Hi there, I'm a speedrunner of this game and I'd like to help improve the TAS. The problem is that I have no experience TASing, but I'm good at finding new strats and manipulating RNG. I've been struggling with saving every frame possible and haven't been able to sync up my improvements with the current TAS, so I was wondering if anyone would be willing to help with the optimization or teach me how to make the game not desync after changing one thing. As an example of what I'm good/bad at, I changed the ending of the TAS, starting right after Kaboola 2 is defeated, and got it to be sub-9 minutes: https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638466906468908702 There can definitely be more frames saved in what I have there.
Bit 2 of LCDC.
Sprites can be 16px height or 8px height.
Is there a byte that controls this?
Trying to have one butterfly fly me to the top, it will not work.
But flying to the top with two butterflies that are positioned at different x locations will clip Yacopu through the wall.
Pressing different input, even non-consequential things like pressing up, will change the movement state.
It will probably be nearly impossible to manipulate two butterflies at the same time, though.
But maybe something will work out from here.
In the oddities section on that page, I see you uploaded the images for the normal and extra game end screens, but I don't see a difference, did you mean to upload a different image for one of them?
I found that you can stand on the ledge of the cooking pot (Act 12) without taking damage. It might be a timesaver to jump on the ledge like that, instead of taking damage like in the current run.
I found a difference between J1.0 and J1.1.
emu.getregisters()Tunnel clipping (...) This was found by mugg and was applied in Hoohoo Mountain by SolidifiedGaming to save a full minute.
...
| Possible Flipper Altitude | No. | Achieved by |
| 0x000000 | 01 | - - - - - - - - - - - L - - L L L - - - - - |
| 0x00000A | 02 | L L L - - - - |
| 0x02AAAA | 03 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x0AAAA8 |
| 0x02AAB4 | 04 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x2AAAAA Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x0AAAB2 |
| 0x055554 | 05 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x000000 |
| 0x05555E | 06 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x00000A |
| 0x0AAAA8 | 07 | - - - - - L - - - L L - - - |
| 0x0AAAB2 | 08 | - L L L - - - |
| 0x0D5552 | 09 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x0AAAA8 Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x155550 |
| 0x0D555C | 10 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x2AAAAA Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x15555A |
| 0x0FFFFC | 11 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x000000 |
| 0x100006 | 12 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x00000A |
| 0x155550 | 13 | - - - - - - L - - - L L - - |
| 0x15555A | 14 | - - L L L - - L L L - - - - L |
| 0x17FFFA | 15 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x0AAAA8 Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x1FFFF8 |
| 0x180004 | 16 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x2AAAAA Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x200002 |
| 0x1AAAA4 | 17 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x000000 Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x0AAAA8 |
| 0x1AAAAE | 18 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x00000A Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x0AAAB2 |
| 0x1FFFF8 | 19 | - - - - L L - - - - - L - L |
| 0x200002 | 20 | - - - L L L - L L L - - - L |
| 0x22AAA2 | 21 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x0AAAA8 Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x2AAAA0 |
| 0x22AAAC | 22 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x2AAAAA |
| 0x25554C | 23 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x000000 Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x155550 Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x1FFFF8 |
| 0x255556 | 24 | Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x00000A Achievable after screen freeze while flipper is 0x15555A |
| 0x2AAAA0 | 25 | - - - - - L L |
| 0x2AAAAA | 26 | - - - - L L L |
(1) Move the ball 7F before it reaches inside the flipper's area of effect for the first time.
(2) Save state A.
(3) Try different inputs so the flipper collides with ball in different ways
(Previously I considered only the 10 possible flipper positionings (called "altitude" before)
but we should consider how the ball is hit, from positioning A in one frame to positioning B in the next frame - refered to as "velocity" above.)
After the tried input, brute force for as long as the ball is still inside the flipper.
(2^10 is only 1024 tries for 10 frames of trying pressing or not pressing the flipper, so this is ok.)
After the ball leaves the flipper's area of effect, check if we reached a new scenario (ball in different position, different speed, etc.) and if yes, save state B.
After the flipper last collides with the ball, there should be no more input.
(4) For each saved state B, let ball reach to 7F before any flipper and repeat from (1)
or if there is less than 7F before reaching the next flipper, rewind to state A in read-only and let it run to 7F before the next flipper from there,
repeat from (1) while replicating the input of the previous flipper.
---
After each frame, check winning conditions. Examples:
- Star key count increased
- Exit reached
After each frame, check losing conditions. Examples:
- Ball reached an undesired transition (i.e. wrong exit)
- Star count below a certain pre-set after certain frame count
- Door to the next room closed after certain frame count
- Fastest record time exceeded
- Ball is too far up in the room after a certain framecount - meant to reduce on unnecessary attempts where ball is not going to be near the exit
- Ball is too low in the room after a certain frame count - meant to reduce on unncessary attempts where ball is not going to be near the exit
- Enemy not hit after certain frame count
- Yellow Coins lower than certain pre-set after certain frame count
- Blue Coins lower than certain pre-set after certain frame count
- (...)
If winning condition is reached and it beats the previous fastest time, then save a state and update the fastest time variable (that is checked by "losing condition: fastest record time exceeded"). Then discard the current attempt.
If losing condition is reached, discard the current attempt.
event.onmemoryexecuteevent.on_bus_execevent.onmemorywrite(function() print("hi") end, 0x14B4, "test", 16)event.onmemorywrite(function() print("hi") end, 0x14B2)