Sim Theme Park
(Playstation) in 8:59.773
Disc used: "SimTheme Park (USA).cue"
Bizhawk reported hash: BA16494F, matches Redump. All uploads of this game will only have a single .bin file, so make sure Bizhawk's "PSX Disc Hasher" tool shows that exact result.
Bizhawk reported hash: BA16494F, matches Redump. All uploads of this game will only have a single .bin file, so make sure Bizhawk's "PSX Disc Hasher" tool shows that exact result.
About the Game
"SimTheme Park (called "Theme Park World" outside the USA [also known as "Theme Park 2" {renamed "Theme Park Roller Coaster" for the PS2 release in the USA}])" was released in '99 by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts as a direct sequel to the original "Theme Park" game, attempting to bring it up to modern standards.
And it's good! They succeeded! I played a ton of the original Windows version back in high school, and it's still pretty much the only "amusement park simulation" video game I've ever given much thought to. (Although I have for years watched that one guy on youtube do really sweet deep-dives into RollerCoaster Tycoon even though I'll never play the game myself. Is that weird?)
And it's good! They succeeded! I played a ton of the original Windows version back in high school, and it's still pretty much the only "amusement park simulation" video game I've ever given much thought to. (Although I have for years watched that one guy on youtube do really sweet deep-dives into RollerCoaster Tycoon even though I'll never play the game myself. Is that weird?)
About the Run
I chose the Playstation version for a few different reasons. Partly because I didn't want to fuss with getting the Windows 98 version to work within DosBox-X within Bizhawk when the less-complicated-to-load PSX edition is right there, and partly because speedrun.com doesn't have any runs on any other version but the PSX one to compare my work against. Plus, while the Windows version lets you ride the roller coasters in first person (neat!), the Playstation version instead lets you play some of the sideshows and go-kart rides and awards you Golden Tickets for winning! So generally speaking, the PSX version just makes for a more interesting TAS. There are more differences than just these, so, while much is shared between platforms, assume that anything I mention below is specific to the Playstation release of the game.
So what Goal is this TAS aiming for? Generally, Simulation-genre games don't have an endpoint or measureable goal, since the player's task is kinda just "live forever or die trying." Well, SimTheme Park however tracks something called "Golden Tickets" across your save file. There are 50 in total, and a running total can be found in the Overworld screen. These tickets are used both to unlock special bonuses within parks, and also to unlock new parks, until all 8 are available for play.
So, speedrunners came up with two possible categories: 1) All Parks Opened, which requires only 12 Golden Tickets (plus 4 for the Camcorder, necessary to play sideshows--the fastest way to obtain tickets.) And 2) All Golden Tickets, which obtains all 50. The strategy for completing 2) is basically "Complete 1), create a small infinitely-self-sustaining design in all parks, stare at the ocean for EIGHT IRL HOURS" so uh I think I'll just be TASing 1) today, thanks you.
So what Goal is this TAS aiming for? Generally, Simulation-genre games don't have an endpoint or measureable goal, since the player's task is kinda just "live forever or die trying." Well, SimTheme Park however tracks something called "Golden Tickets" across your save file. There are 50 in total, and a running total can be found in the Overworld screen. These tickets are used both to unlock special bonuses within parks, and also to unlock new parks, until all 8 are available for play.
So, speedrunners came up with two possible categories: 1) All Parks Opened, which requires only 12 Golden Tickets (plus 4 for the Camcorder, necessary to play sideshows--the fastest way to obtain tickets.) And 2) All Golden Tickets, which obtains all 50. The strategy for completing 2) is basically "Complete 1), create a small infinitely-self-sustaining design in all parks, stare at the ocean for EIGHT IRL HOURS" so uh I think I'll just be TASing 1) today, thanks you.
