(Link to video)
Submission Text Full Submission Page
Suggested Description: Woody Woodpecker must save his family and friends, and he does just that on record time. Suggested Screenshot: Frame 9146

Stuff I think it's worth mentioning first:

  • This movie is played back in the Difficult mode of the game. It has more levels, no invincibility frames after taking damage, you cannot hold infinitely to keep attacking and avoid damage, and different enemy behavior compared to the Easy mode on the game.
  • Although very few know, this game's ROM you download on pretty much any website out there is a modified version of the original game. It modifies almost nothing, it just removes the loooong title screen the original game has, and obviously, this movie has to use the original ROM.

Pecking exploits

In this game, Woody's main attack is pecking (happens when pressing B) and it's main use is to damage enemies, but it is exploited in three different ways:
  • Cancelling the falling animation: When Woody lands from great heights, or from a jump, a small animation of him getting up plays, that costs a few frames. But if you press B a few frames before hitting the ground, the pecking animation will overlap the falling animation, and Woody will not lose as much speed.
  • Pseudo-invincibility: Although it isn't infinite like in the Easy mode, you can peck your way through enemies to no get damaged most of the time.
  • Manipulate subpixels, subspeed, whatever: (Mostly on Level 5) it's used to getting better positioning so some 2-block wide gaps can be cleared without jumps, thus, saving time.

My goals with this movie were:

  • Beating the game in difficulty mode as fast as possible
  • To try to jump as least as possible, jumping is veeery slow
  • To try to take as least damage as possible, if boosting is not an option

Detailed explanation of some levels

Level 1

Mostly optmized movement, trying to jump as less as possible and not taking damage. In the bossfight against Smedley the Bear, dropping the pinecones (or is it hazelnuts?) right after damaging the boss with a peck, skips their damage animation.

Level 2

Trying to get all keys without taking damage, which can be very challenging to do fastly, due to having to peck an enemy and jump straight up to get the key, needing very costly speed loss.

The Bossfight

In the bossfight, you're supposed to wait for Wally to turn back and wait at a barrel to damage him, however, you can simply wait for him to turn around, and, because of shitty hitboxes, hit him from inside of the barrel while he's turned back and then do the intended way to play the level. And that was the Early Damage strat in my previous TASes of this game. But then, I realized, you could simply hold the B button and mash A really fast to keep hitting him from inside the barrel, and that's what I named The Ultra Kill. Sadly, this technique is around a second slower on difficult mode, due to the game having a cooldown on the B button, so you have to mash B too, making the fight a bit slower.

Level 3

Almost the same thing as Level 1, trying to optmize movement as much as I can, mainly on the sloooow climb there is on the middle of the first section of the level. In the skiing section of the level, the rocks can actually give you a good amount of damage, so almost all of those have to be jumped over, which lost a little bit of frames. On the bossfight, when dropping a pinecone/hazelnut on Charlie the Polar Bear's head, he would jump to the other way he would've instead on the Easy mode, which lead to having to do a little re-route here, going straight to locking the boss in the right side of the screen.

Level 4

There's pretty much nothing I can say about the first section of this level, I just jump and avoid the enemies. The second section, intentional damage is taken after some enemies to get a little speed boost, saving some frames. In the bossfight, the strategy is to try to lock the boss to the left or right side of the screen as fast as you can.

Level 5

Manipulating positioning to clear out some larger gaps, and skipping Buzz's Bomb Throws, which can cost over 5 seconds every time. Sadly, some enemy patterns are very bad on this movie.

Level 6

A very straight forward level. Navigating through the level using the fastest barrel route to get all keys, while optimizing movement. The bossfight is pretty simple aswell, simply getting from cannon to cannon as fast as possible, while trying to avoid damage as much as possible.

arkiandruski: Claiming for judging.
arkiandruski: Since this has a known shortcut and the author has expressed interest in reworking the run, I'm going to reject this for lack of optimization. Unfortunately, this run wouldn't be different enough from an any% to warrant a new branch.

