Posts for Faddy3

Posted: 4/7/2024 3:44 PM
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Faddy3
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/10/2023
Posts: 5
So I am going to talk about the changes that happened from the previous TAS publication. The new way to clip looks very similar to the old way. You walk onto the screen and erase the bottom tile with an item. But instead of allowing Dizzy to fall to the the screen below and rely on another glitch called the Inventory glitch (constantly opening the menu if it closes while Dizzy is in a falling state) you simply walk back off the screen. And when you walk in again Dizzy still moves vertically between screens but is never in the falling state so this allows him to move left or right before he starts to fall. There is another method for achieving the same thing but it needs two addition items. Duck almost shows this method in the TAS when constructing the hole on the Dylan Bush screen. Using the autodrop feature where if your inventory is full Dizzy will drop the oldest item in the inventory AND allow you to drop an additional item you can layer multiple items on top of each other. Then you can create a slightly bigger hole which allows Dizzy to clip out as he is walking into the upwards screen transition. So we could already beat the game without saving any Yolkfolk before the new glitch was discovered. However it was slower than saving Denzil because of a quirk of the game's inventory. When you layer 2 items on top of each other the one that appears on top is not related to what item was dropped last but insted each item has an order and they will always layer in the same order. The two items we really need to move, the duster and the lamp seem to be the lowest layered items making it impossible to take the Lamp, Duster and Sticky Stuff on a single trip because you could never set the items in such an order to collect one of them from the bottom of the screen in the process of clipping. The other inventory quirk is the inability to pick up the lamp with the duster in the inventory which complicates things a little. For example after the collecting the diamond behind the troll the Duster needs to be dropped from the inventory before you can re-collect the lamp. The new clipping method removes all the layering difficulties and makes it faster to save zero yolkfolk. However in not saving Denzil a lot of Diamonds are no longer on the critical route. The 3 diamonds to the right of the Weird Henge are no longer on the path to the hot water so have to be collected after Hades and requires some careful health management to do RTA, obviously no problem for the TAS. The diamond behind the troll is collected using the lamp wrap. There was an earlier version of the route where there was a 3rd trip to the ice palace which collected the torch in the crypt to clip out of the ice palace and collect the diamond and walk through the troll from the rear. The diamond down the well has to be collected with a death warp and is pushed to the start since it is the only time Dizzy's passes the Well And the diamond at the Bard is now a little out the way but building a hole under Dylan gets Dizzy almost all the way there So this new route has more glitches, more intricate strategies, completes fewer in game objectives. And the additional bonus of killing Zaks from behind just like how we gank him in Dizzy 1. And is significantly faster. Magicland is also my favourite of the Spectrum Dizzy games and this TAS is truly a wonderful showcase for the game. Thank you to Duck for seeing the new glitch and immediately getting to work on a new TAS.
Posted: 3/3/2024 7:36 PM
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Faddy3
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/10/2023
Posts: 5
nymx wrote:
Thanks for the explanation. This was very fun to analyze. I enjoyed it a lot. Yes vote.
There is a lot of little things to think about when routing out these games. Glad you enjoyed it. Duck does a fantastic job of putting these together. I love going into the lab with these games and after Duck's huge new glitch discovery there is the process of squeezing out every little bit. Duck's series of Dizzy TAS's always find things that just can't be easily replicated RTA which is amazing for games that look very simple and run at a low frame rate. None of the TAS routes are truly replicated in RTA (yet)
Posted: 6/21/2023 9:13 PM
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Faddy3
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/10/2023
Posts: 5
One other thing I forgot. on publication of the original Dizzy TAS there is of course a lengthy part of the video that is just loading the game with rather annoying sounds. Of course timing should start from power on but for the sake of Youtube could whoever uploads this to the official TAS channel put in a chapter mark that allows people to jump easily to when the game has finished loading.
Posted: 6/21/2023 9:10 PM
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Faddy3
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/10/2023
Posts: 5
Another amazing Dizzy TAS from DigitalDuck! This entry in the Dizzy series improves on the original by allowing Dizzy to carry three items instead of just one, with the unfortunate limitation of the inventory scrolling through your items. The most obvious issue is that if Dizzy happens to drop the rubber snorkle while underwater it is an instant death and game over. Most of the effort in routing is about keeping the snorkle in the correct place in the inventory so there are not long sequences of reshuffling which would cost a lot of time. One technique Duck didn't mention is rolling the inventory. Thich is when you collect a coin and drop an item immediately after, there is no delay like when picking up an item. duck uses this a few times to manage the inventory. For example he waits to collect the coin until after the detonator because it allows dizzy to pick up nothing and move the detonator up a slot. This kind of inventory rolling can be the bane of casual players as it is incredibly easy to do accidentally and especially dangerous when collecting the underwater coins. Ordering the inventory is one of the most important parts of the run and while it is easy to write down how you want the inventory to be managed Duck does it with some flair. This is not just copying RTA strats with faster inputs. The two most impressive and inventive examples are when he is cycling the skulls out of the inventory.
  • The first time on the beach Duck drops the snorkle while still in the water(!) to keep all the inventory management as far to the right of the screen as possible to get back in the sea ASAP. The second time dropping the snorkle just before the microwave and having it turn solid and walking toward the microwave while recollecting it. The perfect setup for collecting the microwave and jumping out the cellar.
One other skip that will not be replicated RTA is skipping under the purple jellyfish on the way back from the spade. The trick is unintuitive and perhaps linked to the jellyfish or dizzy not being synchronized to the frame scan. For a 34 year old game there has been a whole lot of new knowledge acquired about the game and even a year ago the TAS would look vastly different. Some of this from Duck's own inverstigations into the game for this TAS but also I was reinvigorated to find tricks and new route ideas for this game from due to the recent remaster and extended version from Titus. Spectrum speedrunning is going strong and there is still a strong interest in Dizzy games.
Posted: 5/10/2023 4:48 PM
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Faddy3
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/10/2023
Posts: 5
Excellent and high quality TAS by DigitalDuck.
As Dizzy does not attempt to control its framerate, when there is more to process, the game runs slower. Rooms with more enemies, items, moving platforms etc. run slower than rooms with less of these. In best conditions, the game runs at approximately one in-game frame every 0.05 seconds. For the rest of this section, "frame" refers to in-game frame.
This needs bolding and underlining. When the game has extra stuff on the screen it is positively sluggish. Lag is main thing that forces the structure of the RTA route. As shown in DigitalDuck's flowchart you could do the right hand side tasks first with no extra movement diversions this will be over 10 seconds slower from extra lag. So in the TAS there also needs to be consideration of objects on screen. This means that small, perhaps unnoticed, optimisations are all over this run. It is not simply a matter of pick up and dropping objects. They need to be picked up on the first possible frame and dropped so they spend the least amount of real time on screen. For example when Dizzy drops the Ghosthunter Laser it is done just before transitioning screens so it stays on the first screen and then falls through on Dizzy re-entering the screen. This keeps the amount of lag to a minimum. So it isn't just to look cool it is done to save time! But this TAS also does look cool. As a speedrunner of this game I obviously enjoy it but I also think there is a lot of entertainment value in a game that is just a big trade sequence. Dizzy interacts with the game world in a lot of interesting ways through out the run. Clipping into walls, standing on item, death warps and a huge sequence breaks. Things that a person who remembers this game from year ago would find surprising and entertaining.