Encode
Abstract
By using a not before featured technique, the previous record gets improved by 34 frames.
Game Objective
- Beat the first stage of the game
- Aims for earliest input end
Strategy
The new technique is an easily executable horizontal size-change of the player (="cannon"). It is done by toggling the difficulty-switch.
A short explanation (citation) from a forum post which i wrote in december of last year:
[The size-change] alone probably wouldn't change much for us [...], but the important part is, that the cannon isn't centered at the middle (where the lazer-shots come from), but at the very left of the sprite, thus pushing the lazer-shot-origin slightly to the right when expanding - which turns out to be very powerfull :)
Possible Improvements
Finding out (mathematically) which order of shooting the invaders (within one column / within two columns / all together) is optimal will probably help (i haven't done it). This seems rather hard, as the timing (bullet fired until invader killed) changes as the invaders come further down to the ground, so one has to account for all different kinds of scenarios. I thing bruteforcing through a simulation of the game (similar to what Chef_Stef did in [3943] NES Arkanoid "warpless" by Chef Stef in 11:11.18) might do the trick (more easily).
slamo: Replaced movie with a 12 frame improvement, and judging!
slamo: Good improvement! Accepting over the current publication.
despoa: Processing...