PDQ: Pony Done Quick · 2:05am Sep 21st, 2013

So, I had this experimental story-ish thing I wrote just for fun. Definitely fictional, anyway. Didn't pass moderation because they didn't think it was actually a story. But seems like a waste to not do anything with it, and the rules on blogs don't bar this sort of thing, so here it is.

PDQ
Pony Done Quick

Introduction by Yo554rian (Yo) and Twilight_Holmes (TH):

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is many things. It defies genres, and nearly defies description. Some of the more amusing attempts we've come across include:

"If Princess Maker were an action/puzzle game with a revolutionary dialog system..."

"If Secret of Mana were also a platonic dating sim..."

There's no doubt that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was a revolutionary step in the gaming industry - or would be, if many of its successes could be imitated. For one thing, it's a rare game that could be directly adapted into a television show for all ages - but yet more brilliance came in releasing the TV show simultaneously, with each episode being a walkthrough for one level. Millions of fans have been drawn by the depth of the game and its world, and millions more just watch the show! Can you imagine anyone watching Captain N who didn't play Nintendo? (Can you imagine anyone watching Captain N at all?). Most players aim for maximal friendship scores. Others, including us, have a different goal: speed. We have completed a Tool-Assisted Speedrun of Disc 1, and are releasing it, incomplete though it is, to gauge interest and to see if anyone has any suggestions or improvements to make.

Now, speedrunning in general is the art of completing a game in the least time possible. Unassisted speedrunning is a performance art; tool-assisted speedrunning (TAS) is more like sculpture. In a TAS, one advances the game frame by frame and chooses what inputs to apply at each step. One has the chance to look ahead in time by restoring from frozen states, and examine (but not alter) the game state byte-by-byte. This allows perfect play beyond what humans can achieve in realtime. We are simply not competing with unassisted speedrunners such as Featherhoof and PP20%Dave. They're awesome and their work is awesome. We are not cheating when our times cruise past theirs; we are simply playing a different game, as it were.

As is standard for speedruns, this is all done with a fresh start and no DLC (details on just how necessary this is follow the conclusion).

Without further ado, the summary of the speedrun:

(TH: First, we hit the setup menus, turn off the voices, and set a bunch of delays and stuff to 0. The only interesting thing here is that we turn off the safety so the other players are not constrained to remain on-screen)

Elapsed time: 1.90 seconds

Level 1: The Mare in the Moon

(Yo: This one was a real blast. I'm not apologizing for that joke)

Twilight Sparkle does some reading, brushes off Lyra and Moondancer, and realizes that Nightmare Moon is returning.

As we gain control, she skips writing to the princess, instead teleporting directly onto the chariot the princess apparently had prepared in advance. (TH: She carefully lands just past the checkpoint where they make sure you have Spike, so he will just have to follow on foot)

As Twilight approaches Ponyville, she casts a megaphone spell, faces down, and calls out, "I need to prepare a party!" (TH: If you time it right, this overrides Pinkie's scripted reaction and fully unlocks her until level the end of level 5). Without any further need for explanation, Pinkie begins gathering various objects and delivering them to the park pavilion (Yo: You can't see what Pinkie's up to because we are controlling her completely 'blind', without ever taking a moment to see her in the actual run. Of course, we saw what she was doing by freezing and shifting viewpoint, then restoring from freeze and doing what we would have done if we'd shifted. Inconvenient, but doable)

Twilight Sparkle telesprints to the other end of the park (TH: we're going to be doing this a lot. The efficiency curve on teleports favors teleport around 30 paces, run for 5, repeat. And of course we nail the casting microgame every time). She materializes right next to Fluttershy. Before Fluttershy's frightened reaction locks out Twilight Sparkle's controls, she telesprints off. Her final teleport to the Apple farm lands her right at the table, already seated. She is offered food without introductions (TH: it's expected she already had them by the time she was seated), and she accepts it. After eating one item her MP start refilling; she grabs everything else on the table, pets Applebloom on the head, and teleports off the farm (Yo: As long as Applebloom is following you around, you're technically still at the Apple Family reunion, so you get to skip the farewell, and she doesn't normally stop following you until you approach the border of the farm, not teleport across it).

Twilight Sparkle telesprints back to the park just as Fluttershy is getting over the first startle, and scares her a second time before disappearing in another flash of light.

