Submission #10468: ChucJo's NES Solar Jetman: Hunt for the Golden Warpship in 06:15.498

The any% category for Solar Jetman was due for a revisit after some more efficient wall clips were discovered. The new wall clips were able to save a satisfying total of 2048 (or 2^11) frames.

This section outlines the strategies utilized throughout the run. For more details, please reference the game resources page.

When a bullet makes contact with the warp enemy, a code branch executes to handle the collision. Instruction $89E6 is responsible for initializing the warp in the persistent entity array in RAM. Instruction $897B is responsible for clearing the warp enemy from the active entity array. If an interrupt is triggered between these two instructions then the warp will have spawned in and the enemy will continue to be spawned in, thus allowing the enemy to interact with the bullet a second time so that the warp is duplicated.

The planet that the glitched warp transports the player to is determined by its index in the persistent entity array. Planet 1 starts with 6 persistent entities, the intended warp is 7, meaning the glitched warp will transport the player to planet 8. If this glitch is repeated enough times in a row, then a warp directly to planet 12 will be created.

The major time save from this TAS is improved wall clipping. The previous TAS relied on glitched enemies to perform a MDR Clip. Not only was this slow, but it needed lots of RNG manipulation as was a nightmare to optimize. The new types of wall clips target specific terrain geometries, and only require pixel perfect position and a frame perfect shield input. This run features 5 wall clips in total.

One of the boss's eyes can be despawned by shooting bullets at the beginning of the auto-scroller section in a peculiar way to trigger a CPU interrupt at just the right time.

RNG manipulation is heavy used throughout the run, primarily by using the inputs for player two. Although there is no other use for a second controller, it still influences the game's RNG based randomness. This allows us to nearly perfectly control the RNG state without affecting the inputs for the controller also controlling the player.

The max speed of the pod is usually 3 pixels per second. However, the momentum from a carried item can push the pods speed up to 4 pixels per second. In order to make this work, the carried item must be consistently in front of the pod and any amount of thrust in a horizontal direction will reset the the speed to 3.

The first order of business is to collect the shield as it is required to perform wall clips. Then I make my way to the warp and perform the warp duplication glitch to spawn in a warp to planet 12. A tiny bit of slowdown is necessary in order to make sure the planet 12 warp is the one that starts moving first. This is because each frame the game cycles through a handful of game objects to check their spawn conditions. The slowdown makes sure the index lines up for the planet 12 warp to spawn in last.

The general path through the planet is not that different from the previous TAS. The key difference is the new series of wall clips to save time. I perform a variation of wall clip called a bump clip by wedging the pod into a narrow angled wall and shield frame perfectly. The will cause the pod to bump off of one of the walls through the other wall. The position chosen for this clip is ideal because the cannon enemy prevents the pod from bumping further back, and there is a blue gravity planet that pulls the pod in which helps it get back to max speed faster. The first fuel is obtained while out of bounds and a tricky bump is performed to get the fuel in front of the pod so that I can abuse item momentum. This fuel is dropped off at the top right nearby fuel two. After collecting the second fuel, I perform a variation of wall clip called a clean clip. This works on terrain geometry that comes to a very shallow point. This clip also only works on leftward walls and the bottom part of the wall must be vertical. By aligning the pod pixel perfectly and shielding frame perfectly, the pod passes through the wall like it wasn't even there. This allows me to navigate quickly to center area near the third fuel. Both fuel 2 and 3 are dropped off and then I head over to the right to collect the last fuel. On the way back to drop it off, I perform another clean clip to save a little time traversing through the underwater part. After dropping off the last fuel, I perform yet another clean clip to skip the entire maze section and head directly to the wormhole.

In the part room, I perform the last wall clip of the run. A clean clip on the far right side allows me to collect the part while out of bounds and immediately start going left instead of going over the rock.

No changes here from the previous TAS. The boss eye despawn is performed and the other 4 eyes are taken out using the same strategy.

For a more precise timing, the following RAM addresses are referenced:

0x003B - Current Planet Indicator (Planet 1 = 00, Planet 12 = 0B, Part Room = 18, Boss = 1A)

And the following criteria:

           ||      NEW      ||      OLD      ||       DELTA
_ _ _ _ _ _||_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _||_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _||_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
     SPLIT || START | COUNT || START | COUNT ||  SPLIT  |  TOTAL
_ _ _ _ _ _||_ _ _ _|_ _ _ _||_ _ _ _|_ _ _ _||_ _ _ _ _|_ _ _ _ _
     Start ||     0 |   114 ||     0 |   114 ||      +0 |      +0
  Planet 1 ||   114 |  2115 ||   114 |  2115 ||      +0 |      +0
 Planet 12 ||  2229 | 10203 ||  2229 | 12025 ||   -1822 |   -1822 
 Part Room || 12432 |  1791 || 14254 |  2017 ||    -226 |   -2048
      Boss || 14223 |  8343 || 16271 |  8343 ||      +0 |   -2048
       End || 22566 |     - || 24614 |     - ||      -  |   -2048

Challenger: Claiming for judging.

Challenger: Great job again! The new Wall Clipping strats polished the routing better than I expected.

Accepting over [7007] NES Solar Jetman: Hunt for the Golden Warpship by ChucJo in 06:49.575.

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