Klonoa, with the help of his ring spirit Huepow, must protect the land of Phantomile, a mysterious place fueled by people dreams.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: PSXjin 2.0.2
- Bios: SCPH1001.BIN
- Aims to beat the game
- Take damage to save time
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile is a 2.5D platform game developed and published by Namco in 1997.
With his minimalist gameplay (X or triangle to jump, circle or square to throw his ring) and only one jumping height, one would think this game is easy to TAS. That's until the game mechanics are explored...
Compared to the TAS of マチョリーさん that can be find on Nicovideo (and that gives me a lot of ideas in the route planning), this TAS end up more than 6 minutes before マチョリーさん's one, for a lot of reasons.
About Klonoa's speed
It is a signed double word (4 bytes) at 0x000BF068 that can go over 50000 on flat ground. In order to simplify the next explanations, I will refer as speed the 2 upper bytes of the "true speed", ie the word at 0x000BF069, until the end of these comments.
With that in mind, the max speed on a flat ground is either 208 when going to the right and -208 when going to the left (but it can sometimes be 209 on some grounds). The max speed is equal to 320 on slope ground (and it isn't always obvious when a ground is a slope one or not).
Tricks and glitches
Bunny hopping
While in the air, Klonoa's speed isn't constant but switches between a couple of 2 values each frame, and there are 8 possible couples for each direction :
- To the right : [200;208] [201;209] [202;210] [203;211] [204;212] [205;213] [206;214] [207;215]
- To the left : [-201;-209] [-202;-210] ...... [-207;-215] [-208;-216]
The couple is determine by Klonoa's speed at the last frame he was on the ground.
For exemple, If his speed was either 1 or 9 or 17 or .... or 201 or 209 or ... then the couple will be [201;209].
As you can see, Bunny hopping is faster than running as long as you use the fastest couples, and in fact you can always get one of the two fastest as speed never goes up by more than 2 per frame while on the ground.
Slide on the ground
Once the speed is equal or above to 208 (-208), Klonoa will slide on the ground if he stops moving or moves in the other direction until his speed goes down to 0. This is by far shorter with the second method.
Setup the Bunny hoppings
When the speed isn't good to jump (usually 208 when you want 207 or 206), there is 2 ways to setup the required speed :
- Don't move for 1 frame so that you slide on the ground and lose 8 units of speed, then move again until your speed reachs 207 or 206
- Move in the other direction for 1 frame so that you lose 14 or 13 units of speed, then move again until your speed reachs 199
The second way is only faster if you can't reach a speed equal to 207 with the first one.
About acceleration
The speed accelerates faster in the air (8 units per frame) than on the ground (1 or 2 units per frame).
However, from a speed below 152, it is better to run on the ground for 1 frame before jumping, as the speed will go up to 160, even if it was equal to 0 on the previous frame.
Quick half-turn
If Klonoa is going in a direction but must then come back (for exemple after getting a key), it is faster to do back - nothing - back - back - back... than holding back the whole time, as Klonoa will only slide for 2 frames that way.
Catching animation cancel
Klonoa can't move while he doesn't hold his ring (at best he will slide on the ground).
However, he can still jump, but it will also cost time as the initial speed will be equal to 0 and if the ring was throw to catch a monster, the game will automatically use the double jump.
That's why it is always faster to throw the ring while in the air, though it is sometimes impossible to avoid hitting the ground before the ring is back.
However by hovering for at least one frame before hitting the ground, you can cancel the animation that prevents you to move, which can be faster in some cases.
Vision 1-1 : There are some slopes on the very first area.
Vision 1-2 : With every elevator-like platforms (the carriage in this vision) that prevent you to escape with invisible walls, the speed doesn't go down to 0 if you hit these walls.
Boss 2 : If I hit the boss too fast the first time, he will be slower (by far) to reach the middle of the area. If I start to go to left one frame sooner in either the second or third part, the boss will not go on the left rock.
Boss 3 : Hits number 1 and 2 were done on the first possible frame so that monster jumps on the field. Same apply for the fourth hit but this time so that the boss flee to the left.
Vision 4-1 : There is a small safe zone in the back of the fire orb ghosts that allow Klonoa to grab them earlier than the normal way by some seconds.
Vision 5-1 : It is impossible to hold two orbs at the same time, else I would be able to get the blue orb by using the red orb route.
Vision 5-2 : On the screen where you must free a monster from a cage, it's faster to leave and come back than to wait for the night to end.
Boss 5 : You can't hit him with monsters if he is on the other side of the field (the monsters Klonoa throws don't go that far).
Boss 6 : Going in the teleportation device skip his phase shoft animation, and it also allows me to manipulate the trajectories of his projectiles.
Final boss (2) : It is faster to die at the beginning than to wait for his animation.
Possible improvements
- A new sequence break
- Better speed management
Noxxa: A nice and good first TAS for this game. Accepting for Moons tier.
