Joined: 5/16/2006
Posts: 7
Location: Wouldn't you like to know, Rosamond CA
This might be a problem. I have yet to find any ingame information about CCB on the interweb, meaning anything to be learned has to be sought out personally.
Here's what I know:
1.Coins have a chance of giving 2x the normal amount of money.
2.The 2nd room in Round 5 has enemies spawn from random places, when I tried to make a movie, the next time I played back this area, the enemies began appearing in places they didn't my first several playthroughs
3.You can "catch" the skull boss's head and the vampire's underwear (cough) for amusing results.
4.The Options menu can be accessed from the title screen by pressing A, B, and C simultaniously.
5. Though the Red Warrior can stock up to five spells, the Blue Warrior has more attack power. (Not certain about vitality difference)
6.Holding up or down when jumping increases and decreses your jumping height.
7.Every 7 attacks, you perform a "critical hit" which is visually recognized by a yellow flash.
This is all I have found that seems relevant.
You need 3 things to make a good tas; an emulator, a ROM image and dedication. Other stuff like known bugs, sda runs, disassemblies, etc are helpful but not necessary. Much of the stuff we care about isn't likely to be documented anywhere anyway. Finding this is probably the most important and demanding part of making these movies.
As for bug hunting, I'm sure you'll find something good if you look. The collision detect seems a little odd. That plus the wierd way you can grab onto walls should yield something. Looking through Common Tricks is a good place to start.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Nice game for tasing. Perfected run would be around 10 minutes.
The fastest strategy is to play with the magician and die in the boss fights to regain all magic power. Shop is used to buy continues and magic exclusively. I also believe that the fastest way is to play the first three levels in the opposite order: 3, 2, 1.
There are two different endings. The better one costs a few seconds. The decision is done near the end of the movie, so it hardly affects anything.
However, there seems to be a desynch issue with the game. No movie is possible until it's solved.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Well, actually it is possible to record a movie, but not detailed optimizations: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/5708/chikichikiboys.gmv
The movie is mostly useless, but completes the game and shows some strategy for the bosses, if someone is interested. I'm not.
Okay! This is my first attempt at a TAS, and I'd appreciate some feedback on how I'm doing so far. I've chosen this game because it's both one I enjoyed a lot as a child, and one I feel offers plenty of opportunity for variety and entertainment.
I made a brief attempt at this years ago, but my movie quickly lost sync and became useless and I gave up. This time I'm using BizHawk and haven't had any sync issues at all. I can see there is quite a bit of lag in some places, which is probably what caused the problem before, but in this emulator it seems to be reproducibly consistent.
So far I've made my way through the initial three rounds of stage one, and decided to stop here and see what people think before going any further, or perhaps starting again and doing things differently.
I found one other thread on this game (after I'd already started though) which has a few suggestions in it.
One thing I hadn't realised is that there's a (not very well) hidden options menu with a difficulty setting. I didn't enter that so I've been playing on the default medium setting, but this alone might be good reason to start over on hard.
I already knew about the other points. One I'm divided on is the recommendation of using all the magic then dying to get it replenished. I know abusing death to save time is acceptable, but just as personal preference I don't like it.
Here's a recorded video:
Link to videohttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6vqg3izOlpNVHlkNEY5NXZQREE/view
Miscellaneous notes I've made on the way (times are offsets into the encoded video):
General
Sword does double damage every 5th strike. Doesn't seem to matter about timing at all, just number of swings. This means I sometimes swing the sword at nothing, just so that the next actual attack will be a critical. If it looks like I'm swinging when there's no point, that's why.
The magic for each round is different, but based on the order you play and not tied to the individual rounds. It might be better to play in a different order if certain magic is more appropriate to particular rounds.
Left/right movement begins 3 frames after you push the direction.
Swinging your sword causes you to stop moving if you're on the ground, but doesn't affect movement at all if you're in the air (or water). Therefore there's no penalty for killing everything in sight so long as you jump, fly or swim (fun!).
You're invulnerable for a while after using magic and after being hit, which is useful for moving through things that would hurt you or otherwise cost too much time to fight.
Enemies (particularly bosses) are also invulnerable for a while after being hit. I used the RAM search feature to find the bosses health in memory, and only strike to cause damage on the first vulnerable frame.
