User Files from Exonym

Finished the test run of the first main 6 stages. Only one final level and a final boss to go. Still not 100% sure the last room of Life Research (last stage in this WIP) is optimized as that one is a pain with all the unavoidable enemies.

Also included some minor improvements to previous stages since the last WIP uploaded here. Probably too minor for anyone to notice.

Finished the first 5 stages on the 4 bomb route I'm currently testing. It's seeming like a solid route, the more I think about trying to do an extra wall glitch in the life research stage the more I think it's slower, because you have to collect an extra e-tank, an extra bomb, and then slow kill one of the bosses instead of instakill. I feel like this WIP is somewhat optimized, I'd like to do a bit more testing on Military Base, which is the last stage completed in this WIP. I wasn't happy with those floor robots, having to significantly select spam my way through one of them. Other than that a lot of these stages are pretty simple, with the first 2 being the hardest to optimize.

Rerecord count is a bit low, because I kept reloading old WIPs instead of consistently working on the original one.

First 2 stages of Power Blazer. Doing a test run of only getting 4 bombs, 2 for boss instakills and 2 for a skip later in the Space Center stage. There's an invincibility trick spamming select, but you need an empty slot to do it. So I've started off the first 2 stages that I acquire a bomb on, leaving the e-tank slot open for using it.

Stage order I've picked for the test (the characters after the stage are how many bomb (B) and energy tanks (E) I'll have after completing the stage):

4 bomb route:

1: Energy Development (+1B) (+0E) (normal boss kill, select Spam) 1B 0E

2: Residential (+1B) (+0E) (normal boss kill, select spam) 2B 0E

3: Weather (+1E) (+0B) (Boss -1B) 1B 1E

4: Space Center (+1B) (+0E) (skip -2B -1E) (normal boss kill, select spam) 0B 0E

5: Military (+0B) (+0E) (Select Spam Boss) 0B 0E

6: Life (+1B) (+0E) (Boss -1B) (CAN select spam second half) 0B 0E

This file completes the first 2: Energy Development and Residential. Fairly optimized, can't think of any easy ways to improve anything at the moment.

First 3 worlds, of a terrible repetitive game, because I was bored.

Further improvements to Secret Cliff.

39 frames saved in secret cliff over the last video I posted in discord. Also, avoided taking a death on the boss so I saved all 3 lanterns, both of which cost 0 frames to pick up. Slightly better cloud management but still not convinced it's 100% optimal. Lost a few frames from having less boost from the moving platform section in secret cliff, but overall gained. Couldn't pick up the spear head powerup from the robot that drops it in the first room because the rocks in the next room would fall in unfavorable patterns.

Saved 10 frames on final boss by using all of the wave attacks before the final punch of phase 1 rather than at the end of phase 1

WIP of first 2 levels. Lag management is a huge part of the game, and upon beating the second boss I realized the game has randomized levels, so will need to do some research to see if the level order matters...

Notes: each health node missing in your health bar counts up 8 frames as it refills health after beating a boss. The wave attack art costs 2 points and each shot saves 40 frames on a boss, pretty important to max that out before reaching boss, even more so than health.

34 frames over 1-1. Better manipulation of flying enemy could save a couple of frames too, potentially

various improvements over last file. Submission this weekend if nothing else is found