Movie Info
- Emulator: libTAS v1.4.5
- Game: The Electric Shocktopus v1.0.3 (Linux)
- Steam Console Download Command: download_depot 521300 521303 4394415316310915070
Game objectives
- Category: Any%
- End Condition: The run is complete upon beating the final level, Magnetic Yeti!
Game Info
The Electric Shocktopus is an edutainment game focused around Electromagnetism and it's associated aspects. You play as the titular Shocktopus that possess the ability to generate an electric charge. This charge allows you to be effected by the other charges and fields in the levels. The players charge is a positive charge, so you will be repelled by positive charges and attracted to negative charges. You also possess the ability to stick to walls for an indefinite amount of time and jump from them at your leisure. There is only 1 jump height, so jumping for a single frame will make you elevate the same as holding the jump button, holding the jump button does cause the player to auto jump when they hit the ground.
The game runs at 30fps and seems to have 2 frames of input lag. Excluding the final level there is no RNG I am aware of, this allows me to optimize individual levels without risking de-sync, for the most part. I did occasionally have to shift things by a frame here and there. However the game does rarely have an additional frame at the very start of the movie which causes it to not progress past the Main Menu, this is very infrequent and can be resolved by launching the movie again. (In retrospect idk if this is an extra loading frame or just a libTAS thing, but it is not very common.)
Individual Level Comments
- After clearing the first level the game always has 3 levels unlocked until there are fewer than 3 uncleared. This means with the exception of the first and the last level the game allows you to skip any 2 levels entirely. After I did an all main levels TAS I used this to remove the 2 levels that ended up being the longest. The all main levels TAS will be uploaded here so if any optimizations are found in those to cause them to no longer be the longest then I will need to swap them around to accommodate.
- You can manually reset the level 31 frames before the loading animation finishes to get control earlier than normal. This can be done on every level and saves (31 * (45 - 2)) = 1,333 frames or 44.4333... seconds. However the final level is effectively an autoscroller. I do not know if the manual reset effects when the game decides to start the level motions.
I am tired and as such will be skipping over the more simple levels that only include TAS level applications of base game mechanics, i will be going over more unintended or interesting things.
Level 3. Van der Waal Jump
In this level I do a same sided wall jump. I do not now why this works, presumably from preserving some momentum with a wall jump very close to when you grab the wall. But if you jump within a few frames of landing on a wall and hold towards that wall you can gain some height, normally you fall back down to slightly lower than you started. This effect is seemingly only possible if you are doing it to scale a left facing wall after having just jumped from a right facing wall. Additionally if you hold charge while on the wall or around the time of the jump it will negate the effect. Possibly because the charge below if effecting your movement slightly it gets overwritten, I am unsure. I have been unable to replicate this trick to gain height on a right facing wall.
Level 7. With a Twist
This level introduces Magnetic Fields. These follow the Right Hand Rule, which converts your speed into a new relative direction while you are charging inside the field. You can tell what direction your speed will be converted to by looking at the arrows on the tile.
Down > Right
Right > Up
Up > Left
Left > Down
Later we are introduced to the field with the opposite direction as these, the conversion of speed direction is opposite to this one.
Level 8. Getting Around!
In this level I use the residual charge from down below to cause me to slightly gain height on the wall jumps instead of lose it to climb this wall and go straight to the end.
Level 9. Turn of Events
I break these boxes in a manner that allows me to bonk my head to have more gravity speed coming out of them.
Level 10. Greed
Spikes do not take a full tile of space. So you can stand next to them. I use this to skip having to go down and around.
I tried jumping from the bottom left wall at the start to the platform to get a wall jump off. I did a LOTAD and it ended up being slower by 14 frames. But that had to use slower techs given I didn't have the proper entry.
Level 13. Tremendo Jump
I charge near the end of the level for a slight boost from the charges below. (This is not included in the provided encode as I found it while writing this Authors Notes.) This saves 2 frames. (Upon closer look I do not know if this saves any time. I believe I get to the door faster but the movie file ended up being the same length as before I added it.) I do this occasionally in other levels as well for small frame saves.
Level 18. Flying Fish
There is nothing super fancy in this level but fuck did finding the inputs for that final charge fling take a while. To get a line to barely clip both corners without actually touching either.
Skipping Levels
Since I am able to skip any 2 levels I wish I skip level 20 and level 33. When I bring up the level menu I manually click the level page number to cause the level icons to update instantly rather than wait for them to slide on screen. So I press off the current page then back onto the wanted page, then I select the level.
Level 21. Temptation
I was unable to find a way to jump over the initial missiles without landing on the ground and having to jump again after. You cannot wall jump off the missile launcher tile either.
Level 24. Advanced Wall Jumping
It might be faster to jump down with optimal initial wall jumps and good management of wall jump + magnet field flings. But it ended up being faster for me to wait on the missiles to clear out the top boxes and jump down.
Level 26. Barrage
I time a jump to land in the missiles as 2 of them collide. This allows me to skip having to go around and possibly wait a cycle.
Level 45. Magnetic Yeti!
The final level and Boss of the game is basically a glorified auto scroller. What types of magnetic/charge thing appears on the walls is the only meaningful rng I am aware of, maybe when they shoot the missiles as well. But I didn't look too much into it. I was getting tired after making it this far so I abstained from the play around that would normally fill in this type of stuff. If someone else wants to add it and throw their name in an as additional author feel free. If you press G the player strums a guitar, maybe throw a Rick Roll or Rush E somewhere in there. Althouh I did jump through the missiles as they spawn for some swag, doesn't work on wave 3 though as the spikes now take up too much of the floor. I do a final wall jump to save a few frames via ending input early.
After the boss dies the game does a short animation which ends with a prompt to click to open the Level Editor page. However if you wait long enough it will progress on it's own. Since the credits are freely available on the main menu I feel finishing the level and seeing the congratulations is good enough to be the end of the game.
Possible improvements
Anything with the electric currents. They generate a dissipating magnetic field and I was getting pretty tired by the time I went back for finer tuned optimization. So the wall jumps and charge boosts are probably not optimal.
The missiles the final boss shoots. Idk if it's rng when they shoot but they track the player position. It might be possible to save some frames by being closer to the bosses killbox than I was able to get.
Screenshot Suggestions
5042
I hope I didn't miss anything important, but if I did you all know where to find me.
ikuyo: Claiming for judging.