The battle for the cyan iPads continue for an additional single level, now with a new slew of quick-kill combos thanks to a brand new, very powerful asset.
A common issue I have with this game's combat is that it's normally very hard to tell how much damage your abundance of different moves do, and how much you need to do them to an enemy to defeat them. This is because enemies do not have health bars, or even instantly keel over when they're out of HP, so usually you're left guessing, likely needing to go back and double check to make sure the enemy is actually at 0 HP. All of this is only exasperated the more hits added to your combo. (Did I mention your combo can be upgraded to TEN HITS??) Of course, that issue has become, for the most part, a thing of the past. Since the first WIP from last year, I made a very vital discovery for reaching an acceptable optimization: The RAM addresses for enemy HP values.
0x1CB1C0 , 0x1CB3C4 , 0x1CB5C8 , 0x1CB7CC , 0x1CB9D0 , and 0x217530 (more testing might need to be done, this address sometimes has an unusual value)
EDIT: Ah yeah, how could I forget the other major improvement to my development tools? Originally, on Bizhawk 2.8, DS games could not detect lag frames. This was alleviated as of version 2.9.1, allowing me to make frame-perfect inputs.
Thanks to this new revelation, I have been able to measure the stats for enemy health and the damage for the player's attacks, and as a result... discovered that I needed to completely remake the TAS from the ground up. The final input frame for clearing the first megazord fight, which was the original endpoint set, was 102710, and is now 95745, a whopping 5590 frames improvement, or a little over 1:33. Here are some of the major things I found when revising this TAS:
What inspired me to try and TAS this game in the first place was that when fooling around, I found out you can turn around to cancel a combo attack mid-animation and skip right to the next hit in line. This allowed combos to be "charged up" much faster, to get right to that golden, powerful final hit. Although I will continue to use this, it will be de-emphasized going forward, since other combos have been found that will better fit certain scenarios. Namely, this will almost never be used for putties anymore (the grey ones, at least), unless I feel the action needs more variety.
Swords are not only used to pierce the armor of krybots, but they are also in fact more powerful than unarmed attacks. The punching three hit combo deals 13 damage overall, with the final hit dealing 8, while the sword three hit combo deals 25 damage, with the final hit dealing 15. This difference will only grow wider as the combo grows longer. In terms of crouch attacks, the normal sweep kick attack is usually worthless, dealing only 2 damage and can't be cancelled out of, but it does launch up the enemies shorter than a normal finisher does. The crouching sword attack on the other hand deals 9. This one-shots putties, and also has a shorter wind-up than the standing punch combo, so it becomes the main way to deal with grey putties. The only downside is a strange quirk with the crouch slash: There is two versions of the attack. I was referring to the inward slice, which slashes from the camera to the background. The fact it does 9 damage may have been some programming oversight, since the inverse attack only deals 1. I don't know the real reason why, but that's how it works. Fortunately, the crouch slash can be turn-canceled, so it's pretty quick to "reload" the crouch slash. Another strange quirk with this attack is that it can be "combo"'d. Hitting an enemy with the crouch slash enough times will cause it to start dealing more damage and will even show the spark effects that happen when you get well into a standing combo. One last note about slashing is that the second hit's hitbox actually goes all the way from the back to the front, meaning it will hit an enemy sooner when you're facing away from it than when you're facing towards it. In fact, it will hit on frame 1, making it technically the fastest attack in the game. At 5 damage though, not much use by itself.
A problem that permeates with dealing enemies is that they have to fall to the ground and hit it before the game counts them as "defeated". Thus, most attacks waste time for spawning in a new wave, since they either launch the enemy into the air, or they send them tumbling backwards. I believe I found this technique in the first WIP, but if you punch an armored enemy while they're at 0 HP, they will instantly collapse. Another great method for getting enemies to hit the ground as fast as possible is to finish them in the air, since when you hit an enemy with an air combo, the final hit's knockback trajectory aims down at the ground. This will not only obviously work wonders on hapless enemies dropping down onto the battlefield, but also enemies on the ground, essentially vaporizing them. Another thing I discovered while making this TAS is that you can also turn-cancel air attacks as well. I kinda knew this already, but I hadn't yet figured out the pattern for it to work reliably until later; your ability to stay suspended in the air during the combo is somewhat finicky.