Twilight Sparkle dodges getting dumped in the mud and accosts the swooper, Rainbow Dash, for neglecting her duties. While Dashie is clearing the sky, Twilight edges closer to Carousel Boutique; she gets into the action too, surreptitiously blasting a cloud. The moment before the last cloud is done, she squeeee-s. Dash swoops down and glomps her right into the Boutique. (TH: We had to solve a variation of the traveling salesman problem here. The walkthrough's solution was good enough to get max bonus, but there were clear inefficiencies. We got her cloud-busting down to 8.41 seconds normally, but ExQuestRyan pointed out to us that Twilight could destroy one of the out-of-the-way clouds with a fire blast. That brought it down to 7.6 seconds flat)

Rarity takes a lot of her time out to help Twilight after the glomp ruined her hair, but this takes remarkably little game time, and gives another MP refill.

Twilight teleports next to Fluttershy for the third time and we get the 'worst' Fluttershy meeting. (TH: Fortunately, we got the full bonus for the others, so we're doing all right on Twilight's friendship)

A scene transition, and Twilight Sparkle is at the welcoming party (Yo: which Pinkie Pie had apparently thoughtfully prepared in advance, since she's been hard at work all day doing stuff for us). Twilight Sparkle steps out and telesprints back towards Canterlot; she finds Spike on the road. She speaks to Spike (TH: to start the countdown to the end of the scene), then telesprints to the hydroelectric dam and cuts power just as the scene ends.

The scene changes to the town hall, which is in blackout. Twilight Sparkle runs to park pavilion, where Pinkie Pie has set up a generator and the fashion runway, thereby making it into the backup site for the celebration. Pinkie sets off a Rube Goldberg contraption of medium complexity. At precisely midnight, Nightmare Moon appears on the runway, and the contraption simultaneously triggers 63 party cannons. They critical for 16528 damage (TH: and if she had survived that, she would have been subject to 255 rounds of deaf, blind, and feeling strange).

Elapsed time: 1:17.04
Total time : 1:18.94

Level 2: The Elements of Harmony

(TH: The Everfree Forest is much much easier without Nightmare Moon mucking everything up. The primary challenges are 1: to get Fluttershy's friendship bonus up, and 2: manipulating the RNG to keep Applebloom from getting herself killed since she's still following Twilight Sparkle around. So...)

Fluttershy helps every little woodland critter she sees. (Yo: Why not? It's not like there's a villain out there who's going to plunge Equestria into endless night. Well, kind of. You can see her floating at the bottom of the screen in her 'defeated' pose. Ignore her. And it happens to be endless night for completely unrelated reasons)

Anyway, the supine, inert Nightmare Moon fails to set off a landslide, then fails to agitate a manticore, then fails to rip off Stephen's mustache (TH: rendering the river fordable), then fails to distract Rainbow Dash while she repairs a bridge. (Yo: But you get the friendship bonuses for each anyway. Yeah.)

While Rainbow Dash is fixing the bridge, Twilight Sparkle telesprints to the castle, grabs the elements, and telesprints most of the way back, running the rest of the way once her MP are depleted. Then Nightmare Moon's body swoops around and lands at their feet. Princess Celestia appears, and Nightmare Moon is replaced with a (more obviously?) living, repentant Luna, and they have a short conversation.

Elapsed time: 1:04.33
Total time : 2:23.27

Level 3: The Ticket Master

Twilight Sparkle has Spike take a letter to Princess Celestia that's nominally about friendship, but doesn't actually say anything. While dictating the letter, Twilight walks to the right, away from Applejack and Rainbow Dash (TH: Dictating the letter suppresses Applejack's ability to keep Twilight onscreen).

Spike delivers the tickets where Applejack and Rainbow Dash can't see. We shift views to Pinkie Pie running around gathering musical instruments and experimental equipment for 24.5 seconds. Meanwhile, Spike lectures Twilight on eating while he crams apples into her mouth and she chows down on all the food she stole from the reunion. Whenever she's full, she teleports the contents of her stomach to the side. (TH: In this way, she consumes far more food than would normally be possible in one day, which is normally the limiting factor on how fast you can train up as a gourmand. It takes a substantial amount eaten in one day to start gaining experience in it at all, but once you get past that, it trains quickly. So, she goes straight from novice to master gourmand in a mere 19 seconds. She is now as good at eating as Pinkie Pie or Spike)

Then Twilight Sparkle and Spike submit a friendship report about how sometimes sharing your good fortune would just cause trouble. (Yo: Be thankful we left them off-screen for that, since Twilight's binge and its aftermath are kind of nasty) (TH: you have to have a pretty good imagination for that to be really nasty. It's not that bad. Plus, we could have arranged a camera angle)

Elapsed time: 30.28
Total time : 2:53.55

Level 4: Applebuck Season

Applejack asks for help right off the bat.

We produce a friendship report on how maybe it would be wise to at least give something challenging a try before begging for help. (TH: the irony. Yo: Is that irony? TH: Cosmic irony. For us. Yo: Ah.)

