Completing the Vault in Under 8 Minutes [TAS] TheUnderscore76 2023-01-28 | PHOTOSENSITIVE WARNING: from 4:10 to 4:56 in the vid there is a ton of menu flashing, I call it out a couple times but just in case you read the desc and aren't listening. I've also modded the game slightly so that menus don't have a dimmed background to remove flashing in mail checks.Chapters0:32 Run Start1:06 Day 5 Start4:10 CONSTANT FLASHING ZONE4:56 End of FLASHING8:04 Run EndThis is a tool assisted speedrun of the Vault Bundles in 7:32.281! This was a heck of a lot of fun to route and run, using the menu to manipulate global RNG is a totally new tech to explore, and understanding how RNG is updated each frame will make some things like fishing significantly easier in the future. Also first time trying to do commentary, some of the things like the menu manip I don't think I do a great job of explaining given the short amount of time mid-run so:Every frame RNG is going to advance due to normal game state changes, the biggest nuisances at least in this run were Evelyn walking in circles in her house and that top green slime who kinda maybe wants to mate with the right slime, they're unsure (actually). Interacting with the menu adds additional random calls on a frame (702 per flip of the npc social page, 1 for hovering over a new BigCraftable like the signs and 2 for hovering over a new Object like a fence post). To be able to successfully manip, I need to set up the RNG state such that I know how many calls there will be during the tool animation AND that advancing the CURRENT RNG by that many calls will trigger a doll to spawn on hoe strike.Because some random calls lead to branching behavior there's just way too much to track manually, so I wrote a simulator that tries to forward predict game state/RNG, and then a recursive solver that looks to create a sequence of menu inputs that not only causes the RNG to be correct to spawn the doll but also limit the number of frames between tool swings. Given energy needs I don't think you could actually translate to 60k/m real time but it's pretty close! It ends up being a super overpowered money strat, the only thing that could maybe rival it early is an insane fishing chest, but I haven't been able to find one that compares.SEED: 1914883252Cart in this run saves about 3 minutes, the alternative strat I tried for cartless was going to Pierre for the green bean seed/maniping a crab in the mines/summer forage which a rough run clocked in at 10:3x. Most of that time loss is waiting for Pierre to open, the pet cutscene, and sleeping 20 extra days (which at 5s per day adds up!).Blade's Stardew University on Step Manip: twitch.tv/videos/1108799188?collection=jY8YtGjzZhbwvABoth of these resources were super helpful in the planning stages of this TAS.Blade's Map Predictor: nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/6614StardewSeedScripts: github.com/Bla-De/StardewSeedScripts
Stardew Valley 1.6 - Mines 120 TAS in 5:12.624 TheUnderscore76 2024-08-31 | Absolutely crushed the previous 120 TAS (9:52 in 1.5). The big difference is the 1.6 update also moved Stardew from .NET5 to .NET6, which changes how C# randoms are initialized in the standard lib (in .NET5 it was time based by current second, in .NET6 it uses OS level random bytes). This means instead of having to wait 1 second to re-roll a floor, we can re-roll floors every frame! This lets us greed much harder for good floors/makes the tradeoff between walk distance and tool usage in the later floors pretty fun to work around.Some interesting things:* ~1:13 of this run are just getting to the mines* It takes 80 frames between right clicking on a ladder to being able to act on the next floor. That means no matter how good your floor rolling is, 2:40 of this run will always be stuck waiting for screen fades, unable to use tools, or take ladders* That means ~80 seconds of this run are spent swinging a pickaxe, eating a mushroom, and waiting on floor rolls. That's WILD to me
Stardew Valley Egg Festival - 1.6 Even Year 20 Egg Route! TheUnderscore76 2024-03-31 | Still don't have TAS tools up but took a crack at it today anyways. Came up with some crude TSP solutions using networkx and then manually sliced out a path. May not be the optimal solution, I'm pretty reliably able to get this run even with small flubs but adding another egg in would be hard I think.Route Image: imgur.com/a/xe8yrKN
TeaSapling TV - Part 4: Monch and Chill TheUnderscore76 2024-03-11 | TeaSaplingTV - Making 1 Billion G Selling only Tea SaplingsPart 4 Main Events (surprisingly chill session):0:00:00 - Day 2 night time2:12:56 - Monch strats gone wrong3:09:12 - Lag reset8:53:30 - Another lag resetWhat is TeaSaplingTV?TeaSaplingTV was a week long stream event where a bot farmed, gambled, chipped, and bricked its way to crafting 2 MILLION tea saplings, worth 1 Billion G. This farm was my attempt at the Tea Sapling Challenge (challenge details can be found HERE: docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTI1U7robrSD-1mVHVtQsx0RK1rMYZBqmmQF1bBo7fACxHYh8W6yz-rUUeu-7eUk1xekCfWwS4mAyE2/pub). I played it myself (non-botted) for about 150 hours before swapping over to automation. This started with the initial 2 week video I released back in December, and then I continued to expand the code (making it 100% bulletproof, for sure.) until finally letting it rip live from January 7 - 14, 2024. Over that week, the bot played over 500 hours of Stardew. It was a ton of fun to hang out with stream, interspersed throughout this playlist are a bunch of live bot development sessions, some truly funny crashes, and above all a ton of Waiting... Love to my mod team (SamanthaCoffinTM, Zachary20XX, demonicmerma1d, BlaDe) who were there for the entire week, and to everyone who stopped by to hang out ❤️.FAQ from stream:Q: So this is a bot?A: Yes! This bot is custom scripted to run a number of different chores (harvest crops, craft saplings, etc), using the TASMod to control sending inputs/frame advancing to the game.Q: What’s the TASMod?A: The TASMod is a SMAPI mod that Underscore built to allow for designing Stardew Valley tool assisted speedruns (TAS). It allows control of the game frame-by-frame as well as supporting scripting to inspect the game state and for automation.Q: Dang, that sounds neat! Where do I find that?A: You find it right here! github.com/Underscore76/SDVTASMod Q: How’s it going so fast?A: The bot is running somewhere between 3x and 4x speed, processing as fast as the scripting and the computer’s CPU allow.Q: How does TAS guy decide what chore to do?A: There’s scripting that defines the various chores and when to do them. The main idea is to look for the highest priority chore that’s valid at a given time. Chores are prioritized based on their likelihood to cause problems and in terms of keeping the tea sapling resources in equilibrium.Q: I called him “TAS guy” in the last question. Is that what we’re calling the character?A: Yeah, we call him “TAS guy”.Q: Why does the bot spin in circles at the casino?A: When we go to the casino to get big jackpots on the slots (to turn qi coins into hardwood fences into hardwood into wood into tea saplings), TAS guy does laps around the slot machine waiting for the RNG to be just right. We’re tracking the most spins he does because it’s really funny when he has to do a lot.Q: What’s a “spurchin”? People keep saying “spurchin” in chat.A: A space urchin a.k.a. “spurchin” is a nickname for the meteor that crash lands onto the farm as a random overnight event. It’s called that because it kind of looks like a sea urchin but from space, dontcha think?
