Movie information

  • This movie was made with the --no-gui argument
  • MD5 Hash: 9f9b697a12ba1ebbeb4e1e5a9f276b43

About the game and movie

Magnet Face is a Flash game based on the 2001 cartoon The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. This game follows Billy, who has been captured by aliens and his job is to escape the alien mothership (and collect pieces of cheese along the way because why not?). He is equipped with an ability to magnetize his head, which allows him to attract to many metallic objects.
This movie aims to complete all three levels as fast as possible, ignoring the cheese along the way. Even though the cheese isn't required, there's still a lot of cheese! This movie completes the game faster than the WR run by me by about 3 minutes

Basic mechanics

Running
Billy has a run speed of 200 units per frame, I give this value as a scale for the speed tricks in this run.
Jumping
When jumping, you don't move for one frame, and when you land, you also don't move a frame, so jumping as little as possible is an important part of this run.
Attracting
With a press of the Z key, Billy will start to attract to metallic object, this is usually used to reach areas that "in theory" would be impossible to reach. Also, by staying in place, the attraction shield will increase in radius until a certain point.
Magnetic rails
Whenever you stop attracting to a rail, the speed you had the frame before ceasing attraction will be converted to your running speed. Rails usually make you go 300 units per frame, so if you were to stop attracting, you would move at 300 speed, which is faster than the regular speed. A weird quirk I found is that attracting to a rail becomes pretty much impossible at speeds higher than 600 because Billy stops attracting to them, but only sometimes for some reason.
Enemies
Throughout the stage, there are some pink enemies, but they can only be killed by using weapons or spike balls. Unfortunately, most of those are inaccessible without it being slower, so I'm forced to make some otherwise unnecessary jumps. A weird thing regarding jumping on them is that they only have collision detection directly in front of them, so you can jump through them pretty easily.
Looking up or down
By pressing the up and down arrows while on the ground, you can look either up or down, allowing you to see farther in the respective directions. It wouldn't save any time aside from maybe loading something earlier.

Tricks and glitches

Faster running
While running, you run at 200 units per frame, however, by unpressing and pressing the directional buttons, you can move faster, I always do this: Reach 200 of speed, unpress for a frame, hold for two frames, unpress for a frame and now I move at 234 unit per frame. This can only be done on the ground, doing it on the air will completely halt your momentum.
Ledge jump
When walking off ledges, you can jump in the air.
Double jump
By jumping the frame you land, Billy will jump while in his running animation, you can press the jump button to jump again. It's very simple, but it's one of the most widely used tricks in the run.
Box jump
When going upwards, Billy will always snap to the top of the metal boxes, this can be used to jump more quickly without losing time.
Corner boost
By jumping in the corner of a box, you will get pushed slightly forward and the box will be pushed slightly backwards.
Attraction jump
Whenever you stop attracting from a rail or metallic platform, you can jump again, this is used to climb high areas without slowing down.
Attraction speed
Now it's time to talk about the single most important glitch in the game. When you try to attract to a rail or a metallic platform, if Billy detects it, he will start moving towards it at an increasing speed, and remember how stopping attraction will convert your current speed into running speed? Well, this applies even when you haven't fully attracted to the rail, this means you can start moving at very high speeds without wasting much time. There is a caveat, which is that this attracting speed on rails has a variable cap that maximizes at 580 speed, but this only applies to rails, since for some reason, metallic platform don't have this limit, meaning you can practically go as fast as you want. The reason why this glitch is so useful is that it opens a branch of other glitches, so many in fact that it has its own segment.

Glitches derived from Attraction speed

Rail jam
In some parts of the rails, if Billy attracts to it, he will end up vibrating between two positions very close to each other, this isn't very useful, but it's actually used in the run.
Attraction disassociation
If you're going fast enough and start attracting to a rail behind you at the latest frame possible, you will still be in the attraction state with the same X speed you have without moving back. This can be used for many thing, it can be used to increase or decrease your height without losing any speed, allowing you to make some pretty absurd distances. However, touching a wall will make you start attracting back to the rail you were supposed to be attracting to. Also, I kinda lied in the Attraction speed section because all of the following glitches actually happen because of this trick, not Attraction speed. However, since you can only do Attraction disassociation at higher speeds, Attraction speed is absolutely necessary.
Floor clips
When in attraction disassociation and moving downwards, most of the time you will clip through thin floors, however, on rare ocasions, you can clip through thicker floors which has two possible outcomes. You either snap to the part below the floor and lose all your speed, or start moving horizontally at a rapidly increasing speed until you get out of the wall and lose all your speed again. The way your speed increases in the latter is interesting because you can either end up close to the wall or very far way from it, depending by how many units you moved in the last frame.
Wall clip
If you're going fast enough (above 900 units per frame) you will clip through every wall, including thicker walls (note that you will lose all your speed if your positioning ends up making you be inside the wall for more than 2 frames while running, which is why it only really works on thin walls).
Bound clip
The walls that block off the Out-of-Bounds have a weird property. If Billy's experiencing Attraction disassociation, you can clip through them, at any speed. If you stop attracting, Billy will snap to the closest position in bounds horizontally.
Warping
This is the strangest trick in the game. For some reason, if Billy's experiencing Attraction disassociation and touches something that damages him while in that state, he will warp the equivalent of the distance you spent on that state. For example, if you are in a disassociation state and move 10 frames forward at a speed of 400, you will then teleport 4000 units forward. This glitch only works sometimes for some reason, it seems to only work when moving upwards or sideways.