Elapsed time: 4.91
Total time : 2:58.46

Level 5: Griffon the Brush-off

(TH: This level has a reputation for taking wildly random amounts of time. Obviously, this works in our favor. Why is it so random, though? There's a nearly unending series of opportunities Pinkie Pie gets for befriending Gilda, and each of them has a very low chance of success, that only gets worse as the level progresses. So, the best chance at a happy ending is the first chance.)

Pinkie Pie sets up a prank x4 combo on Rainbow Dash, Spike, herself, and Applebloom (this finally resets her behavior so she is no longer following Twilight Sparkle around): Joy-buzzer on Rainbow Dash sets off her lightning on Spike, making him knock a bucket off the door onto Pinkie; the tail-twitch from the Pinkie Sense warning on the bucket sets a nearby oversized tuning fork to vibrating, thereby starting Applebloom. (Yo: Prank point total reached, we move on to phase 2)

As Gilda makes her entrance, Pinkie orders seven spinach cupcakes from a passing vendor (Yo: RNG manipulation!) and eats them. She then challenges Gilda to a hoof-wrestling match. Pinkie desperately holds on for two seconds while the spinach cupcakes are still taking effect, then regains ground for five seconds, then lets Gilda regain ground. Once Gilda has made her near-victory comment, Pinkie takes the lead back and delivers a near-victory comment of her own. She allows this to go back and forth three times. At 20.03 seconds, she lets Gilda win.

Gilda allows that other ponies besides Rainbow Dash can be at least a little cool, and we make a friendship report on giving others a chance.

Elapsed Time: 33.38
Total time : 3:32.84

Level 6: Boast Busters

Twilight Sparkle runs (not telesprints) to the center of town. After Trixie boasts to the audience, Twilight Sparkle steps up, ignores Trixie for a moment, and asks the audience whether they find this a little obnoxious. Trixie challenges Twilight Sparkle. Twilight Sparkle, as her challenge, buffs Trixie with a cloud-walking spell. Then she teleports Trixie onto a nearby cloud. In response, Trixie removes the cloud-walking buff and falls to her apparent doom. Then she picks herself up and leaves town in embarrassment. Leaving her cart just sitting there. (Yo: Ah, good old abuse of AI. Incidentally, no one ever comes by to close up her cart until Magic Duel)

Twilight Sparkle writes a friendship report about how modesty sure is nice.

Elapsed Time: 11.82
Total time : 3:44.66

Level 7: Dragonshy

(TH: Most of the challenge in this level arise from herding Fluttershy around. With tool assistance, this is nearly trivial, and she can be kept moving the right direction at nearly full-speed. The path is remarkably short, with Fluttershy-delays accounting for most of the time in a normal run)

The six friends receive their assignment to convince the dragon to leave. They herd Fluttershy up the mountain in a jiffy with no rock-slides or any nonsense like that. The other five friends go in to deal with the dragon all at the same time. The dragon kicks them out and threatens them. Fluttershy admonishes it, and there we go.

Elapsed time: 30.12
Total time : 4:14.78

Level 8: Look Before You Sleep

Rarity calls up to Rainbow Dash and asks her how she'll be taking care of the storm. Rainbow Dash tells her to just watch, and Rarity proceeds to ignore her. (TH: This set Rainbow Dash's storm-management minigame in motion, which allows us to speed up the storm. Even though the in-game conceit is that the minigame is hypothetical, and storm progress is reset at the end, we can trigger all necessary storm events manually through the minigame. We play the mini-game off-screen, using the same trick as when Pinkie Pie was gathering party equipment off-screen)

Rarity and Applejack, upon getting caught in the rain, rush for the library. Twilight Sparkle invites them over for a sleepover. They stand there slack-jawed for 6 seconds while waiting for Rainbow Dash to get a 17x combo which unleashes an impressive lightning barrage and convinces them to stay. (Yo: since Rainbow Dash's minigame was the limiting factor on our progress we didn't need to optimize AJ's and Rarity's progress so much, but we rushed them anyway, just to have them simply stand there for 6 seconds as if they were utterly shocked - it was worth it.) (TH: ponies stand there for much longer when you play the game like a normal person) (Yo: I know, but in context? ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM for four minutes, and then six seconds of crickets chirping)

(Yo: In the sleepover itself, there's little opportunity to speed things up beyond zooming through the dialogue. However, we can milk the events for massive friendship bonuses that dig Applejack and Rarity out of the holes we put them in by mostly skipping their levels. Normally you can't actually make a profit on their abusing each other, but, well, you'll see.)

