Submission #5467: Flip's Genesis James Pond 3: Operation Starfish in 29:08.33

In Bubble-oh-seven's third game, our villain Dr.Maybe has amassed a rat army to pillage the treasure of the moon. Or more specifically, the stiltonium found inside of the moon's cheese. To destroy his operations, we need to clear out all his mines, as well as blowing up all his stiltonium machines. Trying to defeat the final boss without these will simply result in him bragging that his mines are still up, and the game not actually completing.

Hitbox Rotation : While jumping around certain corners, you may notice Pond maintains his rotational movement, which really messes up his hitbox. It results in him being able to pass through thin walls, but only during the limited time frame that it takes for him to do one complete revolution. Obviously in order for this to be useful, we need a potential wall to use as a shortcut, a nearby corner to trigger the glitch, as well as enough speed to transfer through it in sufficient time. As such, only ~2 levels can benefit from this.

Ceiling Clips: Dropping an object beneath you while at the height of your jump will cause Pond to stand on it, which can be used for an additional jump point. Trying to do this while against a ceiling will wedge Pond inside, while still allowing some basic movement. We can accelerate both left and right, and in this glitched state can even pass through certain walls.

TNT Preservation: In many spots, you will see TNT packs used to destroy the environment to create entrance ways, yet it turns out that the TNT explosion itself is not responsible. The ground has its own separate hitbox, which extends above that of the TNT pack. This means careful timing with dynamite can open up the pathways without the corresponding explosion. This saves both time, and health.

This is an improvement of 17072 frames (4m:44s) over the previous submission. Improvements are from better speed preservation, proper acceleration to the ground during jumps, proper fuse timing, level resets, and a nice overworld reroute. Each level can only finish periodically every 4 frames, and thus that is the smallest improvement which can be shown for each level. Collecting the blue minimap token will provide extra routes to hidden levels, needed for proper overworld routing and to actually access the ones with the necessary stiltonium machines. Most levels get completed simply by reaching the exit, but certain ones require you to find the 4 teacups before it becomes active. Naturally this is only done when necessary. Both the minimap, and teacups will remain collected if you choose to reset the level, which helps in a few places.

Jumped into land mass to project forwards.

Better speed preservation

Faster speed boost to ignore dynamite at the end,

Shorter jumps for more ground acceleration

Alas, the only one without room for improvement. Too short, and would need 2 frames to catch the next load period.

Climbing the final section is faster than doing a huge air jump to get there.

This level took a new detour to get the minimap icon hidden above the treetops. This gives access to a nearby level Murky Moors, and although we don't need to actually visit there, it provides an exit route after More Murky Moors to prevent us needing to enter The Wolds and completing those levels. !

Umbrella kept for longer to reach the final exit faster

First use of hitbox rotation, to get into the map chamber without opening up the door. There's no place to use the same glitch to get out, but thankfully resetting the level will keep our collectibles.

Proper bomb timing, and forwards projection on the way back to the exit.

TNT Preservation saves waiting for each explosion, or getting hurt to pass through them.

More TNT Preservation saves even more time and HP

More use of Hitbox Rotation, to get to the TV through the main wall. We can't do this on the way back sadly, as there won't be enough speed to reach the wall from the opposite corner.

Extra dynamites were used, with fuses timed properly to minimise waiting periods.

Collected a better dynamite at the start, and saved HP from previous levels means we don't have to collect the two stars here.

Using a series of jumps down the shallow slope gained us enough horizontal momentum to skip landing in the ditch first.

Faster use of portals

We now skip the Funghi boss, as well as the Nether levels. Instead, we need to take a trip through Fruit Falls and use this route as the entrance to The Wolds as opposed to the exit. This does mean we require a brand new level, but it skips doing 4 others.

Boulders used to destroy enemies rather than jumping around them

Ceiling Glitch used to go through the door, as opposed to the actual dynamite explosion.

Better speed control, but lost time getting to the red cup as the periodic jumping fish proved suboptimal.

Used a better combination of damage/jumping to get through the dangerous section, and used a buggy launch of the rocket to ascend faster.

Dynamite grabbed first at the start. Using the 1 tonne weight gives too much momentum to stop ourselves, so an enemy is used, and managed to squeeze Pond into a thin sliver in the level which causes him to fall straight through.

The umbrella is used for longer, to give extra acceleration in the big cup and as a faster route to the orange teacup.

Here's the ceiling glitch shown in all its glory, with actually enough time to view it.

Faster launch of the rocket, and simply resetting to get back to the start rather than navigating the long tunnel.

Momentum control to reach orange teacup faster.

Firstly we stay on the top floor longer, to get a dynamite respawn. This allows us to start more than one fuse on all future floors, saving time all the way down, and finally topping it off with a ceiling glitch to skip the bottom floor entirely.

Better bomb timing, giving better poison bottles timing to go through.

Used an earlier rocket, skipping messing around with the bushes.

All jumping paths basically converge, only a few frames saved to be 1 loading cycle sooner.

The upper regions get used for more speed boosts, and a faster route to the exit.

More speed boosts, and glitched through spikes for more ground acceleration.

Project forward off of spikes, and getting hurt to run through the giants is faster than jumping over each one.

Another short level, minimal improvement possible.

Faster rocket launch, and better speed conservation.

Better bomb timing allowed us to maintain speed throughout

Rather than using the vertical jump just to get to the top of the hill it gets extended to give us extra height for enough momentum to jump to the minimap without the annoying balloon nonsense.

A slightly better opening and better position at the end with which to throw the weight further and thus end input earlier.

feos: Accepting as an incredibly boring notable improvement over [1018] Genesis James Pond 3: Operation Starfish "best ending" by Flip in 33:50.62, inheriting the Who Cares Vault tier.

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