I have no idea on the best strategy regarding coins. They aren't collectable immediately after they appear, so it's quite rare to be able to collect any without wasting time. I had hoped that I'd accumulate just enough throughout the first stage that I could buy a better sword before stage two, but failed to do so. I'm now thinking it would've been better to just spend all my money on replenishing magic instead.
Round 1-1
Didn't attack anything here as I was just getting started and learning how the tools worked, concentrating purely on going right as fast as possible.
00:17 - This boss isn't vulnerable until it reaches roughly the middle of the screen. Is my standing and waiting too boring? Magic seemed the fastest way to get rid of all the orbiting things at once. I didn't realise that there's actually another horizontal version of this magic that occurs if you're jumping whilst you trigger it - I think that version is slightly faster, so I should probably use that instead.
00:36 - Yeah... probably could've avoided stopping here by using jumping attacks.
00:41 - Timing of the platform is annoying. Tried several things, but the fastest way I could find through here is just to fall in the lava.
00:48 - Again, jumping attack
Round 1-2
I had lots of fun chopping everything up here. Doesn't cost any time so why not?
01:57 - I found that for one single frame here, you can actually jump before you fall. Using this I was able to get right over to the far right of the screen very quickly, but found there's no point; it autoscrolls down all the way before you can go right anyway, and it scrolls down faster if you push downwards, so that's faster. Instead took the opportunity to fall on some of the larger coins and pick up a magic orb. Picking up the orb cost me a tiny amount (about 5-10 frames) versus going straight to the right after the last rope, but I think it's worth it.
02:12 - Really difficult to see this damn boss and know when you're hurting it. Found its health in RAM to solve that. It spends quite a lot of time invulnerable, which leads to a couple of pauses where it looks like I'm wasting time. I wasn't able to do any damage during that time.
02:28 - Jumping or not jumping makes absolutely no difference in frames at all here, but jumping is cool!
02:38 - Had fun catching all the coins by barely touching them (one pixel away from missing), except...
02: 47 - Don't want that one or you get a 'perfect' aware for collecting all the coins, which actually pauses the game for quite a while to congratulate you.
02:57 - Yeah, probably chose the wrong order to kill these beans in, the last one got away. It let me have fun chasing some coins but probably wasn't worth it.
Round 1-3
Chop chop chop!
03:12 - Oh I hate this miniboss so much. He spends most of his time off screen where I can't get him. I tried pushing him up against the rocks to get rapid hits, but that doesn't work because although the rocks are solid for me, he passes right through them. Some particularly long pauses here, but there was literally nothing I could do to hit him. I landed damage on the first possible frame. Need to experiment more with ways to manipulate him to stay on screen.
03:47 - I tried so hard to squeeze through here without being hit (and got so close!), but just couldn't find a way. Being hit is faster than fighting the blue thing. On the other hand, it does also let me abuse the invulnerability to pass right through the next two blue things, so maybe it's for the best.
03:52 - Laaaaaag! Don't know how to avoid this. Obviously too much on the screen, but I don't have time to collect the coins or kill the blue things.
04:01 - Easy but not very entertaining boss fight. His post-hit invulnerability period is juuuuust slightly more than it takes to cycle through five sword strikes, so I took the strategy of hitting him with the critical, slashing at nothing 4 times, pausing a couple of frames then repeat. Could've done this a lot faster with magic, but I'd used it all and had been saving my coins for a new sword. Pretty sure that was a bad decision; should've just spent all my money at the shop for 3 new magics. Tried to keep this from being completely boring by getting right up in his face (most of the time 1 pixel away from collision).
Summary
So... am I doing this right? Do you think this has the potential for meeting entertainment standards? As a n00b, is there anything I should know about setting up the emulator in a particular way that I might've done wrong? Any comments welcome!
EDIT: Added YouTube video.
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
So major bump, but I started tinkering around with this game and found a few small improvements, here and there but I'll have to redo my inputs any way since I didn't realize you could skip the Sega screen at the beginning. I like what you have so far though, would definitely love to colab if you're interested too.
I'll post the WIP of some ideas I have so far once I'm back at my computer (on my phone atm).