Obtaining Golden Tickets
There are three ways to go about this quest:
Park Goals. Each Park has its own goals. These can be "have enough guests in this much time," "make enough money in this much time," or "survive this much longer time." There is no way to fast-forward time in this game, and the amount of time required goes up to 5 in-game years. This is why, for example, the final park alone takes over 2 hours to complete in the RTA 100% WR, most of it spent just staring at nothing to prevent lag. All you can do. Even TAS cannot speed this up in any way at all. So, not one of these goals is accomplished in this TAS.
Floating Tickets. There are 5 of these, and they are attached to special goals and are called "Floating" because they can be unlocked in any park you want. The goals are simple enough that some of them are bound to be the first ones obtained by a new player, totally by accident, just by building a theme park in a way that makes logical sense. Most speedruns get all 5 in the very first park, but since only 4 are needed to purchase the Camcorder, I save one of these Floating Tickets for during some downtime in a later park instead. I will explain them during the park-by-park breakdown later.
Sideshow Successes. Every park has two or three tickets that are won by using the Camcorder to enter first-person mode and playing these games yourself! There are six styles of minigame that provide these:
Park Goals. Each Park has its own goals. These can be "have enough guests in this much time," "make enough money in this much time," or "survive this much longer time." There is no way to fast-forward time in this game, and the amount of time required goes up to 5 in-game years. This is why, for example, the final park alone takes over 2 hours to complete in the RTA 100% WR, most of it spent just staring at nothing to prevent lag. All you can do. Even TAS cannot speed this up in any way at all. So, not one of these goals is accomplished in this TAS.
Floating Tickets. There are 5 of these, and they are attached to special goals and are called "Floating" because they can be unlocked in any park you want. The goals are simple enough that some of them are bound to be the first ones obtained by a new player, totally by accident, just by building a theme park in a way that makes logical sense. Most speedruns get all 5 in the very first park, but since only 4 are needed to purchase the Camcorder, I save one of these Floating Tickets for during some downtime in a later park instead. I will explain them during the park-by-park breakdown later.
Sideshow Successes. Every park has two or three tickets that are won by using the Camcorder to enter first-person mode and playing these games yourself! There are six styles of minigame that provide these:
- Go-Karts. The only Ride that gives golden tickets, these are a racing mini-game that you control. The path is completely customizeable by the player, plus you choose how many laps to do each race! For TAS purposes, the smallest loop possible is done in one lap, inside track no breaks all gas let's roll baby. Go-Karts never appear as researchable until you have researched at least two other new rides first, however, so the only time I get a Golden Ticket from a Go-Kart ride is in the very first park, which I have to spend a bunch of time in anyway.
- Giant Puzzles. A simple 3x3 slider puzzle, it is trivial for a TAS to undo the jumble quickly. This run does all four puzzles in the game.
- Test of Strength. Mash X to build up meter, smash O when you think it's strong enough to hit the bell. Quick and easy.
- Shy Targets. Two of the parks have this 'knock down the targets' game, which even with TAS manipulation is the slowest of the minigames played in this TAS. And even then, there is an RNG element where sometimes, a target will refuse to fall down, even with a direct hit from the player! Not manipulating this away can cost multiple seconds. Also, if you play the game extremely soon after placing it in your park, the angling of the game pieces gets totally out of wack. (This is somewhat true of all playable sideshows, but it's most noticeable here.)
- Smash-a-Mole. You can guess what it is. Get enough hits within the time limit to win. Unfortunately, getting enough hits does not stop the game early, so you have to wait the full 30 second time limit every time. This is an extremely long time for a TAS, so not one of the four smashing games are played in this TAS. RTA gets a ticket from the "Idol Smash" in the first park, but, seriously, TAS can complete all of
Open Park 2, research Pumpkin Shy, place Pumpkin Shy, beat Pumpkin Shy, close Park 2in less time than it takes to play a single Smash-a-Mole game, and that's not even including the time needed to research it first!
- Miscellaneous. There are three other sideshows that provide tickets, and each one is completely unique. The one in Park One takes over two minutes for even TAS to get the Golden Ticket from, so that's completely out of the question. But the other two Misc. sideshows are completed and explained briefly during the park-by-park notes. ...Which are coming up next.
