael that was a graphical error which could probably be chalked up to HTML differences cross browser and platform.

I am not entirely sure what to do with dapper's full game run.

I have watched all the fullgame runs many times and i dont think a thing as simple as an error should be enough to completely disregard these peoples work. Personally, they all seem like Legit runs and we shouldnt discredit them. Also scratch is a coding website made for kids. It not really intended to be used for real people spending hours grinding, so ofc there will be bugs and glitches, especially if you are using a tool or whatever like turbowarp to optimize it. Every game has glitches and everyone has different ways of playing those games. Heck, we could even say that because u got such a good run, it Must be tas! No. Thats stupid. Theres not really any point cheating on a game like this and that just ruins it for everyone. So Dapper, Farcelot, Pls, if u are cheating (which i dont think you are) pls dont. We enjoy this game and we want real competition, not a bot thats impossible to beat. That goes for everyone else too, speeeedy, TheGreatYokai, Michael, Luis, kanuburgetz (who at first i thought was cheating) and all the other greats. You all could be cheating, but we respect you (Idrk about the others but i do) and i hope you can respect us all not to do that.

(sorry for my HOUR long spiel yall ive just been grinding lvl for the last THREE FLIPPING HOURS 💪💪)

I need help 😭

anyway, umm, yea. just dont do that ig yay

but also Speeeeedy umm idk hes prolly just doing sidejumps weird lmao

🐻‍❄️

sorry if my grammer is bad its midnight 😭

I agree with @bringupyourpost Something as small as changing your OS isn't going to change something as large as how scratch works. All of the code will run the same. The only difference there might be is that the font might display differently, like with Michael's runs. I never said I'm not going to investigate Michael too, but I don't have time for two major investigations at the same time.

About @PolarYt323's point, there is no way to explain the key changes after the end of the level. I scraped every run from speedrun.com, and the only person that showed up was sir farcelot and dapper, who we think might be sir farcelot's alt. If this was a bug that happened on some weird browser operating system pair ( unlikely) than I would expect to see the bug on at least one run that wasn't wr/very close to wr. However, I didn't, so ilI helave no reason to believe that it is some bug that just happens.

Also, I would consider myself a decent scratch coder. For example, I made a multiplayer 2d Minecraft before griffpatch, and after he made his, I made one that is even better and has no lag (I couldn't share this one bc replit stopped allowing 24/7 code running sadly) All this said, I could not find a single way that a replay code could do this.

Hi, sorry, since when was the fact that dapper was potentially an alt of Farcelot even thought of? Just wanting to know 😁

@PolarYt323 somewhere in the off-topic channel of the discord.

JS is somewhat depedent on Browser. But the replay code is completely dependent on JS math and string handling. The differences between JS in browser are stuff like what the react command does and whether consts are valid. These won't affect the replay code system. Scratch-Vm, the turbowarp-compiler, the scratch-renderer are also OS independent so it cannot be a probably with them. The only thing that isn't is HTML. But the replay code is stored in a div tag. But Div tags are not OS or browser dependent.

Sources: I will add the rest of these later, I have to go to class now. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/div#browser_compatibility

Also @Sir_Farcelot it would be good to know what browser you are playing and what OS you are using.

There’s a lot to respond to here, and I’m not going to cover much of it, honestly. For the sake of my mental health, I think I need to stop interacting with the community for a while, at the very least. To put it nicely, my life is not going great right now, not just in Appel.

I’ll just leave this here: I usually play on Google Chrome with an html file (sometimes Turbowarp) on macOS.

Lastly, could one of y’all please reply to my questions and suggestion in my previous response? Not sure if those were purposely ignored, but I would appreciate a response to you that.

I use the same os and browser. Can you send the html file for analysis?

Maybe let's just leave him a lone for a while?

@speeeedy In fairness of @Sir_Farcelot, Appel can possibly change for various users. I have screenshots of LionCoder's runs, Krackerz' runs, and dn_scrtch's runs. They're all different in terms of the numbers at the top's location, and I believe that this question must be answered before we look into Sir_Farcelot's runs. (btw, thanks, Krackerz for these screenshots) Doing repetitive key movements is highly possible, and can be done, so while that may look "suspicious", there isn't much evidence on him.

LionCoder's Screen:

TheGrassyGuy's Screen:

dn_scrtch's Screen:

Michael's Screen:

Krackerz's Screen:

Yes, it's true, Appel has bugs, but repetitive movements can't be the only reason to not include a player's run. If you are to attack a player for their "runs" being different, understand that repetitive key movements are possible, and there are much bigger issues with the game itself. Not trying to start a fight, but thankssss! -CAKEC0DER

I would be fine with perfectly repetitive keypresses if it actually saves any time, however there is no reason to be this precise, so it seems very unnecessary. Also that differences on the timer display are just because of differences in how browsers display text. This does not change gameplay in any meaningful way. However, it is impossible that different browser do string parsing differently, and this is the main reason to believe that sir fracelot's runs are cheated.