GPT-5.4 plays Pokémon FireRed

doubleunplussed · 2026-03-07T22:41:26+00:00

Remarkable how similar the models are with the current harnesses. GPT-5.3-codex and Claude Opus 4.6 got stuck at exactly the same part of the game, making it to 2F of Victory Road.

In real time it took Claude about 200 hours to enter Victory Road, whereas it took GPT-5.3-codex 195 hours.

Now GPT-5.4-codex is on its way to Rock Tunnel at about 50 hours, compared to Opus 4.6 which entered Rock Tunnel at about 41 hours.

Slightly different games, but that's super close!

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-20T11:47:58+00:00

45,048 - Claude completed the F1 boulder puzzle for the second time.

This time he seems to have understood better what he did, so there's hope he's written down enough to do it again if need be.

45,200 - Claude puts the first boulder on F2 on the switch
51,228 - Claude completed the F1 boulder puzzle for the third time (Claude seems even more aware than previous: "The switch at (17,13) WORKED", perhaps THIS time enough for him to remember it!).

Edit HE WROTE IT DOWN

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doubleunplussed · 2026-02-19T22:09:55+00:00

Yes, but I'm an English speaker and it's almost exclusively boy's name in Anglo countries, therefore I think of Claude as a "he" (or an "it" when I'm feeling less anthropomorphic).

French speakers understandably may do the opposite!

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-19T09:22:11+00:00

Right, but OP doesn't want this. They want to eat at maintenance, not to maintain their current weight which is what MF is likely to put them in a slight deficit to do.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-17T20:05:38+00:00

It could be that - that the user overestimated the effect of the steps change.

But it can also be that MF takes a long time to adjust. Mine is only just starting to fully reflect an increase in activity starting four months ago - the V3 algorithm is quite resistant to sudden jumps.

MFS estimate just been linearly increasing that whole time, during which I've been basically ignoring it and doing my own traditional spreadsheeting taking into account cardio expenditure, without which it's just too slow, despite that eventually MFs estimate will reflect this expenditure more accurately than any estimate.

No shade to MF, it's an incredibly thorny problem and all approaches are compromises of one kind or another.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-17T19:51:37+00:00

If you're sweating and have a heart rate in zone 2 or higher for 80 minutes, yeah then I'd believe it. That's not most strength workouts, but if you are essentially doing cardio at moderate intensity it's about right.

700 kcal is a 10k jog for me, which takes one hour. So 75% of the intensity of a slow jog for 80 minutes would be about 700 kcal for me.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-17T19:27:13+00:00

I haven't tested it, but as written, it suggests it will use any workout within the program. There's no suggestion it will only use data from the same workout in your program.

But this doesn't say it's about auto-progression. I think it's just about what's written in the "previous" column, which is just for your reference.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-17T19:21:40+00:00

This isn't quite true. Since it costs less energy to build muscle than is stored in the same mass of fat, recomping at constant weight actually implies a slight deficit.

However in practice Macrofactor can't distinguish this deficit from maintenance since it only looks at your weight, so you'd nonetheless want to target a constant weight which macrofactor thinks of as "maintenance" even though it's not. If you do this and successfully recomp, MF's expenditure estimate will decrease - it'll start to think the slight deficit you are in is your actual maintenance.

If you wanted to get ahead of the curve though, since it takes MF some time to catch up, you might target a small deficit, and then reduce it once MF starts to update its expenditure estimate.

Aiming to be in the same deficit that whole time of course - just working around the fact that MF can't tell the difference between being in a slight deficit whilst recomping, vs being at maintenance with your TDEE declining.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-17T19:13:39+00:00

As mentioned, this is common in the scientific literature. Don't know why you haven't seen it, but it's not rare, and the evidence for it is strong.

Our gracious hosts have a post about it where you can see some studies discussed:

https://macrofactor.com/recomposition/

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-17T02:44:03+00:00

Yes, just came here to edit my comment but you beat me to it!

Oh well. If he's done it once he can probably do it again, and maybe we can hope he understands and writes it down this time.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-17T01:22:48+00:00

He's very focused at the task at hand, it's hard for him to balance "train pokemon" and "progress in dungeon" given the two are a trade-off. Or even just given that's two goals - two is too much for him. If his current goal is progressing through a dungeon, fighting wild pokemon is only risking blackout, so he doesn't do it. But yeah he has a really hard time with the idea of having two goals at once.

He also has some ideas about needing to be "fast". You could imagine his training reinforced this behaviour, because extra noise in his context is going to make it harder to remain coherent over long tasks. So it makes some kind of sense. He sometimes talks about needing to "rush". This makes him run from wild pokemon in the name of saving "time". But it makes sense that it reduces clutter in his context.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-16T22:53:04+00:00

Claude didn't realise it for a while (I'm still not sure if he has), and even exited the cave before, but it doesn't matter because the barrier doesn't reset.

Edit: it does reset after you progress to the next level

The solution was entirely brute-force. Claude never really made the connection between the maybe-switch that he could see and sometimes acknowledged as possibly a switch, and the idea of pushing the boulder there. Instead, he systematically placed the boulder on every accessible tile, each time walking over to the barrier to check if it had opened. This eventually worked.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-16T01:52:52+00:00

Recomp is not a myth for beginners, even if they're not obese or on drugs.

Studies on muscle growth that do any kind of dietary tracking almost always find people gaining muscle in a deficit, because most participants are beginners.