TeaSaplingTV - Part 3: A Dandelion and Dev Time TheUnderscore76 2024-03-11 | TeaSaplingTV - Making 1 Billion G Selling only Tea SaplingsPart 3 Main Events:0:00:00 - Start of Day 2 and just vibing4:12:23 - Scared of a dandelion, gonna just chill here for a bit.4:19:00 - And we're back.5:51:40 - Another round of run explanation7:11:00 - Discussing new chores into dev time 7:49:17 - Dagger tech detour (and a lot of wasted time)8:12:06 - Slow mo, zoomed in saplings8:21:05 - Back to dev time9:53:00 - Storing our casino spins10:10:12 - Sign off for this episodeWhat is TeaSaplingTV?TeaSaplingTV was a week long stream event where a bot farmed, gambled, chipped, and bricked its way to crafting 2 MILLION tea saplings, worth 1 Billion G. This farm was my attempt at the Tea Sapling Challenge (challenge details can be found HERE: docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTI1U7robrSD-1mVHVtQsx0RK1rMYZBqmmQF1bBo7fACxHYh8W6yz-rUUeu-7eUk1xekCfWwS4mAyE2/pub). I played it myself (non-botted) for about 150 hours before swapping over to automation. This started with the initial 2 week video I released back in December, and then I continued to expand the code (making it 100% bulletproof, for sure.) until finally letting it rip live from January 7 - 14, 2024. Over that week, the bot played over 500 hours of Stardew. It was a ton of fun to hang out with stream, interspersed throughout this playlist are a bunch of live bot development sessions, some truly funny crashes, and above all a ton of Waiting... Love to my mod team (SamanthaCoffinTM, Zachary20XX, demonicmerma1d, BlaDe) who were there for the entire week, and to everyone who stopped by to hang out ❤️.FAQ from stream:Q: So this is a bot?A: Yes! This bot is custom scripted to run a number of different chores (harvest crops, craft saplings, etc), using the TASMod to control sending inputs/frame advancing to the game.Q: What’s the TASMod?A: The TASMod is a SMAPI mod that Underscore built to allow for designing Stardew Valley tool assisted speedruns (TAS). It allows control of the game frame-by-frame as well as supporting scripting to inspect the game state and for automation.Q: Dang, that sounds neat! Where do I find that?A: You find it right here! github.com/Underscore76/SDVTASMod Q: How’s it going so fast?A: The bot is running somewhere between 3x and 4x speed, processing as fast as the scripting and the computer’s CPU allow.Q: How does TAS guy decide what chore to do?A: There’s scripting that defines the various chores and when to do them. The main idea is to look for the highest priority chore that’s valid at a given time. Chores are prioritized based on their likelihood to cause problems and in terms of keeping the tea sapling resources in equilibrium.Q: I called him “TAS guy” in the last question. Is that what we’re calling the character?A: Yeah, we call him “TAS guy”.Q: Why does the bot spin in circles at the casino?A: When we go to the casino to get big jackpots on the slots (to turn qi coins into hardwood fences into hardwood into wood into tea saplings), TAS guy does laps around the slot machine waiting for the RNG to be just right. We’re tracking the most spins he does because it’s really funny when he has to do a lot.Q: What’s a “spurchin”? People keep saying “spurchin” in chat.A: A space urchin a.k.a. “spurchin” is a nickname for the meteor that crash lands onto the farm as a random overnight event. It’s called that because it kind of looks like a sea urchin but from space, dontcha think?