Hey, nice to see someone interested. I would've definitely been up for collaborating, but realistically I don't have the time to continue at the moment (now have a small baby - no more free time).
I really want to see this game get done though, even if it means having to do it myself eventually. I think it has potential. Happy to discuss ideas for now.
At some point I found a non-TA speedrun video of this game where the runner found a way to skip one of the dragon bosses. I played around for a while but couldn't reproduce it, and he didn't provide much information about how it's done. I guess there are probably other bugs like that too.
I'll post a link if I can find it again.
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
Ahh, totally get it. I've actually been working on a TAS so far. Gonna post a WIP video. I'm actually heading into that dragon boss to see how to skip it. I have a few ideas on how it might be done but I don't wanna speculate until I can recreate it.
I'm mostly following the any% speedrun route only on hard mode. I'm doing a lot of manipulation on getting the coins to give me x2 bonuses which means I've been able to skip almost all of the grinding for coins to buy magic items.
On a side note, this is actually the happiest I've been making a TAS and seeing the result. I might not have known about this game if I didn't stumble onto your WIP, so thank you. Also hope you don't mind, I named to character "BORK" in tribute to the puppy in our upstairs apartment that hasn't stopped barking since I started making this TAS.
After this I might work on a character 1 TAS as well. It'll be much, much harder, but I think it would be fun to work around not having as much magic and having to make the melee-centered boss fights entertaining.
[edit: here's the video]
Link to video
Quick update, I got the glitch to work but I have less than zero a clue why it works. Just from observation, I know you have to chip a little bit of the dragon's health away until a single bomb will one-shot it (not too hard). You have to collide with the dragon behind the rocks at the same time as the bomb kills it. It won't damage you but you'll have to run into the dragon at least. My best guess is that the character hits a loading plane while the boss is technically dead so it okays you to go through, but why I can't seem to get it to happen anywhere else besides that corner, or if the dragon is too far out is beyond me.
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
Double post boi
Link to video
So I finished the dragon boss skip and the next stage and all that, but what I'm running into is an issue getting the fairies to drop magic bombs. I've been trying to manipulate them as that is a huge part to the routing for this run as far as bombs. This is the first place where they can actually save time. I found a speedrun.com post by JohnUK89 (related to Mike89? /kappa) where he explains a bit about the fairies. Apparently your twin has to be at full health. The way the notes for 4-2 make it sound like you have to have low coins too, but that doesn't help either. Besides, I think he meant, if you happen to have low coins and can't buy a bomb, the fairy is an option towards saving the run.
https://www.speedrun.com/Chiki_Chiki_Boys/thread/k538y
All of John's notes, however are geared towards normal mode, Red Twin RTA. I'm gonna feel stupid if it turns out that the fairies don't drop bombs on hard mode, but that is such a subtle difference I doubt that's the case. In any case, I haven't gotten the fairies to drop anything ONCE. I don't want to push through sub-optimally unless there's a good reason, because bomb drops will end up saving a lot of time on the upcoming bosses, especially in 4-3 and 4-4. So as it stands I have to take some time to figure out the fairy drops before I can proceed.[/i]
I'm gonna feel stupid if it turns out that the fairies don't drop bombs on hard mode, but that is such a subtle difference I doubt that's the case. In any case, I haven't gotten the fairies to drop anything ONCE.
If I understand you correctly, you may start feel stupid right now.
Because, difficulty is in fact the reason why you're unable to get any bombs from fairies.
All following info is for (UE) [!].
There are exactly two different schemas for Hard, and Not-hard:
1) Hard:
if you have low hp then it gives you 10000 additional score.
if you have max hp then it gives you 30000 additional score.
No random.
2) Not Hard:
if you have low hp then it heals you by 10 hp.
if you have max hp then:
50% chance to get 5000 additional score
50% chance to get additional bomb.
In case you have max bombs then 100% first case (5000 score).
So, basically, in hard mode there is no reason to touch them at all.
First, while searching info about fairies, I checked the game for level select similar to Japan version.
It's same, just requires character name to be TAKO.
I had found this before info about fairies.
So, you need to enter name TAKO and then, you may select some stages of round 4 by holding A, or B, or C in round selection.
Next, I did research about fairies. Info about that is above.