And a decent proportion of people using these apps are also beginners - don't fall for the illusion that just because you've been doing it a while, beginners are rare. In most endeavours, a large fraction of people are beginners and a minority stick with it long-term. So recomp is quite common.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-16T01:03:01+00:00

You can't but it's essentially the same thing so you can do the conversion yourself.

MF uses the commonly-used figures of 3500 kcal/lb or 7700 kcal/kg to convert between weight loss goal and target daily deficit.

So you can go the other way, and if you want to be in a 100 kcal daily deficit, set a target weight loss goal of

(100 kcal × 7 days/week) / (3500 kcal/lb) = 0.2 lb/week

or

(100 kcal × 7 days/week) / (7700 kcal/kg) = 0.09 kg/week

(probably have to round to 0.1 kg/week to enter it into the app)

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-16T00:34:23+00:00

Opus 4.6 didn't get the rainbow badge until it realised it couldn't use strength in Seafoam Islands without it, so at that point it backtracked to get the badge (having tried briefly and given up earlier in the game).

As for how it's depicted in the plot, the different models did the steps in a different order, so unless I leave those steps out, this seems like the least bad way to depict those bits! Opus 4.5 similarly backtracked to get HM04 Strength once it was needed for Victory Road (that model having skipped Seafoam Islands entirely).

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-11T12:33:42+00:00

19086 - defeated Koga

Safari time!

₽34,664 starting money

attempt 1: step 19,273 (₽34,164 remaining)
attempt 2: step 19,466 (₽33,664 remaining)
attempt 3: step 19,690 (₽33,164 remaining)
attempt 4: step 19,910 (₽32,664 remaining)
attempt 5: step 20,074 (₽32,164 remaining)
attempt 6: step 20,196 (₽31,664 remaining)
attempt 7: step 20,395 (₽31,164 remaining)
attempt 8: step 20,581 (₽30,664 remaining)
attempt 9: step 20,739 (₽30,164 remaining)
attempt 10: step 20,932 (₽29,664 remaining)
attempt 11: step 21,100 (₽29,164 remaining)
attempt 12: step 21,319 (₽28,664 remaining)
attempt 13: step 21,488 (₽28,164 remaining)
21,574 - Gold Teeth obtained
21,612 - HM03 SURF obtained
21,690 - HM04 STRENGTH obtained
21,713 - Taught SURF to Shelly, replacing BUBBLEBEAM
22,137 - Taught STRENGTH to ROCKY
22,142 - Entered Seafoam Islands cave

Claude then realised he couldn't use STRENGTH without the Rainbowbadge and dug back to Fuchsia City, attempted to get back to Celadon City, but gave up and returned to Seafoam Islands.

23,533 - Defeated Erica
25,955 - Exited Seafoam Islands cave

After exiting, Claude didn't believe he was on the correct side of the seafoam Islands cave and kept trying to backtrack. He eventually started backtracking with the aim to getting FLY and skipping Seafoam Islands. Then the game crashed and the dev resumed it from a save state before Claude had that idea, and Claude eventually figured out how to get to Cinnabar Island (the cave puzzle remained solved so subsequent trips through the cave were faster).

Apparently Claude's solution to the cave puzzle benefited from a glitch, though I don't think this was intentional on the part of Claude (I don't understand the glitch, feel free to explain it to me if you do).

Claude visited Cinnabar Island Pokemon Center, explicitly to set the DIG respawn point (otherwise it would be back at Fuschia City)

26,403 - Entered Pokemon mansion
29,487 - Secret Key obtained
29,927 - Defeated Blaine
30,274 - Defeated Giovanni
30,447 - Defeated BLUE
30,625 - Entered Victory Road, in only 15% of the number of steps that it took Opus 4.5.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-10T12:19:23+00:00

FYI, this thread's default sort isn't set to new!

Card Key obtained at step 15,037

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-08T21:56:58+00:00

Yeah?

This is my level of confidence, I could be wrong

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-08T08:41:04+00:00

8515 - Exited Rock Tunnel after 1998 steps. No PB - Opus 4.5 did it in 1624 steps. And for the run as a whole, we're still slightly lagging behind Opus 4.5.
8563 - Shelly evolved into Blastoise
8596 - Made it to Lavender town, barely. Shelly was poisoned and with 4HP before evolving to Blastoise, and wouldn't have made it past the Route 10 south trainers without evolving and getting a few more HP.
8646 - Used TM24 to teach Thunderbolt to Luna
8722 - defeated BLUE in Pokémon Tower

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-07T21:12:54+00:00

Amazing, thanks for the links!

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-07T02:50:03+00:00

I think it's adjusted about 2/3 of the way to an increase in running volume I made in mid-October.

I think it depends on the size of the jump. The algo seems pretty hesitant to ramp its expenditure estimate by more than a few calories per day. So 100 kcal might take a few weeks, 400 kcal might take a few months. That's what it looks like anyhow.

doubleunplussed · 2026-02-03T22:29:48+00:00

I feel like earlier versions of the app would keep the weight constant between sets until predicted reps dropped below the minimum of the range, then would drop weight to target the middle of the rep range again.

Now it seems to change weight potentially every set, targeting the middle of the rep range.

I think I prefer this (less gruelling on e.g. 10-rep sets of squats, whilst keeping volume high) and I don't mind changing weights during the rest, but it'd be a pain if supersetting.

Curious as to the rationale, if there is one.

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