Submission #3075: Tompa's SNES Donkey Kong Country "any%" in 08:13.72

This run is 29335 (8 minutes, 8 seconds and 55 frames) frames faster than the previous run by myself.
The run finishes with an in game time of 7 minutes, 13 seconds and 3 frames.

Arne_the_great here, I will write a small novel about how I found the trick and how it works.

When Tompa and I first found the original Warp (Hold the bonus one), I started to try understand the trick and checked every possible exit and eventually found that warping to Torchlight was the best warp.
However I did see that there were many other exits that simply crashed even though it should warp to other stages (one that would be possible if it didn't crash was Necky's Revenge., the last boss before the last boss). I discussed and got some help from Deign and he found a certain adress that changed to 255 causing the game to crash.
I tried a long time getting the Necky's Revenge exit without the crash value but I later found out that the value that changed the bonus exit is actually supposed the X-position of the barrel you're holding relative to Donkey/Diddy and is a signed 2-byte and the second byte was the one which made it crash so I eventually gave up on that.
Later on, I experimented around and manually poking in what object I was holding and tried warping on the first bonus in Temple Tempest and did this glitch that allows you to die twice in the same bonus (by getting hit at a certain frame, making the fade out delayed) and warps you to the first stage. But however, when I did the bonus warp glitch, I got warped to other exits than normally. I tried a long time finding an adress that pointed to those exits but none existed and it took a long time until I realized that somehow the game interpreted the exit value as a signed value and took -15 as 15 and allowing for warps to many other stages. One of those stages were Manic Mincers. I was very excited and tried very hard and a long time trying to find a way to hold air on that stage by having two active characters at once and bringing different animals to the stage but had no luck. So I looked through every bonus in the game to see what other bonuses one can get hit on early and the only other one was the second bonus on Temple Tempest which you can't even warp on. So I got pretty depressed that it wouldn't work but didn't give up and later found out that the glitch works by exiting a bonus twice, so I immediately checked through every bonus with a DK-barrel and only found one on Orang-Utan-Gang (there is one in Millstone Mayhem and one in Vulture Culture, none of them work for the warp though). My idea was to do the split-up trick inside the bonus and exiting the bonus the same time. I tested it and it worked. But I later found out that Donkey didn't jump long enough to be able to get to that bonus while at the same time holding air and I tried a long time trying to come up with some good idea but wasn't able to. I eventually came up with the idea to try to hold a barrel with an animal and eventually found a way (a very difficult way by having barrel with exact position and grabbing it and mounting an animal the same time) but later Tompa and I found an easier way by just rolling on a steel keg and jump off it while under an animal.
(More text than I expected, sorry for that)

The original bonus warp glitch is done by first doing the hold air glitch which will make your game believe you are holding Sprite ID#x even though it has already been destroyed, allowing you to 'hold' the bonus. Whenever you will throw your object, certain values these objects have will be changed. When you are holding a bonus opening, the adress that is supposed to be the X-position of the barrel relative to your character is instead the exit ID value which will allow you to warp to different other exits. However, as the X-position value is a 2-byte signed value, it will crash on negative values (due to second adress will be 255).
However, when you exit a warp with two characters at once (either by doing the Delayed fade out death or doing split-up in a bonus with a DK-barrel) it will then (I have no idea why) interpret the exit value as a signed value and interpret 250, for example, as 5. This allows us to warp to many other exits otherwise not possible. The only place where this is possible, is that specific bonus on Orang-utan-gang and the only way for Donkey to get there while holding air, is with expresso.
For a full list of exits and what action is needed to warp there, please see: http://www.scribd.com/doc/52062294/Exits

All of the glitches from the previous run returns to this one, as well as a few new. I'll only list the new stuff here though, if you want to know the rest, go to my old submission.

