My first submission, hope you enjoy
- Emulator used: VBA 1.7.2 v19.3
- Aims for Fastest Time
- Abuses programming errors in the game
- Genre: Platformer
Watch it now on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uahJkCze6VE (poor quality)
About the game
As Wikipedia puts it "The game is a significantly cut-down version of Abe's Oddysee, with only a few similar levels and a condensed plot." You play as Abe, a little dude who wants to escape from being imprisoned, from RuptureFarms. It was released in 1998, a year after the original. The game is essentially a trial and error platformer. The game is composed of 3 stages/levels, with the second being non-linear allowing you choose which order you complete the six stages within the world. Interestingly enough the game has a language called Game Speak, which within this run is only used twice, each time on the same screen.
Enemies:
- Slogs are the dog like things, usually seen sleeping, if you sneak by them they stay asleep but if you run, roll, or jump near them they awake chasing after you.
- Paramites are the little creatures crawling around the ground, if one of them is on the screen, they will run away from you unless you fall down to close them or back them into a corner, if two are on screen at once they will be aggressive and chase after you
- Sligs are the dudes with the legs and guns, you can possess these, though in this game its limited on what you can do (walk and shoot), press select and hold it, once they are possessed, and they will explode giving you control of Abe again
- Bees, come out of bee hives and keep going in the same pattern over and over again, you can be stung by them but if stung to much you die
- Bats, fly around usually in a circle pattern, touch them and you are dead
About the run
Within the run I occasionally use a glitch, which gamefaqs refers to as "Super Jump" but I'm gonna call it the Pause Jump Trick (PJT), a programming error left in by the programmers. Essentially when you jump, pause the game while in mid-air and unpause, and the game will repeat the jump animation allowing you to get double the height (if jumping up) or horizontally. In my test run of the game I found some uses for the trick, two of which, I thought, were pretty entertaining, but on my second playthrough I found a faster route (one being only 4 frames faster while the other over 200 frames). Some other 'time savers' were used within the run. If you find a spot you have to jump multiple times in a row, just hold down the jump button. If running off a walkway would lead to dropping down and you need to go the opposite direction, start rolling right before you fall off, saves around 3 frames each time. Another note to mention is that running is the fastest way to get around, assuming you were on a screen with no thing in your way, rolling is 3 to 4 frames slower.
Level by Level descriptions
Title Screen
If you hit A on begin game, you have to click through the 'story screens', if you hit start on begin game you skip it and go straight to the start of the first level.
Stage 1
Nothing complicated here, a neat glitch to mention is with the elevator after you pull the lever, if you run onto the elevator and start going up on the elevator without turning around to quickly, you'll reach the top of by the sleeping Slog, but instead of being able to run to the right, the elevator will drop down really fast, you can hold up while at the top and you will float in midair, doing this glitch though has no time benefits. On the second half of this stage I possess a slig and kill as fast as possible. The hanging bags in the air contain rocks or meat. In this case a rock. Passwords are needed to open 'Chime doors' (though in some cases this can be avoided).
Stage 2
This is the 'hub area' for the multiple stages within stage 2, I choose the door order because it's the fastest possible route (at least from what I've tested). Keeping in mind theres a eight door above the top two doors on the right screen. Door 1 is the the door you come through from stage 1.
Stage 2-1 (Door 2)
Run left, hop up, and now here is something I stumbled upon, jump at a certain part and you'll hit the ground with a 'fall animation' (which happens you fall to great of a distance(not enough to kill you though)) once I stood up, I manage to pull the lever without actually being by the lever (the only time I could do it in the run), which saved a few frames. The 'password' pipe here isn't needed as it is a 'Game Speak' pipe which tells you in what order you need to input commands while talking to the NPC (the only one in the run). Hold select once on the screen with the NPC and it activates the Game Speak screen, simple order, Up Up Down Down, Right. Doing so gives you a ability to make all the mines on the screen explode. Run up grab the lever, run back down, get the ability again, activate the torch switch then hop into the pipe and exit.
Stage 2-2 (Door 3)
Jump from the walkway and it draws out a slig from the next screen, run to the right then possess (watch him shoot thin air in the mean time), once possessed run right kill the next slig, then kill the possessed slig. Grab the rock, hop over, jump over the bat, pass the boulders, 'Sneak' (Up and a direction at the same time) to the lever, get the password, run like hell back to right, blow up the mine, as soon as you can stand up activate the chimes and exit.
Stage 2
Exiting from Door 3, I tested running straight off the edge, jumping as soon as possible, and jumping at the right time to grab the ledge on the next screen, grabbing the ledge was the fastest route, reason picking Door 4 over door 4 over door 5 is because the only way to get to door 6 and 7 is the ledge by door 5.