- The pillow-fight involves slipping books into the pillow-cases.
- The Truth-or-Dare game involves a really awkward questions about Rarity's mom, and another about Big Macintosh, and a segment in which AJ performs the dance of the Sugar-Plum Flutterpony while reciting classical poetry. She gets her revenge, though - she just whispers her dare in Rarity's ear, Rarity blushes and gulps, and then it literally fades out. When it fades back in, Rarity's a motion-blur going out into the rain, and is praying to Celestia that it won't soak in. (Yo: It was so bad they couldn't show it? Wow, what was it - 1 mare, 2 cups?)
- In lieu of makeovers, they do crafts: Rarity and Applejack teach Twilight Sparkle to sew. They have a pretty serious disagreement over the exact means over the obvious differences - AJ emphasizing strength of stitch, and Rarity emphasizing grace, and they take every opportunity to poke each other with their needles. (Yo: This is great. Huge antagonism penalty, no time wasted, and zero damage. Yup. Needles don't cause HP damage - it takes a pillow to do that)
- The 'spooky stories' are far more specific and brutal. Rarity plays up AJ's dead parents, and AJ uses a two-pronged attack both tearing into Rarity's fashion disaster mother while undercutting her right to have her own fashion opinions, then follows up with a right hook that reduces Rarity to 1 hp and triggers Rarity's desperation counterattack, reducing AJ to 2 hp. (Yo: Punch the rock. Kick the rock. Dress up the rock. Whine at the rock. Now... do all of them at the same time. This is the Whining Way) (TH: What?) (Yo: nm)
When Applejack lassoes the tree, Rarity tackles her, so that the tree doesn't come off balance completely (Yo: we keep juggling it with RD's minigame until the appropriate moment). This tackle knocks out AJ.
Applejack's being KO-ed triggers the worst ending for 25% bonus. While that's going on, Rarity spends the magic power and abilities she just got leveling up to revive her.
Now, since Applejack is awake, the worst ending aborts and the medium ending triggers for 50% bonus. One frame after that bonus triggers, Rainbow Dash slams the tree into the library, aborting the ending.
Rarity dithers, and Applejack demands her help. Rarity listens, and we get the best ending, for 100% bonus.
One frame in, AJ headbutts Rarity, knocking her out. (Yo: you'd think that the horn would make that a lousy idea, but hey) Now, since AJ is awake but Rarity is down, the other version of the worst ending triggers for another 25% bonus. (Yo: The bonus is nice but mainly we went for that because the worst ending is shorter)

(TH: All in all, a single night of beating the tar out of each other and worse, we end it four times to stack the bonuses. Now, 100% bonus gives a large flat boost and recoups 80% of the abuse they've heaped on each other over the evening. But by combining that with a 50% and two 25% bonuses, we recoup 160% of the abuse: the worse they were to each other, the better pals they end up. Rarity and Applejack are now the closest friends in the game, by a colossal margin. AND, despite this being a huge friendship win, Twilight Sparkle doesn't even write a friendship report on it because it was a 'worst ending'. Yet more time savings!)

Elapsed time: 2:52.38
Total time : 7:07.16

Level 9: Bridle Gossip

Twilight Sparkle tosses Spike at Pinkie Pie to keep her from interrupting as she telesprints to and makes friends with Zecora. Then she writes a friendship report about it. (Yo: Skipping this would have been catastrophic for Show Stoppers if we hadn't already had Applebloom running around in the Everfree on autopilot, gaining experience.)

Elapsed time: 2.08
Total time : 7:09.24

Level 10: Swarm of the Century

Fluttershy finds a parasprite and zooms off with it to the town square. Pinkie spots it and grabs her pre-fetched instruments. (Yo: Simply crushing the blasted thing would have been two seconds faster to actually solve the problem, but that would have triggered a need for Pinkie to explain, which would have soaked up three seconds)

While she's leading them off into the forest, Twilight Sparkle telesprints to the general store and buys 99 jars of zap apple jam (TH: yes, you read that right. We bought 99 of a broken item. We actually only needed 7, but it was faster to ask for 99). She then telesprints off to catch up, and writes a friendship report about trusting your friends, even though she never got a demonstration that these things are dangerous.

Elapsed time: 7.03
Total time : 7:16.27

Level 11: Winter Wrap-Up

Twilight Sparkle telesprints to Winter Wrap-Up early enough to ask the Mayor some questions, thereby learning enough to organize the event, which she does.
(TH: Normally you can't ask that many questions at once, but since we get there before the speech starts, the event causing you to be sent off to try some work can't fire yet)

Elapsed time: 30.44
Total time : 7:46.71

Level 12: Call of the Cutie

When Diamond Tiara tries to get Applebloom to pass a note, Applebloom pokes her. When Diamond Tiara pokes her back, Applebloom bucks her in the face (Yo: We never said that this was a maximal friendship run!). Fade to black, and she's in detention. She writes 'I will not viciously attack my classmates.', taking exactly 23.17 seconds. Fade to black while she writes this at the same speed an additional 99 times (TH: who would have thought that serving forty and a half minutes of detention (off the game timer) would be speed-optimal?).

