Well, this project is maturing. My first post was two months ago to the day (unintentionally), my LiveSplit any% run counter is over 500 (although probably two-thirds of those were early resets, at least), and my current PB/WR is almost half of what the first semi-optimized baseline run was. Ah, memories.
In general, I've accomplished what I've wanted to, and more. An added bonus was garnering some interest from others as well as an ongoing rivalry re: battling over the WR time. Although that's generally in full force now (with another potential convert waiting in the wings), I'm starting to feel ready to move on.
It's near year-end, which is when I often get reflective and plan out & undertake new initiatives and objectives for the following year, so I'm considering the future of this project especially as it would share space with other things I'd be giving attention to. I actually give New Year's "Resolutions" quite a bit of thought, and a pretty good effort at least for several months until the springtime distracts me with its charms.
Anyway, this post will provide a general update, overall thoughts, and future plans for the project in a longer-than-usual form (no bulleted lists!).
I've gone back and forth on the WR with NaiveSquirrel a few times now which was initially fun but is starting to feel a bit arduous. One of the main topics of this project was exploring obsession - which has both positive and negative aspects to it. I would say it's been all positive so far, but the part of me that needs to keep the WR is more of the negative sort in that it's not serving as inspiration/motivation/focus but rather not-totally-wanted obligation and inability to let something go. Anyway, all part of the territory and generally a large point of what I started two months ago re: exploration of its expressions.
Another development was playing around with AutoHotKey (AHK) as an exploration of Tool-Assisted Speedruns (TAS), which is basically programming automated runs of a game instead of manually playing. Drakklor is a near-perfect candidate for this and I made a quick AHK script to complete level 1 consistently with a relatively quicker time than I'm able to, even when including a delay-for-consistency of about 3 seconds in the AHK script. I'm not going to post it on YouTube but there's a quick VOD here. Basically, it was a bit tedious/finicky re: some timing inconsistencies so I'm not going to go any further with it because I've satisfied my curiosity.
Beyond that, I've been doing some Sable speedruns and did a stream of that as well. I'm enjoying it as a change of pace/evolution of this project and am looking forward to returning to it once I've finished putting this pin into Drakklor (assuming I'm not required to constantly be reclaiming WRs in the near future).
Not much else of note, but on the topic of streaming I've basically decided that I've had my fill and am not planning to do anymore, with the potential exception of a one-off stream if I really feel motivated to do so at some point.
It's been a really positive experience. I've enjoyed basically every aspect of it from the logistics and tech surrounding the project through to all the trappings of developing and executing speedruns for a game. I even garnered enough interest to start a rivalry resulting in my WR being beaten more than once, which is more than I expected at the get-go. Overall, I'm glad I moved forward with the project even though I was definitely on the fence about doing it and had dismissed the idea previously several times.
I was lukewarm on the streaming aspect and like I said above, am not planning to continue. This doesn't really surprise me though and I more so did it just as a point of completionism about the whole speedrunning experience - but also due to some curiosity about the involved tech/setup. It actually ended up being quite straightforward to do, more so than I thought it would be.
I think the important takeaway here is that I should keep this experience in mind when I have ideas/whims about other potential undertakings, despite how "out there" they may be. I guess that's all TBD in the future.
I'm motivated (enough) to hold on to the any% record at least for a while, while being aware that I should make the difficult call to "let go" if it turns out I'm really not enjoying trying to grind out taking it back (assuming I lose it again). Also, the 100% run is under-explored and might be something I revisit more after a bit of a break if I get an itch to play some more Drakklor down the road.
I do want to give more attention to Sable, although I'm feeling slightly less enthusiasm about that than I initially did. I may not push beyond the 5th-place spot because that seems within reach, but the spots beyond that would be a real grind.
I'm not sure how committed I'll stay to the idea of speedrunning in general. I did spend quite a while researching other games to run with very few appealing to me before landing on Sable. A game/run has to check a lot of boxes for me to be appealing (a platform I have access to, say sub-20m runs, not too RNG-oriented, active-ish community, not too physically rough re: repetitive controls, reasonably consistent runs, game that's generally interesting/fun, etc.). Also in general I'm not sure if speedrunning is something that would be especially fulfilling/worthwhile relative to the time investment it requires in the long term.
Will be some decision-making here likely if/when I'm able to grab 5th on the Sable any% ladder.
This post is meant as a capstone to the project but there are likely to be future run updates (mostly depending on the level of obsession of my rival(s?) vs. my own), in addition to blog posts - but with lower frequency.
I may post some stuff about Sable on here and potentially pointers to other projects if I find that appropriate or opportune.
I really appreciate the interest I garnered from others, especially my main rival NaiveSquirrel - it was more than I expected. Even though I was fine with (and expecting to be) doing this in a vacuum, engagement with others made it better. An expansion of that is something I may be seeking with more active games like Sable - even though it has a pretty niche/small community as far as speedrunning communities go.
Anyway, cheers.
