Another night with too much free time. I started working on yet another game, and still haven't worked on the other ones I started a long time ago. All of them are just vault-worthy games though, including this one.
So Flink is a game I'm not sure many people know about. That's what I tend to TAS the most, so that people can see the game they've never heard of, or bothered to play. I'll most likely be posting way too much info about this game, and probably end up quitting, but I'll leave the info here for future reference.
00FFC7EF - xspeed
00FFC7F0 - xsub
00FFC7F3 - yspeed
00FFC7F4 - ysub
00FFC7E7 - xpos
00FFC7EB - ypos
I haven't tested these RAM addresses for the second world. Some games like to switch up the addresses for different levels, and make you do more work than you want to (Radical Rex).
The character moves rather slowly, but if you jump you can reach the normal running speed of 2, yes 2, much faster. Going down slopes is necessary but I haven't found a way to preserve your complete downhill speed. You lose speed over time if you keep running (even when jumping).
There are a couple areas where it seems to be a few pixels away from making a jump. In 1-2 the gap where you have to hang on to a vine is just such a jump. After going down the slope jumping almost reaches the ledge below, but I have found no way to do any boosting to your jump height, or run speed.
Tricks so far:
- Jumping at the end of the stage allows him to exit the top of the screen faster.
- Damage boosting.
.. That's about it so far. The game seems to be pretty well made.
I get a bit sloppy at the end, but it's okay for a test run. I made no attempt at really optimizing the boss fight. I'll do it right when I learn more about the game. The game has a magic system where you can use abilities after you mix ingredients. I haven't even began to experiment to see what these do. It's probably something I should consider looking into. Seems important.
By the way, I'm using Gens11a, cause I'm too lazy to mess with bizhawk.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/16392392711089938
Joined: 11/27/2004
Posts: 688
Location: WA State, USA
Exxonym wrote:
The character moves rather slowly, but if you jump you can reach the normal running speed of 2, yes 2, much faster. Going down slopes is necessary but I haven't found a way to preserve your complete downhill speed.
Have you tried to see if jumping while not holding forward works? It's an odd edge case that they might not have tested, so it might work. Truncated figured out that that worked in Batman and Robin (though in that case the calculated savings were minimal).
Nach wrote:
I also used to wake up every morning, open my curtains, and see the twin towers. And then one day, wasn't able to anymore, I'll never forget that.
So tonight I decided to continue the test run of this a little bit. Completed up to 2-3 and I've found a timesaver on level transition. Turns out if you just press a button to go to the current level flink is standing on, and THEN pressing the direction towards the new level, it skips him slowly floating to the new level on the map. I didn't use it up until the 2-3 transition, but it's something to do when doing a completely optimized version.
Here is some other info I found out, you need to beat all of the bosses in the game to open up the final boss. To do this, you need to make 3 magic spells:
Shrink (allows you to enter the Old Apple Tree stages)
Ingredients: Magic mirror, magic necklace, magic amulet
This spell is the reason I grabbed the magic necklace from the guy in 2-2, as it is the only level you can get it. Magic mirror and magic amulet can be obtained from 2-3, which is an autoscroller. Edit: I just noticed I grabbed the magic mirror instead of the magic necklace in 2-2.. Time to go back.
Ghost
Ingredients: Skull, Goblin's tooth, Magic Root.
all of these items can be found later
Platform
Ingredients: Eagle's Feather, Tiger's eye, eagle's feather
I'm not even sure if you actually NEED this one, the longplay I watched used it near the end of the game, but it looked like frame precise movements might be able to bypass it. I haven't gotten that far so I have no idea. If I need it it will probably be best to grab an eagle's feather in the first world.RT-55J wrote:
Have you tried to see if jumping while not holding forward works?
I did. Unfortunately no matter what you do, you lose your speed over time.
Aside from the room transition trick I just found, I know there are at least a couple places that can be improved, but will worry about that later on the rerun.
Here's the newest file up to 2-3:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/16881308928444540http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/16899943890784112
Fixed to get the magic necklace instead of the magic mirror.
Edit2: Okay, apparently the GameFAQ guide lied to me. You don't get magic mirror and magic amulet on 2-3 autoscroller. Instead you get Magic necklace and magic amulet. This makes collecting the magic necklace in 2-2 unnecessary, but I'll leave it in for the test run, and fix it later. The FAQ says there's an enemy carrying a magic mirror in 2-4, so I'll have to pick it up there for the time being to avoid backtracking. Who knows if it's even correct though, we'll see..
Yet another edit: Well ignore all the above... I forgot I still had my old save file from when I accidentally collected the magic mirror, which is in fact actually the correct decision.
So I finished the test run, and there are some sloppy moments for now, but would be easily fixed on a serious TAS playthrough. For now I'll post what I know that needs to be fixed, and you can see the full game, somewhat fast.
- Take the left route in 1-4, around the seesaw sections. Using the ropes is probably faster because it's closer to where I need to be to pick up the rock.
- More playaround in the autoscrollers. I didn't spend much time making the first and second autoscrollers interesting. In the world 2 autoscroller, I'm pretty sure you can manage to get throw that rock all the way to the end, which would be a little more entertaining.
- Staying on the leaves longer in 1-3 might be faster, at least for the ones that fall to the right. I believe it adds your speed to the leafs speed, but it doesn't show that in the RAM for flink's speed for some reason.
- Use the level transition trick on the overworld map on all the stages up to 2-3, in which I first figured it out.
- Didn't realize on the first run through of 2-5 that you could pick that platform up while it's falling instead of waiting around for it to slowly drift into place. I also didn't spend any time optimizing it on the 2nd visit to the stage.
- The platform spell I made is completely unnecessary. There is no point in the game where you need to get that high, nor is there anywhere that it would create a big enough shortcut, considering how long it takes to make a spell and cast it. Also, you can't get the tiger's eye until cloud stage 1 or mountain stage 5, which is very late in the game, so that minimizes areas it could be used. You only need the shrink spell and the ghost spell to complete the game.
- The gorilla boss in the Old Apple Tree world can most likely be manipulated to never jump across the screen, and in fact stand in place to make the fruits fall. In fact, I found that different inputs will affect where the throwable fruit will fall, and having it fall closest to him, at least for the last hit, will be most effective. I also thought about possibly leading on the little health items that fly towards you when you hit the boss, and try to avoid all of them until the fight was over. I'm not sure if that's possible but would be more entertaining.
- Might be possible to do the seesaw section a little faster, in the first world. I didn't spend too much time on it, but I did look for a super jump trick involving them for a while, with no luck.
- Boss Fights in general. First boss fight might be able to be a little bit faster, or at least a little bit more entertaining. For example, could keep both rocks inside his stilts until the fight is over. Second boss can possibly be killed in one cycle, I didn't spend hardly any time investigating though.
- Handling of the throwable raft in world 2 can be better.
- There are probably many more small optimizations here and there that can be made.
To be honest I don't even know if this game deserves it. Even with all the improvements, it's still a slow paced game, and I think that would turn off most people. I don't know if I'll ever completely optimize it. Although it does have very nice graphics.
Well here's the unoptimized version anyway:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/16990286074110489
