- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
- Uses SRAM
- Genre: Tower Defense
- Genre: Puzzle
Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game released on PC in 2009 and later ported to the DS in 2011 where you use various garden plants to stop the zombie invasion. The puzzle gamemode contains two series of shorter levels, one based around smashing vases to break open plants and zombies (Vasebreaker) and the other based around controlling the zombies yourself and using them to destroy pre-built defenses (I, Zombie), with 18 levels in total.
You can only play all of the puzzle gamemode after beating adventure mode first which is why SRAM had to be used. The order puzzles are beaten in typically doesn't matter, and routing them out of order actually helps in making this TAS a bit faster which I'll explain more below.
I'll go over all the basic mechanics of each level in the order I put them in:
- Vasebreaker levels
- Ace of Vase: You get five squashes, a potato mine, and various types of peashooters to kill a few basic zombies, five bucketheads and a gargantuar. While squashes and potato mines instantly kill the other zombie types, it takes two of them to kill a gargantuar, running into an issue where you're essentially forced to use the mine to slowly arm in order to kill at least one of the bucketheads. Squashes can be used for the gargantuar and all the other bucketheads (assuming at least one pair of them can be grouped together), while firepower brute forces the basics since it's too slow to kill a buckethead.
- To the Left: Similar to Ace of Vase, it has a bit of a problem where you're forced to wait for mines to arm, otherwise it's okay though. Basics can be killed with snowpeas and backwards repeaters, and wall-nuts can be used to stall zombies if needed.
- Scary Potter: You get two squashes, some threepeaters, repeaters and torchwoods to kill two football zombies and several pole-vaulters and basics. The football zombies are important to use the squashes on. Pole-vaulters have slightly more health than basics do, so it's important to prioritize them just a bit in terms of firepower usage.
- Third Vase: You get more than enough squashes and hypno-shrooms to kill the bucketheads and disco zombie on this level, while basics die to snowpeas and repeaters.
- Hokey Pokey: Ideally you want to put the most spikeweeds in the rows with the most basic zombies while isolated zombies can die either to squashes or to a single spikeweed + a wall-nut to stall (and the buckethead get squashed, obviously).
- M is for Metal: You get plenty of counters here (squashes, hypno-shrooms and magnet-shrooms) to kill the bucketheads and football zombies while basics die to firepower once again. Sometimes hypnotized zombies killing other zombies is helpful too.
- Vasebreaker (one): The simplest Vasebreaker level, you get an abundance of squashes and they can be used to group up most zombies together immediately.
- Chain Reaction: Tons of jack-in-the-box zombies, a few basics and one football zombie. Since every vase can get broken really quickly this level is over super fast, you have so many plants to handle the few zombies besides the jacks.
- Another Chain Reaction: Just like the last level but with some pogo zombies, you get enough squashes to kill all of them though so it's no problem.
- I, Zombie levels
- All your brainz r belong to us: The most complex I, Zombie level, with different types of firepower covering each row. Some important plants to prioritize killing are the threepeater and magnet-shroom since it's easiest to handle rows 1 and 3 with imps and rows 4 and 5 with football zombies, with extra imps thrown in to speed up eating. Ladder zombies handle row 2 well since they counter the snowpea's slow effect.
- Three Hit Wonder: You need to use ladder zombies to get past the wall-nuts, but magnets are usually in range and will steal the ladders away. It's fine to use bungee zombies to steal the magnets or to just overwhelm them by placing down a bunch of ladder zombies at once (or sometimes both). Imps get used here to speed up the eating process again, and groups of them can also handle rows with little firepower on their own.
- Zomboogie: Lots of chompers and potato mines. There's no point in using bucketheads or disco zombies here, you just want to place basics and pole-vaulters in certain numbers depending on how many insta-kills there are per row, prioritizing the ones with the most.
- Me Smash!: The sun for everything is pretty easy to get in this level, only really problems are the snow pea and kernel-pults. Basics can be used sometimes as shields, otherwise this level is a lot of vaulter usage everywhere.
- Dead Zeppelin: Every row can be cleared with a balloon zombie except the ones with cacti, for those you want to use either a bungee zombie to steal them or brute force them with basics.
- I, Zombie (one): For some reason Crazy Dave will always show up at the beginning to talk which can be skipped by tapping the screen. Football zombies can rush each row, prioritizing the rows with snowpeas since they take the longest to clear. Regular zombies can also be snuck behind football zombies to speed up the eating process.
