Speedrunning review 2020-08-21

me:

> • I think I'm still learning problem-solving techniques as a result of my speedrunning work.

> • In my last speedrunning session I made an action plan item that encompassed 30 sessions worth of work. Before this session I didn't know enough to be able to make a plan regarding the next 30 sessions. So I think I'm getting better at speedrunning. And this means getting better at any multi-session project.

Elliot:

> Cool. Though planning 30 sessions ahead sounds unnecessary. Is there a benefit to it? Is it a flexible plan that’s easy to change later (so little downside)?

Maybe I should have explained more of my thinking regarding the 30 session plan. I'll do that now.

I noticed that it took me 30 sessions of Cap kingdom (first kingdom) to go from ~200% of WR time to ~119% of WR time. So I thought that each kingdom after that would need at least that much because those kingdoms are more difficult (assuming all other things are constant, like my skill). This is a vague impression I got a long time ago when I first started speedrunning. And to account for the extra difficulty of the next kingdom, I decided to reduce the goal from 119% to 125%.

So I set the minimum bar for 30 sessions per kingdom to go from 200% of WR time to 125% (or whatever number I think I can achieve within 30 sessions for that kingdom). 

Now I think the 30 number is wrong. I think I should be matching the 30 with the number of minutes of the speed run, rather than with a kingdom. So like instead of thinking in terms of 30 sessions per kingdom, I should think in terms of 30 sessions per 2-minute section of the speedrun.

Regarding flexibility: Yes it's flexible, like everything else. Plans can be changed, edited on the fly, or given up on. All things that should be documented and analyzed. But there's also a sense in which it's not flexible. Pass/fail criteria should not be flexible in a way where the user could cheat by treating a fail as a pass. One could change the pass/fail criteria, but that should be documented rather than done on the fly without documentation. Regarding the 30 sessions, the idea is like this: do a minimum of 30 sessions of every 2-minute section of the game in order to go from 200% of WR run to 125% of WR run. If I reach 125% before 30 sessions, keep going to 30 sessions to see what % I get. If I reach 30 sessions but I'm still above 125%, move on to next kingdom. So this is just a framework to help me decide what to do with my speedrunning sessions, specifically with regard to how to decide to switch to the next kingdom.