Submission #10624: McBobX's PC Mega Man Rock'n Roll in 38:54.200

Mega Man Rock'n Roll in 38:54.20

Run details

• Takes damage to save time
• Aims for fastest time
• Luck manipulation

Technical details

• For sync verification: You may fast forward (even with all rendering skipped), but do not fast forward before or during Wily castle animation (between stages). This will also load the map faster, which desyncs the run immediately. From what I noticed, this doesn't occur during encoding nor if you set fast forward mode to skip no rendering, but better no fast forward at that moment.
• For encoding purposes, the original resolution of this game is 256x224, just like NES Mega Man games. You may either change that from in-game or from libTAS by going to Settings -> Video tab and changing to your custom resolution.
• Also, it's recommended to disable Force Software Rendering and Toggle Performance Tweaks from Video tab. This can prevent some pixilation artifacts and smooths the video more.
• This should go without saying but anything key related must not be changed from outside libTAS for playback consistency.

Game overview

• So this is Mega Man Rock'n Roll (download the game from there), a fantastic fan game created by Dennis Engelhard in late 2019. The game features both Mega Man and Roll as playable characters, with Mega Man, as we know from classic series has charge and slide with Rush for help, while Roll can also slide but can double (not too high though) jump with Beat for help.
• The story, briefly, is about some aliens that invaded earth, and kidnapped some robots, which are Fire Man, Skull Man, Honey Woman (Hornet Man from Mega Man 9 but the female counterpart), Dagger Man (from another fan game called Mega Man Super Fighting Robot), Proto Man and Mega Man himself during invasion. Seeing Dr. Light in panic mode, Roll decided to help and join the battle. She saved Mega Man firstly, then they joined together to save the other robots. Who's behind this invasion? You guessed it! It's Dr. Wily!

Run overview

• This game offers an advanced way to switch weapons. It includes the number buttons to instantly switch to the desired weapon, unlike the classic L and R (which is still present). This is a very powerful feature for speedrunning, and even better for TASing, as it allows for some really instantaneous kills without wasting any frame.
• In this game, Roll is more optimal than Mega Man in terms of gameplay, so she was used mostly whenever possible (You must use Mega Man in different Dr. Wily stages). Using Roll's double jump and Beat's lifting ability allows for many skips and quick screen crosses. Mega Man's charged shot really isn't useful at all, and Rush's energy is, just like Mega Man 11, shared between Coil and Jet. There aren't many places where Coil can be useful, and Jet is so slow to use. On top, Coil's consumption is too heavy (4 ticks).
• Ammo management is so critical in this game. Most weapons are very useful (except Beetle Drones), thus over-consuming them can be costly. It's mostly okay during 8 robots, but during Wily stages, it's a huge deal! Fortunately, Mega Man and Roll do not share same energy bars, so each will use their energy consumption in their own specific levels. Oh, and if you don't have enough to use a weapon (like Shield Bubble that requires 3 bars while you only have 1), then you can't use it.
• I found it also not wise to refill weapons every now and then, as it seems slow (even with RNG manipulation), so a strategy to consume weapons with little to no refill helped here.
• The route chosen for 8 robots in this run is: Dune -> Missile -> Tide -> Drake -> Polar -> Reactor -> Ghost -> Beetle. This is optimal as Dune's weapon, Desert Storm, is very useful for clearing large amount of enemies, and then we go through the weakness order which gives powerful weapons gradually.

Stage by stage comments

• So this is the first stage, and pretty much very simple. You slide as Mega Man and Roll until the end and go to 8 robots.

• Dune is a very RNG heavy boss, so I tried to manipulate her to not use her Desert Storm attack, as it's the worst to deal with and slow as well. The best I could force her to do was to teleport twice, though I'm not sure at all if a fight with no teleports is possible.

• There is a hidden W tank right at the start, and doesn't cost any time to get, however its usage during Wily stages (specifically in refights) in huge.
• I didn't like being unable to skip the crusher cycles at the end of the stage.... It feels bad but had to accept it :(
• This robot as has a bad pattern that occurs frequently so I decided to take damage before entering the fight as it allowed to have a great one.

• Enemies in this game have no i-frames, including mini bosses. This makes it a lot easier to finish them fast by spamming different weapons. The whale is one of them!
• Tide Man fight is pretty straight forward. All patterns are fine, however the Blast Missile weapon has a 30 frames cooldown, and it doesn't go down if you switch it away, so it's a must to stay on the weapon for that period. Though, the i-frames period of Tide are not affected by this.

• Now weapon management (to an extent) starts to matter! We only have 9 Shield Bubbles, however Drake requires 7. Thus, only 2 can be used during the stage. The best place is the one where we can't skip those flames on the ground, in addition to Desert Storm being so useful for that.
• Similarly to Tide, Drake fight is quite simple as well.

• Beat is now obtained! This stage has many vertical sections and Beat lifts are very useful for that. Our gear is pretty upgraded too.
• Polar fight is also pretty straightforward. 7 Fire Breaths and she's defeated!

• Snow Roller, Polar Woman's weapon, is also useful as an "upgraded" version of buster, and it's used to take down the mini boss quite fast
• It takes 28 shots to defeat Reactor, though the best usage for Snow Roller is to mid-charge it, which deals 3 damage. This means that optimally, only 27 HP can be reduced with Snow Roller. I decided to begin the fight with a regular buster shot for a fast start, and deal that 28th shot early!

