TASVideoAgent, or Bisqwit himself, or someone else wrote:
>Nuts & Milk is a platform game deriving influences from a number of famous Nintendo games, including Mario Bros. (green and red fireballs), Donkey Kong Jr. (spring platforms, jumping from ladder to ladder and fruits) and Wrecking Crew (barrels). And as Kirby shows us, nothing can go wrong when you start with pink blobs.
This movie is a small improvement of 821+94=915 frames faster i.e. about 00:15.22 seconds to the published movie by the same author.
Note: The submission file has been updated once with a 94-frame improvement on Round 48.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: FCEUX 2.1.4a
- Finishes the game as fast as possible
- Acquires PERFECT ending (completes all bonus rounds without failing)
- Acquires all fruits in all bonus rounds (not required for PERFECT ending)
- Plays in the hardest mode (mode B)
- Abuses programming errors in the game
- Manipulates enemy movements (which seem to be deterministic)
- Uses no warps
- Uses no level editor (for the concept, see this demo)
Tricks
Wall-Jump Tricks
Some wall-jumps requires your character to be positioned at odd x-coordinates which can be only reached with stepping off a cliff and bump into a wall or doing a short-jump and bump into a ceiling 1 block high.
Wall-Jump & Double Wall-Jump
Under a ceiling corner, short-jump outwards, and jump after 8 frames again.
Your character will begin to fall after 2 frames. You may wall-jump for the second time at this frame.
Long Wall-Jump
Requires odd x-coords.
Under a ceiling corner, long-jump outwards, and jump after 8 frames again.
This is an old trick found and has been used since my previous movie.
High Wall-Jump
Requires odd x-coords.
Under a ceiling corner, jump outwards, run left or right 8 after frames and jump after 2 more frames again.
This is not used in this movie.
Triple Wall-Jump
Requires odd x-coords and a ceiling that is at least 2 blocks tall.
Under a ceiling corner, jump outwards, jump after 8 frames, jump after 2 more frames and jump after 2 even more frames again.
This is new in this movie.
Other Movement Tricks
Recover from Stun without Jumping up
In order to recover from the stun from falling down a long distance, the jump button (A or B) has to be pressed down after a fixed period. This usually causes the pink hero to jump in positon as well. The jump can be avoided in two ways:
- By falling down onto a rope ladder. You can't jump on a rope ladder.
- By holding down the jump button since the last time you are on the ground. This is new in this movie.
Zip on Rope Ladders
You may seize to and start to climb up or down on a rope ladder even before you get to the middle point between the two ropes. When you are climbing up or down a rope ladder from its leftmost or rightmost tile block, the game will set your x-coord to a value aligned to the ladder's x-coord, centring you at the ladder horizontally, which effectively makes you zip on the ladder horizontally.
Enemy Movement Manipulation Tricks
You may manipulate the enemies to perform some favourable movements.
Keep on Going Forward after You Jump over Them
If you perform a successive jump after jumping over your enemies, they are likely to ignore you and keep going on. Whether this happens depends on your cycles (2 frames) and and theirs (3 frames).
Stall Another Enemy Passing-by
If two enemies are walking/climbing past each other toward opposite directions, one (depending on their order in the memory?) will be stalled at position until the other one gets past.
Quickly Fall Down into Water upon Round Completion
This animation costs quite some time as long as the enemies are falling. This can and should be minimized by manipulating the enemies to get to the water surface as close as possible before the you complete the round.
Note: On Rounds 32, a longer route was chosen over the shortest one for this very reason.
Comments
Some Stage-by-Stage Comments
Round 01
It is possible to use the level editor from the title menu to shorten this round as demonstrated before. However, that would confict with the rational of collecting all fruits in all rounds, and is therefore denied.
Round 09
I spent some frames to manipulate the enmy's movement and saved time in the end.
Round 11
I simply mistimed the shortest route in my previous movie. The mistake is corrected this time.
Round 12
There is no fast way to prevent the upper enemy from either respawning after drowing or simply following me up. The former situation is faster than the later and presented in this movie.
Round 16
The solution of this round including the manipulation to lure the enemy to fall into the water was the excatly same as in my previous movie.
Round 23
I do have acquired the last banana. The scores may prove this.
Round 24
In my previous movie, I stated that the two trampolines were too far away from the house and two successive bounces on them would stun my pink blob when it landed in front of the house. However afterwards, I found it barely possible to land slightly inside the house, and that saved quite some time.
Round 29
Any way to manipulate the upper enemy to jump down earlier would be unfortunately slower in the end.
Round 32
It would be a shorter route to go left after falling down to the lowest floor. However, taking that route would also cause the enemy to be positioned at a great height above the water level, which would cost quite some time at the end. Therefore, the second shortest route was instead taken in this movie, which turned out to be the fastest as the enemy was positioned right on the water surface when the Round was finished.
Round 37
It would be slower to zip on the leftmost ladder because that would delay my landing.
Roung 39
The edge-collsion abuse leads to this new interesting strategy. Enemy manipulations were perfect.
Round 41
This new strategy is exactly as fast as the old strategy. I just intended to make it look different.
Round 44
The enemy was manipulated to stay on the lowest floor at the cost of several frames. This saved time in the end.
Round 45
It is amazing that I was able to save time so much time even on such a seemingly straight-forword stage.
Round 46
Again, it is amazing that I was able to save time so much time even on such a seemingly straight-forword stage.
Round 48
This was the first place where the newly discovered Triple Wall-Jump Glitch could be used to save time.
Round 49
There is no enough time to get the fruit on the lower-left, jump back up the second floor and avoid the enemy there before it goes down the floor. The Triple Wall-Jump Glitch saved time again.
Thanks
Special thanks to Hisatoki for the solutions of Rounds 11 and 39.
DarkKobold: I'll take care of this.
DarkKobold: Easily accepting, nice improvement.
klmz: I have replaced the submission file with an updated one that improves Round 48 by 94 frames. Sorry for the trouble.