End-screen has flashing lights.
SWF
md5: 066a75210d6c3d5f48bbffb9b76bb461
Some other versions feature an extra loading screen.
After watching the published
Bloons run, I realised the series was a good choice for TASing. The later games allow you to shoot before your previous shot has left the screen. Out of these, the obvious choice was
Bloons Insanity, the hardest set of levels Ninja Kiwi released. The real-time records are
14:49 with unlimited darts, and
39:37 without. With skill and consistency being no concern, the TAS pushes the insanity to the next level.
Most of the levels here have a very specific solution in mind which limits creativity a bit. There's still lots of optimisations to be had, which are mentioned below. I chose not to use unlimited darts mode. I suppose you could consider this hard mode. Unlike the TAS of Bloons there aren't lots of extra darts needing to be thrown away at the end of each level. Unlimited darts mode would be a bit faster on most levels; it might be an interesting TAS in its own right.
I'll comment on notable levels.
6: Had to reset this level once (takes 1 frame) as the spiked ball wasn't reaching the bloon.
8: klimtkiller informed me that the spiked balls can bounce in different ways (clockwise, still, counter-clockwise). I went back and reset this level twice, which saved a considerable amount of time from the better pattern.
17: Had to wait on the final shot because the level "times out" otherwise and fails.
19: Experimented a lot with hitting the saber bloons at just the right time. I'm not sure it's perfect but it's very good.
22: Couldn't find any way around waiting for the rainbow bloon at the end.
23: Very cool route with the second pac-man that's almost frame-perfect, saving a decent amount of time overall.
24: Long wait on the boomerang, couldn't find anything better.
25: Spent a long time on this level and couldn't get much to work. I wanted to freeze the pac-man without going to the left side of the bloons but didn't manage to.
29: Encountered a bug where the level didn't complete. After a long time trying to find the issue I managed to fix it by delaying the third and fifth shots slightly.
35: Tried freezing the pac-man earlier, but collecting the second extra dart makes all the subsequent shots faster.
37: This seems to be the best point to release the rainbow bloon.
38: Unexpected strategy with the dart getting past the frozen bloon.
40: Many options for the order of shots, settled on this after lots of back and forth.
43: The level forces you to go fairly fast which isn't an issue for the TAS. Just about managed to hit the frozen bloon with the last boomerang to save a bit of time.
45: Probably my favourite. Experimented a lot with the first shot. Ended up with quite a different route to normal.
48: The first shot is so precise that I had to reset twice to get the correct orientation of the bottom-right bloon.
49: Would've liked to find a way to freeze the pac-man but the result is still good.
Improvements
I resynced the TAS from about levels 8-20, so there might be some frames to be saved there. I didn't realise until level 48 that the orientation of bloons can affect when they can be popped, so there may be some more improvements from resetting. Also RNG could possibly be manipulated to save some frames; I didn't look into it at all. I hope there are more routes to be found.
Special thanks
Big thanks to klimtkiller/Chessplayer101 for providing feedback and some improvements, and having the RTA runs as a reference.
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: The movie looks awesome, and I was unable to complete even the first level unassisted.
This branch keeps the Unlimited Darts Mode disabled (which is the default), and that works as a hard mode, but an "Unlimited Darts Mode" movie could potentially co-exist with it, because it would involve different strats in a lot of levels. I'm not sure which of them would be standard and which Alt, but I'm pretty sure this one doesn't need a label. Accepting.