TeaSaplingTV - Part 2: Beginning of the Bricks TheUnderscore76 2024-03-04 | TeaSaplingTV - Making 1 Billion G Selling only Tea SaplingsPart 2 Main Events:0:00:00 - Continuing the grind3:37:18 - Penny ruins TeaSet%8:39:00 - The Luau isn't a festival?9:02:20 - Staring at the woodchippers, wondering why we're doing all this9:39:30 - Sweet pea with incredible defense, too bad I was walking my dog10:15:35 - Back to manually clear the sweet pea, crystal pathing the broken tilesWhat is TeaSaplingTV?TeaSaplingTV was a week long stream event where a bot farmed, gambled, chipped, and bricked its way to crafting 2 MILLION tea saplings, worth 1 Billion G. This farm was my attempt at the Tea Sapling Challenge (challenge details can be found HERE: docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTI1U7robrSD-1mVHVtQsx0RK1rMYZBqmmQF1bBo7fACxHYh8W6yz-rUUeu-7eUk1xekCfWwS4mAyE2/pub). I played it myself (non-botted) for about 150 hours before swapping over to automation. This started with the initial 2 week video I released back in December, and then I continued to expand the code (making it 100% bulletproof, for sure.) until finally letting it rip live from January 7 - 14, 2024. Over that week, the bot played over 500 hours of Stardew. It was a ton of fun to hang out with stream, interspersed throughout this playlist are a bunch of live bot development sessions, some truly funny crashes, and above all a ton of Waiting... Love to my mod team (SamanthaCoffinTM, Zachary20XX, demonicmerma1d, BlaDe) who were there for the entire week, and to everyone who stopped by to hang out ❤️.FAQ from stream:Q: So this is a bot?A: Yes! This bot is custom scripted to run a number of different chores (harvest crops, craft saplings, etc), using the TASMod to control sending inputs/frame advancing to the game.Q: What’s the TASMod?A: The TASMod is a SMAPI mod that Underscore built to allow for designing Stardew Valley tool assisted speedruns (TAS). It allows control of the game frame-by-frame as well as supporting scripting to inspect the game state and for automation.Q: Dang, that sounds neat! Where do I find that?A: You find it right here! github.com/Underscore76/SDVTASMod Q: How’s it going so fast?A: The bot is running somewhere between 3x and 4x speed, processing as fast as the scripting and the computer’s CPU allow.Q: How does TAS guy decide what chore to do?A: There’s scripting that defines the various chores and when to do them. The main idea is to look for the highest priority chore that’s valid at a given time. Chores are prioritized based on their likelihood to cause problems and in terms of keeping the tea sapling resources in equilibrium.Q: I called him “TAS guy” in the last question. Is that what we’re calling the character?A: Yeah, we call him “TAS guy”.Q: Why does the bot spin in circles at the casino?A: When we go to the casino to get big jackpots on the slots (to turn qi coins into hardwood fences into hardwood into wood into tea saplings), TAS guy does laps around the slot machine waiting for the RNG to be just right. We’re tracking the most spins he does because it’s really funny when he has to do a lot.Q: What’s a “spurchin”? People keep saying “spurchin” in chat.A: A space urchin a.k.a. “spurchin” is a nickname for the meteor that crash lands onto the farm as a random overnight event. It’s called that because it kind of looks like a sea urchin but from space, dontcha think?
TeaSaplingTV - Part 1: Start of the Journey TheUnderscore76 2024-03-04 | TeaSaplingTV - Making 1 Billion G Selling only Tea SaplingsPart 1 Main Events:0:00:00 - Start of the run1:40:22 - Rogue grass causes a near freeze, leads to first DevTime and bot explainer3:37:48 - Deciding we should try and get Tea Sets from Feast of the Winter Star4:54:15 - First Winter Star and back into it5:05:21 - Vlad flies in out of nowhere6:54:50 - Offscreen dog proofing Code Review notes: LGTM 🚀7:16:36 - Explaining again how the bot works7:39:40 - Dog can't block the harvest if there's no harvest 🤔8:35:10 - Bonus farming11:22:53 - Spurchin brick day What is TeaSaplingTV?TeaSaplingTV was a week long stream event where a bot farmed, gambled, chipped, and bricked its way to crafting 2 MILLION tea saplings, worth 1 Billion G. This farm was my attempt at the Tea Sapling Challenge (challenge details can be found HERE: docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTI1U7robrSD-1mVHVtQsx0RK1rMYZBqmmQF1bBo7fACxHYh8W6yz-rUUeu-7eUk1xekCfWwS4mAyE2/pub). I played it myself (non-botted) for about 150 hours before swapping over to automation. This started with the initial 2 week video I released back in December, and then I continued to expand the code (making it 100% bulletproof, for sure.) until finally letting it rip live from January 7 - 14, 2024. Over that week, the bot played over 500 hours of Stardew. It was a ton of fun to hang out with stream, interspersed throughout this playlist are a bunch of live bot development sessions, some truly funny crashes, and above all a ton of Waiting... Love to my mod team (SamanthaCoffinTM, Zachary20XX, demonicmerma1d, BlaDe) who were there for the entire week, and to everyone who stopped by to hang out ❤️.FAQ from stream:Q: So this is a bot?A: Yes! This bot is custom scripted to run a number of different chores (harvest crops, craft saplings, etc), using the TASMod to control sending inputs/frame advancing to the game.Q: What’s the TASMod?A: The TASMod is a SMAPI mod that Underscore built to allow for designing Stardew Valley tool assisted speedruns (TAS). It allows control of the game frame-by-frame as well as supporting scripting to inspect the game state and for automation.Q: Dang, that sounds neat! Where do I find that?A: You find it right here! github.com/Underscore76/SDVTASMod Q: How’s it going so fast?A: The bot is running somewhere between 3x and 4x speed, processing as fast as the scripting and the computer’s CPU allow.Q: How does TAS guy decide what chore to do?A: There’s scripting that defines the various chores and when to do them. The main idea is to look for the highest priority chore that’s valid at a given time. Chores are prioritized based on their likelihood to cause problems and in terms of keeping the tea sapling resources in equilibrium.Q: I called him “TAS guy” in the last question. Is that what we’re calling the character?A: Yeah, we call him “TAS guy”.Q: Why does the bot spin in circles at the casino?A: When we go to the casino to get big jackpots on the slots (to turn qi coins into hardwood fences into hardwood into wood into tea saplings), TAS guy does laps around the slot machine waiting for the RNG to be just right. We’re tracking the most spins he does because it’s really funny when he has to do a lot.Q: What’s a “spurchin”? People keep saying “spurchin” in chat.A: A space urchin a.k.a. “spurchin” is a nickname for the meteor that crash lands onto the farm as a random overnight event. It’s called that because it kind of looks like a sea urchin but from space, dontcha think?
