User Files from Exonym

WIP up through the first cave level. You can use the air punch to clip into the floor and won't get stopped if it's next to a slope. This does not work in the first stage because the ground there is seemingly different (no forward or backwards boosts if clipping into the floor)

Finished the test run of the first main 6 stages. Only one final level and a final boss to go. Still not 100% sure the last room of Life Research (last stage in this WIP) is optimized as that one is a pain with all the unavoidable enemies.

Also included some minor improvements to previous stages since the last WIP uploaded here. Probably too minor for anyone to notice.

Finished the first 5 stages on the 4 bomb route I'm currently testing. It's seeming like a solid route, the more I think about trying to do an extra wall glitch in the life research stage the more I think it's slower, because you have to collect an extra e-tank, an extra bomb, and then slow kill one of the bosses instead of instakill. I feel like this WIP is somewhat optimized, I'd like to do a bit more testing on Military Base, which is the last stage completed in this WIP. I wasn't happy with those floor robots, having to significantly select spam my way through one of them. Other than that a lot of these stages are pretty simple, with the first 2 being the hardest to optimize.

Rerecord count is a bit low, because I kept reloading old WIPs instead of consistently working on the original one.

First 2 stages of Power Blazer. Doing a test run of only getting 4 bombs, 2 for boss instakills and 2 for a skip later in the Space Center stage. There's an invincibility trick spamming select, but you need an empty slot to do it. So I've started off the first 2 stages that I acquire a bomb on, leaving the e-tank slot open for using it.

Stage order I've picked for the test (the characters after the stage are how many bomb (B) and energy tanks (E) I'll have after completing the stage):

4 bomb route:

1: Energy Development (+1B) (+0E) (normal boss kill, select Spam) 1B 0E

2: Residential (+1B) (+0E) (normal boss kill, select spam) 2B 0E

3: Weather (+1E) (+0B) (Boss -1B) 1B 1E

4: Space Center (+1B) (+0E) (skip -2B -1E) (normal boss kill, select spam) 0B 0E

5: Military (+0B) (+0E) (Select Spam Boss) 0B 0E

6: Life (+1B) (+0E) (Boss -1B) (CAN select spam second half) 0B 0E

This file completes the first 2: Energy Development and Residential. Fairly optimized, can't think of any easy ways to improve anything at the moment.

First 3 worlds, of a terrible repetitive game, because I was bored.

Further improvements to Secret Cliff.

39 frames saved in secret cliff over the last video I posted in discord. Also, avoided taking a death on the boss so I saved all 3 lanterns, both of which cost 0 frames to pick up. Slightly better cloud management but still not convinced it's 100% optimal. Lost a few frames from having less boost from the moving platform section in secret cliff, but overall gained. Couldn't pick up the spear head powerup from the robot that drops it in the first room because the rocks in the next room would fall in unfavorable patterns.

Saved 10 frames on final boss by using all of the wave attacks before the final punch of phase 1 rather than at the end of phase 1

WIP of first 2 levels. Lag management is a huge part of the game, and upon beating the second boss I realized the game has randomized levels, so will need to do some research to see if the level order matters...

Notes: each health node missing in your health bar counts up 8 frames as it refills health after beating a boss. The wave attack art costs 2 points and each shot saves 40 frames on a boss, pretty important to max that out before reaching boss, even more so than health.

34 frames over 1-1. Better manipulation of flying enemy could save a couple of frames too, potentially

various improvements over last file. Submission this weekend if nothing else is found

Holding off on submitting for a few days in case something else is found, but this is the pretty much complete TAS of this game.

improved boss fight by 59 frames by utilizing a turnaround trick which creates a large hitbox behind fred. The boss moves based on the direction fred is facing when taking damage, so we can abuse this and get 3 shortened i-frame animations by stopping him in the middle of the room.

Also included the initial run of the first part of the next stage, synced back up nicely which means this game is rather edit friendly at least so far.

I did find the basic values such as x camera position, x position relative to the camera and something related to animation cycles in the RAM. Did not do any hard digging for boss hp values or such.

Mainly for this I just used prince_leaf's fastest TAS on youtube as a reference point but without an actual input file I have no idea if I was faster or slower than what he did.

Haven't really found anything substantial, there is a slight glitch where the water death animation can slide along the moving platform and then over the crocodile and into the wall but you still die anyway.

This is just a quick test, everything seems relatively sync friendly at least up til the first boss. Only one jump height, annoyingly.

Did a test run to see how the parasol numbers would line up, so that I can plan the route better later.

-Didn't include a strat of killing the first boss a few frames sooner by jumping on it until I saw MESHUGGAH's wip later.

-stage 1 is pretty much perfect, no lag and no tricks to really speed up anything since it's all horizontal.

-you can jump off enemies as long as you land on them just right and it doesnt slow you down. This can sometimes be useful for making certain jumps or jumping off the rock in stage 2. You still have to be on the right half of the screen to progress, that's why the backtrack. Still needs to be optimized.

-you can alter your jumps slightly by letting go of A for a bit, and you seem to be able to jump sooner after landing if you have the above parasol out, not sure why this is but it seems useful for vertical stages. Though sometimes it can cause lag so it's a big trial and error on when to use it?

-Got lazier the further into the run I went as it was just a rough draft, most notably would be lag reduction.

-Didn't find any way to break out of the whale's suction in order to reach his mouth faster.

-3rd beanstalk puts you the furthest right in the above cloud level despite the fact that it's the slowest vine to climb. (1862 frames compared to the fastest which was stalk 2 at 1796) The amount that it puts you ahead is so great that these don't really matter.

-final boss takes 30 hits so that many parasols must be preserved. He can be killed entirely off screen but must wait for him to bounce down before he's actually dead. There is a line of dialogue at the end that must be skipped so unfortunately we can't end input early here.

I moved on from stage 2 for now. I did an early run through of some of the next stages in the interest of making at least some progress, though they are kinda boring levels.

removed a few lag frames from the beginning but might have to scrap it as its very hard to keep them

Still undecided if I want to take death on the first boss or not, but the damage boost in stage 2 is set up so that can be changed later.. up to the first boss though this is 95 frames faster than published movie. Not sure how much is attributed to this emulator, but stage 2 starts only 2 frames faster.

bare minimum watch file. Has x and y speed and positions.

Most recent WIP, completes up to first boss where I have to finally figure out how his behavior works. If anyone has any insight it would be appreciated

more minor improvements to earlier stages + a little bit past poison ivy boss. Poison ivy boss is probably not finished entertainment wise

minor improvements throughout, and up through level 4 (didn't finish the boss yet). Had to not take damage the entire stage 4 so that I can use damage boosts to get quick hits on the boss. Kind of sucks but it is what it is

improved 9 frames in the first stage up to the boss fight, but the boss fight desyncs. Leaving it that way for now until I can figure out the boss patterns etc, so all of my savings might be for naught.

301 frames faster than the submitted version

Here's the awesome boss freeze that occurs for seemingly no reason. If anyone has any insight as to why, it would be appreciated.