It's also worth noting some other quirks with these two kinds of air combos. During an air punch combo, you cannot turn around and execute the attack at the same time, since forward+Y will trigger the forward kick instead. This is not the case with the air slash combo. On the other hand, there is a weird, annoying bug where, depending on the position or timing of the attack, the air combo refuses to advance to the next hit, protracting the combo out indefinitely or whenever it feels like it. I don't know the specifics of why it happens, but it does. While this often not advantageous, one factor that is is that you're pushed up a little bit with each hit, which can allow you to reach a wall or platform that is otherwise just out of reach. You can see this in one specific part I will cover. Another quirk is that after you land the meteor smash and turn-cancel out of it, your character is floating for a bit. Sometimes this is good, sometimes bad, but if you want to cancel out of it, you can either execute a few hits to cancel the momentum, or use one of the diving attacks you can unlock. I found that if you're close enough to the ground while in this floating state, and try to jump, you'll shoot up into the air quite high. Odds are, both tricks may become obsolete further down in the run, since the game will eventually give you a high jump move. Like... really high.
When it comes to standing combos, I had assumed the impact combo upgrades would have on my speed would be more negative than positive. I assumed they'd just nerf earlier hits for extending the combo and nothing else. That's only half true. Unfortunately, for example, the third hit is in fact nerfed in favor of the later hits, going from dealing 15 on a sword slash to just 5. However, using RAM Watch revealed that hits in a longer combo can potentially deal more damage than the three-hit finisher could ever do. The six-hit finisher, for example, can deal 30 damage, one-shotting red krybots, which have 30 HP, twice of the originals. I had opted to steer around enemies in flying sections to reduce my number of crystals in the original WIP, but this time, I went for destroying every enemy in those sections.
Unfortunately, the pose power that you unlock in OO4 (the fourth level of the Operation Overdrive chapter) seems to be rather pointless at level 1 (It can be upgraded with crystals). I mainly just abused it for style points, but at level 1, it seems to add, at most, 2 damage points for each hit. Worse, experimentation seemed to point that it actually nerfs later hits, at least in the six-hit combo. It may become worth it down the line, at least for some boss battles; While in my experimentation phase, I decided to poke the RAM address for crystals ( 0x1CD414 , by the way) to give me enough to unlock every upgrade, and used it to fight Gluto with max combo and pose power, which destroyed him in a single combo, something that wasn't possible without the max pose power.
Movement is a bit different from the previous Power Rangers games from Natsume. Running has a bit of momentum, both in starting and in running. It's not much, but it means that when the camera unlocks after a fight, you should already be running full force. Additionally, you seem to move faster on the ground than in the air, so to get from A to B as fast as possible, you'd need to be on the ground as much as possible. In terms of stopping, crouching will make you stop instantly if you need it.
Let's talk levels. I only go until I reach the end of Time Force 2 in this TAS, since it was more about finding new things and seeing what kind of improvement can be found and presented. I may continue this version with a somewhat rough drafting, since for such a long game, I'd really have to lock in my strats before I start working on the real deal. It may be a while before I can make a TAS worth submitting, but I hope the journey would at least be fun enough.
TF1 (Time Force 1) - The intro stage. Very short and doesn't even have a flying section. This is also the main reason I will probably not submit this version of the TAS whenever I complete it, as it's a bit rough, since I hadn't fully grasped some of the techniques I found by this point. That said, it does lay down some of the basic foundations, and that's all I can really say about this level besides it's really short, but it does have a lot of dialogue to skip.
OO1 (Operation Overdrive 1) - The first level proper, since it unfortunately starts the whole "flying section" shtick. Almost every level in the game has one, and it's just a boring autoscrolling section that wastes 2-3 whole minutes a piece. I forecast they'll contribute almost a third to the game's total time. Not to mention, most levels from here on is considerably longer than the intro stage. As for the level itself, there's an odd quirk in some fights. Normally, you have to defeat all the enemies to advance, but there are a few cases where some enemies will show up while the screen is locked, but they can be left untouched and still progress. There's also some kind of bug or something (not calling it a quirk, I used that word way too much when writing this.) where during the second fight in the final section, a putty doesn't spawn. I actually have done some kind of test TASes, two of them, where I was working on this level, and for some reason, later attempts came up with a serious time loss of 30 frames. In TAS Standard Time, that's criminal, and I was banging my head against a wall to figure out why, until I stumbled upon this glitch. Not sure why (perhaps overloading the game with explosion effects from defeated enemies), but this does happen, and I was able to perform it for this TAS. Also worth noting is that this is one of the few levels in the game outside of boss fights to have an uncomfortably long wait before the ending cutscene, where here, the Omega Ranger pops in. I used this time to do the requisite TAS seizure, and for some reason that that triggers the cutscene a little earlier. Again, not sure why (Oh yeah, this game's a bit sloppy.), but I took the savings anyways.
