Crusader of Centy is an old Zelda knock-off that replaces useful items with useful animal companions. You can have only two animals out at a time, and some will combine their abilities for unique effects. Despite being an action-RPG, very little killing of monsters is actually required other than bosses. Most of the gameplay is centered around swinging and throwing your magical boomerang sword to solve puzzles. This run contains gratuitous use of abusing slide physics, abusing wall collision, abusing monster collision, abusing the bosses, and literally skipping through many of the game's challenges.
This is my first TAS and it's quite a doozy. I started almost a year ago but gave up in a few weeks, only to start over from scratch about a month and a half ago. Previously I'd been using my keyboard to record the run, which was painful to say the least. Using a wired 360 controller was much better, allowing me to hit all four buttons at once and mapping out frame advance, pause, and two sets of save/load commands.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Gens Movie 10A
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes damage to save time
- Abuses programming errors in the game
Animals
Mac: My faithful hound. Bites enemies to make them hold still.
Use: Advances the plot.
Chilly: Penguin rescued from the Octopus. Adds ice element to sword, 2 damage.
Use: Roxie, Georama, and Mother Monster fights.
Cecil: Flying squirrel rescued from the Shuffler. Adds distance and rebound to your thrown sword, and locks your movement.
Use: Activating switches in Iris, Camellia Desert, Castle Freesia, and Tower of Babel.
Flash: Cheetah recruited from the Lily go-kart track. Doubles your top speed.
Use: Quicker movement, used whenever possible.
Pieces: Caterpillar found in Iris who won't stop following me.
Use: ...no really, stop following me. I mean it.
Dippy: Dinosaur bullied out of the oasis. Crosses "dangerous terrain" without taking damage.
Use: Advances the plot.
Inferno: Lion freed from a cage in Castle Freesia. Adds fire element to sword, 3 damage.
Use: Just about every boss fight after I get him. Combines with Chilly for 4 damage over time, Moa for 4 damage plus fireballs, and Dodo for 5 damage over time. Also, unfreezes Amon the ice block.
Leviathan: Mythical monster recruited from the Root Temple. Cuts sword swinging and charging time to 3/4, and adds speed and range to the throw.
Use: Various puzzles in Tower of Babel and Black Night, and the Chameleon and Spirit Energy boss fights.
Monarch: Butterfly transformed from Pieces after totally ditching us at Babel. Grants remote control over your thrown sword.
Use: Tower of Babel ground floor, and Black Night.
Rio: Armadillo recruited after a very Eeyore moment in Past Iris. Becomes a throwable platform when C is pressed.
Use: Sets up various epic jumps in Iris, Past Camellia Desert, and Black Night.
Moa: Ancient bird rescued from Chameleon. Enhances the abilities of various animals.
Use: Triples top speed with Flash equipped. Boosts Inferno's damage to 4 and adds fireballs, used in many boss fights.
Dodo: Extinct bird rescued from a lava platform in Past Burn Daisy. Makes things stick to the thrown sword.
Use: Begins Puppetmaster boss fight, used in conjunction with Inferno for 5 damage over time in the Spirit Energy fight.
Techniques
Early zoning: You can change zones a few frames early by approaching the screen border or doorway and then stepping back.
Damage boosting: Touching a monster repels you precisely at the angle you approached it from, so it's very easy to line up where you want to go. The speed boost is reflected in what I call "Slide" speed, which adds with your controller momentum (the direction you push) to give your total speed.
Swing interruption: Pressing and holding A usually swings your sword and begins charging. Some things can interrupt your swing and allow you to begin charging immediately, such as a monster, a slide, or a spring. This is useful because while swinging, you lose control of your momentum and slow down.
Jump charging: You retain control of your character if you swing while in the air. Jumping is therefore used often to begin a sword charge. Completely replaces swing interruption after Dahlia Valley.
Slide boost: Your Slide values increase every frame you are on a slippery slope, like a cliff or waterfall. By maximizing the time I spend on a slide, I can build up a lot of momentum and make previously impossible jumps, especially ones the developers didn't think of, and to cross distances quickly.
Rope hop: Some ropes will prevent you from jumping onto them, but the game is very wishy-washy about enforcing it.
Block stop: You are given 3 frames to move before you push a block. If you hide yourself against an obstacle, the game cannot move you.
Wall-hack: When there is an obstacle next to a diagonal wall, you can squeeze in between the two to pass through, or press into it to force the game into resolving that collision, resulting in you being pushed into the wall. If you end up fully in the wall, you are allowed to walk freely around so long as you stay away from legal squares.
Jump swing: With Flash equipped, you move faster than your thrown sword. To clear breakable obstacles without slowing down, jump and swing 16 frames before you land, and your sword will be active for that single frame.
C strafe: While holding C, your angle is locked in. You cannot hold a sword charge while strafing, but it is useful for talking to NPCs and manipulating Rio's position.
Post-menu input: Press any buttons you like while holding Start to exit the menu, and it will be inputted as the screen loads. This allows for sword-charging one frame sooner, quicker movement, and jumping off Rio when he no longer exists.
Stage comments
Rafflesia
If you go through all three courses in this area, the King gives you a Holy Sword, which does double damage. This is a long and tedious affair, and boss fights take an average 15 seconds to begin with. Instead of going through the beginner course, I collect 20 Malins, learn the sword throw, and leave.
Dahlia Valley
Here I demonstrate damage boosting off of monsters, and swing interruption on the spring and waterfall. Dahlia's boss, the Wolf, attacks you with the stars and planets he sees when he hits himself with a 1 ton hammer...the stars allow me to swing interrupt and kill the Wolf quickly, but on the final hit I damage boost into the door before he gives his death speech. By reaching the door early, I completely skip a 20-second dialogue with a grateful Granny.