Hat Mouse TAS in 2:36.951 TheUnderscore76 2024-02-03 | I've been thinking about whether TAS could do better than the RTA crafting route, and turns out it can! Just need 86 cauliflowers and a dream. Shoutout to Elite Chat for the support (especially as I biffed the fairy for ~2 hours)This run is an improvement of over 40s from the previous run (which was 3:18.640 timed from game launch)!Seed: 176272512
Two Weeks of the Tea Sapling Billionaire Challenge TheUnderscore76 2023-12-28 | The challenge rules are pretty straight forward: Make 1 BILLION g only selling Tea Saplings. This run picks up in Spring Year 5 (I played the first 4 years manually), but decided it's come time to automate. Using my TAS mod (github.com/Underscore76/SDVTASMod/tree/main), I've written a bunch of distinct chores for different parts of the process and then a basic state machine to cycle between them. I have not hand tuned a single frame in this video, this is all purely code driven 😎This isn't optimal, but it's fun! And a pretty important step towards making possible harder/longer TASes by reducing the amount of fine grain detail I need to manually do.Also cause Sam pointed it out, we’re like 50 in-game years from getting 1B still lolRules provided by @scribbledinksdv docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTI1U7robrSD-1mVHVtQsx0RK1rMYZBqmmQF1bBo7fACxHYh8W6yz-rUUeu-7eUk1xekCfWwS4mAyE2/pub
Joja% TAS in 20:48.819 TheUnderscore76 2023-12-15 | Actual toxic run, the beginning is about maniping enough money to get the membership on day 5 and then the rest is just folding in strange dolls while waiting for joja to open.Find something better to watch for 20 mins PotFriend (or at least skip the doll tilling if you’re photosensitive)
Cordites Chore Challenge TAS TheUnderscore76 2023-10-28 | This was a brain bender, but pretty fun once I finally figured out a rough route/understood all the dependencies. I don’t think I’ll be doing commentary for this one so hope you enjoy the game noises.@CorditeTV hosted a challenge earlier this year where he designed a save file and a series of chores/tasks to try to execute in a single Stardew day (with a maximum time of 30 minutes). You can find more details about the challenge, including the save file and score tracking mod here: docs.google.com/document/d/1BgYWu5N-_5U_qfNfUSLKdJscn_HbSp2FsdPj79YfAGQ/editI think this is easily the best designed challenge put out to the community so far, and I do encourage people to try and play around with it even though the competition ended months ago (don't try what you see here, or really try for a woodskip at all cause you'll get PianoTime'd).Now 30 minutes may seem like a lot, a normal Stardew day without pausing is 14m24s. But we have so much to do and we need to extend the clock as much as possible. So a lot of movement involves chair hopping, which pauses the in game clock as you move into/get out of the chair. This is heavily used in the early part of the run before needing to deliver Jodi her pancakes, and randomly throughout the run to ensure we hit the tight timing windows for specific key events (Sam's band can get h*cked)This run is definitely not the fastest 100% possible, I made a lot of mistakes while building this out (eg I 100% forgot the sandfish and had to rollback) and there were a lot of things that weren't worth optimizing because of the 30m total time constraint, but even then it came in pretty close...
Casual Junimo Kart Run (TAS) TheUnderscore76 2023-08-24 | Just a pretty typical 200 level Junimo Kart run. At around level 120 you no longer snap to downhill sections (meaning you fly off to your death...), and at around level 180 you can phase through slopes entirely 😎 (which can be both useful and impossible to play around).Ghostly Galleon is the worst level. It's 1.5x longer than every other level AND it cheats in level generation to not always be winnable. There are a few pauses in the later parts of the run where I'm cycling RNG because I'm so fast the the level has not generated anything to land on or the level it will generate is poised to kill our brave junimo.Oh also this is tool-assisted. At some point if I choose to continue this run, I'd probably have to drop All Fruits because that's the majority of my resets (part of the impossible level generation). RNG ticks every frame regardless of pause state, and the particles your cart emits/lots of other interactions and objects call RNG so it's actually pretty easy to quick roll for new tracks. You'll see this in the mid-to-late game as I hop at level start or at level end to futz with RNG.Level Ranking by "Easiness to run assisted"1. Red Hot Rollercoaster2. Glowshroom Grotto3. Gem Sea Giant4. Sunset Speedway5. Slippery Slopes6. Slomp's Stomp7. Crumble Cavern8. Ghastly Galleon
Remix CC Deep Dive/Explainer TheUnderscore76 2023-05-29 | Sorry about the low bit rate, I wasn't local recording and didn't realize until after I stopped streaming! Honestly kinda sad about it :(Pulled from Twitch VOD, thankfully a lot of it is just paused while I ramble about TAS nonsense so video quality is less important (right? right!?). Thanks folks who came out and asked questions/hungout!