OO2 - Honestly, kind of a nothing burger of a level, much like TF1. Crouch slashing putties? Check. Flying section? Meh. Will the Black OO Ranger blasting off into the sky with the exaggerated swagger of a black thief to smite two krybots? Borderline pedestrian.
OO3- This level is easily the most interesting of the 6 levels, at least in this TAS. The main thing is that the first act of this level differs from the vast majority of the levels in the game, as it requires you to collect one of three pieces of an artifact on your way out. The second piece though, hoo-boy. This area has a section where you gotta jump across platforms, or else you fall back down to the start of the room. However, the only thing stopping you from getting back up straight from the pit is an overhang just out of your reach. A little air slash jank later, and you can get just enough height to start wall jumping. As long as the final enemy explodes while on screen, the screen will unlock and you can move around freely. Backtracking the normal route from here presents the second artifact piece. You can pick it up here and advance to the next area like nothing happened, not only skipping the whole roundabout path leading to the piece, but also skipping an entire fight, making this the first (and probably last) major skip in the run. Only problem is that when picking the piece up, there is a very small margin to collect it without triggering the fight, which from this way, actually softlocks the game, making this essentially TAS only. Another strange thing about this level is that there are a lot of enemies that are optional. The first half of this level is structured more like Power Rangers SPD (GBA) or the console version of this game, with a few forced fights, but mostly enemies you can just go around. There are clearly so many enemies I just walk around in this level that, despite clearing it deathless, I only get bronze. This actually cuts down the wait on the results screen, since I get 2000 less crystals as a bonus, but trying to get a smaller bonus normally takes too much time compared to the savings.
OO4 - The level itself is, again, not super special, sans one specific part. I will want to beat this game with as little damage as possible, but I kinda decided to let two krybots hit me, because they then proceeded to just walk off a cliff, which I thought was a little amusing. In the last section, you get the pose power, which the Quantum Ranger claims to help you defeat Moltar's army (not really...), and the first taste of a """boss fight""" (not really...) The only notable thing about it is that new black-armored lizards show up, which have a record-breaking 50 HP. This is where I use the odd crouch slash combo technique to obliterate them quickly. The pose power is mostly useless at this point, but they do help defeat these guys slightly faster. Speaking of the pose power, something strange I noticed was that if you start it too early, it will actually delay the """boss""" summoning his minions, which is just a waste of time.
The other notable thing about this is that, being the final level in an "era", it has a megazord fight. They consist of shooting at parts of the enemy mech's body until they are damaged. All five must be damaged to engage the second phase, where the mech closes in for a melee brawl. The game is, annoyingly, somewhat picky with the recognition for drawing a line, and that's really all you need to do for this phase; draw a line as fast as possible, hitting as many parts as possible, and as frequently as possible. Fortunately, you can (at least in this first fight) draw a line that hits all four mech parts at once. Then it's a matter of doing it once more, with less parts, and you win. The mech won't react to damage until it's finished with its current animation. It won't move onto the melee phase until it's done with the current part of its attack pattern, and as you can see, it won't keel over until its attack is finished and played out.
Once an "era" is cleared, you're booted back to the Hall of Legends to unlock the next era. Additionally, any time you come back here, the guardian of the hall will take your crystals and grant you whatever moves you can afford at the time. From this, I have acquired the following moves:
Jump Kick - 4000 crystals: A diving kick that is so powerful, it creates a swirling vortex and makes the ranger cry out in pain... and deals 3 damage. Yep. At least it sends you falling at terminal velocity instantly.
Vortex Kick - 8000 crystals: Basically a more advance version of the normal sweep kick. It deals 3 damage, and you still can't turn-cancel. Useless.
Six Hit combo - 10000 crystals: Extends both punch and sword combos; nerfs the third hit in favor of more powerful hits down the line.
Screencracker - 10750 crystals: Stun an enemy with your blaster and instakill them. Seriously. Anything that can be stunned will die instantly when you use this move on them. Handheld Games gave you an instakill move less than a quarter into the skill tree. The only cavate is that you don't get any crystals if you do so, but most people say that if you're given an instakill move, do you really need anything else? I won't use this move very often in the full TAS, despite how OP it is, mainly because it would be boring to spam it endlessly, and plus, I completely forgot I unlocked it by this point.
