Emulator used: BizHawk-1.8.1
Takes damage to save time
Plays on easy, which allows for much more damage boosting, and a more entertaining movie overall I think.
Well it's finally done, the laggiest and randomest game I've ever seen. Literally 1/4 of the game is lag frames. This game is a nightmare to TAS for those reasons. I'll admit to kind of trying to get this done before DTC5, but the result shouldn't be too sloppy, and any improvements found I will fix for next year. But anyway, about the game:
Tricks
Rapid Fire
By shooting and then timing your slide, you can reset your fire counter, allowing rapid succession of shots. This is used on most bosses unless the saber will do more overall damage when it is acquired.
Rock Climb
This is only seen in one place in Stage 5. Boost jump combined with blasting the rock at the right time/angle. Allows me to get over the wall in Stage 5.
Stage 4 Boss Skip
It's been known for a while that this boss was skippable. When approaching the boss if you scroll the camera up with R, the boss wont spawn and you can just jump and trigger the stage end.
Slide Shot Cancel
By shooting your gun at the right time during a slide you can perform the next slide without as much downtime between them. This saves a few frames every time.
Stage 1 / Dune Sea
Lot of slide canceling and damage boosting here. It's also important to note that when arriving at the boss the boss doesn't spawn if Luke is too far on the right of the screen. The boss only spawns relative to where the entire camera is, not where luke is. So for that reason I have to slide back slightly to position the camera to get an early boss spawn. Manipulated to spawn as soon as possible. Also manipulated to stay above ground the entire fight, all while using the rapid fire trick on him. I make him come up as far left as possible also so that way I can jump to the right and get some of the explosions when he dies off screen, to prevent lag.
Stage 2
And here are the laggiest levels in existence. About half of the frames are lag frames. Manipulate the enemies to appear as early as possible, while managing to shoot in all the lag. Also when all of the required enemies are killed, I manipulate there to be nothing that spawns on the way to the Sandcrawler, for lag reasons.
Stage 3 / Outside Sandcrawler
This level is also laggy, and very awkward to play through. Waiting on platforms is unfortunately required here, but lag is prevented sometimes by scrolling certain things off screen. I grab the powerup that's above the exit in this level because the one in stage 4 would waste too much time.
Stage 4 / Inside Sandcrawler
This level is cool, compared to the ones so far. Shout out to Tompa here for pointing out that I wasn't using boosts in the spikes for some reason. It made me redo the entire level and saving a few seconds overall. There's a minor clip on top of a door here for whatever reason, I use an angled shot to open the door then clip through the door. The laser doors in this section are sometimes tricky as well, they have to be carefully manipulated to not close before you reach them. Doing so while still keeping everything else optimal is quite a task, but luckily I got it, with the damage boosts too. The large turrets in this level are annoying, they require a few hits and they lag the game severely when killed. Manipulated the platform after the "smashers" to be further down when I reach it, so I don't have to wait as long to jump down. Also I stay up top with the smashers since there is hardly an lag up there. Rapidfire on the miniboss, then collecting the last blaster powerup. As said before, the boss is easily skipped by scrolling the camera up with R.
Stage 5 / Land of the Sandpeople
I like this stage as well. It took me a while but once I saw that you could get a jump boost from the falling rocks, I knew there had to be something you could do with it. After a bit of experimenting I found that you can shoot the rocks to trigger another one to fall, since another one wont spawn until the first one is gone. Doing so at just the right time to trigger another rock, and manipulating it to be in a good position, I can actually climb the rocks up over the top of the wall, skipping a large portion of the level. Then comes a couple of autoscrollers but they aren't too bad. After the first autoscroller, one of the sandworms is manipulated to not spawn by scrolling down on the camera. After getting the light saber I found something funny that you could do. If you carefully time your shots, you can keep the Banthas bodies from spawning, and instead they're just a floating head. At the end of the stage I manipulate a thermal detonator to drop so I can use it on the boss. It does 40 damage to the boss, which has 150 hp. It's best to use the light saber on this boss, since the blaster only does 1 damage per hit.
Stage 6
Another 3D lag fest. This time with 20 enemies to kill instead of 12. They do spawn slightly more often than the other level though. Other than that it's the same.
Stage 7 / Mos Eisley
This level is kind of annoying, mainly because of the rocket launchers. The rockets create a ton of lag so they are destroyed or avoided as much as possible. There are also spikes here that you can boost on, but they do a ton of damage to you very fast. This is why I manipulate shield drops from just about every enemy where I'd need it. Not much else to say really, it's kinda repetitive.
