TAS Goal: Complete all 15 levels and reach the final cutscene.
Rather standard platformer with simple controls. You attack with your claw, you dash with odie, and you jump.
Basic Tech:
-Odie's Dash can be extended with jumps as well as the claw attack.
-Turning left and right can help with landing on platforms.
That's really about it, the game is split into 4 playstyles (Exploring, Riding, Performing, Flying)
-Exploring is the main platforming part of the game where you have to collects special collectables to bring back to a NPC character.
-Riding is another part where you ride Odie to the end of the level without losing all your energy.
-Performing is a basic rhythm mini-game where you time the stars to achieve a high score.
-Flying is practically a side-scroller where the inputs are up and down to avoid obstacles.
Levels:
1 - Get Ready to Leave Home (Exploring)
Standard starting level, there's keys you have to bring to Jon that you can't access without Odie's dash, in which Odie is present on the other side of level, just a basic B-line to Odie with some small platforming.
2 - Ride to the Studio (Riding)
The first riding levels, and the introduction of damage boosting in these types of levels, by getting stuck behind a wall the game launches you forward at high speed while taking away 10% of your energy (health), so to get as many damage boosts here it's simply about collecting the low-hanging foods as well to avoid dying.
3 - Sneak Preview (Performing)
The first of these, there's not really much of a way you can speed these up, so these can be pretty much glossed over.
4 - Get Ready to Rehearse (Exploring)
More platforming and strats, just collect the 3 items scattered around, in the rooms leading up to 2 of the items you can use Odie's Dash and coyote frames to skip some platforming, other than that just some fast platforming.
5 - Ride to the Forest (Riding)
The first and only glitch present in this game, despite the lack of walls to get stuck on, you can damage boost by doing a precise jump to get stuck in an incline between the floor and the slope, saving about a second per boost, I tried in other inclines but couldn't get them to work.
6 - Get Ready for Magic Tricks (Exploring)
Collect the 4 cards stuck in the trees, bring them to the NPC, I chose to route in a way to collect the coffee to obtain the red card from exiting the ladder without having to do some extra platforming.
7 - Comedy for Alligators (Performing)
Fast menu navigation yippee!
8 - Ride to the Pong (Riding)
The final riding level, just holding right most of the time until reaching this one part where you can do a glitched damage boost.
9 - Get Ready to Train (Exploring)
Like level 6, except one of the collectables is just in the main path, the coffees in this level are simply too out to reach without having to spend extra time platforming to them.
10 - Training with Freddy (Performing)
These levels were a bit a break after all the save states and frame advances in the Exploring levels.
11 - Get Ready for Funny Water (Exploring)
Just a lot of jumping just enough to land on the platforms, and some fast ladder climbing with coffee. And the single collectable here is just sort of put there on the side of the level.
12 - Fly through the Forest (Flying)
Yep, just a basic autoscroller, I tried making it entertaining by collecting most of the items here.
13 - Fly through the City (Flying)
Last flying level? I was getting attached to them ):
14 - Get Ready to Tango (Exploring)
The last platforming level, really just like level 4 but the items are in different places. Just take the direct paths to them and win!
15 - Fun Fest Tango (Performing)
Ending off the game with a basic rhythm mini-game, game simply ends after this with a final slideshow.
Overall, fun game to TAS and get under 19 minutes.
Garfield's Fun Fest is a DS game based on the 2008 straight to DVD movie of the same name. The game is a 2D platformer with a whole bunch of alternate gameplay styles sprinkled in. This game is fairly whatever, not offensively bad but also not anything special. The game is very basic and very short, doing nothing interesting. Over half of the game is glorified auto-scrollers and even the platforming levels aren't particularly engaging. The game does look nice however and I think it is actually better than the movie it is based on (although that is a very low bar).
