Principles of HMSR Script

Principles of HMSR Script

Channel name: Heinz Harvest Stories (Kappa)

TO-DO
- Consider the structure--probably want something like "Common Mechanics", "Routing Principles", and "Miscellaneous Optimizations"

INTRODUCTION
Speedrunning, though still very much a niche hobby, has lately become more and more of a household concept among gaming communities, partly due to the visibility of large charity marathons, but especially the explosion of speedrunning-related content in recent years. In simplest terms, speedrunning is the act of "beating a game as fast as possible", and it is often said that almost any game could be speedran. However, there are still a few games and genres which are more heavily associated with the craft, such as platformers and other action-oriented games. In these titles, it might be a bit clearer for players and viewers to understand the strategies involved in going faster--precise inputs, optimized pathing, advanced movement techniques, as well as flashier things like sequence-breaking glitches.

But in this era of increased interest, speedrunning communities of all shapes and sizes have experienced a lot of growth, including a series of speedgames that many would not associate with speedrunning--Harvest Moon. For the past several years, a passionate group of farm sim fans have been hard at work fleshing out our technical knowledge of these beloved games and competing in a wide variety of speedrun categories that spans the series' now-25 year history. Through their creative cooperation, they have transformed Harvest Moon from a series most would never associate with speedrunning, into one with many active runners and biannual community marathons.

But how does one "farm fast"? This video aims to answer that question. These are the Principles of Harvest Moon Speedrunning.

This video assumes that you are familiar with the basic gameplay elements of the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons series, and also does not attempt to answer the common question "Why speedrun Harvest Moon?" That deserves its own video. Here we will be looking at common routing challenges arising from the basic mechanics of the games and how to find fast solutions. If you're interested in learning more and getting involved yourself, please join our Discord server, linked in the description below.

COMMON MECHANICS
In this first section, we'll take a look at mechanics that most casual players will be familiar with, but we will examine them in more depth so as to better inform our routing endeavors.

ROUTING PRINCIPLES
In this section, we will take a look at principled ways to approach common routing challenges in light of the mechanics we just discussed.

The first principle is Routing Repetitions. At its core, Harvest Moon features repetitive gameplay. This means that determining which of two strategies is fastest often boils down to the sum of all the repetitions in each respective strategy. For example, to complete Save the Homeland's "Cake Contest" ending, one of the five girls must reach 120 affection. Katie is readily available 6 days a week. Gina is readily available only on Wednesday and Saturday, but she is much closer to the farm than Katie, so each repetition of gifting is much faster. Since they both gain affection at the same rate, the only drawback for Gina is a bit of timeloss from extra sleeping.

The second principle is Using Downtime. There are many moments in Harvest Moon when the player must wait for some specific time of day, whether for a certain shop to open, or a villager to appear, or a festival to start. In these cases, as long as the player arrives at the right place at the right time, then that preceding waiting period is free time for other tasks. For example, in Save the Homeland's "Horse Race" ending, the player must befriend Bob, but on every day except Thursday, he isn't available until 8am when his shop opens. Thus, the time it would normally cost to forage gifts for him actually costs no time at all, since it can be done during the downtime from 6-8am. In such a simple category, the use of that downtime is very simple and obvious, but in more intricate full-game categories, the runner should do their best to find little bits of downtime throughout the run and seek to maximize its use in creative ways. Another example would be games like Harvest Moon 64, or Harvest Moon DS, where small bits of downtime can be spent spamming a certain tool in order to level it up.

The third principle is Real Time vs. Calendar Days. This is somewhat related to the principle of "Routing Repetitions", but we thought it deserved its own section. In casual play, it is common for the player to seek to maximize their use of every single calendar day in exploring the various bits and bobs of content that the Harvest Moon game has to offer. However, in speedrunning, the player assesses a streamlined set of objectives they are to achieve, and this often involves