Goals
Heavy luck manipulation
This TAS aims to be added as a separate branch to the existing one. The puzzle mode has a different set of levels compared to the time attack mode, which was what theenglishman did.
This TAS was made because there were no good resources about the puzzle mode of Snood online, so I attempted to fix this by making this TAS.
How the RNG manipulation was done in this TAS
So far, we found 2 things that can affect the RNG.
1. Varying the number of collisions that the balls make (including both the collisions on the walls and sticking to another ball or the ceiling).
2. Waiting.
Unlike what theenglishman thought 13 years ago, you can manipulate the first 2 tiles that you get at the beginning of every level. You just have to do it in the gameplay portion of the previous level, as waiting before the level transition while "Win!" is displayed does nothing to the RNG. Same goes for waiting on the pause screen or in the main menu.
The tiles you get to shoot are generated on the frame that they become visible in the queue.
The rules that determine when power-ups spawn (the wild card and the exploding rock) are still unknown. These special balls are also incredibly rare. Therefore, the only time I really got some in this TAS where in level 42 (a level where it's required to get one, and was only completed after banging my head against a wall for multiple hours), and whenever I happened to get one for free. A deeper understanding of the RNG function to force these tiles to show up on demand would certainly save lot of time (probably around 10-30 seconds), most notably in the levels 36 and 47, where clearing skulls would remove the need to do unnecessary shots to lower the ceiling.
Special thanks
TheBreadghost: for showing me the game and giving me the motivation to make this TAS by attempting to beat this game mode as part of his Gameboy Advance console challenge.
Souzooka: for attempting to figure out how the RNG works in this game.
Lightmopp, Mannix86 and NicoPlaysThings: for keeping me awake and interested in making this TAS by being in a Discord call with me while I was TASing.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: I've been doing some research on this game to make sure that my final decision will be accurate. Here are some details that I have figured out.
Speedrun.com failed to show me all of the game modes. Because of that, I originally thought that the branch name was "loosely" used. So I checked the submission, by theenglishman, where I loaded up this old VBA emulator to find out how "Time Attack" came into the picture. Basically...that submission is one of 4 game types, found in the options menu:
- Puzzle
- Time Attack
- Journey
- Classic
g0goTBC's submission passed the menu options, and went straight into the game...which looked similar to the only other publication of this game. So...now that I am clear on this, I can now pass judgement.
With no feedback to go on, I can only see that this run looks good. I tried comparing it with the older TAS to see if the optimization matches up...and from what I see, its very well done. It also has a clear ending, which demonstrates a completed game.
Accepting.
despoa: Processing...