Note: A section of the final level has a copyrighted song playing during it, Attack on Sail Barge, that needs to be either muted or replaced to avoid a copyright claim.
Boy, oh boy! Super Star Wars! Notable as being some of the laggiest games in existence, this is probably the easiest one to TAS. IE, it's still really difficult to optimize.
The first thing that should be addressed is the use of Easy difficulty. Changing the difficulty reduces enemy HP and how many enemies spawn. It does NOT change anything else. So Easy mode is chosen for speed purposes.
Tricks and Glitches
Slide Cancelling
Pretty easy trick. Attack right when a slide is about to end, and you can slide immediately afterwards. Saves frames over the course of the run.
Slide Boosting
Slide boosting is basically using objects or enemies to boost you forward a great distance. This can be done either with taking damage, or getting smooshed behind an enemy or object to get the game to eject you. This can be used to clip through walls, as well.
Freeze Jumping
The biggest glitch in the run, whenever Luke uses his Freeze force move in midair, there will be a period of time where he can then jump again. This is used in every Luke level to skip platforms, and sometimes entire levels.
Luck Manipulation
Luck manipulation in this game is a fickle mistress, but it is possible via pressing different buttons to get different results. This can be used to despawn enemies, change enemy attacking patterns, and most importantly to manipulate stuff like Thermal Detonators from enemies.
Jabba Palace Approach
Lots of luck manipulation to reduce objects onscreen/drive in a straight line
Jabba Palace Approach II
First real level. Leia is chosen because she has a very powerful charge move and is the second fastest next to Luke. I manipulated a Thermal Detonator before the boss, and manipulated the boss to move away from Leia's shots so he'll take more damage.
Jabba's Dance Hall
Very difficult level to optimize, due to the sheer amount of lag and luck manipulation needed. I manipulated as many Thermal Detonators as possible here. The boss is similar to the first boss in that I make it move away from Leia's shots for extra damage.
Jabba's Palace
First Luke level. Frogs are used to clip through a wall to skip the lower section of the level. After that it's freeze jumps and manipulating the frog boss to not spawn as many projectiles to kill it faster.
Rancor Pit
Chewbacca is used over Luke because his spin attack can pierce below him, and also because his gun is very effective against the area boss. The Rancor itself is very tricky to finish quickly, so I manipulate 2 extra Thermal Detonators from the rocks it spawns.
Attack on Sail Barge
Freeze Jumps lets me skip straight to boss, which makes up for how little damage Luke does to it.
Inside Sail Barge
Leia may look different (and sexier), but the only real difference is that she can double jump. Pretty standard level.
Speeder Chase
I manipulate all of the Storm Troopers to the side so I can instantly destroy them by hitting them against the forest wall.
Ewok Village A
Very, very laggy level. I roll a certain distance away from the boss area to skip it.
Ewok Village B
A bit easier then the last level. I use a passing Stormtrooper to skip a few jumps, and boost off a mantis to skip this boss as well.
Endor
Very precise freeze jumps let me skip the entire level and go straight to the boss.
Falcon Shooting Stage
Another 3D shooter stage. What fun.
Reactor
Leia is used over Han because she can clip through a wall and save time. Sorry Han. The boss is destroyed by the stars powerup.
Inside Death Star
Standard stage for the most part. I skip the twin mecha boss by causing lag killing an enemy.
Falcon Shooting Stage II
I kill enemies nearby me so I can pick up the item they drop and reduce lag.
Tower
Towards the end I trigger the end of the level by getting high enough to hit it. Skips a floor of the level.
Tower Entrance-Vader-
I use a spike ball to clip through the staircase and go directly to Vader. Vader himself is very easy thanks to the Force Saber.
Emperor's Chamber
I manipulate the Emperor to not move from his starting position, which lets me destroy him.
Death Star Destruction
5 minute scroller hooray~
Q/A
Q: How much input was done by each author?
A: I did the majority of the input, while Tompa did a few improvements, in particular the beginning of the reactor and a bit in the rancor pit. He didn't want credit though, so it's just me I guess.
Q: Easy Mode is for scrub noobs!
A: Fine, do a run in the other difficulty modes and see how much fun you have. Easy Mode is the fastest mode there is, so I chose that.
Q: The last 5 minutes are booooooooooooorinnnnnnnnng
A: I like to view the last five minutes as an accumulation of the previous 2 games. This is the final SSW game, so an epic spaceship thingy is perfect for that.
Q: Is this optimized?
A: I'd say it's as good as it's going to get for right now. These games are extremely laggy and random, and I did the best I could. Those 138,000 rerecords aren't lying, it's really that difficult to optimize this game.
Thanks
Thanks to Exonym, Samsara, Spikestuff, xy2, Mothrayas, and scrimpy. You all know why, you sexy ducks.
Special thanks to Tompa for helping optimize the earlier section of the run.
Suggested Screenshots
Up to you guys.
Tompa: Alrighty. First off: This is a fast-paced TAS which shows off a lot of neat moves and tricks. Optimising it is very struggling because of the high amount of lag as well as randomness.
Second off: The difficulty discussion. Easy was picked here because it would make a faster run through the use of more damage boosts, more tricks and glitches, slightly faster boss fights and shorten some levels. Two such levels are the Speeder Chase, where you have to kill twice as many enemies (20 compared to 10) in Jedi mode before you can finish the level, and the Falcon Shooting Stage, 28 Ties VS 12. Neither one of these make the run more enjoyable or more challenging, it only makes it longer. The
Guidelines are recommendations in order to make a more entertaining run. In my eyes, Easy mode is the choice to use to accomplish this for the case of this run.
Accepting.