TASVideoAgent
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MESHUGGAH
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The submission note links to a youtube video which - has a link to the speedrun.com game page which hosts the original game ROM for whatever reasons - description includes a direct ROM download link I have very mixed feelings about this.
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MESHUGGAH wrote:
I have very mixed feelings about this.
What do you mean exactly?
A more stupid human being than you think.
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OK, I understand the difference between the version you're using from the cartridge and the version that's more commonly out there:
  • The Sega and Tec Toy opening logos are present. (probably what you mean by the long Title Screen)
  • There is copyright information on the first screen after the opening logos run.
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ItsPietroFelix wrote:
MESHUGGAH wrote:
I have very mixed feelings about this.
What do you mean exactly?
- This post I'm writing is mostly intended for the staff, you don't need to do anything with this currently. - This site (TASVideos) has a rule of: Users are strictly prohibited from posting references to copyrighted material (such as ROM or BIOS images) https://tasvideos.org/SiteRules#LegalIssues - While this can be interpreted as many ways and there's a note about rules not set in stone, - I think a submitter should respect this rule as long as it's inside their own controllable domain: the submitter linking his own Youtube video with a ROM in description is his own controllable domain. It's fine if the ROM link was shared outside of his domain (comments on youtube, a forum of a site (Speedrun.com 👀 👀 👀) )
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Oh, i see what you mean now. I just added it there because many people don't know that the rom you donwload anywhere has the opening removed, but if it is against the rules, i will remove the links.
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To indicate which ROM it is, just post its hashsum (MD5 or SHA1 are the popular ones).
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
To indicate which ROM it is, just post its hashsum (MD5 or SHA1 are the popular ones).
This is the SHA1 of the ROM it was played back (with the opening) 295E3FE1EAEC3E5181E7DCB46CEC6507D393B82D This is the one without the opening B76D3A24E7CFF4C1D6396E263953322E (The TAS was created in the version without the opening, and then I edited it on the version with the opening)
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Congrats on finishing this tas! This was a lot of fun to watch :) I did notice a bonus game after Fase 5, that I don't usually get when doing runs, although I'm unsure if that's due to this version being different in that regard, or due to you destroying more enemies and getting the bonus due to that, in which case I'm unsure if not killing some of the enemies would be faster than taking the bonus game.
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GarbiTheGlitcheress wrote:
I did notice a bonus game after Fase 5, that I don't usually get when doing runs, although I'm unsure if that's due to this version being different in that regard, or due to you destroying more enemies and getting the bonus due to that, in which case I'm unsure if not killing some of the enemies would be faster than taking the bonus game.
As far as I tested, taking a death to avoid playing the bonus game is slower than simply beating the level normally. So, let's just take a bonus, I guess
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I'm having trouble adapting to this new forum format and remembering a 12 character password, having said that... I have to abstain my vote unless my question is answered: at level 4, the boat level, did you test for possible shortcuts on waterfalls? I had this game and I'm pretty sure there was a shortcut on one of the 3 first waterfalls.
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I was curious, so decided to test, and I did find a shortcut if you enter the second waterfall. Link to video
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Ok, i GENUINELY* did not know about that. If any mods are reading this, you can set this TAS to rejected because i'm definetely making a faster one with this strat.
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ItsPietroFelix wrote:
Ok, i GENUINELY* did not know about that. If any mods are reading this, you can set this TAS to rejected because i'm definetely making a faster one with this strat.
you can make this one "no skip" version and another one "Any%" btw, how did you managed to play dark level without losing time?
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you literally just hold right and c the most useless level in all of videogames
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ItsPietroFelix wrote:
Ok, i GENUINELY* did not know about that. If any mods are reading this, you can set this TAS to rejected because i'm definetely making a faster one with this strat.
As the author, you have the option of cancelling the submission. This will take it off the workbench same as a rejection. Please do so if you don't intend to keep this run. If you do intend to keep it, explain how you would like it to be judged.
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Well, I think this could be some sort of skipless branch submission, but I don't really know if that a skip or actually intended by the game's developers, in my opinion, I think this movie should still be up until a faster one is made without the "skip"
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I'm sorry, but I still can't understand what's going on. How does this skip work? How much gets skipped? Which stages, levels, etc?
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It's a skip in the 4th stage of the game. There are 4 waterfalls in that stage, all having enemies coming your way that you have to jump over, however, at the end of the second waterfall, you can simply run into the wall and it'll simply end the level and get you straight to the boss. Is it an intentional game feature? Is it a glitch? Can it happen somewhere else? I really don't know
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I'd like to know if there are other similar shortcuts in the game and how much time they save combined. If it's just that one, then that probably wouldn't make the run too much different.
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As far as I know, there are not skips like that in any other level in this game
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The submitted bk2 has the hash B76D3A24E7CFF4C1D6396E263953322E which is apparently wrong and needs to be fixed.
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