Angerfist wants to see this movie done and I would like to record it. All I need is a tool to view the results of item drops at any time and I'm back at this project. I know that the item drops are not manipulatable, they are solely based on the clock. Also, enemies are mostly not manipulatable.
It's almost like the whole game universe starts moving at the same time and always does the exactly same pattern. No matter what screen you are positioned in, all the enemies in the game follow the clock. Mostly it's possible to just run through the screens at full speed and avoid every monster by jumping. The huge problem emerges when you have to decide where/how to waste time to collect coins. At some point, some monster's simple movements are synced so that it gets on your way, that's unavoidable. You have to decide what to do:
1) Kill it + collect coins ---> many frames lost, but got some money
2) Hit the monster, but don't collect coins ---> less time lost, but no coins gained
3) Run to the monster ---> waste time, waste health, no money
4) Use magic ---> Best solution, but can be used only a couple of times.
The decision is made, but....
Uh-oh, the clock goes *tic-tac* and you realize that the position of all future monsters (relative to you) depends on the decision you made, because different amount of time was wasted. If you're lucky, you can run about a minute without bumping to any monster. It may not sound bad, but there is no simple way to calculate when to use magic, kill monsters and collect coins. Finding the optimal choices would require many (hundreds, thousands?) of full game test runs, a movie-tree. And sub-optimal test runs are useless, because the game clock decides the item drops and monster placement.
Here are two small movies that demonstrate the problem.
No matter what is done, eventually some monster gets on the way. I'm stuck at 1:20 and the movie is going to be about 40 mins.
Well, I've made some experiments with a savestate cracker. I've found out that savestate address FCB8 seems to have something to do with the item drops. That's the highest hi-tech level I can reach. I can't code anything myself. Item drop viewer wouldn't solve all problems, but if I had that kind of tool, I'd have much more motivation to record this run.