Anemone Beach
The third screen typically requires >90 seconds of running back and forth hitting switches, but a quicker way is to slide boost off the cliffs and skip over the water.
Hot Daisy
You're supposed to equip Chilly here and freeze that lava pond that I instead slide boost across.
Burn Daisy
The block pushing in screen 1 sets up the wall-hack that allows me to use the last staircase first. Goodbye, level. I collect the money bag here because you need 20 Malins for Flash and 50 Malins for Past Iris. The Shuffler fight is easily the longest wait in the game, so I try to make the most of it with Red Light, Green Light, sword tricks, and other shenanigans.
Iris
This is a long segment. The second wall-hack goes into the cliffside, then up into the trees. The go-kart race against Flash held me up for days as I tried to figure out the physics behind it. As a slime you have instant acceleration, so I use that and the respective waiting times to give the screen a nice shake or two. The last jump in this area was tricky to set up, as it goes onto a switch, then off of another one instantly.
Camellia Desert
Some block-stopping here, slide-boosting with the quicksand pits, and some funny bouncing around with breakable obstacles. Second money bag collected on the second screen.
Tower of Babel
Roxie has several attacks, only one of which leaves him vulnerable. If my luck were better, I could have killed him in two phases.
Castle Freesia
The entire floor is slippery here. Jumping gives you control back while adding your current Slide speed, so you can travel at ludicrous speeds if you build it up enough. Towards the end there is a jump across a pond with a breakable boulder across it; this was one of the hardest jumps in the run to set up. It is possible to exit the Georama fight early and go straight to Babel with the seeds, but it takes a while to go back through Freesia, and Leviathan is very useful.
Root Temple
With judicious use of slide-boosting, I made a mockery of this level's twistiness. Some care was given not to get hit by a bubble. It is also possible here to exit to the world map, but since the temple hasn't been raised, the path going past Castle Freesia is blocked off by a glitch. The Leviathan fight requires you to knock his fireballs back at him, but throwing the sword at him while they appear works better.
Tower of Babel
Abusing the rubber bands was fun and useful. Unfortunately there is a LOT of block pushing here.
Place of Peace
Instead of going through a long, tedious set of switch puzzles, I hitch a ride on a single bumblebee and steer him by moving a few pixels left, right, up and down. I didn't have this idea until I reached the level, but I'm proud of the trick. Maldra was completely emasculated because he didn't know how to turn around...his parts didn't even have time to hit the ground.
Past Iris
I collected the last money bag quickly and re-entered the cliff without hesitation. Once I reached Past Iris, I knew I could easily jump across the water without getting Rio, but I also knew I needed Rio for several puzzles later. He turned out to be a huge asset to me in his chasm-crossing abilities.
Past Camellia Desert
You'll see some C strafing here as I make use of Rio. Chameleon was tricky; the fight went well, but a few frames had to be sacrificed because of his quick shuffling around and grabby tongue in the second phase.
Past Anemone Beach
The Moa+Leviathan switch/throw was difficult to set up, but it looks impressive now. Baron was slightly difficult to deal with, and I couldn't manipulate the fireballs to hit both purple blobs at once.
Past Dahlia Valley
Wall-hacking in full force! I wish I could follow the wall all the way north and transfer to the horizontal wall, but it is impossible without trapping myself on the upper shelf.
Black Night
The very first jump in this segment was hands down the hardest, yet most rewarding. I had to time Rio tracking me and invent a new glitch that involved jumping out of the menu. There was literally no room for error except for four frames that I could manage using diagonally. Although the very next part could be done quicker with Flash+Leviathan, the 122 frames necessary to switch again is just not worth it.
The boss fights were very interesting. In Smell Sense, tiles crack when you walk over them, and turn to spikes when you jump on a cracked tile; after a few seconds, the spikes begin to disappear, but quicker than the appearing spikes. If you make a long enough trail that the disappearing spikes catch up to the appearing ones, the spikes that remain stay there permanently. Unfortunately, when I trapped the boss on a permanent bed of spikes, he remained invincible half the time and it took far longer to kill. Touch Sense was so-so; half the time the fireballs were not co-operating, but I killed them both just in time, so the white-out happened early.
Other comments
I hope you guys enjoy this run as much as I tore my hair out making it. This run would not have been possible without Upthorn contributing a basic RAM watch list for me to reference. Here is an updated version of the watch list:
0 17 0CC4B 00FFAC4B b s 0 Angle 0CC4D 00FFAC4D b s 0 Target Angle 0CC1B 00FFAC1B w s 0 Height 0CC5E 00FFAC5E w s 0 Button Accel.x 0CC60 00FFAC60 w s 0 Button Accel.y 0CC3B 00FFAC3B w s 0 Slide.x 0CC3F 00FFAC3F w s 0 Slide.y 0CC22 00FFAC22 d s 0 Speed.x 0CC26 00FFAC26 d s 0 Speed.y 0CC66 00FFAC66 w s 0 Position.x 0CC68 00FFAC68 w h 0 Subpixel.x 0CC6A 00FFAC6A w s 0 Position.y 0CC6C 00FFAC6C w h 0 Subpixel.y 0D0C5 00FFB0C5 b s 0 Sword Charge 0D0CB 00FFB0CB b s 0 Sword Return 0D0D4 00FFB0D4 d s 0 Sword Speed.x 0D0D8 00FFB0D8 d s 0 Sword Speed.y
Suggested screenshots
adelikat: Good votes and viewer response. Accepting for publication and processing.