Hunting for Bolds [6]

[Ihavenoname248]

After a long break, I started working on CC1 bold-scoring again.

Corridor: Ended up taking a few tries from minor input mistakes, even though I remembered the route completely after watching it once.

Reverse Alley: I expected to have a lot of difficulty remembering where the waits were and which column to run down, so I noted a number from 1-4 for how close to the outer edge of the spiral I needed to run, and a paired number for how long of a wait was required. I lost my place in the list a few times, but 5-10 minutes after starting, I had scored the 961.

Morton: Another level I expected to have serious difficulties scoring, but ended up getting quite quickly. I messed up the teeth section the first time I got there, and immediately after getting it I ran into a wall. Still, I pressed on and scored bold.

Playtime: My first couple tries all came up as a 358.0, and I couldn't figure out why until I looked at the AVI again. I was riding the force floor path too far, and also moving the 2nd block up instead of down first. After correcting these mistakes, I got 359 in 1 try.

Steam: There hasn't been one this easy in ages.

Four Plex: This was an interesting one. First, let me drop my notes for it here:

*Right, red key, blue key, RLR, yellow key, LRL, out of first part.

*No wait on first chip, 1 wait on second, use multi-push. No ball waits, 2 bug waits.

*Toggles closed, clone, trap, clone, trap, LLUURU, lowest chip, clone, trap, clone, trap, LLUURUR, top chip, 2nd lowest, climb up.

*Recessed walls, wedges, left for fire (no wait), swap, no wait for bug, exit!

Compared to the AVI on the wiki, I gained 2 moves in the ice section which had to be dropped before cloning the first ball or it WOULD result in death later on. The block pushing section gave me no trouble to get down beyond that, other than sometimes gaining a further [1] on the bug (which again, would be equalized at the large wait). The cloning room was very easy to remember, being the same logical path twice in a row. I did die the first time I got there in an attempt, though, from taking the wrong path to the 2nd lowest chip! The itemswapping area was as easy as I expected, and I walked away with the 416 fairly easily-though I would have liked to have had the gained moves /not/ be equalized somewhere

Invincible Champion: First try, no references. Alright, second try, because my first try forgot to wait before grabbing a chip XD

Force Square: I practiced a bit on an edited section of the center with walls blocking the incorrect passages to get the moves into muscle memory, then spent 6 minutes playing the level. In that time, I got the boosting perfect at least a half dozen times...but messed up the teleports. I did score a 480, though it was with a move lost in the opening. I kept going and improved the tenth because it was fun- and only took me one additional try.

At this point, after scoring Time Suspension 849, I saw James' upload of Mixed Nuts on the side. I thought one of the rooms looked poorly optimized, rerouted it and found 2 extra moves. The first of these was equalized by the pink balls, so I reordered that room too to still have 0 waits. I scored 830 on my 2nd attempt, accidentally running into a bomb on the first try. It would be a really fun level if that block staircase didn't exist... A couple weeks later, I discovered another 2 moves that I have not made public since it only raises the route to a .8, and though I don't believe any other moves are possible, I may go back someday and find something, and I'd rather not be sniped. If you find anything else, let me know and if it's /not/ what I found, we can joint on this . Still, +4 moves on public in CC1 MS...

Also before continuing with scoring bolds, I finished up solving CCLP3 in what seems to be a record pace: 28 hours, 30 minutes, give or take a bit. No external help or solutions were referenced during the playthrough, and the entirety was streamed and later archived


. I'll probably write up a similar post for CCLP3 as I did for CCLP1, since I had a lot of fun with this. For now, I'll just say that the puzzles were as difficult as I expected but took nowhere near as long as I was led to believe...especially Avalanche

Then there was the CC1 race on the first day of 2015, and that was a blast. I'm surprised I not only kept pace with J.B., but was way ahead until losing 10 minutes to a mistake on Writer's Block...and even after that I kept pace and finished 10 minutes behind (final time 6:21:47 to his 6:11:58). I don't believe I picked up any new bolds during the race, but did finally solve the entire original set in the MS ruleset for the first time in my life. I found the route to Four Square during, though, and scored 335 within a few minutes the following day with minimal difficulty, along with scoring 968 on Pentagram in the time following the race.

Drawn and Quartered: Forgot to release, forgot to wait, scored the bold.

Vanishing Act: Once I realized I had to take the bottom fork on returning to the center, I scored 733 first try.

Writers Block: Skipped for now...maybe someday I'll try copying the public TWS.

Socialist Action: Watched the AVI, copied it after a few attempts.

Up the Block: Second attempt, because the first pushed the block too soon and died by a glider.