Park One
Most of the game happens here. The first Dinoland park is open by default, and is a great place to obtain Floating Tickets. Here is what this TAS accomplishes and why, in order:
- The first thing done in every park is to hire all 5 Researchers, train them to max level, maximize their output, and set them to work researching only what is needed from each park. In the first park, they need to research two rides and then the Dino Karts--every other park, I only have them research a sideshow or two.
- Then, I take out a $100,000 loan. No, I do not ever pay it back, why do you ask~~
- Time to farm for Floating Tickets. I set up an Arcade Sideshow and a Drinks Shop near the entrance, extend the Path a few tiles, and place two rides and connect them to said path. This passes the requirements for what is called the "Fundamentals Ticket," which the Dot helper eventually hands over after it finishes blabbing through some other notices. I'm waiting for my Researchers to do their thing, so as long as I get 4 Golden Tickets before they get the Dino Karts ready, he can talk all he wants.
- Next, I lay out numerous Security Cameras in seemingly random places around the park. It's not necessarily the quantity that matters, but that they cover enough tiles throughout the grounds. The Dot will give me the "Security Award" and a ticket for my troubles.
- The next target is the "Path Award," which you obtain for having lots of rides and not a lot of walking needed to reach them. Directly connecting the entrance of one ride with the exit of another also counts for this, so this Award is easily achieved by building a bunch of rides in a chain--I choose to go full Ape-Centipede with it!
- Finally, achieving the previous two awards coincidentally sets a player up to obtain the "Aesthetic Award." You need a "large park full of beautiful features" to get this, which means a lot of rides (MONKE) and a lot of features (which the Security Cameras count towards!) Easy-peasy.
- The last two tickets were handed out quietly in the background while the Dot was yapping, so as soon as the Dino Karts are placed (and laps set to 1,) I buy the Camcorder, go into first person, win a race, and escape all the way back to the Overworld.
Parks Two-Through-Six
The next five parks follow a simple pattern here, so descriptions will be more brief.
- Park Two, Halloween: Research "Pumpkin Shy," beat it, leave. The only other Golden Ticket here is a Smash-a-Mole game, slow slow slow.
- Park Three, Fantasy: This park starts with "Fruit Shy" already researched, but I have to research "Giant Puzzle" myself. Both of them are beaten quickly.
- Park Four, Dinoland #2: This park starts with both "Strength Bird" and "Sun Shooter" unlocked. Sun Shooter is the Misc. Sideshow here, and it's a simple dart-shooting game where you don't have as much control over your aim as you'd like but oh well. Hit all six Suns and try to ignore the bombs. I research "Giant Puzzle" again and beat all three sideshows for big Ticket gains.
- Park Five, Halloween #2: The Go-Karts are too slow to research here, so I opt for the "Fortune Teller" instead. This Misc. Sideshow is bizarre--it's functionally just a Magic 8-Ball that you "win" by shaking it and getting a "YES!" response instead of any of the "maybe? try again later I dunno?" responses. Pure RNG, even RTA just mashes X for a few frames and gets the ticket quick. This Park also has a "Giant Puzzle," but at least it starts off unlocked, so that's two more tickets achieved in short order.
The final park that this TAS enters is the first of two Outer Space-themed parks in the game. No Golden Ticket Sideshows are unlocked from the get-go here, so this park requires sitting through two rounds of researching: "Strength Rocket" and the final "Giant Puzzle."
Since this requires so much time sitting around waiting, I opted to obtain the fifth and final Floating Ticket in this park, instead of doing it first in Park One like most runners do. This comes from getting the "Green Award," which is awarded for placing a Trash Can very near the entrances of your Shops. If you have at least five Shops and a Trash Can near each entrance, you're golden! Here, I place my shops in a very tight circle around a singular can, which is enough to trigger the award. They didn't say I needed one for each, just that every shop needed to be near one!