Diamond Tiara comes back to taunt Applebloom just as Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle enter for their class session. Applebloom steers the conversation to cutie marks, and Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle deliver their inspirational speech and they form the CMC. The level ends with no letter to the princess, since Twilight Sparkle never found out there was a problem.

(Yo: It's a shame, but we couldn't figure out any way to exploit the glitch where Sweetie Belle is briefly a member of Applebloom's class right in the beginning. Seems like a promising avenue for improvement.)

Elapsed time: 50.43
Total time : 8:37.14

Level 13: Fall Weather Friends

Applejack and Rainbow Dash get into an argument over who's more athletic. Rainbow Dash challenges Applejack to arm wrestling and loses badly; Applejack challenges Rainbow Dash to a no-wings running race, and Rainbow Dash utterly demolishes her. Twilight Sparkle catches up with Applejack and dictates a friendship report, while the race is still on, that maybe it's not the best idea to try to outshine your friends in their areas of expertise: either way it goes, everyone loses. Spike takes this down while also being race announcer, and when he sends the letter it sets the microphone on fire.

(TH: The walkthrough went for the trick ending where they tie. The friendship bonuses for that are too slight for us to consider anything other than a crushing victory)

Elapsed time: 1:26.26
Total time : 10:03.40

Level 14: Suited for Success

Twilight Sparkle enters Carousel Boutique, teleports outside before Rarity can notice her, and mends her plain yellow dress herself, in the street. Then she writes a letter about self-sufficiency.

Elapsed time: 11.87
Total time : 10:15.27

Level 15: Feeling Pinkie Keen

Upon hearing about the Pinkie Sense, Twilight Sparkle chooses a prior probability of 1 in 10 billion that the Pinkie Sense works as described. Then she grabs the experimental equipment Pinkie had been gathering, and sets up a double-blind experiment of Pinkie's falling-object, dirt, bees, and scariness-detection abilities, and concludes that the Pinkie Sense is real with >99% probability in a mere 9 positive trials (2 seconds each) and 5 negative trials (0.5 second each).

(TH: here's the rationale for the experimental protocol: The probability of guessing the proper combination of fall, dirty, bees, and scary (15 possibilities) is clearly 1/15, and the probability of guessing when it occurs is 9/14 for each, for a total prediction power of 1 in 23.33 for each cycle. 9 correct in a row produces an odds ratio of 2 trillion, sufficient to turn 1 in 10 billion prior probability into >99% posterior probability. Any not-perfect result produces a negative result on the experiment. This last part is terribly unfair to Pinkie, of course, but since she can pull it off we don't need to worry about it. Note that the noise generators are only perfect in-game. Obviously the game has to use a PRNG for Tool-Assisted Speedrunning to make sense. Also, only high quality noise generators work - otherwise the Pinkie Sense can see the next one coming and you need to space the trials by 15 seconds instead of 0.5 seconds)

Twilight Sparkle then dictates a friendship report about how maybe you shouldn't assign a 1 in 10 billion prior to your friends' confident assertions, and Spike hurls it up in the air hard enough that Princess Celestia catches it before she even lands.

(Yo: The look on her face if you miss and the report goes flying out of town... she knows, man. She KNOWS. I'll be seeing those eyes for weeks)

Elapsed time: 43.88
Total time : 10:59.15

Level 16: Sonic Rainboom

Rainbow Dash lets herself be satisfied with Fluttershy's anemic cheering, then practices. When she fails to break the sound barrier and her pseudo-Mach cone catapults her into the library, she looks on the bright side and names it the Sonic Catapult. She sets about practicing that to clean it up a little and chain a few of them in a row.

Twilight Sparkle gives Rarity wings and the others cloud-walking (Yo: yes, this is very much worth the delay. Especially with the way Fall Weather Friends worked out, saving Rarity and the Wonderbolts is Rainbow Dash's main source of friendship bonus before Discord shows up. We're not getting her even halfway through the maze without it, and that's saying something considering how fast she can get through the maze)

Rainbow Dash offers to give them the grand tour afterwards, saying she needs to practice now. Therefore, she doesn't see how much attention Rarity is getting. She preregisters Rarity anyway, so that Rarity's number is right before her own. (TH: Since they're not last and the event isn't running over time, it's not clear why they should go out at the same time, but they do)

In the competition, Rainbow Dash, not so crippled by underconfidence as in the aired walkthrough, is able to perform the first few tricks adequately. (Yo: Literally. Even with perfect play, we couldn't get above an 'adequate' rating from the judges. The best I can do on manual is 'Bad', even without her stage fright tripping me up) (TH: In short, you're not winning without the Sonic Rainboom. Incidentally, the best I can do on manual, even without the jitters, is 'Pathetic'. It seems like the game was out to put the player into RD's mental state, which seems a little mean)(Yo: I just looked it up - Featherhoof can achieve 'adequate' even with the shakes. Celestia help us.)

