The famous tower defense series, reduced to 256x384 pixels.
I started from SRAM to skip unlocking towers as I found it more interesting this way. Starting from a new file is slower and limits your tower options. There isn't a definite ending to this game. Could've done many things like maximum rank or unlocking everything, but I just went for one game of Easy mode to avoid repetition.
Routing this game seems fairly complex, but not very interesting. I started with Dart Monkeys and a Tack Shooter. Each shot of the Tack Shooter produces 1 frame of lag. I bought more Dart Monkeys, then sold them to buy the Ring of Fire as early as possible; the Ring of Fire is very strong and has no lag. 1 road spike for the camo bloon on 24, Monkey Beacon, some MOAB Maulers, and Arctic Wind. I haven't tested many strategies but this seems like a good low-lag strategy. The input ends on starting level 50.
Not sure what to make of the result. I don't think BTD is a good game for TASing. Maybe there's a more interesting goal here. Let me know if I should add anything to the description.
CasualPokePlayer: The verification movie syncs and produces the correct SRAM, and as far I can tell, the strategy employed makes sense and the optimization appears to be sound.
There is a consideration of the difficulty chosen in this movie. The movie uses "easy" difficulty. This is very notable in the sense that, besides the overall difficulty being lowered, it also lowers the number of rounds before you earn a "Medal" for the level (along with which type of medal is earned), and so would drastically lower the movie's time due to that. This would also most likely have effects on the chosen strategy, as the player would need to last longer with the higher difficulties, on top of the general difficulty spike. This would thus give unique gameplay for each difficulty. With this, each difficulty (or at the very least, easy and hard) could be argued to be able to be placed in separate branches.
This movie has an issue however, due to its chosen endpoint. This movie only completes the first track, which in this game could be seen as the first level. From what I understand, there isn't any actual reward for completing all tracks, and each track is largely (if not completely) independent of each other.
With this, I've considered if each track could be considered a separate "game mode" and thus if each track could be under separate branches. After deliberation with other judges however, this consideration doesn't hold up with our rules. Individual levels cannot be defined as separate "game modes" here. Each "game mode" must have unique gameplay with a unique ending point. Levels do not have unique endpoints. Whether that be in Super Mario Bros with the flag pole at the end of each level, or here with enough rounds being completed that a Congratulations screen appears, levels have a common endpoint. Only as a complete collection are levels considered as a game mode. Even without a definitive ending (e.g. Credits) after completing all levels, the collective endings of all levels can itself be considered a definitive ending.
While we can place this movie under playground with its significantly relaxed rules (and for that, Ocean Road has been added to the branch label), this movie cannot be accepted in any case for publication, as it simply doesn't reach a suitable endpoint to be considered completion of the game.