Wars: It took me a while to remember to push the block left...whoops!

Telenet: I knew this one would be interesting to face, and indeed it was. My initial set of notes had the direction to teleport and the direction to move after teleporting, but this was missing the next direction to go as well. My final notes looked like this:

R(UR) L(UU) L(UU) D(RR)

U(LU) D(RR) L(UL) U(LU)

R(UR) L(UL) R(UU) R(UR)

L(DD) UD(LL) RLRLRLRLRLRLRLR (15, U)

This immediately got me into the RLRLRLRLRLRLRLR run, which I failed the first time but survived to score 235. Undeterred by how close this was, I pressed on and repeatedly moved too quickly in the teleport rooms. On the 3rd time reaching the alternating run, I counted out 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 on right key presses, and boosted perfectly, scoring the 236.2.

Suicide: Cloned too many gliders once!

Cityblock: Also skipped for now, and probably forever unless I feel like looking for the pieguy insane block pushing route...yeah right

Spirals: I kept turning the wrong direction upon reaching the top half of the level...once I added a couple chip checkpoints to the directions I scored 317 easily.

In the CC1 race, Block Buster gave me a rough time, mostly at the 3rd section. I knew it would be much more difficult to score 402, but I wanted revenge. I was going to pull this off...but not for a while. I needed easier boosting levels on my new laptop to get used to the different feel of the keyboard, and so I skipped Block Buster as well for now, and also put H2O Below 273K 273+ on hold.

Playhouse: Took one attempt after watching the route. I was a little worried about remembering how to deal with the GOOD JOB part, but after JaBoL stuff like that feels a lot easier.

Jumping Swarm: I spent a couple tries getting the route down, and kept having to wait 2 moves for walkers. Finally, I didn't have to wait at all...and ended up having 4 walkers converge on the exit at the same time, dying right next to the socket >.<. 10 minutes later, all the random factors finally went right and I scored 367. "However, with a route as quick as this, Chip rarely gets hit." -Andrew Bennett, ChipWiki annotation. THIS IS A BLATANT LIE...when going for bold. With all waits allowed, it'd be the most likely route to succeed, but in the context the claim is made...

Vortex: After a half dozen attempts where I ran into blue walls left and right, I opened the level in an editor on the side and played off that. The walker blocked my path 3 times in a row, then I forgot how to deal with the teleport and scored 443. The walker blocked me once more, and I scored 444 on the next attempt.

Roadsign: When I said 'easier boosting level' this isn't what I had in mind! To make matters worse, my new laptop has a slightly different input to screen refresh rate than my old laptop, and as I found out with Guitar Hero 3, a difference of as little as 15 milliseconds can make precise timing much more difficult for me. Despite everything stacked against me, I went for the 650 directly...and scored 634 on the first attempt after watching the AVI. Well, that didn't go as planned. I watched the portions I forgot again, and spent a few minutes practicing the sequence 40 seconds in. Before long, I gave it another try...and scored 638. A few tries later, I had 641 with the main mistake having been forgetting to move the 2nd/3rd block over while navigating the 3rd/1st block through the 'maze'. At this point I wrote everything after "Roadsign:" because interesting stuff happened, and maybe writing down to move that block would help me remember.

It did. I remembered to move the block over, but forgot the fastest way to move after pushing the next block in. Combined with forgetting the force floor to ice combo near the end, I ended up with a 646. However, my first half was perfect, so I knew it was just a matter of time. That time was taking way too long, in no small part due to the additional latency I was experiencing. A half hour later, and the best run I had would have only been 648 if I hadn't overcompensated and failed the boost in the northwest.

And then this happened. I had overstepped once after the ice tile in the southwest, but as an annotation on the ChipWiki AVI said, that was acceptable. The choppiness of the recording made the wait hard to see, and since I knew I was matching the AVI (a .0, IIRC) I pressed on. Being that close, even once, made it clear that 650 was an inevitability.

Next good attempt: low 647, overboosted at the end by 1 space costing 2 moves, but the real killer was forgetting to move the block off (5, 25). Then finally, I broke through (while recording with input display, because why not)...though partway through I realized "wait, what am I doing?" because I collected the chip behind the bombs before I was supposed to! Rather than restart, I kept going, remembering that 2 moves had to be lost at some point, and that mistake cost me 2. Video


.

Current MS official overall scores and bolds:

http://imgur.com/lUXHm2m

Current Lynx official overall scores and bolds:

http://imgur.com/X0oqCpU

As far as CC1 goes, there's very few routes left that could be considered 'easy'. We'll see how frequent further progress is.