- Recorded with FCEU 0.98.15
- Luck manipulation
- Fastest time to get the CPU bankrupt (by last player input)
Yet another improvement, by 16 frames, still using the same strategy. The time is now 00:30.03 (1802 frames) ... almost under 30 seconds, but unless I missed something unexpected, I don't think it's possible to do any better.
I spent the last 1-2 days figuring out the game's randomness completely (different variations and frame timings) by looking at the code and memory viewer, and made a program that simulates it. Then, given the initial random values, it tries all possible timings that lead to victory and only keeps the fastest one ... doing about 500000 re-records worth of work in 15 seconds.
The result was only 10 frames faster than on the last run, but it should be optimal. Then right when I was going to record this run to submit (after finding and testing the best combination), I found another way to manipulate the card order: when entering the player's name, both the amount of letters I enter and the time between each (including End) affect it. Trying different ones until I found a pattern in the results allowed to save 6 more frames.
The delays are now down to this:
- 7+0 for the card order
- 0+2+4 to get Community Chest
- 0+0+4 to visit jail
- 0 for the CPU to buy Oriental
- 2+1 to buy St. James
- 0+0+1 to buy Tennessee
- 0+1+5 to buy New York
- 3+2 for the CPU to go bankrupt
Total: 32