After all is said and done, I go back to the Overworld and open up the final two parks. All eight are now open, goal achieved, TAS done. For the encode, I would have gone back to the main menu and gone to the Credits sequence from there for some kind of closure, but it turns out you can't do that without resetting the console and waiting through the whole loadup sequence again so meh nevermind.
Since this requires so much time sitting around waiting, I opted to obtain the fifth and final Floating Ticket in this park, instead of doing it first in Park One like most runners do. This comes from getting the "Green Award," which is awarded for placing a Trash Can very near the entrances of your Shops. If you have at least five Shops and a Trash Can near each entrance, you're golden! Here, I place my shops in a very tight circle around a singular can, which is enough to trigger the award. They didn't say I needed one for each, just that every shop needed to be near one!
After all is said and done, I go back to the Overworld and open up the final two parks. All eight are now open, goal achieved, TAS done. For the encode, I would have gone back to the main menu and gone to the Credits sequence from there for some kind of closure, but it turns out you can't do that without resetting the console and waiting through the whole loadup sequence again so meh nevermind.
Any last questions?
Q: RTA goes into the options menu and turns off the Tutorial messages, why don't you?
A: Tutorial Messages are very irritating interruptions from the Dot that pop up whenever you attempt to do something for the first time, and it locks you out of gameplay until you either listen to his message all the way through, or hit the Triangle button to cancel him out. This totally disrupts real-time flow, so it makes sense to turn it off in real-time play.
TAS, however, only needs 2 frames of Triangle press to cancel it as soon as possible, so you'll never notice that these messages were ever even loading up in the first place! Going into the Options menu to turn off the Tutorials, however, costs well over 100 frames, so it's much faster for TAS to just muscle through the interruptions. (Plus, RTA runs start from selecting "Main Game" anyway, the time spent going into the Options menu is not included in their run times.)
Q: RTA runs build a Staff Room in Park One, and seem to swear by its necessity. Why don't you?
A: Researchers are human, and need breaks sometimes. If you don't let them take breaks, eventually they'll burn out, and go on strike! No researching gets done in that case, and in RTA, the length of time spent in Park One is just enough that sometimes this can become a problem if RNG goes against you. This is absolutely a run killer, so startrunners start off their run by building a Staff Room to immunize against this potentiality.
For TAS, however, I can guarantee that the time spent in Park One is not going to be long enough to trigger the strike, so a Staff Room is not necessary. In fact, it's actively detrimental, because Researchers will take breaks and slow down your Research progress if a Staff Room is present! So I crack the whip, refuse them any chance to sit down, and make them do crunch time as long as is necessary.
Q: Why not do entertaining things during the downtime?
A: In all my tests, moving the camera around slowed Research heavily for some reason. I'd love to place paths down to spell out 'TAS' or make smiley faces, but that would have just extended the amount of downtime so I skipped the opportunity.
Q: Are there any tiny improvements you could have made?
A: Yes. I realized very late in production that the first trip to the Research screen in each park could have gone Upward through the options instead of Downward, which would save around 4 frames each time. This game is extremely inconsistent from screen to screen, so altering a single frame is extremely likely to desync everything immediately. So, this is merely a note to keep in mind in case anyone decides to improve this run.
Similarly, while the "Giant Puzzles" are always shuffled by exactly 16 steps (which TAS can easily transcribe and reverse perfectly,) it is possible sometimes for the post-shuffle layout to be solved in fewer steps. One of the four puzzles in this TAS is solved in only 12 steps, which saves 16 frames. If I was able to manipulate the RNG into giving me more convenient layouts for the other three puzzles, that could save over a full second off the run. But I found the RNG to be very difficult to manipulate, which leads to:
Q: Well, are there any LARGE improvements you could still make?
A: Probably! See, from all of my testing, I am of the opinion that Researching might be heavily influenced by RNG. Sometimes in my tests, a Sideshow would be researched in 1600 frames. Sometimes, that same Sideshow would take over 2400 frames! I was unable to pin down exactly how these discrepancies arose, and I failed to locate any RAM Watch locations that could help here.
