Ok, thanks for the response. The reason I ask is because I've been bouncing around the idea of making a Necrodancer Science video series that documented unobvious aspects of the game (similar to the Hearthstone Science video series I help produce), for the purpose of using as references for the wiki, and wanted to make sure I wouldn't be going over stuff that was already documented.
So I guess what I should do is join that Discord channel and ask questions about stuff I want to do videos on - if the answer is known but not documented, I can make the video very easily.
The Heal Spell exploit is really cool. I'm going to have to try that next time I play.
Hey! I made this :)
The replays desyncing weren't too big of an issue. When a replay of a game you played desyncs, it's usually when recording rather than when playing, so you don't have that issue if you edit the replay directly.
That being said, there's a whole category of bugs in this game that stems from the fact that not everything is tied to the beat, and so if you go fast enough you can do things that shouldn't be possible (like attacking an enemy on the same beat that it dies on a spike trap), and with Coda's tempo, I had to slow down the replay (or rather, fast-forward slower) at certain strategic points to make sure it didn't desync because of that.
There was also a big desync problem at the very end, when I tried to record the finished run. I found out that for two of the bosses (the 2-4 Coral Riff and the 4-4 Deep Blues), there's a point where an add's movement should be deterministic but isn't, and is affected by god knows what. I had a bit of a panic until I managed to make it work just long enough to record it.
As for playing ping-pong with Deep Blues, I certainly considered it, but every time I hit it with one Coda, the other one moves away, so it would've only been possible for the first two hits after which the 2nd Coda would be too far to aggro the king. Plus, I like how it turned out a lot better.
Hi Teraka! Do you know if there's any resource for Necrodancer where deep mechanics and bugs are documented? There's the wikia, but it's sparse on specific information.
I know Bard used to have lots of bugs related to going really fast - I think it let you avoid trap damage, for example? - so it's pretty interesting to me that the game isn't programmed to simulate what happens in a beat the moment you press a button, but rather some things are simulated in real time.
Crypt of the Necrodancer has a deterministic, editable replay format. Therefore it is possible to make TASes of the game (albeit slowly).
A TAS got released today of probably the hardest imaginable speedrun category. Coda is the hardest character, unable to upgrade from a dagger, dying in one hit, dying if you ever make an invalid move/lose your combo, dying if you pick up gold and moving at double the speed of the music. The TASer (@Teraka91 on Twitter) controls two Codas at once using the same input to beat the game in under 4 minutes while satisfying low% condition (never picking up an item or using a shrine). It's recommended that you watch at 0.5x or even 0.25x speed to be able to follow it, because it is extremely fast.
Link to video
This is one of my favourite shmups, so I just want to say I'm rooting for you :D Playing on very hard will be a very interesting stylistic choice. Though you could go all out by playing in white label (which is considered to be harder than black label), black label is much easier to get huge chains in, and since the goal is to get a massive score it's acceptable to me.
EDIT: TO contribute, here are the world records for Dodonpachi DaiOuJou Black Label.
First, with Type A, by HFD, 3.5 billion:
Link to video
Second, with Type B, also by HFD, 3.3 billion:
Link to video
EDIT 2: Thought of some things on the way home, probably stuff you already know to look for though :0
Your laser has an 'aura' which is a small, damaging rectangle around your ship. It builds hyper meter and damage very fast IIRC. Pro players use the aura on things that are invincible due to being at the top of the screen - or because they were left alive, because they become invincible due to being at the BOTTOM of the screen, too. Maybe there are opportunities to aura things at the top and bottom of the screen that pro players leave out due to being inconsistent or unknown.
With three different weapons (shot, laser, aura) I was wondering if there are weird combinations of the three that extract more or less points/combos/hyper meters from enemies. Bosses, too - the pods of boss 1, the falling guns of boss 3 final attack, the falling casings of stage 4's midboss, the options and discs of boss 4, the midboss of 5 that spews discs - can you take advantage of these by auraing (or otherwise) in ways pro players don't?
(btw, did you compare 'auraing the stage 1 midboss and never moving off it' to what you do in the TAS, which is go back to grab the tanks?)
It's also interesting that delaying things in weird ways (killing blows, bee pickups) will give extra points due to the multiplier being higher.
I believe there's a bonus for having maximum bombs that is given out per frame and increases every time you get another bomb - so I think getting bombs earlier will be a marginal scoring advantage.
Have you tried turning on 'C is Autofire' in the operator menu, and alternating A and C? Maybe you can get a 60Hz hyper shot.
Does moving diagonally shrink your hitbox? (It does in some other Cave games, like SaiDaiOuJou (AFAIK), so it's worth testing.)
Here's a guide on how Hyper Rank works in DoJBL: https://www.dropbox.com/s/n8z15uu28w2tath/dojbl_guide.pdf?dl=0
Chaining mechanics explained: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=315284#p315284
More up-to-date documentation related to score, using HFD's run as a reference: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=777219#p777219
A known improvement to HFD's world record: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=827392#p827392 + http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=827634#p827634http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=695296#p695296 'BTW using shot on popcorns increases your hyper bar way faster than lasering them'
And just for fun, a video of DaiOuJou White Label that includes a full chain of 1-3, which was thought to only be possible on Black Label, but is actually just extremely difficult: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlzixxnGm0w&t=6m29s
To me, making a 1st loop only TAS of a ghost and goblins series game is like TASing pokemon gold and stopping when you beat the elite four. But ultimately it's up to the TASer.