Also I got plenty of RAM watch addresses...
Next, I decided to make some replay just to avoid playing the game manualy.
While doing that I've found that you may make character name selection screen
to fade in faster if you hold start.
Suddenly, I decided to dig into coins x2 chance.
And I've found that there is double-coins chance located at FFAF56.
Surprisingly it depends on name as well.
So, I picked one of highest luck character names, having minimal input.
Here is my test run.
Link to videohttp://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/47311537298098294
For some reason I forgot to hold start at character selection screen.
So, you may compare frames.
As you may see, on the stage with clouds I got all coins around tower doubled, except one that is missed to avoid "perfect bonus".
Btw I did damage boost on the top.
My run has around 2 k coins more, and around 100 frames ahead of your WIP at the end of this stage. But I have lower hp, yeah.
Next I picked up sword upgrade, and lost frames in second stage.
I was just testing this strategy.
So now I think I should get max magic orbs as you did.
In the end, I was so upset about golem boss with hands. He is annoying.
Had bad luck to beat him, so I just set sword on autofire and picked up best from some of attempts.
Whole run is not optimized too much, but it is a bit optimized. 3.5k rerecordings.
So, summary notes.
1) You may fade in character selection screen faster if you hold start. You didn't it.
2) Character name and type sets two things: sword max hits, and double coins chance.
When you reaching sword max hits, it's reduced to 0 and does that long yellow swing.
It deals higher damage to simple enemies, but at least for first boss in round 2 damage is same for yellow swing/normal swing.
Double coins is a chance of 256 to get coins doubled.
Sword max hits and double coins chance depends on same value: index.
They both increase by index.
So, the more you have sword max hits, the more you'll have double coins chance.
This is not always working in opposite way. Just because gradation between chances is smaller.
Index is in range 0..31.
lowest sword max hits & luck is index 0, which has (3, 12) <- max hits, luck.
so it has 12/256= 4.6875% chance to get coins doubled.
Highest luck with same max hits is index 2 and it is (3, 16).
The highest luck is 112 = 43.75%, and index is 31.
Now, a small table:
Sword max hits, highest luck, %:
I suggest alternative names that have (9, 112) and nice meaning:
GG (type GG and hit and hold START)
GG?!
GG!?
There are many of ugly ones. I didn't check them all.
Also, you have in the title "GENS TAS", but it doesn't look like GENS.
Are you sure that you're using gens? Or does it mean Genesis?
If it means genesis, then please don't confuse people, write Genesis or GEN or MD instead.
Also, if your WIP is not on GENS, then you should not compare frames, because timings depends on emu.
Info provided by me http://tasvideos.org/Addresses-121.html
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
Oh yeah the GENS thing was a simple typo, it's in Bizhawk but I (out of muscle memory) typed "GENS". I'll fix that once I'm back at my computer at home. That said, with all of this information in mind I'm most likely gonna start rerouting and planning a new TAS. Debating whether hard mode would add or take away from this run with the added time to kill bosses withoit possible bomb drops.
Really weird how much the name choice actually affects things but it's good to know.
[Update: fixed]
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
So double post time.
While working on the rerouting for this TAS, I think the best thing would be to decide yes or no on hard mode.
Pros and cons to hard mode:
+ preferred (but not required) difficulty
+ swordplay actually means something for boss fights
= can potentially avoid repetitive bosses (namely spam 2 or 3 bombs and the boss is dead). Though one could argue ending up with not enough bombs and having to swipe down a boss looks not only slow, but still repetitive. The latter is where my opinion lies, but that's neither here nor there.
= not as easy to compare for RTA runners looking for theory runs. Personally, it doesn't matter to me as I believe TASes inherently have different parameters and goals anyway. But some people may care, so I figured I'd mention it.
- cannot get fairie bomb drops
- as a result of the above, in order to optimally dispose of round 4 bosses, the sword upgrades will have to be collected.
- as a result of the above, the coin farming route will have to be altered slightly. The difficuly in this is mitigated quite a bit by the new info we have.
I have my opinions on what mode to chose but I wanted to know what others thought. [Edit: also does anyone think a blue twin, melee-centered TAS would be interesting to see as well?]
