This is an improvement over the current movie by about 2m 45s. It follows the same goals, namely:
- Aims for fastest time
- Plays at the hardest difficulty, including no initial shurikens
- Doesn't get hit or lose power
There are a gazillion things to discuss, so I'll focus on the following points.
Lag
This game doesn't have much lag, but much of what it does have doesn't show up on the lag counter. To deal with this, I made a lua script that counts frames when the ninja doesn't move, and also tracks speed in pixels per frame. You need Gens 11+ for lua.
Randomness
Some things like the timing of enemy attacks are random. So if you spot-weld improvements earlier in the movie, you get desyncs later. The randomness is determined at least in part by the input stream--even input that has no effect on gameplay affects the RNG. Crazy but true, it's possible to repair sync by adding or changing input that does nothing before the random thing gets spawned.
Tricks and glitches
- Pallete error
- In the horsey level, the last enemy is left for awhile to illustrate this.
- Quickroll
- Perform a double jump below a thin platform and the ninja will jolt upward while rising through it. Pressing into a wall during the zip will terminate the roll and return to standing position with full control.
- Shuriken spamming
- You can cancel the standing attack recovery with a jump and a jump with an attack. You can see where that's going. However, this doesn't help for the bosses with long invuln times.
- Fastkicking
- A typical jump kick moves at the same horizontal speed as running. But if the kick is done to the right while at less than running speed, it's 25% faster. (This seems to be a glitch because the same procedure to the left incurs a speed penalty.) Because of the delay in jumping up and landing, it's not faster than running over flat ground, but if done near the peak of a high jump, the penalty is less than one frame's worth of movement.
- Recoilless kicks
- It's possible to hit an enemy with a kick after touching ground and avoid the costly recoil. This is the fastest way to get rid of enemies that have 1 HP, but some open ground in front is required. In a couple cases it's also useful for hitting bosses that are too low to shoot.
- Wallkicking
- A sheer wall can be climbed by kicking into it on alternating frames. Gravitational acceleration continues, so it's best as a supplement rather than a substitute for jumping. Neofix demonstrated this in his movie but didn't put it to good use.
- Upward zipping
- This requires a low ceiling that opens up and becomes a vertical wall. Jump facing away from the wall so that the ninja's back is partly overlapping the wall in a nonsubversive manner. When the wall covers the ninja's back at foot level, do a turnaround kick into the wall. Do not press into the wall or the ninja will be ejected. The zipping lasts until the ejection is complete and is accelerated by wallkicking. It looks and sounds like wallkicking but is much faster and allows regular jumping, which is better than walljumping.
- Walk through walls
- Performing wallkicks while zipping into a ceiling can bring the ninja high enough to walk around in there. Running is not possible inside walls.
mmbossman: Excellent improvement, and a ton of fun to watch. Accepting.