Submission #6773: Flip's Genesis Disney's Aladdin in 09:30.42

This is an improvement of 2064 frames (34.44s) over my previous movie from 2017.

When taking penultimate damage, Aladdin pauses for a split second, which for some reason can also be used to 'charge' jumps so to speak, for a nice boost to velocity. This can be used to extend jump height from 67 to 85, which can be large enough to overcome certain intended obstacles, allowing new skips. However, it does mean that we need to plan our HP management to force ourselves onto 1 HP at the opportune moment, and that they'll be no spare health afterwards for any invincibility frames, and so the use is limited, but powerful.

The standard setup for skidding requires running for a continuous 40 frames, with any form of interaction resetting the skid timer. Aladdin needs to remain in his running animation in order for this to function, which means that this is lost when jumping, turning around corners, attacking an enemy, sinking in trees/genie trails etc. What has been discovered though, is that doing a sword/jump on the same frame will effectively fool the game into thinking that he's still in his running animation when airborne, allowing a skid to be stored and thus can still be activated upon landing. The accumulated skid will be lost if it isn't activated immediately, and the airtime itself will only contribute anything towards the 40 frame counter if the jump has a medium sized drop it seems. Thus this only allows extra skids when dropping down into lower areas, otherwise it can only be used to delay a skid which has already been accumulated.

Gained 13 frames preserving skids around the zigzag stairs, and also generated a few more skids on the upper section of the level by using Sword Jumps whenever diving into pits. Sword Jumps were not used at the lowest section of the level, as guard behaviour would not allow a favourable pattern to get through.

Both emulator versions and frame counter causes differences with guard behaviours, which means slightly different strategies have to be used each time we do this level (or any pack of guards for that matter). More smooth activating of scarab #2 was done by doing a sword slash through the air, which was made possible thanks to a quick pause earlier for camera manipulation to make the scarab load at a more convenient time.

Slightly better first banister. Sword Jumps were used to land on the black genie jar, and to enter the Gazeem fight. The fight itself was improved by a few frames thanks to better positioning, and the quick zigzag to collect the flute was put to good use this time. By using a jump slash for storage, we can store and release a skid to be used in the correct direction. The Razuul fight was also improved, by ending the fight with a sword slash for double apple damage and eliminating one jump cycle. This can only be used at the end sadly, as the larger jumps required in order to slash him don't give enough time to jump back.

There are many sections here where we're forced to wait for periodic platforms, and unfortunately a few extra skids isn't fast enough to beat the cycles, and so this is the perfect time to introduce our new Tall Jumps. Many platforms are deliberately designed to be just barely too high to reach, but can now be accessed with our new glitch, assuming we have a damage source available to activate it. The only one which can get close enough to us when midair on platforms, is of course the nearby exploding skeletons. Their various explosion patterns can be shuffled through by manipulating the loading/unloading of nearby actors, which were searched until a favourable one was found. The load range of the skeletons and the bones themselves is quite small, so we need a pattern which flings a bone to a desirable location, but which also allows enough time to race to the location before the bone arrives. Doing this allowed for two 256 frame cycles to be skipped, at the cost for 1 extra lag frame for a nice total of 511 frames saved.

The biggest saving of the run, we can use our new Tall Jumps to simply bypass the annoying time-waste-of-a-boss. It's just a simple matter of jumping out of the boss pit, to go and claim our prize.

Using new Sword Jumps, got a few more skids, so I managed to actually beat the rock cycle this time for a saving of 20 frames. Later on in the level it may appear as if there was an opportunity for another skid, but doing so messes up the boulder despawn glitch.

On rails, as it always will be. Don't expect any improvements here.

The balloons spawns are based on the global timer, and so no improvements can be found in the first section. Secondly, the growing hand platforms which you see are also on the global timer, which dictates when they become tangible. This means that the new frames gained through extra skids would otherwise be negated, as the previous strategy was to simply wait. Instead, these platforms are skipped by using sword hitbox extension, to leap from the current platform from its extended edge, in order to skip them and to instead utilise the finger flickers in order to get by.

Favourable RNG meant a guard despawn after Abu for a few frames saved, and a better landing on the final floor saved a few more. The Iago fight was also improved by 4 frames, by not prioritising killing a nearby ghost, and 7 frames arbitrarily saved loading.

More effort was put into collecting heart pieces for extra HP, as skidding through the guards using invincibility frames is a valuable tool.

ThunderAxe31: Judging.

ThunderAxe31: Accepting as improvement over the current publication.

feos: Publishing...