TF2 - The final part of what I'd consider the first act of the game. Trip the Green Ranger has to chase down Gluto to find out if he's the true villain of the game, using a new pack of moves unlocked from crystals. This level introduces two mainstay enemies that will haunt us for the rest of the game: Red krybots, as stated earlier, have 30 HP, double of the regular ones. Flying insects ("Sting wingers", I believe?) also sometimes show up from now on to be a big nuisance to those with bad aim. They fly around, drop bombs, and, if you take too long to take them down, they'll dive right into you. Mercifully they only have 1 HP, being designed to be taken down by any single attack, including blaster fire. We shoot two of them, and one is unfortunately on the receiving end of Jump Kick. I believe blue putties are also introduced here? They have 12 HP, a little more than regular putties, but for some reason they didn't spawn at the end of the first section, and I was able to run past the red kryobts to advance to the next section. Speaking of, two very precise actions were performed here. There's a section with a few platforms; you gotta climb up and jump across them; but a pixel-perfect walljump allowed me to cut this corner a little. Very soon after, in the proceeding fight, two red krybots drop down from opposite ends. I wanted to hit the first one with hits 4 (and 4.5, the fourth sword hit is two hits in one) and 5, then go for the finisher on the other krybot as the first keels over. Turns out, this is pixel and frame perfect, and there is only a single possible set of inputs to perform this stunt successfully. Oh man was it worth it though! As for the final fight here, all I wanna say is that this room is arranged SO annoyingly... After this, we chase Gluto on a flyer (yep, another flying section), and we land immediately in our first proper bossfight:
Gluto - HP: 150
I actually had several different strategies I ended up going through before I landed on the one in this WIP. Normally, bosses only let you hit them four times. In reality, I don't think that's entirely true. What seems to happen is that something happens when the boss is hit, depending on the "strength" of the attack. By default, the boss will take hits and flinch; when they do, and you don't land another hit in time, they'll counter with a normal attack. Unfortunately, the sword combo is so slow, it seems like the boss will counter before you can even get a fourth hit in normally. If the attack causes sparks to fly, the game counts it as a "power shot" and will make the boss go invulnerable and activate a special counter, such as a ground pound in Gluto's case. This is a huge problem normally, since with one upgrade, the finisher is already too late into the combo to activate before the boss counters. That's the reason why I thought combo upgrades were counterproductive in the first place. Anyways, I was going to use the turn-cancel technique to get the whole combo in before Gluto attacks. That didn't turn out how I had hoped. My next plan was to just try and hit Gluto with the best shots. Turns out the later hits were all "power shots" and Gluto will counter after just one move. "That's fine", I thought, "just try and hit Gluto with the sixth hit over and over." He'll keep spamming his counter, and it may hurt Trip a lot, and funnily enough causes Trip to trip, but I wanna point out that while you're falling down from an enemy attack, there's a very tiny window where you can input an attack and the ranger will immediately get up and do it, cancelling the hit stun. I didn't point this out in my general tricks section, because taking damage is normally just not beneficiary. Would've liked to just kill him in a single, satisfying combo, but this pattern seemed to be the only feasible, kind of fast method.
...Until... I was playing around with various methods to defeat him in record time... and suddenly, at one point... he just... froze up. He wasn't attacking, he wasn't even flinching, but he was taking damage. I had somehow locked up his AI for a good while, and not only does this prevent him from fighting back, but most importantly, it stops him from countering, from going invulnerable. This meant I could finally just combo him into oblivion like I originally wanted, and the best part is that all you have to do is hit him while he's trying to headbutt you. His animation will be interrupted, and he will freeze up for a good while. Only problem is that this is not permeant. Of course, when trying this for this WIP, I had successfully done a very promising 75 damage to him with one combo. Unfortunately, during the second combo, he arbitrarily recovered and hit me instantly, completely ruining it. That said though, I would soon find another handy tip for fighting him. He starts the fight in the middle, one level below you. He walks to the right and leaps up to your level. While he leaps up, he's still completely vulnerable, so you can sneak in some hits before he begins his assault. In fact, I did one even better by remembering the crouch slash combo, dealing over 75 damage very quickly. I probably could've kept going, but I figured I'd finish him off in a cooler way by doing the six-hit sword combo on him to finish the fight. After some cutscene skips, TF2 ends on frame 116763, but I insisted on some performing while I waited for the level to end.
Seeing such a huge improvement from the first WIP is great to see. If I had just winged the whole game like I did the first time around, spamming the basic finishers on everything, I could only imagine how much time savings would be left on the table... The judges would've had to make a TAS for rejecting my submission for optimization.