First Plateau

2023-10-28

I would say my day-to-day time improvements have been levelling off. In general, I'm putting in completed runs around 6m 30s +/- 10s, with my new record being 6m 18s. I did change my keybinds partway through the week from the arrow keys to WASD which messed with my muscle memory a bit, but I think I've mostly gotten through that now.

Point being, I feel like I've generally hit the plateau for my current strat and I can take a step back and move to optimizations for a while, settling on a more optimal strat, and then kind of repeating that process until approaching a point of very diminishing returns. Will reassess the project after that.

Along those lines, I've finished mapping all 8 levels so they can be reviewed during theory crafting:

• Level 1
• Level 2
• Level 3
• Level 4
• Level 5
• Level 6
• Level 7
• Level 8

Upon review, I've already come across a few "easy wins" in terms of optimization (to be verified), and have several other leads or areas wanting for experimentation. Enough on that for now.

Asides & Next Steps

A quick list:

• Immediate priority is optimize/iterate/etc.
• I have purchased a new laptop which is set to arrive this week. I'll have to take a day or two to set it up, and also am curious to see if the game emulates at the same speed on my new system vs. my current one (which is kind of tired). To the best of my knowledge and in theory, it should be consistent, but TBD.
• As an extension of that, I'd like to do the mise-en-place leading up to some low-production-value YouTube VODs and Twitch streams. Basically, I've been putting this off pending the arrival of the new computer so I don't have to redo the associated setup.

I think that will keep me busy for a while.