• Ideally, saving the robots (to clear the game fast) is not recommended, however, just for this stage, it's faster to save Skull Man to not only skip a large chunk of the stage, but also to not fight him in Wily 5 before refights. This is the only robot saved in this run.

• Yes, not a woman yet! Well, this stage is very linear and there is many complicated things going on. The Soul Trap weapon from Ghost Woman joins the best weapons club, as it costs only one tick per shot and can clear enemies better.
• Beetle fight is gimmicky, where more damage comes from trapped drones. Beetle only summons three drones unfortunately so the remaining shots are dealt with regular Soul Trap, which deals only 2 damage.

• Now weapon management starts to become the main optimization factor for the rest of the run. Most of decision taken from here are to conserve the exact amount needed for each boss fight, while also spending the remaining ammo to clear enemies in a way that doesn't cost anything.
• Stage is straight forward, with Roll going first then Mega Man follows up. This forces Roll to fight the boss here with 9 missiles, and since this weapon only has 14 shots and being so useful, it's important to use it wisely later on.

• So Mega Man starts the castle first, and the stage is all about Mettaurs, kinda like Wily 1 from Mega Man 4. Here I'm forced to spend one Shield Bubble, however I need to make sure that I reach refights with 7 shields at least. Rush Coil was used carefully here (only twice) with 1 tick for Rush Jet.
• Boss fight is very technical but not too complicated. The goal is to throw as many trapped Mettaurs as possible while minimizing non i-frames for the boss.

• Now it's Roll's turn! W tank obtained earlier will be used on Mega Man weapons, so Roll's weapon energy becomes incredibly scarce, but thankfully sufficient enough as Buster Shots can compensate in many instances. I used Desert Storm and Burst Missiles as minimally as possible. Need to save 4 Storms for the refight and missiles at this point don't matter much, but I need to save 1 later in Wily 4
• I like how the boss fight is scripted where you just light the big bulb, get inside it then spam bunch of beams until it explodes. The most efficient way to do this is to continuously use a 2-frames jump, as it's proven to be the fastest way to take the boss down.

• Normally, I only have 9 available Bubble Shields, however I already used one, and I'm forced to use two more here (to conserve other weapons). For that reason, I manipulated a small drop to make up for the energy lost. This is the only drop obtained during the entire run, and it costs 12 frames only
• This stage boss is a remake of the Wily 3 boss from Mega Man. It is casually more annoying but thanks to TAS abilities, it becomes straightforward. In speedrunning, people use Snow Rollers alongside Burst Missiles, however, as explained earlier, you can't use missiles after another unless you wait 30 frames and you must stay on the weapon, something that will cost a lot of time as I need to charge the snow balls. For that, I use Buster Shots instead to burst the bubbles.

• Beat usage in this stage skyrocketed and I'm glad I had enough to go through (1 tick left)
• I used every weapon in my possession to not lose any frames, but conserving for refights.

• This stage is split into two parts. The first part is before refight capsules. Here I fight the allies that were not saved. Only Skull Man was saved, so I'd have to fight Fire Man, Honey Woman and Dagger Man.
• This stage will be done by both Mega Man and Roll. Mega Man will fight Fire Man and Honey Woman, and both require a good amount of ammo, however it doesn't matter much as Mega Man will make use of W tank, which is convenient in this case. Mega Man's part is all about climbing so I had to use all Rush Coil possible ammo.
• Roll will instead fight only Dagger Man (Skull Man is saved and so skipped). Dagger Man and Beetle Lady bought weak to Soul Trap, which both will be fought by Roll. Fortunately the ammo is enough to handle both with no refills!
• The second is about refighting the 8 robots. They all go same way as in their respective stages, with Dune Woman is being fought with her weakness this time, with Roll, which turned out that drones are incredibly scarce here as 4 drones are needed for Wily second phase fight by Roll, thus only three used against Dune, which was enough barely.
• The order of refights matters. Roll starts first so that she ends last (by fighting Proto Man). This is important so that she's the one kidnapped instead of Mega Man, as he has plenty of energy and also starts the final fight faster.

• With the usual Wily fights, it's also split into two fights here: The machine and the capsule.
• The machine goes into two phases: The first phase is about destroying the eyes however each character opens the eye for the other to destroy (team work xD). I implemented a cool strat where instead of Mega Man destroying the eye Roll opened for him, then opening the other eye, I do both where I damage the eye and open the other eye at the same time. This is a very fast way to deal with this phase.
• The second phase requires inserting drones into the machines, so I tried to do so in a fast way. Roll is the first one to do so, but also the last, so that's why she required 4 drones, instead of 3 for Mega Man.
• I got a very nice pattern that made use of a Buster Shot to take down Wily fast enough while also spamming as many Bubble Shields as possible optimally.

Closing

• This was a very fun project to work on. It's pretty challenging as the core part of this run was not only optimizing execution, but also weapon management that turned out to be incredibly critical. Putting everything together felt so good at the end especially that my expectation was about mid 39, so this was a nice result to see! I think a 100% run that collects all 8 letters for the upgrades, as well as it saves all allies before Wily fight for the best ending will be also interesting.
• I would like to thank the RTA community for the knowledge they collected for this game as it was very helpful putting this run together.