So, while this run obviously is pretty quick already, I have this feeling that if someone was to work out how to master the RNG and get all that Research done as quickly as the programming allows to be possible, there's a ton of time-save that could be trimmed off of this TAS's waiting periods in each park. Could be a couple more minutes faster, even. I just have a hunch!
A: Tutorial Messages are very irritating interruptions from the Dot that pop up whenever you attempt to do something for the first time, and it locks you out of gameplay until you either listen to his message all the way through, or hit the Triangle button to cancel him out. This totally disrupts real-time flow, so it makes sense to turn it off in real-time play.
TAS, however, only needs 2 frames of Triangle press to cancel it as soon as possible, so you'll never notice that these messages were ever even loading up in the first place! Going into the Options menu to turn off the Tutorials, however, costs well over 100 frames, so it's much faster for TAS to just muscle through the interruptions. (Plus, RTA runs start from selecting "Main Game" anyway, the time spent going into the Options menu is not included in their run times.)
Q: RTA runs build a Staff Room in Park One, and seem to swear by its necessity. Why don't you?
A: Researchers are human, and need breaks sometimes. If you don't let them take breaks, eventually they'll burn out, and go on strike! No researching gets done in that case, and in RTA, the length of time spent in Park One is just enough that sometimes this can become a problem if RNG goes against you. This is absolutely a run killer, so startrunners start off their run by building a Staff Room to immunize against this potentiality.
For TAS, however, I can guarantee that the time spent in Park One is not going to be long enough to trigger the strike, so a Staff Room is not necessary. In fact, it's actively detrimental, because Researchers will take breaks and slow down your Research progress if a Staff Room is present! So I crack the whip, refuse them any chance to sit down, and make them do crunch time as long as is necessary.
Q: Why not do entertaining things during the downtime?
A: In all my tests, moving the camera around slowed Research heavily for some reason. I'd love to place paths down to spell out 'TAS' or make smiley faces, but that would have just extended the amount of downtime so I skipped the opportunity.
Q: Are there any tiny improvements you could have made?
A: Yes. I realized very late in production that the first trip to the Research screen in each park could have gone Upward through the options instead of Downward, which would save around 4 frames each time. This game is extremely inconsistent from screen to screen, so altering a single frame is extremely likely to desync everything immediately. So, this is merely a note to keep in mind in case anyone decides to improve this run.
Similarly, while the "Giant Puzzles" are always shuffled by exactly 16 steps (which TAS can easily transcribe and reverse perfectly,) it is possible sometimes for the post-shuffle layout to be solved in fewer steps. One of the four puzzles in this TAS is solved in only 12 steps, which saves 16 frames. If I was able to manipulate the RNG into giving me more convenient layouts for the other three puzzles, that could save over a full second off the run. But I found the RNG to be very difficult to manipulate, which leads to:
Q: Well, are there any LARGE improvements you could still make?
A: Probably! See, from all of my testing, I am of the opinion that Researching might be heavily influenced by RNG. Sometimes in my tests, a Sideshow would be researched in 1600 frames. Sometimes, that same Sideshow would take over 2400 frames! I was unable to pin down exactly how these discrepancies arose, and I failed to locate any RAM Watch locations that could help here.
So, while this run obviously is pretty quick already, I have this feeling that if someone was to work out how to master the RNG and get all that Research done as quickly as the programming allows to be possible, there's a ton of time-save that could be trimmed off of this TAS's waiting periods in each park. Could be a couple more minutes faster, even. I just have a hunch!
Thanks to everyone who ran this game for Speedrun.com that I was able to steal information from, particularly XandoToaster's speedrun guide and Roxreeves's WR run Twitch streams.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: All looks good! Another great effort from Twisted_Eye, having beat the WR by almost 5 minutes.
Accepting to "Standard".
fsvgm777: Processing.