(Link to video)

Motivation

The Witnes is a puzzle game released in 2016 by Thekla on PC, PS4 and XOne. There's no HUD, no tutorial, no living thing besides the flora and the player, who must solve puzzles on panels scatered around the island. Jonathan Blow presented us a masterpiece of game design, both artistically and technically.
The current "any%" speedrun of The Witnes is 14:55 by Amerald. Today I finally present a 11:05 optimization of that, to illustrate how fast this game can go.

Speedrun premises

  • Find the fastest/shortest solutions, because a lot of puzzle have multiple ways to solve;
  • Use the fastest/shortest route between panels based on the map. The game have distinct areas with grouped puzzle panels, there's a bunch of different combinations of area order, but one is faster;
  • The puzzle panels can be activated/started from any side, so this has to be abused anywhere possible;
  • There's some lag when moving on the y direction, probably due how the puzzle panel spawning was coded, so the movement in this TAS was carefully molded to minimize these lag instances;
  • Prioritize reaching the panels from the front of the player, not from the sides, because there's an extra frame for turning to face the panel before starting the puzzle;
  • This category is the fastest possible (without Credits Warp), so most of the game's content isn't even shown. Unfortunately, I didn't find any sequence breaking glitch to chop the route even further.

General commentaries

The start is very straightforward, on the first 2 rooms you simply learn the inputs on the panel and what exactly is solving the puzzles.
On the surface, the puzzle increase on diffulty, just to force a smooth learning curve. Solving the 4th puzzle enables 3 new areas of panels straight away, and you can play them in any order. I called each one A, B and C, based on the order of wires leading to them, from left to right, and each one shows a new puzzle mechanic (I won't spoil here). The final puzzle panel is only turned on when the player completely solves all these 3 areas, and it contains all the puzzle mechanics.
The final puzzle is very close to the last puzzle of area B, my only doubt was where I would start: A or C. It turns out that starting on A, then heading to C, then B, takes a total of 164 tiles, and starting on C, then A, then B, takes only 152 tiles, so that's the optimal route to go. Here I considered each tile to be 16x16 pixels, because the player always stops at 16 pixel multiples.
Once the route was defined, it was only a matter of moving as fast as possible between panels (you can hold the other button to run), solving each puzzle performing the fastest solution possible.

Final thoughts

This game is very interesting to TAS, despite being just a puzzle game. Before anyone asks, yea I have the intention to TAS the 100% category, and I'd love to find some glitches to use here.
Shoutouts to eternaljwh for the tip on activating the panels from any side.
Suggested screenshot: 13399
Thank!

Post April Fools' bits and tips

This demake was made by dustmop, it was released a few months after the original game. Unfortunately it's a demo, and due the lack of updates it might forever be a demo.
I made a map of the game, both with unsolved and solved panels, and a compilation with all the puzzle solutions I used.
Also I made a simple Lua script with some basic info to help the process, it uses the puzzle solution images as an overlay during the puzzle sections, it helped not wasting time thinking about the solutions more than once.

Samsara: (wakes up dazed and confused in a room with a bottle of piss)
feos: TIL BizHawk Windoes. Judging...
feos: Replacing with a replayable movie and rejecting because I'm upset that Bizhawk doesn't emulate Windows.
feos: It's a decent little game. It's a homebrew demo, but it's been about 5 years already and there's no full game, nor any indication that's still being developed or planned. So it's fine to TAS what we have.
Gameplay looks straightforward, but there's still some room for optimization in this game, given mechanics and routing. Feedback was mixed, and it was unclear if the people who said they liked it actually enjoyed the movie or the AFD joke (or something else), even after I explicitly asked for extra feedback.
Accepting to Vault.
Zinfidel: Processing via EZGames69

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7058: brunovalads's NES The Wit in 03:49.17
Patashu
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Pleasant and satisfying!
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Zinfidel
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Ho ho ho I had not yet realized what date it was when I saw this pop up in my feed and boy did you get me. You got me good. I freaked out and wondered how this was possible. Yes vote for duplicity.
Editor, Experienced player (607)
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Oh, that was a good one! I waited until the end of the run to figure out what game this was. Now I get it.
Joined: 3/11/2008
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Location: USA
Looks like you did notice b-button run… You don't have to stand south of a panel to activate it, though, and waste a few tiles' motion in a few places (such as southeastmost panel, the last puzzle in section A, and many times in section B) on this.
Editor, Player (132)
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eternaljwh wrote:
You don't have to stand south of a panel to activate it, though
Oh my god you're absolutely right, how did I never test this?? Thanks! @feos, i'm improving.
Games are basically math with a visual representation of this math, that's why I make the scripts, to re-see games as math. My things: YouTube, GitHub, Pastebin, Twitter
Editor, Player (132)
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Thanks to eternaljwh I saved 106 frames! Here's the improved movie. And here's the new encode: Link to video
Games are basically math with a visual representation of this math, that's why I make the scripts, to re-see games as math. My things: YouTube, GitHub, Pastebin, Twitter
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Looks like I should reject it for being unreplayable.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Editor, Player (132)
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feos wrote:
unreplayable
I edited the movie header so the site parser could identify it as Windows (glad that worked acually). Here's the original with untouched header.
Games are basically math with a visual representation of this math, that's why I make the scripts, to re-see games as math. My things: YouTube, GitHub, Pastebin, Twitter
EZGames69
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Claiming for encoding btw
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
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I decided to do a console verification of the run so it will be ready if/when the run gets accepted. Link to video
Site Admin, Skilled player (1234)
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I'll need some more feedback on this run. The current support is 68% (7/1/3), but it's unclear if the audience is actually enjoying the game or just the joke. I personally think it's way too simplistic and unexciting: if you don't know the puzzle mechanics, you won't understand why they're solved, and if you know them, you've already seen them and there's nothing revolutionary in them. The overworld is also straightforward. Voted No.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Editor, Player (67)
Joined: 6/22/2005
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As someone who has never played the original or the demake, I was confused about the puzzle solutions. Would probably be helpful if I knew the mechanics. Lacking that knowledge, I did not find this entertaining, so it's a No vote.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Patashu
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I don't think this can be justified for anything about Vault in reality. It's a bootleg of a puzzle game that already does nothing to explain why its solutions are solutions.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
EZGames69
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Should the game name be "The Wit.nes"? That's what it says on the title screen:
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Site Admin, Skilled player (1234)
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That's what I thought too.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
EZGames69
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Expert player, Publisher, Reviewer (3941)
Joined: 5/29/2017
Posts: 2701
Location: Michigan
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4440] NES The Wit by brunovalads in 03:49.17
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At 2:33 (going by video time), it saves 2 path segments to input RULUURDRRU instead of URDRRUULLURR. The rest of the solutions are optimal to my eye- wish I'd noticed this sooner so that the improvement could have been incorporated immediately, but oh well.