ChesetheStickman made the first draft of this TAS (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lanrVZbBr70 ) and after seeing it, I saw potential for improvement. This was actually a game from my childhood unlike all of the other licensed games I've run at this point and I did have brief thoughts of TASing this game myself so seeing Chese's TAS really motivated me to look into this game. As a result, I worked on this TAS and cut down the run a good bunch. Most of the significant improvements I made were in the platforming levels but I made some smaller adjustments in the other levels in addition to cleaning up inputs and execution throughout the run.
Exploits
Here I will go over the main exploits in the platforming levels. There are a few smaller things but these are the main exploits used.
Air Walking
Garfield's Fun Fest like a good chunk of platformers has Coyote Time where when you run off an edge, the game considers you grounded for a little bit before you start falling, allowing you to jump in mid-air. If you stop moving while you are in Coyote Time, it resets the Coyote timer which essentially allows you to infinitely walk on mid-air until you eventually hit the ground. This can be used for a handful of skips throughout the run including a couple of big skips.
Speed preservation
Using Odie in the platforming levels gives you a big speed boost although Odie only lasts for a limited time and there is a little bit of cooldown before you can use Odie again. However, if you claw swipe while using Odie and then you time another claw swipe with perfect timing, you can retain the speed for as long as you chain perfectly timed attacks, allowing you to keep the speed from Odie during the cooldown. You can then use Odie after preserving the speed a couple of times. You can also hold neutral and use well timed jumps to keep the speed although I don't think that was used much in the run.
Here, I will give any extra level comments regarding improvements I implemented compared to Chese's original draft. Some of his level comments are outdated and this section will fill in those gaps.
Get Ready to Leave Home
- This level has the biggest skip in the run. You normally have to go all the way to the right to get Odie where you can then go all the way back, grab some keys you couldn't get before and then make it all the way back to the beginning to finish the level.
- However, we can use air walking to get the keys without Odie and we can finish the level without Odie. The game still gives us Odie in later levels so the game does not punish us for skipping Odie. This skip saves somewhere from 40-50 seconds I believe.
Ride to the studio
- I was able to incorporate an extra damage compared to Chese.
All Dancing Levels
- The only real notes I have for the dancing levels is that you need to hit the last note as early as possible with a perfect (earlier technically works too) and you need to mash through the results screen.
Get Ready to Rehearse
- There is a section of the level with 2 ladders. Each ladder takes you to 2 of the items you need. Once you get one of the items, you are supposed to backtrack to the other ladder in order to get the other item.
- However, we can go to the right ladder, collect the glasses and then we can use air walking to take a direct path to the plates, skipping the backtrack and saving around 20 seconds.
Get Ready for Magic Tricks
- After collecting the spade card, we can use air walking to get the blue card and then we can take a direct route to the red card and finish the level, skipping some climbing and backtracking.
Get Ready to Train
- In the cave, we can use air walking to reach the item faster.
Get Ready for Funny Water
- Apart from optimising platforming further compared to Chese, there isn't much to say about this level. It's just optimised platforming more or less.
- The only other thing I will say is that this level is prone to desyncing. The rest of the game is rather sync friendly (although level 9 can desync at times) but this level is quite prone to desyncs which was annoying to deal with.
Get Ready to Tango
- This is another level where I mainly just optimised platforming further compared to Chese, this level does not have anything super noteworthy.
Conclusion
And that is Garfield's Fun Fest in 17:18 (16:55 RTA). Chese was able to get a sub 19 and I managed to save over a minute and a half compared to that which was neat to achieve. It could be possible to optimise platforming a bit further, more lag reduction could likely be implemented and maybe there are more skips/better routes in certain levels but I am happy with how this turned out overall. Huge shoutouts to Chese for making the original draft and for inspiring me to work on this TAS.
Tegron: Adding SuperSqank as a co-author with authors' permission, and replacing movie file with
this improvement posted by the author.
Tegron: TAS looks good with level completion, 1 minute faster than
RTA
Accepting to Standard