Stage 8 / Cantina Fight
Yay a brawler stage, but with a blaster. Killing enemies to advance the stage. In one section where I stand around for a second, I'm waiting for those 2 enemies to come so that I can kill them in this location. If I went to the left to kill them faster, more enemies would spawn that I would have to kill to advance the screen for whatever reason. I manipulate a thermal detonator to clear the next room in one sweep. Also used again later to kill a few enemies faster. And one final one manipulated for use against the boss. For the Kalhar boss monster, I use the rapidfire blaster for a little while, until he attacks me. Then I switch to the saber because now I can keep him looped in his head attack, which allows me to get max hits in with the saber, which ends up being faster than just shooting him the whole time.
Stage 9 / Escape from Mos Eisley
Another Mos Eisley stage, but this one is more interesting. The first section up to the mini boss is pretty much just like Mos Eisley, so not much to say about that section. The miniboss is interesting, I manipulated an enemy to push me to the right while fighting the boss. Then after the first 2 sections of the miniboss, I get him to push me to the right a bit before he opens up to attack me. This means I can get through the door quicker after killing him. After the miniboss comes a new section. Manipulate a few shields to get through some lasers. I found that shooting a barrel causes 2 blaster shots worth of damage to the robots, this means that shooting the barrel and then shooting the robot kills it and I can slide past it. That's faster than jumping over it. Then there are the claws, by shooting them at certain frames I can make them take slightly longer to come down, which is just enough time to bypass them without having to jump over them. And finally we come to the boss. It's pretty laggy when his parts are killed off. I manipulate the boss to be in a good position when I kill him that I can move to the left to eliminate all the explosions, making the stage end much sooner.
Stage 10 / Death Star Hangar Bay
Level is pretty straightforward. Manipulating the tiny robots to be in a position when I jump over the gaps they give me a little boost. Jumping over the large robots is necessary because they normally take 4 hits to kill, plus I get a damage boost from jumping over them. Some of the large things that pass by can be manipulated slightly to arrive a little later or sooner, and others can be manipulated to not appear at all, along with the falling enemies at certain portions. The boss can't be killed in one cycle sadly, but it's manipulated to open back up as soon as possible. Can't scroll the explosions off screen on this boss either.
Stage 11 / Rescue of the Princess
Manipulate the little robot at the start of the stage to push me to the right. Waiting on platforms section, yay. You can slightly change the timing on some of them. Also have to wait on the giant crushers to lift up. Timing your slides so that you can do a normal jump without hitting the top of the crusher is faster. The boss of this stage can be killed quickly, making him look foolish.
Stage 12 / Tractor Beam Core
This stage is annoying, more waiting on platforms. Some of them can be manipulated slightly to catch in a better position, while some of them have spawning positions where it won't help to manipulate them really, so there's still waiting around unfortunately. Using the camera to keep enemies scrolled off screen until I can kill them, that's why it might seem weird sometimes. I did find that you can manipulate the final large platform to appear in a position it's not normally supposed to by dragging the camera up as I'm jumping. This makes me not have to wait on it. Using the blaster on the Tractor Beam boss is not as useful as the light saber. Blaster only does 2 damage, and it has 200 hp. Also it releases those orbs that damage you and they block your blaster shots. Also you can't rapid fire on the platforms beside the boss, and doing it from the bottom creates some sort of sprite limit where after your fourth shot, you can't shoot for quite a while. With all that into account using the light saber is the way to go. Then I fall down to prevent explosions after the boss is dead.
Stage 13
Another 3D stage, but this one is much faster. You can only turn in a certain arc, you can't turn around completely. If you look too far to the right or left it stops you. That being said it can still be done relatively fast compared to the other similar stages.
Final Stage
This stage is just shooting enemies until you reach a certain portion of the level, in which you fight a really easy boss. Then one final shot from your missile thingies ends the level. And that's SSW.
Thanks
Thanks to Tompa for following my early WIPs and critiquing it. I improved stage 4 by quite a bit because of that. Also thanks to everyone on forums and IRC who were following it.
As far as improvements, better manipulation/lag management on the 3D stages. Also pootrain mentioned on the forums the stage 9 miniboss can possibly be skipped, but I couldn't find what he was mentioning. I got the miniboss to not spawn but the door would not disappear until you get him to spawn. Maybe there's a condition to be met where it would work, but I couldn't find anything. I do plan on revisiting this game next year, so that's something that could be tested more extensively then.
Suggested Screenshots: 25318, 23751, 25053