Then Rarity burns her wings and begins falling. Rainbow Dash, about to start her Sonic Catapult ladder, gets the danger bonus and immediately breaks the sound barrier. Instead of rescuing Rarity right away, she loops around waiting for the Wonderbolts to try to rescue Rarity. Rarity puts the wonderbolts to sleep (TH: by incapacitating them, she removes the effect that keeps them from granting XP), then knocks them out, revives Spitfire and knocks her out again. Then Rainbow Dash grabs all four and delivers them to safety.

Rarity apologizes for trying to steal her glory, and Rainbow Dash replies she'd never deny someone the chance to compete.

Twilight writes and sends a friendship report about being a gracious winner, before Celestia can show up to take it in person (Yo: which would take an extra 0.4 seconds) (TH: shouldn't 'in person' be 'in pony', anyway?)

Elapsed Time: 1:13.45
Total time : 12:12.60

Level 17: Stare Master

Sweetie Belle ditches her sister to go hang out with Scootaloo and Applebloom.

As soon as she arrives, Scootaloo in turn ditches her friends and scoots off into the Everfree Forest. The two remaining friends also dash into some woods, but not the same woods - they instead bust into Applejack's old treehouse and begin fixing it up.

Anyway, in short order Scootaloo comes across the cockatrice. It petrifies her. With her momentum, though, she crashes into it, pinning it under her. In order to free itself, it reverts all of its victims from stone, so Scootaloo and Twilight Sparkle are freed.

Scene transition and we're in the library. Twilight dictates a friendship report that going and visiting your friends isn't worth getting killed over.

Elapsed time: 18:97
Total time : 12:31.57

Level 18: The Show Stoppers

(Yo: This level is a beast. Of course, anyone who's ever played the game knows that, and anyone who's speedrun it knows it better. It's beyond ridiculous. The walkthrough had to leave a lot out to fit within 22 minutes)

Applebloom and Sweetie Belle impatiently rush ahead of AJ as she leads them through the woods to the clubhouse; Scootaloo does a U-turn and scoots back into Ponyville. While AB and SB are finishing fixing up the clubhouse, Scootaloo reaches the library and dumps the entire collection on the floor.

Twilight Sparkle comes in with Cheerilee and scolds her for making a mess; Cheerilee shows the talent show advertisement scroll (Yo: which unlike all the other text in the game is in wingdings, and reads from right to left instead of left to right. How many written languages do they have?) (TH: I think it's like hiragana vs kanji) (Yo: Or maybe they're the Equestrian equivalent of Jews, and this is Pony Hebrew. The schoolhouse is small because it only serves the Pony Jew population. Now that I mention it? Try to tell me Cheerilee and Rarity aren't Jewish) (TH: Those two? What set of stereotypes are you working off of anyway?)

Immediately, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle change from finishing fixing up the clubhouse to working on a talent show presentation - Applebloom working on the dance moves, and Sweetie Belle on the props and costumes (TH: it's possible to get them each lined up to their appropriate role, but this is counterproductive for speed as it takes much longer to get started and leads to longer training sequences). Scootaloo starts humming a tune and banging on the piano... and... (TH: a little RNG manipulation later)... they do a lousy job, but have their aspects prepared enough to go ahead with the show! (Yo: the trick here is not to make them do better, but to make their taste so indiscriminating that they think they're doing fine and don't need to ask for help. Except for Applebloom - we had to level her up in the Everfree forest to get her agility ranks up high enough that she's actually quarter-way decent at dancing)

Then there's the normally tedious paperwork part that got cut from the walkthrough. Fortunately, Applebloom does her dance moves while meandering in the direction of the schoolhouse, and she's doing a pen dance, that just happens to involve waving the pen around in the exact pattern required to fill out the submission paperwork. (Yo: Martial arts bureaucracy dance. I'm surprised Ranma Saotome didn't join the competition)

Now that they have a submission ready, they get to the rehearsals. Sweetie Belle steps out briefly, finds a (TH: RNG-manipulated up) just-starting Pinkie Party and gets herself blasted with a party cannon (TH: so she'd be deaf enough that Scootaloo's singing wouldn't bother her). Applebloom's choreography has Scootaloo facing away from her so she can't make any helpful suggestions.

The talent show has a lot of non-skippable dialog and cut scenes. The crusaders start their song, but the set collapses in six seconds. They manage to lose the talent show.

