FLASHING WARNING
The screen abruptly changes colors when a bullet bounces off of anything. This bouncing also tends to be fairly rapid. There's also rapid color flashing at the end of the movie for the victory fanfare. Viewer discretion is advised.
Introduction
After making the first submission I looked around for any information about the game. It was there I came across The Odyssey2 Homepage's Spotlight article that had an interesting bit of info:
Phantom Bullet - When a round ends, a short series of musical tones plays, then the screen resets to a new round, with the players in their starting positions. A bullet fired right before the next round screen sets up will sometimes carry over into the next screen, often with fatal results. With practice, you can shoot your opponents before they get a chance to move!
I had to verify if that was something that was actually true for myself. Seeing as this submission is being made, it in fact was a real trick that can save time in a TAS as well as piss off the other player in a real PVP situation.
Run notes
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.10
- O2Hawk core
- Genre: shooting
- Single player mode, player 2 side
- A little bit of RNG manipulation
Game mechanics
I'm going to save time and suggest reading the first version's submission notes for some prior information before the new discoveries. The new discoveries will be discussed below.
Phantom bullet
This one was recorded by The Odyssey2 Homepage and I can elaborate further. If a shooting input is timed right such that the gun is about to fire before round transition, the bullet appears on the next round rather than being culled. This requires precise timing that isn't always possible due to frame rules involving when the gun can be used. That being said, I managed to get this off twice in this TAS, saving a lot of extra time.
Map RNG manipulation
Shooting a bullet influences how the next round's map is generated. By shooting extra bullets after getting a point, I can generate more favorable maps that allow for points to be earned on earlier shooting frame rules via ricocheting bullets off of more favorable trees or getting better lines of sight. Note that shooting a bullet adds a lag frame but generally the tradeoff is worth it.
Possible improvements
- Getting more of the phantom bullets without trading off extra time to get them set up would save even more time, gun frame rules permitting
- Get the RNG to generate more favorable maps
Suggested screenshot
Frame 950, the red gunman aiming their gun at the red tree and about to get a free next round.