Question about difficulty selection for me is more like question about how much technically hard you want your TAS.
For me, it is not much fun to bomb bosses. It's easy.
From other hand, if you have bombs then you have to use them.
Just because your goal is to finish game ASAP.
In "normal" mode you don't need too much coins to have enough magic orbs.
And thus, you don't need to think too much about decision where you need to pick them up.
Easier routing is reducing technically difficulty very much.
I see only one boss that you'll have to fight with sword twice: scorpion.
Also, picking 1p vs 2p seems to me as another kind of difficulty selection.
Just because with 2p you skip many of boss fights.
And with 1p you'll have to boost your sword, and grab coins more carefully.
For me, it looks like there is 4 difficutly: 1p/2p and hard/normal for each.
And, in the end... Anyway you'll have to choose luck/sword hits.
This is tricky. Best option is to try some of them.
Or, you need to make statistic about bosses: I-frames, hp, sword hits required with each level of sword.
And then, plan how many sword levels you need, and which sword-max-hit you select in the first place.
By the way, I was wrong when I was saying that some bosses doesn't take double damage from yellow swing.
In fact, all of them affected by yellow swing.
So, for each boss you need to consider how many double-damage swings you can apply on them.
Update: http://tasvideos.org/Guidelines.html#SelectYourDifficultyWell
Oh, looks like normal should be selected, because:
Faster bossfights on repetitive bosses, especially if their lower health can lead them to be one-cycled, and they are not interesting to fight for longer periods
And all of bosses in this game are boring.
I find it upsetting. And, it's not rules, it's advices.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
If hardest difficulty adds variety and complexity, is harder to play and to TAS, use that. If it only makes things tedious and long, use easiest. If unsure, use hardest.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
To adress the scorpion boss fights, you can use two bombs on the crab refight, two on the mini boss of 4-2, leaving you with one left over. If you are in normal you can grab the free orb on the way to the first scorpion boss, plus manipulate the fairie just before to give you 3 bombs to drill through the boss immediately.
I know with the second scorpion boss if you use bombs to kill it you can regain 2 bombs on the fairies on the way to the pickaxe boss in 4-4 (iirc).
To be honest, I'm the type that leans toward pure speed when hard mode doesn't present a vast difference, which I feel applies to this game. My interest is kind geared towards showing off ridiculous luck that cannot be replicated by a human. Getting x2 bonuses all over the place, getting perfect fairie luck, perfect enemy AI, etc.
[Edit: all of that said I'm still down for hard mode]
I have second my test, I haven't publish it yet.
So, here it is: https://youtu.be/7KGDc8V57RQ (fixed)
Just to make anyone who wants see it to be able to.
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
I thought about that but you spawn back with the basic fire magic orbs and can't regain your bombs. The fire is pretty inaffective on later bosses too (when you'd most likely need this strat) so it's completely suboptimal unless something else is found.
Plus the time it takes to die and respawn typically isn't worth it either.
I'm still working on this TAS and should have a finished WIP of the first 3 rounds soon. Just had a lot of irl things interrupt TASing time for me.
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
Sigh... Okay... So
There have been WAAAY too many IRL delays on this TAS. But long story short, here is the newest WIP for the first three rounds.
Link to video
For starters, this is ran in hard mode with the name DERP. DERP gives red twin max luck and highest amount of swings before a critical strike comes up. The second part can be basically a non-issue in a TAS setting where you can plan sword swings very precisely.
After a lot of testing, I found getting the first sword upgrade is most worth it. The second upgrade, not so much. The reason being that the second sword upgrade costs 15,000 coins, and the time it would take to farm that many coins and however much I’d need for magic orbs isn’t worth it and doesn’t end up saving time.
I found the best place to farm for coins quickly is Round 3. Through quite a bit of manipulation (which I will explain later) you can get yellow fish to spawn in sets of 3. Killing all three will cause the last one to drop a 500 coin, which can be manipulated into a 1000 coin, which can, in turn, be duped for a x2 bonus. Making it super quick to gain 2000 coins. Neither Round 1 or 2 allow for this level of quick farming, and ideally, I want to have a sword upgrade by the end of the first 3 rounds.