Remix CC at 30x Speed (FLASH WARNING) TheUnderscore76 2023-05-28 | This is literally what I have to watch every time I make a mistake/want to retry a small section...I dunno why I uploaded this, it's an audio visual disaster. Enjoy.
This. Is. The. Remix. (Stardew CC TAS, uncommentated) TheUnderscore76 2023-05-25 | Remix Community Center Tool Assisted Speedrun in 39:54. No commentary, just Elite Gameplay™️. Going to try and play with a different commentary style over the weekend to break things down (it's too much to pack in over the live gameplay) so look out for a rare stream appearance.**Flash Warning**: This run (like most TAS runs) includes some very fast menuing that can be disorienting or cause issues if you are photosensitive. In particular on Spring 11 we do some doll manips (see Vault run) that can be particularly bad. There are a few rare moments outside the mines where this is used but I've tried to limit flashing where possible.This run was a doozy, both in routing and execution.Seed: 1730261738Frames: 143393 from boot (39:49.883 + 5s of lag on recording)Re-records: 3339 (mostly automated brute force searching for frame RNG)TAS File Open: 193 hours (doesn't include the 3 complete redos of Spring 11, and a scrapped Fall 5)*Technically not glitchless,... the dagger tech was ruled a glitch after I had completed Spring 11 but I'm leaving it because I like the mechanic/think it's cool.
Daggers are pretty strong TheUnderscore76 2023-05-09 | This is a sneak peak from an upcoming run highlighting something I didn't realize until now. The normal dagger attack doesn't give monsters invincibility frames if it's on cooldown, so you get the benefits of the dagger's special with a faster attack rate and much finer control. Clubs can hit every frame on a smash, this lets you attack every other frame (and you can carry that state for the duration of the cooldown).Also this floor sucks but it's a necessary evil for the run.
Stardew Valley - Vault % TAS in 7:32.281 [Unedited/Uncommented] TheUnderscore76 2023-01-29 | PHOTOSENSITIVE WARNING: from 3:42 to 4:28 in the vid there is a ton of menu flashing, I call it out a couple times but just in case you read the desc and aren't listening. I've also modded the game slightly so that menus don't have a dimmed background to remove flashing in mail checks.HEADPHONE WARNING: Leaving the wizard at 5:52 is kinda terrible, I pulled the volume down on this segment cause it's actually too loud otherwise.Chapters0:40 Day 5 Start3:42 CONSTANT FLASHING ZONE4:28 End of FLASHING5:52 Chest juggle sounds...7:38 Run EndCheck out the commented version for full details: youtu.be/mQPdF1ZyzH0SEED: 1914883252Blade's Stardew University on Step Manip: twitch.tv/videos/1108799188?collection=jY8YtGjzZhbwvABoth of these resources were super helpful in the planning stages of this TAS.Blade's Map Predictor: nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/6614StardewSeedScripts: github.com/Bla-De/StardewSeedScripts
Stardew Valley - Shane Marriage TAS in 20:42 TheUnderscore76 2022-07-01 | Huge shoutout to BlaDe for developing the route/finding the seed for this run. Check out his commentary video for this run! youtu.be/TH2yKzkyvncGoal of this run is to marry Shane as fast as possible, which we do by finding a seed with as many billboard quests as possible to get friendship without waiting for things like Gus to open or the flower dance.
Stardew Valley - Hat Mouse TAS in 3:15.536 TheUnderscore76 2022-06-24 | I tried to theory craft an alternative route but for now crafting reigns supreme. The closest I found was fishing treasure chests for the 15k achievement but the max I was able to reach was 12.5k off a second cast's chest (fish taco, perfect luck), and even then it probably would've been 30s slower.## Map ChoiceAs long as it's not beach, it doesn't really matter (all other farms have the warp on the same map tile). Assuming completely cleared farm you get the following movement timings from farm house door to warp tile (41,64):-- Wilderness : 713 frames-- Farm : 721-- Four Corners : 741-- Forest : 748-- Riverland : 748-- Hills : 748Add in the stuff you can't clear due to energy/time/tool quality, they end up being pretty equivalent.That being said, Four Corners I think has some really nice features for RTA runs. You have plenty of quick stone, plenty of trees and close tree diversity to the run path. Once you get out of the top left corner it's trivial to walk off the farm (no struggling with getting blocked at the bottom of the farm). Curious to see if folks give it a try!## RouteGoal is to gather 75 wood (6 trees+3 twigs), 40 stone, 10 fiber, 2 sap, and 23 clay to sell to Robin for 460g. Then buy 26 wood (only 2 frames to buy post v1.5.5!) and the 5 recipes we need. This route avoids needing to collect tree seeds/going through the level up screen. Energy isn't all that tight (252/270) so some room to spare. Early exhaust strat (taken from the current RTA WR by nEmerald) is definitely better, you move 40% speed but you save all the exhaust swings.RTA WR Video by nEmerald: youtube.com/watch?v=TQ3plIG1AVAHatmouse on SRC: speedrun.com/stardew_valley_category_extension#MemeSDV Speedrun Discord: discord.gg/0t4blMHaUewwda7V
