gfd
He/Him
Joined: 3/21/2013
Posts: 9
Location: Canada
...Yes, really! The guy who made Gunman Clive, Bertil Hörberg, also made a fully-functional Gameboy version of the first level a few days ago. This TAS I made of it today is my first TAS ever. Link to video There's some commentary in the YouTube video as subtitles. Some useful and not-so-useful RAM values:
0424	X velocity
0425	Y velocity
0420	X subpixel position
041F	Y coordinate
0422	Y subpixel position
0423	Y superpixel position
0449	Jump assist timer
00B6	X coordinate (camera)
00B9	X superpixel (camera)
0444	Camera x offset
0438	Sprite change timer
0428	Invincibility timer
This TAS was fun to make, but I suspect it's a bit suboptimal. There might be strategies I didn't think of, since I'm relatively inexperienced. I also didn't do any y-subpixel optimization, because subpixels are evil. I doubt there are any glitches to be exploited in this, as the programming seems quite solid. Edit: Bertil Hörberg has seen this TAS, as he retweeted it a little while ago. Woo!
Editor, Experienced player (609)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4012
That's pretty cool – both the demo and TAS! We'll have to see if he decides to continue work on this game, though it seems like he might be busy starting up another commercial game right now. Otherwise, if this is the final ROM, and people like your TAS enough and you don't find any big mistakes, maybe you might like to submit it here.
gfd
He/Him
Joined: 3/21/2013
Posts: 9
Location: Canada
Eh, if I wanted to submit a TAS for this, I'd probably end up redoing the whole thing to see if I can squeeze out more frames by using y-subpixel optimization. It'd be difficult for me to justify submitting a movie that might have known optimizations when it's so short. I discovered that might be relevant for optimization when it was the only thing keeping the TAS from syncing after I added the first corner boost. It was added after I'd finished the rest of the TAS, and doing it gave me a different y-subpixel, so I had to add another specific jump afterwards to get it to the same value as before. (This added corner boost doesn't even save time — I just added it so nobody would think I missed the opportunity). I think he might be updating the ROM a bit since it seems to be incompatible with certain flashcarts, but this doesn't sound like a change that would actually cause any gameplay differences. The relevant Twitter conversation is here. Since he's already seen this TAS, though, it might be possible that he wants to fix being able to shoot the third guy in the second room while they're crouched. That's basically the only bug/exploit in this TAS besides the mundane corner boostings. If he does do that, it'd require a significant reroute.