ROUND 2-1
I found the fastest strat for the first part of this stage was to avoid lag as much as possible. The biggest source of lag comes from the sprinklers, plus I want to try and de-spawn as many devil dudes as possible. I don’t spend time farming here because, as mentioned, I can save all of that for more profitable sections.
When heading up to Cupid, you can land a hit a few frames earlier, but by getting a little closer, the horizontal fire will stay on screen longer and land two hits at once to end the first phase immediately. Do the same thing for the second phase and Cupid is done for; simple enough.
ROUND 2-2
During the drop, I use the zip lines to delay when I grab the coins to dupe the 500 coins on the way down. On the last zip line I stay on for a few frames longer to put to twin in a position to drop past the platforms below, thus allowing him to smack the shell open for the magic orb, and grab it before the screen can catch up. As a bonus, this positioning allows me to dupe all of the coins on the top path without stopping forward movement. All except the last 10 coin, I had to stop moving for one frame to dupe this coin. This wasn’t necessary at all, but for the sake of entertainment, I chose to go for it to show off the luck manipulation.
Small note: jumping off of ledges is faster as it maintains the twin’s 2 p/f movement, whereas falling off a ledge drops your movement to 1 p/f.
For the dragon, you can land an off-screen hit fairly quickly, but manipulating the dragon to be vulnerable more often was the hard part. So the dragon has two main attacks: it’ll spit fire, or spit out an egg. Whatever you do, you don’t want it to spit out an egg, the heads are invulnerable for much longer after spitting an egg versus fire. After the dragon is disposed of, I dupe the coins and jump on the cloud.
Another small note: the cloud doesn’t leave the screen any faster if you are on the ground or in the air, it raises at 1 p/f regardless of where or how it grabs your twin.
During the rising section, you don’t want to grab all of the coins as that will cause a PERFECT BONUS screen to stay up for waaaaaaaay too long. What you do want to do is dupe all of the coins on the way up. Thankfully, this isn’t all that hard to do with max luck.
For the beans up top, I planned out sword slashes so I can use the longer hit box of the critical slash to take out a bean guy without waiting for him. Funny enough I didn’t have to do any sort of manipulation to get a good pattern out of these guys.
So after that round I refill my magic orbs and head to Round 3.
ROUND 3-1
The most important thing I want to do here is manipulate yellow fish to get them to spawn. The enemies you kill/spawn plus when you reach certain points in the stage causes certain enemies to spawn. Getting the first wave of yellow fish to spawn close to the ground by the first hidden chest allows me to grab not only the manipulated 1000 coin from the third fish, but also manipulate the hidden 500 coin to x2. This allows for a fast 3000 coin grab for the first wave.
Immediately after I force another wave of yellow fish to spawn just before the boss. I had to pause to cause a 1000 coin to drop, but in this case, it was more than worth it. I plan a critical sword strike to hit the crab boss as soon as possible, this allows me to place a typhoon right under him to land three hits one right after another with a single bomb. While the crab is being hit with the typhoon, I can dupe the 1000 coin, and grab the 500 coin in the chest for another total 3000 coins. After the boss dies, he drops a 500 coin which can also be duped for another 1000 coins.
Overall this ends up being a huge haul of coins, and enough to grab both magic orbs and the sword upgrade
ROUND 3-2
Wedging between the first set of doors and the blue crab is extremely tight. It also requires destroying the top wooden door to end up farther into the wall. Also hitting the crab to push him upward gets him farther out of the way. I need to avoid damage on the first crab as the damage boost on the second crab is much more worth it. This allows for a very small window to pass the third crab without slowing down or dying.
Coming up to the shark boi you can place a typhoon to one-shot the boss during the first phase. For the second phase I try to keep the shark in place to land two quick typhoons to take out this boss very quickly.
ROUND 1-1
Leading up to the first boss is very simple, just keep heading right.
I had to try every single available frame to find the fastest way to destroy the space ship. The positioning to the far right and firing the balls at this angle lands multiple hits immediately with minimal lag. Just for fun I dupe all of the 10 coins while I’m waiting for the ship to land. My goal with phase two is to hit the boss on the same frame he jumps out of the ship while also being on the far right to walk out of the stage as fast as possible. Jumping a slight bit positions the balls to bounce into the boss to land immediately.
