Rock On! Island is a tower defense game in UFO 50. You play as a tribe leader Zola, and must prevent dinosaurs from wreaking havoc to your cave.
Unfortunately, inflicted with the curse of April Fools, Zola turns out to be secretly on the dinosaurs' side, fires all her cavemen, and just lets the dinosaurs roam free...
Information
- Emulator(?) used: CoffeeTools 1.4
- Game version: 1.8.9 (the latest version that CoffeeTools 1.4 supports)
- CoffeeTools currently does not track rerecord count. I think it's somewhere in the hundreds.
Game objectives(?)
- Fastest game over
- Simply quitting out is not allowed
- Use RTA timing; input also ends when "game over" appears
- Deals damage to save time
Comment
This is the first submission that uses CoffeeTools!
For April Fools, I was thinking of which UFO 50 game would make the best game over TAS. I decided that Rock On! Island is the one, since it's not trivial to optimize, it features a speedrun trick, and it offers plenty of playaround while waiting.
Honorable mention goes to:
- Hot Foot (didn't have time to plan my strategy)
- Lords of Diskonia (not even sure how to optimize this)
- Pilot Quest (need to learn how RNG works so that I get an ingot immediately)
- Cyber Owls (The fastest way to fail the first mission is Guin, which is currently unstable with CoffeeTools)
I chose to use RTA timing for this goal. If I wanted to optimize input length instead, the run would be over as soon as starting wave 3, which is boring.
Glitch (I don't know what it's called in particular)
Normally, while the "WAVE X" message is on the screen, you cannot take any action. However, you can override this by setting the "REALLY EXIT TO MAP?" dialogue by attempting to quit, then choosing "NO" when the "WAVE X" message is on the screen. This saves around 2 seconds per wave.
Strategy
So in order to speedrun a game over in Rock On! Island, you actually have to beat the first two waves as quickly as possible, then sell all cavemen as you begin wave 3. It's because the first two waves don't have enough enemies to deplete all 30 health, and it takes too long to wait for more than one wave to reach the cave.
I die in wave 2 to get 1 life closer to game over. But then there's another problem: a caveman is placed pretty close to the dinosaur spawn point, which I can't reach after respawning at the cave and starting wave 3 because there would be a swarm of green dinosaurs. Then that caveman will start killing those precious dinos! To get around this problem, I sell that caveman at the same time he deals the last damage needed, then die before the last red dinosaur dies. The other caveman can be reached and sold before he starts attacking the dinos. Dying in wave 1 is probably not worth it, since then I can't place a second caveman there to finish wave 2 quickly.
The rest is just an autoscroller, so I do a little playaround with chickens. They conveniently have the same cost to buy and sell, so they can be recycled all you want.
Human comparison
By RTA timing, this run takes 59.78 seconds. It's not really a popular category, but the human world record is 1:04.60 by dumbenbygoose (who is also the WR holder for both Gold and Cherry categories of Rock On! Island).
Bonus
I also have a test run of completing the first level, but it desynced:
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: I'm dropping this submission. While the new rules have created a path for this goal choice to be accepted, that is not the issue I am facing.
In some games, an in-game timer is displayed at the end, providing viewers with a clear indication of how the game itself measures completion. For RTA timing, however, we measure completion by frame count. Since this submission has chosen RTA timing, I would expect the final frame to coincide with an optimal ending, reflecting properly on "fastest game over".
Because additional input was included for entertainment purposes beyond that point, I am not comfortable being the person to finalize this judgment, as I disagree with the final result. If there is an acceptable resolution, I am confident that another judge will be able to evaluate and determine it.
The goal itself is now an acceptable category under recent rule changes. My concern has shifted to the optimization of the run, which has been called into question by the inclusion of entertainment-focused content after the point where I believe the run should have ended.
Dropping.
ikuyo: Claiming for judging.
ikuyo: Hey synabler! Thanks for the patience.
This was fun to watch! It is definitely interesting to see a game where a fast game over is non trivial and rather involved. This was fun to see, what a way to welcome CoffeeTools to the site!
In most circumstances this would have gone straight to Playground, but the recent rules changes around goal choices make this eligible for Alternative. After some discussion, we decided that it is as good a fit as any, and as such, this will be the first CoffeeTools movie published on site. PLAY FOREVER!
Some notes to publishers:
- Game catalog info is correct as documented. UFO 50 is a game collection, and this name format matches precedent of our collections such as Super Mario All Stars or Action 52.
- I've simplified the branch name to "game over". I've removed the RTA timing branch name, as there is no need for it provided we do not receive a similar submission that aims to end input early.
- Make sure to not this is the first publication using CoffeeTools!