Unused tricks and glitches

Damage boost
When taking damage, Billy will be moving at 300 units per frame for a while, which is faster than the regular running speed. It wasn't used since getting a speed above 300 with Attraction speed is pretty trivial.
Box clip
When smashing a metal box against yourself close to a wall, you or the box can clip through the wall. It's very inconsistent and it wouldn't save time anywhere.
The nothing pusher
If you're walking against an enemy and that enemy dies while you're still pushing it, Billy will be moving in the pushing animation. You can't jump out of this action without stopping, so it's pretty much useless.
Ultimate floor clip
By executing a Bound clip and not stopping the attraction until a certain point, Billy will clip through the floor, softlocking the game. This is obviously very bad, unless you were actually trying to softlock the game.

Level-by-level commentary

Level 1

I start the stage by setting up a faster run speed to 232. Then, I do a corner boost, which pushes me 24 units forward. After some Double jumps, I reach the first rail, which I use to get a speed of 444. I then do the same thing again on a later part of the rail to get a speed of 500. After some more movement, I become jammed in another rail and reach the speed of 580, I actually need that speed in order to perform the next glitch. I do some rail jumps and then, by disassociating from the rail, I clip through the ground, pushing me forward significantly (in the last frame I move 11212 units). After quickly increasing my speed back up to 400, I then do a floor clip and enter the door.
One thing I must add is that there's an alternate route where you use a metallic platform that's way up, it showed some promise but I couldn't find I way to make it faster than this route.

Level 2

I start by jumping to the top platform, I can't set up a faster run without bumping into the wall and losing time. After landing, I finally set up a faster walk that sets my speed to 234, and after going to the nearest rail, I set my speed to 425, then immediately after I set it to 500 with a rail jam. After some movement, I land on the platform close to the metallic platform's path and start attracting in place, this is going to increase the radius of my attraction shield. After increasing the radius to the maximum size and walking right, I start attracting to the platform, increasing my speed to the absurd value of 1120 units per frame. After some "walking", I reach the end very quickly, so quickly in fact that I have to wait before the door opens, which allows me to look up.

Level 3

I start by setting my running speed to 234 and doing two consecutive Box jump-Double jump combos. I then move to the nearest rail and set my speed to 560 and start a disassociation. With all of this, I then get hit by an obstacle, and I warp 50979 units in a single frame (50979 units is about 91 frames moving at a speed of 560, which is roughly how long I spent in the disassociated state). After recovering, I go to the closest rail and set my speed to 580, and start doing some more disassociations until I do a Bound clip. I wait until I'm at a good position and stop attracting, finishing the movie.

Potential improvements

Most of the time that could be saved comes from more optimized Attraction speed, what I mean by this is finding a way to get the most out of every rail as fast as possible, rail mechanics are one of the things I don't fully understand. I believe these could have been brute-forced, but I lack the programming proficiency to make something like that.
However, there is an improvement that I am aware of and actually performed once. In level 2, after the metallic platform attraction, I land and jump, making me lose 2 frames, I had found a way to save these frames, but after checking something in the same section and going back to this part, I was unable to replicate it.

Extras

Thanks
Special thanks to CasualPokePlayer for creating a script that allowed me to see how many units I moved every frame, even if the script wasn't explicitly made for this game. This run (and the run this script was made for) would be way worse if it wasn't for this script.
The future
I plan on doing an "all cheese" run, though it's going to take a long time, with a lot of routing and stuff.
Suggested Screenshot
Frame 1618

InfoTeddy: Claiming for judging.
InfoTeddy: Unclaiming.

feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Accepting.
fsvgm777: Processing.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15527
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #9063: Mikewillplays's Flash Magnet Face in 01:17.77
Player (153)
Joined: 10/4/2015
Posts: 139
Wow, what an unlocked memory. 20 years ago this was some quality free gaming content lol. Great TAS you broke this thing apart.
Enter the Matrix is a piece of garbage but I'm gonna finish it if it kills me.
CoolHandMike
He/Him
Editor, Judge, Experienced player (888)
Joined: 3/9/2019
Posts: 690
Wow. I really liked that. Also quite a complex set of mechanics in this seemingly simple flash game.
discord: CoolHandMike#0352
Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4042
Amazing speedtech. Great find.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15527
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [6046] Flash Magnet Face by Mikewillplays in 01:17.77