Submission #6650: EZGames69 & Juarez's Genesis Doom Troopers: Mutant Chronicles "2 players" in 06:02.82

Finally after a long tiresome experience of learning 2 player tasing and RNG annoyances, I give you Doom Troopers

Doom Troopers is a game where if instead of having Donkey Kong characters exist in the DKC world, it was gory violent soldiers, and also on Genesis.

This is a 333 frame improvement to Juarez's last submission. this time though the movie is on bizhawk, which only has a difference of 4-5 extra frames of input needed for emulation differences.

I ended up using some of Juarez's inputs after getting frustrated with some rng cycles not being in my favor. I did the best I could to optimize his inputs as much as possible, though some cases I couldn't do it due to it causing different RNG patterns.

There is not much to explain here other than the end of the first stage. in order to cross you have to shoot enemies and land on their corpes, I try to shoot them an land on them on the first possible frame that there is walk able land.

The 2nd Stage just has mines and stuff to dodge, if you notice I am jumping alot in this stage. every time you land after a jump you lose about a frame, but if you bunny hop on the first possible frame you can jump, you can avoid that. there are some areas in later stages where I dont do the bunny hop either because it isnt worth it or it affects RNG. For the majority of the game I try to make the player in front do bunny hopping as much as possible.

for this first boss you have to shoot the bones back at him, however some bones he throws does not get knocked back, so I do some RNG manipulation to get consistent knockbackable bones.

This stage introduces secret bonuses, going into these bonuses and leaving them takes you farther into the level than just walking through them normally.

for the 2nd area, the bonus is avaliable if you shoot a falling rock into an electric door, this saves almost half the stage.

for the boss, his drone that he sends out is the only thing that can damage him, and it will only damage him if you shoot it. however wether or not the drone goes near the boss is completely rng, the path was manipulated to be as close to him as possible, and this resulted in a death of player 1 to get a good rng pattern. I am sure this can be done faster but honestly it was hard enough as it was to get this pattern.

the first area has wind that can push you up or to the side, this is useful to get to areas faster or unable to reach. This is also a stage that is really frustrating with RNG due to areas with falling objects. I had to really focus on getting a good pattern in order to jump though them without getting hit. we grab a weapon powerup for player 1 that will be used for the boss and the next area. There was also a glitch I found that allowed me to avoid grabbing a ledge near the end, if you get the player on the top of the screen, and use the other player to move the screen upward, you can skip the ledge grab all together, this saved 2 seconds.

the 2nd area has a few things you need to shoot to continue, a switch that is located in one of the wind turbines lets player one go through doors. we also make the 2nd player grab a weapon power up for the boss. There is a ball like thing that needs to be destroyed in order to finish the level.

for the boss, his pattern is hard to predict, he will either shoot in the air or if you are close enough, try to kick him. sometimes you can shoot him repeatedly without him doing any of these actions.

Another area with falling object rng annoyance. this is one area that Juarez was able to get a good cycle on, so I borrowed his inputs for it and optimized everything else.

The 2nd area we need to grab powerups for both players to kill the final boss faster, unfortunately they are somewhat out of the way to get but they are needed to do a quick kill on the boss.

For the final boss he has 2 phases, one where you destroy the medallion in the middle before you can see him un-darkened. once he shows himself to you, there is a certain amount of times you can damage him at once. ending input is done so the last homing missile shot will do the final blow.

This is as good as you can get this game until we have a better understanding of RNG for bosses, for being such a short game, it really took alot to get it finished. This was also an interesting experience to do 2 Player tasing for once, not sure if I want to do it again soon, I need a break.

I'd like to thank Juarez for his previous submissions, even though they weren't fully optimized, he still managed to show me tricks that were useful for this run, this submission would not be possible without him.

Thanks to MemoryTAS for finding out that landing after a jump causes a frame loss

I’d also like to thank r57shell for making a really helpful lua script that showed enemy hitboxes, health, collision boxes, bullet paths, and more!

Thank you and I hope you enjoyed.

ThunderAxe31: Judging.

ThunderAxe31: All right, it seems optimized. Gameplay appears relatively fast-paced and audience liked it. Accepting for Moons.

feos: Pub.

ThunderAxe31: Setting to Delayed, in view of an hypothetical improvement.

ThunderAxe31: File replaced with a 208 frames improvement, and accepting again.

feos: There's no "The" in the game or on the official covers. Also Pub.