Enter an already finished level, throw a DK barrel (Must have one Kong only) and press start+select before it hits the ground. Then you enter a level, get hit and have the monkey fall down a pit. If you die above solid ground, Donkey/Diddy will freeze and you have to reset the game. when you have done that correctly, enter any level and break a DK barrel. You'll now be able to control both monkeys simultaneously, instead of one following the other. The game will focus on the monkey that came out from the barrel and it's only him that can die from enemies, enter/exit bonuses/levels etc.

A pretty simple glitch to perfom. Throw a steel barrel and jump on. Make sure that you have put the animal in the path where the barrel is going. When you reach the animal, press B+Y. You'll pick up the barrel and land on the animal at the same time. Keep holding Y the whole time afterwards. If you release Y, the animal will turn into the monkey you are riding with. The effect will go out when the animal gets hit, you jump or enter a bonus. When you are riding with a barrel, you can activate the invis barrel glitch and then reach the bonus with the DK-barrel in it.

As I must have Donkey alone to throw the DK-barrel, it will be much faster to play the level as him. Nothing more to say.

It was tested to die in Orang-utan Gang as well. But then you are forced to play the whole level from the beginning, and that was slower than to backtrack.
Pretty simple to do. Roll down the edge and jump to get killed.

This level became quite tricky. First off is the Manky Kongs. I'm delaying to spawn and then unspawn the barrel that Manky throws. I'm moving faster than the rolling barrels so I would have been killed by it otherwise.
The next part is Expresso. You are unable to activate the glitch on the second platform because of the bouncing from the steel barrel. The Klap Trap was also annoying. If you are any further to the right, you'll have the Klap Trap killed by the barrel when I'm picking it up, which would have ruined the glitch.
I had to delay a little in order to "hold" the bonus. Once I'm approaching it, I release Y and the bonus opens up. If you are too close to the bonus you'll get the wrong value. While inside you just have to get the barrel to appear as soon as possible, pick it up and throw. You have a 1-2 frames (Don't ermember) to exit the bonus. If you do it too early, Diddy won't be able to exit and too late, Donkey won't be able to exit.
28821 frames ahead at the start of Manic Mincers.

A nice side-effect of this warp was that Diddy had Expresso at the start of the level. This happens if you've done the split up glitch and the inactive character is riding the animal. There also has to be an animal box somewhere in the level you warp to for this to work.
This level become very easy to do with Expresso. No need to slow down anywhere and no hard parts! I'm jumping off Expresso near the end to roll into the enemies. As rolling throwing enemies speeds you up more than Expresso's running.
440 frames saved.

By not having two monkeys, I'm able to save about 10 frames between each stage, yay. It also saves time in many of the levels to only have one monkey with you, as it often reduces the lag. For this level, I came up with several faster strategies that saved a few frames here and there. Good stuff
10 frames saved.

Again, some time saved from small optimising as well as having no Donkey Kong. When I did the Jumproll this time, I managed to be higher up in the air. Meaning I wouldn't stop at the smallest platform as I did in my previous run, this saved some time.
44 frames saved.

This was probably the most annoying one to work with. The beginning with the Klumps is very hard to get perfected. One reason is that you often get lag when killing enemies, so being slightly slower may result in you hitting the enemy a frame later, but as you don't get any lag you may be ahead afterwards. I knew it would be possible to avoid the lag with the klumps, so I tried many many combinations of rolling before until I managed to do it.
The rest is basically the same with a few changes to save time. In the middle of the jumproll, I pass a lot of Gnawties on platforms. In the old run I got 11 frames of lag there, because of Donkey Kong, and this time I got it down to only one, yay.
16 frames saved.

Stupid bird. As I have to break the DK-barrel. Time was actually lost here. Not counting that, I think I saved one frame because of less lag or something
32 frames lost.

Just wasting time doing "nothing" during this 2 minutes long fight. I even managed to save a frame, yay!
1 frame saved.

Nach: Didn't we just have a DKC run which beat the previous by many minutes? Nice going pushing that even further. Accepting.

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