Twilight Sparkle writes a friendship report about how friends can console each other when things don't really work out at all even a little bit. While Spike is sending that, Twilight Sparkle teleports over to Carousel Boutique and casts a low-powered, extra long-duration, Want-It-Need-It spell with Rarity's entire lineup as the subject, and targeting only a nondescript background pony walking outside the window. (TH: This pony has ID 43. That'll come up in a few levels)

Elapsed time: 4:18.44
Total time : 16:50.01

Level 19: A Dog and Pony Show

After getting her commission from Sapphire Shores, Rarity goes gem-hunting with Spike, quickly locating hundreds of gems. When the diamond dogs attack, she immediately offers to hire them as diggers to give Spike a break. They decline, and try to capture her. She demolishes them. Spike helps too, a little. She reiterates her offer of employment, and after a little dithering, they accept. (TH: Fade to black for the bulk of the work, thankfully.)

Rarity splits the haul with them as agreed, and for no apparent reason the other Mane 5 show up and Twilight Sparkle delivers a friendship report on second chances.

Elapsed Time: 37.01
Total time : 17:27.02

Level 20: Green Isn't Your Color

Fluttershy jumps out the spa door and asks Rarity what's up. Rarity tells her about Photo Finish wanting to come and do a fashion shoot. (Yo: If we let this happen in the spa, we can't skip through the dialog nearly as fast) Since Rarity and Applejack are best buddies, Rarity goes to ask Applejack if she'd be the model.

Just as Photo Finish enters Rarity's Boutique, she falls in love with everything in the boutique (TH: she has ID 43. Basically, the game took that pony that Twilight Sparkle Want-It-Need-It-ed, and polymorphed him into Photo Finish for the duration of this level. Without resetting his status). Photo Finish decides that Applejack is her star, but Rarity doesn't mind since Photo Finish seems determined to dress the poor famer up in every outfit Rarity has ever made.

The modeling career is cut very short when Applejack boils over and tells Rarity what she really thinks of this idea. (Yo: And with that, we've burned off half of their friendship lead over the rest of the cast)

Twilight Sparkle ends up writing a friendship report about how Spike has a crush on Rarity, since there's no way she's telling Princess Celestia about what actually happened.

Elapsed Time: 48.28
Total time : 18:15.30

Level 21: Over a Barrel

(TH: This level was what got a lot of FiM speedrunners interested in the first place. People loved playing the well-executed base defense segment of this level over and over - but to get to it, one needed to get through the rest of the level. Good players eventually got completing this level, up to that segment, down to a mere 35 seconds, by hand. So it's almost a shame that we couldn't use most of that hard work. I just wanted to tip my hat and thank them for going before.)

We pan over a pony-assisted train and look into the last car - Rarity enters, rolls her eyes and curls up in the corner to finally get some sleep. (Yo: Ok, we got to use that part)

Twilight Sparkle buys an apple pie from the café car, telesprints to the buffalo camp, and chucks it into the chief's face. He has an epiphany on the topic of apples. Scene change to Appleoosa, and Twilight Sparkle writes a report about spreading the joy of apples worldwide.

Elapsed time: 18.21
Total time : 18:33.51

Level 22: A Bird in the Hoof

(TH: Fluttershy is adequately friendshipped up, so we take the obvious shortcut)

Fluttershy leaves the recently healed mouse to wheel himself back to his hole and flies into town to get to the princess's party. She takes a rather circuitous route that avoids all of the event triggers - in through the window, then behind the buffet halfway, crossing over to behind the other buffet, and right up behind Applejack. This puts her close enough to Philomena that she sees its poor condition. She slips under the table and crawls over to Twilight Sparkle's spot at the end.

Having avoided the various events that amplify her apprehension, she is able to gather her courage and, from under the table, ask Twilight Sparkle to bring Philomena's condition to the Princess's attention. Twilight delivers that and a friendship report about networking.

Elapsed Time: 15.70
Total time : 18:49.21

Level 23: The Cutie Mark Chronicles

The CMC split up. Applebloom asks Twilight Sparkle and Rarity to tell their stories; Scootaloo asks Applejack and Fluttershy; Sweetie Belle asks Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. All six tell their tales pretty much at the same time.

(Yo: The camera keeps bouncing around between the stories in a blinding fashion, but that's all right because hardly anything interesting is going on that you didn't get from playing this normally. Applejack's and Fluttershy's segments in particular are just acknowledge-acknowledge-acknowledge; Pinkie Pie is hardly better, just do backbreaking rock farming for ten long seconds. Yes, that seems fast, but we used RNG manipulation to get the best rocks right near her starting point )

Twilight Sparkle's segment starts out acknowledge-acknowledge at the summer sun celebration, but for the test, she busts out some extreme timing skills and aces it. Then the rainbow goes off and she gets her cutie mark.