Seanies Skeleton Caverns Challenge Run [TAS] TheUnderscore76 2022-04-14 | I unfortunately ran out of time for this challenge so tried to optimize where I could/ended up having to leave 3.5 minutes on the clock but I'm happy with the result. This was a good excuse to flesh out my TAS tools for SC/mineshafts (still needs a lot of work...), mail, some additional overlays, and more "process of making a TAS" things. It's also my first real test of the SDV v1.5.6 HF#3 TAS build (not a single desync while testing!)Basic Challenge:- Given the starter file from Seanie, you get 1 day to prepare to go as deep as possible in the Skull Caverns- Skull Caverns day can not exceed 21 minutes in length.Route Description/thought process:- Drop shafts are fixed by game seed/day/floor so I can precompute the # of floors dropped for each level of the mines- A floor has a 20% chance of having a drop shaft (can predict upon reaching a floor but can't forward look)- When a floor is generated, a random number generator is seeded by the current real time in seconds (which for this run is calculated as frame offset from the file seed). This means you can wait to the next second to try and roll a new floor (why I end up pausing a lot).- Frame perfect laddering can be done at 80 frames with transitions- Factoring in a tool use (10 frames) and ~2.5 tiles of movement (~30 frames), an average floor is close to 120 frames- Taking a drop shaft is 120 frames with transitions (dropping 3-15 floors), which means for N floors I can drop, I should be willing to wait 2*(N-1) seconds on a prior floor to ensure that the drop shaft is generated- I computed the minimum transition path to reach floor 1000 (sometimes this will want to avoid 1 drop shaft to pick up a later larger one, but primarily it's chaining drop shafts)- This isn't an optimal strategy (it's greedy), and it's not super practical in an RTA run because the clock is running and sometimes you just won't get a shaft in the wait window. In a pure depth run, you could just wait on rolling the next floor which would minimize spent time vs depth.- Instead I mostly use this path as a loose guide that I try to shadow, in particular getting into sync when there are large blocks of good drop shafts.- I was able to make floor 1000 in 17:35, which I find pretty freakin cool because pure laddering would only get to floor ~945 in the 21 minute window due to how long transitions take!Chapters:0:00 Day 14:40 Day 2Challenge Doc Link:docs.google.com/document/d/1vGDPhW199F9kEuUpa_45C1IuO28zcx9R-C40fEOthLUShoutout to Seanie Dew, this was a fantastic challenge idea for the community!YT: youtube.com/c/SeanieDewTwitch: twitch.tv/seaniedew
Stardew Valley - CC% TAS in 1:26:26 TheUnderscore76 2021-10-30 | No commentary, writing a script still but wanted to just push this out cause I'm super proud of it. I started TASing this game back in 2018 but it's taken a long time to reach a stable build/setup that allowed for reliable frame consistent replay over this long a time window while not modifying any of the underlying gameplay elements. I've been working on this particular run in earnest from mid-August 2021, so 2.5 months for 305k frames.There are definitely some scuffed pieces that'll probably be clear to those in the SDV speedrun community. I'm moderately annoyed with the need for some blatant backup strats late (THANK GOODNESS FOR THE CRAB POT), but rerolling 70k frames isn't guaranteed to save time given how everything shook out. My guess having done this now is that sub 80 is doable, but would require a mind-numbing level of planning/resets and seed grinding that I am not prepared to do (resets at the end of this run take ~4 minutes to recover from...)I'll save most of the explanation for a commentary version because there's quite a lot to cover. Huge shoutout to everyone in the Stardew Speedrun/Challenge run communities, in particular a big thanks to BlaDe and the Map Predictor which I've used regularly during routing and development of this TAS.Join the Stardew Speedrun discorddiscord.gg/2zsuVzjAhNJoin the Dew Crew discorddiscord.gg/SsjWFq6qQYBlaDe's Map Predictornexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/6614
PauseChamp - Hypest half-minute of pausing TheUnderscore76 2021-10-12 | Only 33 seconds of pausing to spawn the correct serpent.