Stage 2-3 (Door 4)
Using the Super Jump (I'll call it the Pause Jump Trick (PJT)) I hop up to the walkway, run over pull the switch, run back and exit from the original door. Skips pretty much all of the stage.
Stage 2-4 (Door 5)
The order your suppose to do this level is climb up to the top, go right, activate a wheel, hop on on a ledge, then come back down to get pass the Bees. Instead I run pass the bees, hop on the edge, get the password, when the sequence ends a bee 'stings' me and makes jump left. Climb down grab the meat (yup, the rock and meat look identical), hop over, toss the meat, time it so you don't run into the bees, pull the torch lever, run back, climb all the way to the top, run left, toss another piece of meat at the paramite, activate the chimes, exit.
Stage 2-5 (Door 6)
Run right, time the jumps, jump over the bat, deactivate the mines, climb up, deactivate more mines, pull the lever, jump left, sneak over to the password pipe, head back to beginning, exit.
Stage 2-6 (Door 7)
Hop down, turn around, run the other way, attract the paramite, make it follow, turn around and run back just as the boulder falls, get the password, run right. Attract another paramite, run left, hit the boulder switch, kill the paramite run back, pull the switch, two more paramites come down. Somehow pass through the paramite while its in the crawl space, jump, PJT, exit (reason for the PJT, grabbing the ledge will let the paramite eat you)
Stage 2-7
Nothing to note worthy here, after the 'sneaking' part to jump up out of the slog's reach, I have to stall at point for a few frames in order for the paramite to run ahead instead of eating me. Also once I hop into the pipe, I once thought you had to get the meat in order to get to stage 3-1 on the next screen, but I found out there is exactly 1 frame where you can just jump and time hitting up
Stage 3-1
Start off with a PJT to hop up to the pipe as quickly as possible. Next screen I hop up, then jump across a gap, do another PJT, and exit. Skipping a majority of the level.
Stage 3-2
Climb up, fall down to get meat, climb back up. Here's a time saver,jumping into the wall by the lever is actually quicker than running to it, because whne you run into a wall you get this 'stun' animation. Activate elavator,deactivate mine. Another time saver, running (not rolling) right off the edge lets you fall down and grab a ledge, which is faster than hoping over, then falling down onto the pipe. Toss some meat, get the rock, go into the tube, once out, climb back up, reactivate elavator, go up,toss rock to blow up the mine, exit.
Stage 3-3
Do a lot of jumping and climbing, get the rock, keep hopping, run pass the paramites (one will run into the mine and blow it up), deactivate the mines, I did a PJT here, saving roughly 4 frames or so then actually climbing up the other parts of the screen, blow up all 3 mines, activate switch run back, jump over the paramite, run off the edge (grabbing the ledge), drop down to the bottom and hop into the tube.
Stage 3-4
Time a jump to go over the paramite, run left, hop up, fall down jump right to get the password, go to the next screen, turn around and jump, do two PJT to get over the paramite, hop into the tube. Now for some reason I didn't have to activate the chimes to open the door, so hurray time saved
Stage 3-5
Alot of jumping, climbing and falling, do that until you get the meat, go up, fall some more, activate lever, fall, toss some meat for the slog, hop into the tube, fly to the top, jump up to Big Face, End.Now the game doesn't end with automatic credits, the game ends with 3 pictures to show the ending, a 'congratulation' screen, and 5 screens of credits, all of which you manually have to hit a button to go to the next, so I decided to end the run on the congrats screen. If you cycle through it all, the game restarts itself and starts you off at the title screen.
A thing to note is the meat/rock bags, when jumping/walking into one, the game either decides if it falls to the right, or falls to the left. So if you go frame by frame that would explain why I stand still doing nothing for a few frames. On this matter, the very last tube/pipe I hopped into, for some reason if you hop into it automatically, it brings you to a different spot than the end screen, so delaying here is needed to do so.
My test run was 545 frames slower than the finished run, though it has two interesting tricks using the PJT on Stage 2-6 and Stage 3-4 (check it out here) http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/429783629/Oddworld%20Adventures%20%28UE%29%20%5B%5D.vbm
Suggested Description:
Join Abe, your favorite Mudokon, as he runs and jumps his way to victory while in a portable RuptureFarms. On a more serious note, Oddworld Adventures is an attempt to take the popular Oddworld series to the Gameboy, many of the features found in the Playstation version won't be found here.
Images:
mmbossman: Entertaining enough movie, particularly for the gameboy. Accepting for publication.