Ah, alright, thanks for clearing that up. I should probably start working on this sometime today if I get free time. I'll post the World 1 [Plains] WIP when it's done.
Also, I should make note that some of the Carrots in this game are hard or impossible to avoid. Even in 1-3, the fastest route has you collect 15 carrots or so because they're on platforms needed to jump on. I'll test to see if I can get around this.
I think also that there is a small leeway for carrot collection; when I played through this before, I noticed that as long as I collected <20 carrots I wouldn't lose much time as Buster waits around for the music to nearly end although you have no Carrots. The only thing I need to watch for is forgetting to grab Helpers, as unused helpers add a large chunk to your score. 50 Carrots gets you a Helper, so I should try for around 15 carrots in stages where it's impossible to avoid them.
A good example of this would be the beginning of some caves levels.
To get this a little back on track...
Highness wrote:
Did this run stall?
Very sad if it did because it's an awesome game. But I can understand if it was stalled because it's a very long game and needs as much planning as Super Mario World I suppose. :(
I've been working on it off and on for about 6 months now. I've currently made 5 versions of it [none of which have completed the game; I've only made it to the pirate ship in one version.], improving the game as I learn more. On the newest version that I started over the summer vacation, I'm done [hopefully for the last time] with the first level and it seems optimal, though boring. I'll write up some stuff I jotted down in class today, in case someone else wants to read it:
- Buster seems to hate jumping in this game, at least at the maximum speed. Every time you hit the jump button, he delays for a bit it seems. It's not noticable by the human eye, but with slowdown I see it. At 6% speed it is around a 1~2 second wait, which is around 3~5 frames I guess. At the moment I don't see a way around this other than never jumping but I'll do a bit of testing when I get some free time.
- Taking the above into consideration, would hopping from enemy to enemy, killing them in the process, be best for traveling? This is really easy to do in the early levels [and looks kinda neat, too], but after the second world [forest] is over it's hard because of the cramped spaces in the caves and lava world.
- Speaking of the Caves, there is exactly one section that is impossible for me to do at a slow speed for some reason. At 100% it's fine, but even at 50% I can't pull it off. It's at the beginning of one of the levels [the second?] where he runs for a bit, turns around and jumps up these blocks. It looks like this:
I'm not sure how I can do it without doing the small segment before it, making a savestate, and then constantly retrying at 100% to get to the top flawlessly.
- This will be a no warps run. I don't know of all the warps past the third world or so, but they don't seem to help. Some actually seem longer than just playing the levels normally. Perhaps in a future run I'll "warp," but right now I just want to get the game complete warpless. I will not be backtracking through levels to do ones I haven't, such as the split in 2-2.
- Though I've gone over the bad I guess, now I can talk about the good; I've found a couple of non-level-warping shortcuts that save quite a bit of time rather than the normal route. One is in the forest world, and one is for the Caves. See here:
- This is the forest one obviously. What you basically do is instead of jumping down like it shows me doing in the picture, follow the arrow. There is a block of wood stopping your progress if you just wall-jump, but if you jump at just the right height on the pole, you can wall-jump, jump into the jut the "block" creates, and wall-jump from that onto the edge. From there, just jump down and you'll be at the Bird. I made a sloppy version of this method and I saved around 45 seconds, give or take. Optimized I could probably take it to 50 or maybe even 55~60 seconds.
- This picture in the Caves world shows me going the normal route over the gap and on toward victory. The normal route normally takes a long time, as you have to crawl for around 20 seconds. The method I used took a bit of planning and messing around, but you can use the enemy in the gap, manipulate him to shoot a bubble at you at just the right angle. When it's at a suitable distance, jump on it and onto the wall. Wall-jump and you'll save a good amount of time [undetermined amount saved, probably around 20~30 seconds?]
I'll post more as more shows up, and/or if people seem more interested.
Well first, uh... Long-time lurker, first time poster. ;D
Secondly, I love this game. It's my favorite Sega game that I own besides Sonic 2. Interestingly enough, they have quite a few similarities. I had started a run after seeing various runs of other games and was inspired, but I lost interest after a while because well... This isn't a game that a lot of people know about. But I can help you out a bit, and hopefully this'll reinspire me to restart my run.
1. The "wall-jumping glitch," really isn't a glitch, it's in the instruction booklet. You hold the direction the wall is so your feet are up against it, and while still holding the button, jump once more and you'll do a wall-jump. It's quite useful in the Forest world, one level in particular you can skip almost everything. (If this isn't what you're talking about, sorry, I can't view your videos; the host seems to have expired.)
2. The fastest route in the Forest area is the normal route. That is, instead of going into the cave on 2-1 (Maybe it's 2-2), you go up and hop on the swinging ball things and onto Dodo. I've done a bit of testing and it is the fastest route, because going the "secret" route requires you to go through some annoying parts where you have to stop and start again. Also due to a shortcut I found out in the beginning of 2-4, shortens the video by quite a bit as running it originally took me about 50 seconds, but with this shortcut it only takes about 5~9 seconds to do that level.
3. In 1-3, you can indeed slide under the birds, and it is faster than getting hit. If you move fast enough you can make it before the birds get close enough to you so you can start running, make a quick slide as soon as you can run (It's a gap of about 10 frames you have to hit it, so it's somewhat generous.), jump as soon as you kill the lowest bird (the other birds should be behind you a bit by now, if not wait a few frames more so you don't get smacked), then continue moving on.
4. You can only accelerate on the ground. That is, if you are pre-running and you jump, you will pause your run "timer."
5. Try and make a little hop as soon as you start moving in every level, as well as whenever you stop moving at any time. It makes you start running earlier which is always helpful.
6. The only level I can see where it would be useful to get hit is in the Lava world. If you could avoid it or manipulate how the platforms work in that level it could potentially be a no-hit run.
Hope this helps, and hey, maybe we should try a little competition. I'd love to see the best ways to deal with every level as fast as possible.
Hope I wasn't too adding too much information in my first post...
I'm not sure how I can do it without doing the small segment before it, making a savestate, and then constantly retrying at 100% to get to the top flawlessly.
- This will be a no warps run. I don't know of all the warps past the third world or so, but they don't seem to help. Some actually seem longer than just playing the levels normally. Perhaps in a future run I'll "warp," but right now I just want to get the game complete warpless. I will not be backtracking through levels to do ones I haven't, such as the split in 2-2.
- Though I've gone over the bad I guess, now I can talk about the good; I've found a couple of non-level-warping shortcuts that save quite a bit of time rather than the normal route. One is in the forest world, and one is for the Caves. See here:
- This is the forest one obviously. What you basically do is instead of jumping down like it shows me doing in the picture, follow the arrow. There is a block of wood stopping your progress if you just wall-jump, but if you jump at just the right height on the pole, you can wall-jump, jump into the jut the "block" creates, and wall-jump from that onto the edge. From there, just jump down and you'll be at the Bird. I made a sloppy version of this method and I saved around 45 seconds, give or take. Optimized I could probably take it to 50 or maybe even 55~60 seconds.
- This picture in the Caves world shows me going the normal route over the gap and on toward victory. The normal route normally takes a long time, as you have to crawl for around 20 seconds. The method I used took a bit of planning and messing around, but you can use the enemy in the gap, manipulate him to shoot a bubble at you at just the right angle. When it's at a suitable distance, jump on it and onto the wall. Wall-jump and you'll save a good amount of time [undetermined amount saved, probably around 20~30 seconds?]
I'll post more as more shows up, and/or if people seem more interested.