Stardew Valley CC% Glitchless TAS - through Summer 7 TheUnderscore76 2021-08-31 | Had to take a small detour to debug some rng issues but a huge amount of progress made in the last week. Bumped the frame count from 20645 to 95036, and played out 21 more days (really 3 days). Got through all mines requirements except for a ghost fish (couldn't seem to spawn one at all, not even a bad location one). And I caught the first set of fish I need. Basically already done.--- Day BreakdownsSpring 27 - I still don't know if I should do the day this way or not. I want to enter Town from the Mountain on Summer 1, so I'm scrambling to find stuff to do before the 8am cutscene trigger (hence me swinging at a tree for ONLY foraging experience, totally not needed given I only need forage 3...). Pretty bizarre day but I think it sets me up well for the next day out. I sleep at home instead of exhausting for no great reason, I could've just RNG maniped rain where I was but it works out in the end...Summer 1 - Oh boy do I think I need some routing help. My outset goals: any fish I can ONLY catch on summer sunny I need to get today, because any other day I go outside will be raining. Also, I need the furnace for Summer 7 because I have a great mines day setup with no monster floors until 103! And my rng manip led to Super Meals at the Saloon, which is a must buy.Start with clearing the farm and then it's time to tour Pelican Town. Up to the mines to get level 5 and literally ANY amount of copper to trigger Clint's cutscene. Then it's fishing time, the carp is whatever, it was that or a sunfish. The sturgeon catch highlights an important point I'll stress: fishing is hard to TAS because clicking or not clicking impacts RNG, and thus what the fish will do. I have a script that does some basic prediction of where the fish intends to go/when it's likely to change direction, and plays that logic out each frame, and it works well enough for the purposes of this TAS. A better fishing system would require me to have better replay tools, which is unlikely to happen (I'll make a video about this at some point).Drop some items off on the floor of the community center and then it's backpack and a mass buy. My route lists a tile I didn't actually hoe so overbought a melon seed. I realized way too late to worry about reseting given how good fishing was, it winds up being ~5 frames different/80g lost overall. Sunfish is easy, Tilapia is easy, my script scuffs the Tuna catch but not badly enough that I'm worried. And then is the Pufferfish, the entire reason I'm still up today. Required a lot more manual control and rolled into a pretty nice pattern overall for the level 1 catch. Then it's a race to the Saloon to buy coffee, super meals, maki roll recipe, and some spaghetti. Some future shenanigans that I'm sure won't be as OP as I think it is now. Plant, sleep, next.Summer 7 - I did this day twice (forgot to bring the axe the first time...), and mines optimization is kinda tricky but overall not bad. I need 60 copper, 30 iron, 5 gold, all the gems + essences, and a crab from the mines. Having the Super Meals was clutch, I don't have a ton of coffees so I'm using them sparingly for long distance runs. The only "flub" I'd say is the first cherry bomb use, I don't know if it actually would've been better to save it (it saved energy, cherry bombs are otherwise slow). I was hoping for a random club spawn at some point but it never appeared so had to manip one on floor 24 as it is just broken for TAS. I forgot how slow it is to exhaust via Red Mushroom, so I ended up picking one up for no reason. I also ended up needing to sell 1 coal to buy the remaining copper I needed, which is fine because I can just grab one randomly on another day.What I don't know still: should I have bailed when the 5th copper bar finished at floor 60 and instead finished another day? I'd leave the mines ~2 minutes faster, which is 2 minutes I could spend waiting for Robin on another day...Mines rerolling: the Mines generation is reseeded every second (60 frames), so I'm pausing at the top of a ladder trying to roll a good next floor, such as a quick ladder or having some drop that I need. Sometimes I have to run what looks like a "bad" floor because the wait for a good one ends up being longer overall. This is the first time I guess I've had a reason to call it out: I set the DateTime.Now at frame 0 to be the exact second mapped by the game seed (seed is the offset from June 22, 2012 00:00:00).--- BackgroundTool Assisted Speedrun (TAS) for Glitchless Community Center %, attempting to finish every bundle in the community center as fast as possible. This is done with a custom build of Stardew Valley 1.5.4 that I've wrapped to allow me to provide frame by frame input while polling the game state, as well as a Lua scripting interface for live programmable control of the game.
Stardew Valley CC% Glitchless TAS - Spring 1 to Spring 14 TheUnderscore76 2021-08-23 | To help motivate me actually finishing this run, I'm planning to do an update every 2 weeks with the current TAS progress.--- Run Details- Seed 361560: I spent NO time selecting this seed (as will be seen at the start of the next segment...), it's the same one I used in my Mines 120 TAS. It's a meh seed.- NO CART/TRASH CAN/GEODE ITEMS - I think using these seeded items for bundles is boring to route/run/watch. Instead, I get to route and show-off every aspect of Stardew!--- Segment DetailsThis first 6 minutes segment is probably the most important for the run, money snowballs really hard in this game so I'm trying to get as much buildup done in as little time as possible. There are a few flubs/annoying magnet radius issues (...rng manip I swear) but overall I'm pretty happy with where this ended/it really sets me up well for the money I need.Day 7 has the hardest decision in this segment: skipping Pierre or going. I'd have enough money to buy ~20 more potato seeds and the added in game time would allow me to collect way more mixed seeds/have more crops to snowball into Day 14. Right now I'm significantly ahead of my Joja% run on Day 14 (both time and money), so I'm hopeful that skipping Pierre was the right call. I'm keeping the parsnips as a random food source if I need it because it really doesn't affect my money that much.Day 14 actually worked surprisingly well (took quite a long time probing the weeds for mixed seed drops), getting 62 free cauliflowers is a huge deal (more than I could afford to buy!). My current plan is to not plant crops in Spring of Y2, so need to grab all the other seeds now. Next day out is Spring 27, which should be pretty straightforward and then comes Summer 1, which is probably one of the two hardest days in the run remaining.--- BackgroundTool Assisted Speedrun (TAS) for Glitchless Community Center %, attempting to finish every bundle in the community center as fast as possible. This is done with a custom build of Stardew Valley 1.5.4 that I've wrapped to allow me to provide frame by frame input while polling the game state, as well as a Lua scripting interface for live programmable control of the game.
Stardew Valley - Slingshot Minigame 412 Score TAS TheUnderscore76 2021-08-10 | Only things that matter in scoring is hitting every target and maintaining an accuracy greater than or equal to 100%. Scoring is 1 per red target, 2 per blue, 5 per purple which amounts to 103 points for all targets hit. Getting an accuracy of 100% triggers a 4x multiplier to your score (this multiplier is reduced for different levels of accuracy). There is no multi-hit bonus, so no real benefit one way or another on trying to line up multiple targets per shot. This is run via a custom Tool Assisted Speedrun (TAS) build of Stardew Valley for 1.5.4. Scripting is done via Lua to make it easier to automate tasks like aiming and timing the target locations.
