587 Squadron is a 2021 ZZT world ported to GBA that was made for the GBA Jam 2021. The player is a pilot who controls a bomber plane and must complete 10 missions with their limited supply of bombs. I had this input file sitting around for over a year and looking over it now I feel that, while not perfect mainly due to slime RNG, it's solid enough that this probably should be shared here as well.

You can check out and play the GBA Jam 2021 version (used for this TAS) here:

There's also an updated non-GBA version with a proper Hard mode here:

The main differences between Normal (the default) and Easy modes for this version is that the plane object cycle is set differently between them. Normal runs the plane object at cycle 1 to move twice as fast and respond to inputs sooner so it's the difficulty chosen.

It's possible to turn and drop a bomb on at the same time by pressing shoot in a different direction. This sends two commands to the plane at around the same time and makes certain awkward bombing situations at turns more viable despite ZZT jankiness.

The check for level completion is based on if certain colors of fakes are on screen. The plane can cover one with its body to save a bomb, which can save time if dropping a bomb requires extra movement. The checking object performs 5 checks and works at cycle 3, so this is limited to objective fakes that are next to walls as the plane is generally on the move unless something outright blocks it such as solid walls.

Every level ends with a tally of converting remaining "bombs" for score. While I could've saved extra time by burning extra bombs when possible, I went with the tradeoff of getting a high score while keeping in-level gameplay time to a minimum.

Level V has the bombs dropped work with ZZT slimes. How they spread is RNG dependent, and the plane has code to wait a bit and then change the slimes to fakes. This means that getting the right slime clusters was a lot of trial and error, and the main place where time can be saved.

Level VII ends prematurely due to a bug in the checking object. When the first set of red fakes are removed, there's a transition to reveal a second set of red fakes that reveal themselves. However, the checker doesn't have enough /i functions to wait long for the transition to complete. The checker instead runs through and completes its object code to finish the level before the final objectives reveal themselves.

Here's the extended input file I used for my encode, mainly to have the credits linger a bit longer: UserFiles/Info/639216502691062000

I'll leave it up to the publisher to use it or not.

Tegron: Claiming for judging.

Tegron: TAS looks well optimised for beating all the levels faster, the difficulty selection for this game has also been sped up, making it quite difficult, especially when comparing Easy mode to Normal, it’s amazing. Nice work!

Accepting to Standard

fsvgm777: Processing.