Fairly significant improvement over the test run, which I had believed was already perfect. I especially liked the new trick on Fun Forgiven and how you absolutely RAPED Sparky. Yes vote, of course.
Dynamite Headdy is one of those great games that, while not well known, is easy to follow and entertaining to watch for the uninitiated. It's got colorful graphics, catchy music, and huge bosses. I hope this run will expose one of my favorite games to even more people. Congrats Emu, well done!
I'm going to start sounding like a broken record at this rate, but I don't have much feedback to give other than compliments. Level 6 looked great, keep it up!
1. I'm leaning towards speed being more important than entertainment in this case. People watching the run know that you could easily collect them all in a TAS, so I think they'll be understanding if you explain why the sacrifice was necessary in your submission text. I would experiment with it more, though... see if there's anything you can do that would possibly reduce the lag while still collecting the pieces. Maybe just not jumping, using very little left/right movement, or collecting them without shooting your head, etc.
2. I'm almost certain that I've watched runs that worked the same way (last "real" input being way after the game is finished), and the runner just made a note in their comments about the fact that the run is really XX:XX long, but there is one final input required at the end of the credits. Sorry that I can't remember which specific run for reference. It might be acceptable to just suspend play when it gets to the password screen, but I think that at the very least you still need to wait for the part where you're prompted to press a button during the credits.
3. I consider it the normal ending. Collecting the numbers is optional and unlocks a bonus stage. I would consider that to be a 100% ending (although, would 100% also require the SBPs?).
EDIT: Also, I just watched your last WIP. I think that's a pretty cool glitch, and I would definitely include it. Any idea how much time you've saved so far compared to the last run?
I'm obscenely impressed with your work so far. The way you're coordinating between the two characters is beautiful. My jaw dropped during level 4 and didn't come back up until the movie was over. I'm quite literally excited to see the rest of this.
Yes it does skip the long diving part, however even in single player i know that entire dive + fire room is completely skippable. In fact just that one level alone could be improved by more than a minute on arrows run on SDA.
I know the high-five glitch can be easily done in real time, but are you saying there's a way to skip that portion in a single player run that I overlooked?
Great run! I've been blown away by this from the beginning, and the grand finale is no less impressive. A few comments...
Using the protection head to move the blocks was pretty clever.
There were a few parts where it seemed like you could have saved time by jumping before hitting the switches (in Vice Versa)... this is just speculation though, haven't exactly tested it or anything.
Sparky fight looked really good. I knew having multiple balls hitting him did double damage (harder to do in real time, though), but did you happen to notice if the size of the balls caused different amounts of damage?
Twin Freaks got owned so hard :)
Never knew that the routes on Fatal Contraption actually impacted the scroll speed. I'll have to take that into consideration if I ever try to improve my run (which I'm considering more and more. I could cut a lot of time out if I just get luckier on Stair Wars and Finale Analysis).
Far Trek - personally, as someone that has played this level many times before, I found it extremely entertaining. Making such an annoying level look trivial amused me to no end :)
As for DD, I was fairly certain that the fastest attacks were his flashing and purple ones (provided you killed the enemies quickly). Thought you did a really great job here.
shoot the buzzsaw, when descending, to save time when climbing the wall (credit goes to arrow)
Haha, even though I missed it in my run =P At least you noticed what I was attempting to do.
I tried to reproduce your glitch at the panel and apparently it only happens, if you Press C one frame before you can enter the first digit. This makes your already highly impressive speedrun even more unique :)
Seriously? That's hilarious, and a bit surprising since I've been able to reproduce it at least once (I level skipped to the final boss shortly after completing my run to test the glitch again and see if it was a random fluke or something that always happened if you were hammering C at the end of the credits).
Emu, I really think you should submit this for publishing. Although there's a few minor improvements you've noted, I can't see a future run saving more than 10 seconds over this one.
Looking good! I'm eagerly awaiting the finished run. I especially loved how you completely owned Nasty Gatekeeper. It's amazing how big a difference a little luck manipulation can make.
Have to agree with your sentiments on Sky Battleship. It really is an enigma. Compare your TAS to my speed run and note how long the level takes to complete in each one... yours is only about a second faster than mine, yet I take the time to destroy the cannons/mouth (not to mention that I'm probably not hitting it at the earliest possible frame each time). The only thing I can think of is that the Battleship, like the TB and Baby Face fights that follow it, has a certain amount of HP, but also has a "pattern" it must finish before it actually dies.
About the Tank. The problem is not that the first shot isn't straight, it's that the tank isn't in a position where the first shot can land on the driver. This didn't seem to be possible to manipulate, but my testing was far from exhaustive.
Are you sure? I'm almost positive you can hit him with the first cannonball. Maybe hit it from farther back?
Regarding the Sky Battleship, it seems to me that since you probably only deal damage to it on certain frames anyway, you'd be able to dodge whatever projectiles you need to and still hit it without missing a beat using Air Head. I just don't see the 3 seconds you waste waiting for the Rocket Head possibly being gained over using the Air Head. I'll have to test this out.
