"Finished" world 3. I completed the world, but I'm feeling like I can save more time, so I'm going to back through and try some stuff. I also really rushed at the end, so I'm going to go back through that.
I tried using death again at the first screws. I found I lost 185 frames from respawning, and 5 from death warping (I was moved back a little). After that, I used the invincibility from respawning to avoid the first screw, and took a hit on the second, saving ~100 frames. On the way back the timing of the screws let me completely avoid the left screw, and I took a hit on the right screw. I ended up ~12 frames behind if I had just avoided the screws, but I still had one hit point. I used that last one on a screw near the end, which would have taken 47 frames to avoid, meaning I saved ~35 frames. Looks like death was a good choice.
I end the level with one hit point, but I'm thinking of dying again on the screws near the bottom to give me more hit points for the next levels (most likely world 5), I just need to really make sure I can make up for the respawn time.
Other interesting things, I found kicking changes my hit box, letting me grab items sooner than if I didn't kick. I saved 11 frames grabbing the third machine part using a kick. I would have saved another 11 getting the first, but it threw off the timing of the screws. I did end up using it though to save a few frames and get me out of that area faster. It makes me wonder if I could have kicked in level one to grab the bomb. No way I'm going back now to fix it, but I'll definitely try it on world 5.
Also, not having the gun (or the ID card) made a noticeable decrease in the time. You can really see it when I use the machine parts, it only takes 4 menu accesses compared to the 8 it took in my previous attempt. It also took 2 less to get the boots out at the beginning of the level. Each access is 77 frames, so I saved 462 frames, ~8 seconds just from that.
And apparently they REALLY want you to have the gun in this game, since on one of the screens I don't visit there is another gun waiting to be taken.
And the WIP I posted a few days ago was 33333 frames, this one is 43333 frames. Epic.