Young Rarity goes sliding towards the rock like she was Mega Man. When she arrives, she digs at the patch of ground behind it, which makes it possible for her to tip it over. It smashes into tiny bits on the rocks below, revealing the gems just as the rainbow hits.

And of course there's Rainbow Dash. Ironically, that proceeds at a relatively normal pace since players are normally optimizing for speed, and the designers were focused on that.

Since they're nowhere near each other, Twilight Sparkle's report about how the six of them were connected from long ago indicates that either she knew this already or she's got them all bugged.

Elapsed Time: 45.45
Total time : 19:44.66

Level 24: Owl's Well that Ends Well

Twilight Sparkle teleports to Owlowicious' location, claims him, and teleports back. Spike eats him in one gulp. (Yo: Don't worry, he gets better)

The game glitches for four seconds, then dumps us into the next level.

Elapsed time: 6.59
Total time : 19:51.25

Level 25: Party of One

Pinkie Pie throws a birthday party for Gummy. It was such a big hit that her 5 friends agree they should do it more often and propose a biweekly party. This preempts Pinkie's attempt to start one the next day. She's mildly disappointed that it's as infrequent as biweekly, but as soon as she complains, they point out that two weeks is just barely long enough to prepare for an epic party. Epic parties every two weeks year round!

Elapsed time: 30.00
Total time : 20:11.25

Level 26: The Best Night Ever

Twilight Sparkle comes to the Grand Galloping Gala alone, in her lame yellow dress, earning dismissive looks that become braced by gritted teeth as she joins the princess. She chats up Princess Celestia for a few seconds, then the receiving line starts. She whips out 99 jars of Zap Apple Jam and demonstrates her Gourmand mastery by eating all of them in one gulp. Then she spits out the 99 empty jars, with lids still on. The receiving line turns out to have only two more ponies. (TH: These two were spawned before this stunt)

(TH: You know how Zap Apple Jam says it restores MP, but doesn't? Well... it's not completely broken. Or maybe we should say, it's even more broken than you'd think. Instead of increasing MP, it increases M_P, which stands for "Members of Parliament". Since your receiving-line score is based on the quantity and prestige of those greeted - modified by uncouthness penalties - and Members of Parliament are the second highest rank, then after simultaneously eating 99 Zap Apple Jams your M_P counter is over 2400 more than there were even supposed to even be ponies in the receiving line, so you get a score above what is theoretically possible through conventional play) (Yo: I can't figure out why they even gave the M_P counter more than a byte of storage space) (TH: Equestria has more than 255 Members of Parliament, I guess?) (Yo: At least M_P didn't stand for Military Police) (TH: Even if it had, we'd still have gotten the receiving line over with)

Celestia completely ignores the remaining two ponies in the receiving line, perhaps because they tripped over the empty jam jars and are slowly rolling down the stairs. She instead congratulates Twilight Sparkle on her remarkably good manners and the speed with which she dealt with the line. Then she licks some of the jam off of Twilight's face (TH: Did they just canonize Molestia?) (Yo: No, that stuff is just that good). Fade to black as they spend the next N hours chatting. (Yo: Thankfully for the game time counter, they do it off-screen.)

Elapsed time: 45.63
Total time : 20 minutes, 56.88 seconds

In conclusion: Whew. Throw in the intro after the first two episodes and the first disc could just about be an episode of the show.

As promised, a note about New Game+ and DLC:

Obviously with a New Game+, the run is degenerate: the fastest solution for The Mare in the Moon is for alicorn Rainbow Dash to fetch all 6 elements, Cherenkov Burst to the Moon, landing on Nightmare Moon with a bodyslam for max damage and stun, followed by a Winged Scorpion Pounce for septuple max damage and KO. Elapsed time: 18.12 seconds, 7 of which are skipping through Twilight Sparkle's cutscene in the beginning.

Similarly, the main game is ruined if you do the DLC quest chains before The Mare In The Moon. Doing the DLC first lets you switch to any of the completed characters during the regular campaign, which is outright broken. Even just playing by hand, Snips/Magic, Peppermint Twist/Generosity, Silver Spoon/Loyalty, Soarin/Honesty, Snowflake/Kindness, Granny Smith/Laughter is 12 seconds faster through the first two levels than the usual crew under TAS conditions). You might be able to tell why we didn't elect to make our official run take this route.

Suggestions and Comments are welcome.

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nightly terror

nightly terror #1 · Jan 19th, 2023 · · ·

will we be receiving an analysis of the other disks? you mention the maze, clearly a disc two item, but without any analysis of that, it can only be seen as a time-waste.

(OOC:this is great, please make more, i will pay if i have to.)

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