Thanks for your info about the wooden dresser strategy. I know what you mean, I remember such behaviour little bit, but as you can see in my test run, I could not trigger it. I start to believe, that this only happens when she has that ballerina dress, since it is one of her attacks to jump and fall on you. By undressing her right before the jumps you can already hit her, but she comes again, still vulnerable. I guess the dragon has to jump too, to trigger this, but until now she doesn't want to jump :)
I know it occurs normally during the ballerina phase, but I've definitely made it happen during the dragon phase as well. If I remember right, I knocked the last piece of the costume off when Wooden Dresser was just beginning to move across the screen. She continued to strut all the way across "naked", then jumped up, landed (heart still vulnerable), and I was able to kill her right before she jumped again. I'll mess around and see if I can get it to happen on the emulator.
Also, I found a couple ways to avoid the invisible wall on Down Under by jumping into the pit... I think it ends up being a little quicker, although I'm not sure if it will save enough time to beat the platform rotation at the end of the level. I'm sort of new at this whole TAS thing, so I'm still trying to figure out how to make recordings. I'll post some examples as soon as I get it worked out.
I finally got around to watching the WIPs. Emu's looks great so far. I can't really think of anything to recommend trying that might save time, although it did occur to me that getting around the invisible wall in Down Under/not having to jump in the pit might not even save any time since you still have to wait for the platform to align at the end.
Upthorn's run - although far from optimized, you have a lot of interesting tricks here that never would have occured to me, like jumping over the statue thing on Terminate Her Too (after the tank), and falling into the pit after defeating Armordillo to get to the upper platform quicker on Towering Internal. And I really liked your route on Mad Mechs! Just a couple suggestions:
On Terminate Her Too, you only have to hit three of the Happy Campers to be able to reach the ledge before the tank (maybe even less for a TAS). Also, the tank should be manipulated so its first shot is a straight one (not bouncing).
On Flying Game, there's no reason to wait for the Rocket Head. The Sky Battleship can't be defeated until the cloud cover passes, so your choice of head doesn't matter. Take the Air Head since it's first, and then switch to Rocket Head after the Battleship.
Do some experimenting on Clothes Encounters. I've been able to defeat Wooden Dresser without having her switch to the ballerina costume. It involved waiting around for a long time before I knocked the last piece of the dragon costume off, and then she jumped into the air and landed again with her heart still vulnerable, giving me just enough time to kill her before she jumped again. It was slower than the normal way, and I wasn't able to consistently reproduce it, but it might be possible for you to manipulate this to happen without as much waiting.
btw: Arrow, You said Trouble Bruin rammed You four times? Did YOU make that awesome speedrun on Speed Demo archive? If yes: congrats on the flying level, I was shaking :)
Yes, that was me, and I'm glad you enjoyed it :) I had a lot of things go wrong though, like Stair Wars taking way longer than usual and missing DD a couple times. I have had TB ram me four times in a row, but I'm not sure what triggered it. Obviously it didn't happen during my recorded run -_-
Good idea with collecting 3 digits. Saves You a LOT of work.
I'm fairly certain that the digits aren't created until you complete the bonus stages, but this would definitely be the best way to test that. If it turns out that it doesn't work, it might still be worth it to complete the bonus stages so you can play the extra stage at the end. I think that watching the basketball games get owned in TAS form would be pretty entertaining. Skip the SBPs, though. Some of them waste a lot of time, and there's no reward for collecting them all.
I'm not sure, if You noticed it, but it seems upthorn found a little glitch: Moving always on the edge of the screen in Mad Mechs 2 (I'm not sure which stage; the one with the fans, and blue crosses) seemed to enable You to leave the stage earlier (maybe a quarter screen). Maybe I'm wrong and it is not a glitch, however, at normal speed, You have to go a little bit further.
I've noticed this before. Sometimes if I tried to use the last spinner to flip me up towards the door, it would appear that the level ends earlier than it should have. I never tested to see if this could possibly be abused on the earlier spinners, but it would be a huge time saver if it works.
If there's any time where taking damage would save time apart from fall damage then I'll just not use the Hard Mode cheat. Otherwise, I'm game. :)
Damage would save time on a number of bosses, possibly Mad Dog (to get the Hammer a little earlier than I did in my run on SDA), Baby Face, TB on Fly Hard, Missile Man, and Twin Freaks, and definitely on Nasty Gatekeeper. The idea with Nasty would be to stand directly under him whenever he targets your head, as it takes much less time than to have him reach towards the sides. It might be possible to stand slightly to the side of him and fire down diagonally towards his feet to get the same result without taking damage, but I haven't tested it.
Also, I'll look into it soon but does anyone know offhand the differences in version? I know that the (J) bosses look much cooler and I think the bomb will kill the boss in Terminate Her Too in one hit. That's what I think I remember offhand. :)
I think some of the bosses have more health in the English version. I know they changed Twin Freaks to be much harder. In the Japanese version, you can just stand next to him and keep firing up/diagonally to hit him, while in the English version you actually have to hit him exactly in the ear. And yes, there's the added dialogue you mention. I'm not sure which would end up being faster to use overall.
Stair Wars should definitely be manipulatable so that TB always moves into the center of the screen... not sure how, but I've had him do it four times in a row in real time, so there's got to be a way. The bomb is the fastest method to kill every boss you can use it against, which is only two bosses (Mons Meg and Nasty Gatekeeper). Against Dark Demon, figure out which attack takes the least amount of time and try to manipulate DD to use that attack every time. And make sure to get the Hammer the very first time items circle you. I'm guessing that the fastest attack, for a TAS, would be the purple one where he shoots enemies out of his hand, since the length of it is only determined by how long it takes you to kill the enemies.