Stardew Valley Egg Festival - 18 Egg Route! (Odd years in 1.6) TheUnderscore76 2020-05-09 | Was super inspired by Tooshi's recent stream/video, so figured I'd use my TAS pathing tools to help me find a better route. Pretty tight run overall, there's only about 4 tiles of free movement left. Have a solver going to see if I can find a better route but not expecting to do much better.Tooshi's Egg vid: youtube.com/watch?v=InZRZLby5mo
Stardew Valley TAS - Mines Floor 120 in 9:52! TheUnderscore76 2020-04-30 | There's quite a lot to talk about with this run, I'll be throwing up a commentary video in the next few days showing the TAS overlay/more details about the decisions that went into the run.This is based on a custom build of Stardew Valley I've been developing on and off for the last few years (this iteration for v1.4.0 I've worked on in earnest for about a month). Here I've wrapped code around the game play loop in order to inject input/control frame by frame advancing and inspect different elements of the game to help guide routing. I've finally come up with a brute force approach to remove desyncing, and so I was able to throw this example together in a single day!The total frame time for this recording was 34572 from game start to clicking the ladder down to 120, which at 60fps is 9:36.2. RTA time of 9:52 is from OK button clicked on character creation to the same point (due to save game lag).Couple key notes:- This seed was specifically chosen to get really good daily luck on day 5 and only spawn a single monster floor on floor 52 (which always will have a ladder). The seed is 361560.- Animation canceling - Every time you swing a tool, you have a certain number of frames before the tool hits its target. After the tool has hit, there are then "follow-through" frames that complete the animation. Pressing Right-Shift+Delete+R at the same time will cause the tool to stop animating and return the player to the default standing animation. Every single tool use in this TAS uses animation canceling to dramatically speedup movement. This is most noticeable with the weapons/scythe, where a single frame swing can be used to poke at grass or containers blocking my path.
Stardew Valley - TAS of Joja% in 38:30! TheUnderscore76 2019-10-22 | An exploratory Tool-Assisted Speedrun (TAS) built using a recompiled version of Stardew Valley v1.3.36. This is my third attempt at developing a TAS framework for Stardew, and I finally think I've worked out most of the desync issues. This run is far from optimal, it's primarily a proof of concept and stress test (took about a weekend to play all ~133k frames).Joja % is a run where you attempt to complete the Joja Community Development Form. It's a pretty easy run to TAS because there's really nothing more to do than make 140k gold as fast as possible. In this run I take advantage of some tricks that are not RTA viable (or at least not easy to take advantage of fully) which you'll see through:1) Animation canceling - Every time you swing a tool, you have a certain number of frames before the tool hits its target. After the tool has hit, there are then "follow-through" frames that complete the animation. Pressing Right-Shift+Delete+R at the same time will cause the tool to stop animating and return the player to the default standing animation. Every single tool use in this TAS uses animation canceling to dramatically speedup movement. This is most noticeable with the scythe, where a single frame swing can be used to poke at weeds or grass in certain directions.2) Rain manipulation - Rain for a day is decided two nights beforehand, based on a random number generator seeded with the player's step count. This run makes heavy abuse of this mechanic to force rain on almost every single day of the run where it can be used to water the crops (which is what makes this run viable).3) Animation overlaps - during crop harvesting, you can pick up other crops that are within reach and only have to go through a single animation cycle (why I typically walk into the middle of a 3x3 and then pick them all up at once).Otherwise it's a pretty simple money route: exponential increase crops to 205 tiles (what gets covered by my scarecrow) and try to minimize the number of days outside. I'll probably use a similar (if not identical) Spring route for other runs that require fast early game money.Interested in SDV Speedrunning? Come join us at http://discord.gg/0t4blMHaUewwda7V
SDV Demo: Collecting 12 potatoes from 1 seed! TheUnderscore76 2019-04-04 | Game seed: 47021741Potato must be planted on that specific tile (or ones that follow a specific pattern for how tiles affect RNG)
SDV TAS! Shane Marriage % Theorizing through Day 5 TheUnderscore76 2019-01-02 | New version of the TAS running on Stardew Valley 1.3x, now with sound and an improved (ie more stable) reset system so I can more quickly route this game. Figured Marriage % was the most interesting non-mines run I could do (mines% is absurdly broken via TAS, I'll get to it soon enough). It's much harder to think about how to best route all the "filler time" but at least this shows some theory of what can be done.Fast tool use is done via animation cancelling (on Windows, press R+Delete+RightShift) on the frame that the tool actually does it's action (breaks a rock/hits a tree/etc). This cuts each swing down by almost 1/3 of the frames.Note: I realized after uploading that I didn't need to water the second parsnip on one of either day 2 or day 4 because it would get an extra rain day, woops...
Stardew Valley - Mines Floor 50 TAS in 5:22 TheUnderscore76 2018-07-27 | A proof of concept, waiting on the 1.3 release to happen before I go back and do a full run with this. Check out this run with the TAS overlay here: youtu.be/3WWd5zHrs6oSorry about no game audio, my TAS version of the game can't currently compile with audio enabled.
Stardew Valley - Mines Floor 50 TAS in 5:22 (TAS Overlay) TheUnderscore76 2018-07-27 | A proof of concept, waiting on the 1.3 release to happen before I go back and do a full run with this. This version of the video has my overlay on so you can see what I see as I'm making the TAS. Original video: youtu.be/nFAdsbPXw3ESorry about no game audio, my TAS version of the game can't currently compile with audio enabled.
![Completing the Vault in Under 8 Minutes [TAS]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mQPdF1ZyzH0/maxresdefault.jpg)