That is where a lot of the challenge with this weapon comes in. I have to worry about the trajectory of the balls and test A LOT of different positions to find the most optimal solutions. This will be a HUGE pain with the next boss.
ROUND 1-2
The top path immediately at the start of the stage is quickened quite a bit by having the sword upgrade. I want to destroy the wall as fast as possible to grab the x2 500 coin. Unfortunately, taking damage in the lava is much faster than waiting for the platform to get into a position to get to the next platform safely. That and the pillar up top gets in the way of just jumping there directly. I have to wait for the stalactites to get out of the way, so I use this time to grab a few extra coins.
I grab the x2 500 coin from the hidden chest and head right. In my original routing, I head upward to grab the extra magic orb shell, but I found it wasn’t necessary and I could save more time by simply grabbing the coins and ignoring the shell. This also sets up the elevator to be in a position to where the twin can jump straight up and avoid stopping forward movement.
When I enter the boss area, the Golem AI is already activated, I found I could land multiple hits by letting the Golem hit the wall. The wall on the left is farther away, but more optimal for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. Being by the wall, bounces the balls in a way that takes out the first arm immediately. I swipe him with the sword to keep the Golem above ground for longer. This allows another ball to hit him and take out the second arm.
The second ball attack deals a lot of damage as the Golem is technically in the ground, but is still vulnerable as long as it’s attacking. This setup has the Golem looking to slam into the wall right after, and as such you can land another hit as soon as it enters the ground. The wall also allows for two balls to hit him on the same frame, hence the huge amount of damage a single hit deals. One of the balls that fired out directly vertically is used to deal the final hit and end the fight before the Golem can even reemerge.
Another advantage to doing all of this by the left wall is it allows the twin to grab the key the first frame it’s active to end the stage faster. On the downside, I couldn’t dupe all of the coins, but I was able to get all but 2 to x2.
It took me 4 hours to get this boss to act right, so I’ll finish the victory dance when I’m a little less dead.
Just amazing!
That coins farm in 3-1 wow! woW!
That 3-1 boss crab kill from single orb WOW! I never been able to.
That 3-2 boss phase 2 in one cycle yet again wow!
And 1-2 boss golem is also O_o.
I don't wanna disappoint you, but here are few notes.
Red pill in 3-2 - you could either open it while comming from left side through wall using critical swing. Or avoid picking it and use hidden blue pill at boss 1-1 screen while he is falling or spawning. Anyway you need hp there only for lava hit in 1-2. And I'm unsure is it faster to pick red pill than wait for platform.
Other note is: you could grab more coins under ceil in 3-2 while you have time. But here I'm unsure just because I don't know how it is if you use lava for speed advantage.
Anyway, it's way too tiny improvement for redoing 3-1 boss and 3-2 boss manipulation and you don't know for sure that it won't end up worse.
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
I'll test the strat with the red pill out. The only real advantage that the red pill gives me is I-frames to pass through the spikes slightly faster. Though I did neglect to see about reducing lag during that sectioin. In hindsight that's kinda what I regret most. The only worry I have is if getting to the shark boss faster will result in a bad pattern. But without testing I can't be sure.
When I get some time I'll retest that section of 3-2 to see if I can save any more time. Any little improvement counts.
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
I wish I could convey into text the long, bellowing scream of relief I let out after I finished the Golem Boss.
You can skip to the 2:00 minute mark for the improvements.Link to video
I'm gonna keep my notes short as it's really early in the morning where I am and I need sleep.
So, I decided to redo the ending portion of Round 3. I used a few lag reduction strats and skipped the health pellet and that got me to the boss fight 92 frames ahead of the last WIP. With some better boss manipulation I end the stage 120 frames ahead.
Heading into round 1 I found a better positioning for the miniboss and a way to save a lag frame that net me 4 more frames heading into the second portion of the level. I lost those 4 frames manipulating the Golem into a somewhat serviceable pattern. But overall, despite not being able to pick up the key on the first possible frame, having the Golem hit the right wall meant less slow travel time for the Golem, and allowed me to save 238 frames over the last WIP.
The actual strat on the boss saved 269 frames, but the slower key grab by not having a wall to walljump off of knocked that time save down to 238.
