Iros was a game made for the Uzebox in 2017 by one Lawrence Brooks. It was inspired by Technos' Solar-Warrior, and features both platforming and shmup sections. Your quest is to defeat the five knights of Iros, as they have stolen your powerups and ran off like the little cowards they are.
All planets are similar, all containing basic enemies and deadly things that fall from the sky/eyes/ceilings. Sometimes you need to slow down in order to dodge the falling projectiles, but it's not too bad. Enemies give you points when killed, which are tallied at the end of the stage, so avoiding killing unnecessary enemies is key (this also goes for the shmup stages). In the platforming stages, you have to get to the right of the screen, where one of the knights will appear, insult you, and attempt to kill you. You can vaporize them pretty quickly and you can go inside their hitbox and rapidly shoot them. After each knight is killed, your weapon is upgraded, giving you a different shot every time. Most of them shoot straight, except for one which has a ball shoot out diagonally up or down, similar to the weapon in the shmup section. It is hard to hit the knights with this projectile, but I've done the best I can in that regard.
The shmup sections mostly serve as a means to go from planet to planet, to kill all 5 knights. After they are dead, however, there is an ending shmup section where you need to destroy some turrets and a mass of glowing balls. The ship you fly has two projectiles; a straight forward pink blast that fires forward, and a silver ball which fires diagonally up or down alternatingly. The silver ball does more damage than the pink blast, but here's the thing. They are both under the shoot button, and are always shot in a cycle. pink, pink, silver. This means if I want to start shooting the bottom turrets with a diagonal down silver shot, at most I have to waste five other shots before I reach the place I'm gonna shoot from. Other than that, I think everything else is self-explanatory. This TAS and description was made by enderpal7, and thank you for giving it a look!
Submission Update:
enderpal7's second version of the run shaved 80 frames off the original, but I still felt there were more that could be squeezed out. So I dug into this more deeply and helped further improve the run. I was able to reduce the frame count by an additional 128 frames for a total savings of 208 frames over the original publication.
TAS Notes
- Shooting in any stage (space shooter or platforming) will delay the end of the stage.
- In space shooter stages, shooting delays the appearance of the end-stage score tally box, making these stages essentially just fly arounds. The ship must be to the far right to complete these stages.
- In platforming stages, shooting before the final boss delays when his initial text box disappears allowing the battle to begin. This is not always avoidable.
- The enemies of the first 3 platforming stages are unique to their stage (Turrets-1, Spiders-2, Bats-3). Beginning in the 4th Platforming stage, all of these enemies return.
- Where these enemies appear is mostly set by the stage layout. Though they can occasionally be despawned outright with well-timed jumps. This was only useful one or two times.
- Which enemy appears at the prescribed spot is RNG based and able to be manipulated. Delaying a frame of movement before the enemy's spawn on-screen will cycle to the next enemy type. Delaying a second frame will cycle to the third option. This was used to avoid enemies being in the way of jumps (primarily bats) during the last two platforming stages. It also occasionally helped with damage control.
- Similar to enemies in platforming stages, those in the 4th and 5th space stages are combinations of the enemies of the first 3.
- If a boss is airborne when killed, the stage won't end until his explosion "lands." Similarly, the end will be delayed if the player is airborne when the boss is defeated. (These are not always unavoidable)
- On the final boss, there are two projectile types that the ship fires.
- The balls are stronger and fly at an angle, the beams are weaker and fly straight. This discrepancy in damage/direction is useful in managing to defeat the various turrets faster.
- It's not necessary to shoot beams at the topmost or bottom most turrets. This saves movement time and speeds up the fight.
Improvement breakdown
This chart breaks down where improvements occurred based on frames where events start/end.
| Event | Original | Revision 2 | Cumulative Saved (over original) | Revision 3 | Cumulative Saved (over v2) | Cumulative Saved (over original) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start | 357 | 352 | 5 | 352 | 0 | 5 |
| Stage 1 Tally Box | 3258 | 3249 | 9 | 3245 | 4 | 13 |
| Stage 2 Tally Box | 5600 | 5588 | 12 | 5579 | 9 | 21 |
| Stage 3 Tally Box | 8786 | 8773 | 13 | 8730 | 43 | 56 |
| Stage 4 Tally Box | 11149 | 11126 | 23 | 11072 | 54 | 77 |
| Stage 5 Tally Box | 14251 | 14223 | 28 | 14162 | 61 | 89 |
| Stage 6 Tally Box | 16644 | 16608 | 36 | 16547 | 61 | 97 |
| Stage 7 Tally Box | 19590 | 19559 | 31 | 19494 | 65 | 96 |
| Stage 8 Tally Box | 21959 | 21904 | 55 | 21840 | 64 | 119 |
| Stage 9 Tally Box | 24976 | 24921 | 55 | 24839 | 82 | 137 |
| Final Input | 27949 | 27869 | 80 | 27741 | 128 | 208 |
For publisher
The run ends on the final shot required to kill the end boss. The game will then progress through the end-story and go to a high-score screen to input one's initials. I've included this file which contains the input necessary to do so and return to the main title screen.
DrD2k9: Claiming for judging.
DrD2k9: Delayed pending potential improvements. If successful, I'll be requesting co-authorship.
DrD2k9: Encode/Submission notes updated, replacing movie file, adding myself as co-author, and resetting to new for someone else to judge.
ViGadeomes: Claiming for judging.
ViGadeomes: Everything seems good!
Accepting.
despoa: Processing...