Manipulating unmanipulatable Kappa
Link to video
Description of current TAS says that those flying things are unmanipulatable, but that ain't true as you can see in this video. Trajectories of those flying things depends on what frame rule you started the level (at least it feels like this game uses frame rules, i didn't checked it for sure) AND for some reason if you allow to fall some of those things lower than something like that line then it changes trajectories of later things
https://i.imgur.com/hGHtEPF.png
I don't know why it works like that and i don't care LUL
Sorry, if this thread are duplicate of other thread. I can't find Popeye's thread
edit: basically in this video i started on exact same frame rule and on the left side i allowed some hearts to fall below that red line for some proper amount of time and on the right side i pick hearths normally. You can clearly see the difference
If it's possible to pick up last heart, last note, last letter at highest possible point by letting some of them fall lower than that line then it maybe possible to shave 5-10 seconds from the current tas. And even if it's impossible to do that from first frame rule then you can try second frame rule. Starting from second frame rule only costs 0.3
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 303
Location: Stafford, NY
I'll take a guess at explaining what's going on.
Letting the first hearts drop nearly all the way down the screen allows the maximum number of possible dropping hearts the game can handle at once* to be on screen - this value would be capped internally to prevent sprite flicker and slowdown during gameplay.
Normally the hearts would be released on a regular timer, but if you fill up all the memory slots the drops get delayed and the game will release them as soon as a slot in memory opens up (which is when the score value after catching a heart disappears). It's definitely a case of "slower is faster" here. :)
* It looks like this value is six hearts at a time, which makes sense for an 8 memory slots NES game if you look at the spinach can and the punching bag as filling the other two slots for objects the player can interact with.
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/50470498702122204
Shaved of 4 seconds. I give up on manipulating last stage. Stupid Bluto trolls too much, but it's possible to change last P trajectory to pick up it as high as possible and save like another 2 seconds. I just can't avoid Bluto and get up after manipulation
Just stumbled upon this thread. Nice find Koh1fds!
I'm even a bit buffled, as I actually did alternate routes for maximizing scores, one of the routes was going to bottom row in level 2 but "lower" hearts equal fewer points. And I didn't see change in heart pattern.
Now I also wonder if this glitch is present in other ports, because most Popeye games has the same (but now correctly calling it) "seemingly fixed" heart patterns: Colecovision and C64 (atari 5200/2600/8 bit are more flexible as well as they are more unpopular).
Will watch your movie some day.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...