- Totally Nuts: A lot of ladder zombie spam, two to three of them per row is enough to clear them all.
- Can You Dig It?: Limited speed-wise since the game doesn't give you any fast zombies to work with. Rows with either a torchwood or several peashooters need a buckethead to clear, and extra basics thrown in behind as well as digger zombies can help speed up eating on the slowest rows.
- I, Zombie Too: Also pretty limited speed-wise. Bucketheads need to be used on rows with at least two spikeweeds, screendoor zombies can clear the rest.
- Rake: You'll probably notice right away that the first three Vasebreaker levels use the rake upgrade from the shop. It can be used three times before you have to buy a new one, and for normal levels the way it works is that it'll show up where the first zombie does and kill it, but for puzzle levels in particular the row it shows up in can be random. Since this TAS depends on SRAM anyways I felt like a pre-bought rake would be fine, these are the rules normal speedruns follow as well.
- Part of why I put Ace of Vase, To the Left, and Scary Potter as the first three levels is that the rake is often the most useful on them. For this TAS unfortunately it didn't do anything for Ace of Vase, but for To the Left it fortunately killed a buckethead so one less mine had to be used, and for Scary Potter it killed one of the football zombies so one of the squashes could clear a bunched up basic & vaulter instead. In total the rake helped save a few extra seconds.
- Layout RNG Manip: After every few seconds, the game rerolls all RNG, including the spots just about everything is in on the puzzle levels. For I, Zombie levels the layout luck you get matters a TON since ideally you want a decent amount of sunflowers to be in easy access (usually towards the front) and that doesn't always happen. For Vasebreaker levels it still matters a bit since zombies can sometimes be in annoying spots to clear depending on the circumstance. Before actually starting to route each level I checked if the layout was viable enough to be quick, which is why the order I put them in is based on the RNG rolled upon entering. Not perfect luck manip, but probably as close to perfect as you can get.
- Vase Prioritization: On Vasebreaker levels you can't smash vases immediately after one another, only once about every 5 frames (game lag sometimes makes this a bit slower). Plants vs. Zombies runs at 30fps, so breaking every vase always takes at least a few seconds per level. Prioritizing a few things is important:
- Every level except for Hokey Pokey has a jack-in-the-box zombie in one of the vases that will blow up immediately. Since it's able to break 3-8 vases around it and cost no time at all, it's usually good to let it do its thing so the plants it opens up can be worked with right away. The only time this doesn't matter is when the adjacent plants aren't important at all.
- In Chain Reaction and Another Chain Reaction nearly every vase has an adjacent jack-in-the-box zombie making this a lot easier, the only thing that matters is prioritizing the ones around the firepower you want to plant as soon as possible to take care of the basics quicker.
- Usually you want to plant firepower before insta-kills since unsurprisingly, firepower takes longer to kill zombies. For the same reason it matters to break open the zombies that'll be killed by firepower before the rest. Plants can be planted in just 2 frames, conveniently allowing one plant in between each vase smash.
- Mines still need to be placed before anything else since they take a long while to arm (about 15 seconds).
- In certain cases intentionally stalling certain zombie vases to group zombies up into a squash kill more easily is also useful.
SRAM
Starts from a fully completed file with a pre-bought rake.
Link
ThunderAxe31: Setting to Delayed while I attempt to produce myself a verification movie.
ThunderAxe31: In order to prove the legitimacy of a movie that starts from SRAM, we need a verification movie, that is a movie that plays through the game until it produces the very same SRAM file used in order to create the submitted movie. Since the verification movie isn't available for this submission, I decided to try making one myself... for some games the save data structure is enough simple that even a different playthrough can produce a syncing SRAM file... however, it turns out it's not the case here. I made a movie that unlocks the Puzzle mode and bought a rake, then tried using that SRAM file for the submitted movie, but it desynced right after starting the first level. I guess that the game either uses a lot of data for the starting RNG seed, or is just that sync-unstable. In case anyone is interested of making a new Puzzle mode TAS, you can download my movie file from
here.
I'm sorry, but without a compatible verification movie, there is no way to be sure if a SRAM file is valid or falsified. With a hex editor and the right knowledge, anyone could cheat by producing an impossible save file to compete unfairly against other authors, and it would be potentially impossible to find out. In order to avoid leaving such a huge loophole, we need to require a verification movie for any submission that starts from SRAM. For this reason alone, I have to reject this submission. Better luck next time!
