Dream Team Contest #7 had chosen this title. Now that it is concluded, I figure now's a fine time to explain a few things.
The winning movie.
There's a
lot of details I'm skipping over. I won't mind anyone asking, to try to drag out every bit of information out of my head as needed. I'm tired now, so this is just what you get for my initial post.
Stage 1 - Home Town World
This is the only time we're without the apple power-up, which allows us to have two apples out at once. This is rectified in our very first jump.
Not a lot to say, really. Boss goes poof in one hit.
Stage 2 - Lake Side World
A lot of the stage has us over flat ground. There is a very useful apple dropping pattern where we're in almost constant boosted speed.
The boss takes four hits to take down. We don't understand its ouch animation, but somehow found hits that don't trigger it. It's a lot faster than waiting out the animation.
Stage 3 - Forest World
We drop down toward the bottom of the screen and fly on apples down there. We stay in boosted speed for as long as we have the freedom to stay there. Toss two apples on occasion, three frames apart, so that we can follow them down instead of instantly jumping off of them (
and continue to gain too much height).
The "boss" would shoot giant instant-death fireballs, but it turns out a magic tile is always available to touch. Actually, it's lucky that mouth animation produces the magic tile for us, or we'd be stuck waiting for the stage to load it in. The magic tile isn't checked for earlier in the stage, so even if its ID existed in Stage 2, landing on it then wouldn't skip Stage 3 for us.
Stage 4 - Sky World
That balloon stage. Exonym did most of the trickery here.
The zips at the end were my work, though. Basically, there are magic pixels the game looks for 12 pixels left and right of the player's feet. If we have any left or right speed, we can trigger a zip. But we need to manually move to the right for each tile zip to give some distance so we don't bump into the same tile as before. Also, I intentionally slow down the zips in order to stay away from the "latest pixel" and therefore delay the loader. This is to keep a magic tile we need for skipping Oasis World.
Of note, I haven't spent the time to ensure I went from "slow tile zip" to "fast tile zip" as early as possible. I think we can get one more "fast tile zip" in there, as we have a little loading time to spare, considering how many loaded tiles are left before we overwrite the 0x79 one we need.
The boss itself would have a weakpoint tile load in, so that we can damage it. Our zipping stopped that. So instead, we have to rely on the fact the game reads tiles "out of range" with apples in the status HUD above. The screen is aligned with the half where it uses garbage tiles, based on some tile loader the game does. The boss mouth animation occasionally has its weakpoint tile IDs show up there. Single frame windows to land the apple, but single frame windows are just another day in TASing, as we know.
Stage 5 - Oasis World
We need to touch the magic tile 0x79 in order to reach the boss. Thanks to the fact the game keeps the last tile we touched in memory and
uses it before updating it on the first frame means this paragraph is longer than the whole stage.
Standard boss kill. The apple boost at the end does speed up the cutscene slightly, while also lasting to the first frame of the next.
Stage 6 - Cave World
We're limited by the stage loader because of these magic tiles we need to touch. There isn't any way to touch one we need at the end of stage 5 like we did to skip that stage, and they will only load in at the end of each segment. Therefore, the best strategy is to trigger the loader ASAP, putz around waiting for the loader at an average speed of 16 pixels per 7 frames, touch the magic tile ASAP. We despawn enemies to guarantee low lag.
Standard boss kill. Yep, that wraparound on the left? Definitely standard. The apple boost seems to keep working during the cutscene.
Stage 7 - Pond World
There's a 4-pixel gap every 128 pixels. If we're at a pixel just before this gap, and manage to get at a pixel on the other side of this gap with a speed somewhere above 4 pixels/frame, we skip spawning enemies. This is critical, as there are cutscene crocs which freeze us in place while the croc shows itself. But they depend on these spawning gaps like other enemies, for some reason, so we skip 'em.
The boss extends depending on a global timer. Apparently, if it is killed during the extension, it warps off the top of the screen and disappears much sooner. We weren't successful for the run, though, thanks to the global timer being just a little too fast for us. Saving a few frames anywhere earlier would help.
Stage 8 - Harbor World
Exonym pointed out there was air tiles below the ground. The results are clear.
Standard boss kill. Luckily, there's a magic tile the next stage is looking for wherever it is we stopped the loader.
Stage 9 - Ocean World
Swimming stage! First segment skipped thanks to that magic tile ID, which the game stores and uses before refreshing it on the first frame. We're able to move quickly while riding objects because holding Down (
and specifically Down, no Left or Right) while on an object prevents an instantaneous 0 walk speed. It's also tricky to despawn enemies, but we also have a larger margin with a speed very close to 5 pixels/frame.
Boss needs a magic tile to load for the boss weakpoint, so we're sluggish in the last segment waiting for it. No top of screen glitches today, the screen is stopped on the bad half.
Stage 10 - Ghost Town World
Much like with Stage 2, a lot of flat ground to traverse, so we can go quickly. The startup plan needs to get past a barrel before it loads in, and we have a fraction of a pixel to spare.
The boss gives up before we do anything to it. No, seriously! The boss reappears a fixed distance above our heads, but at the position we stop at, that would wrap around to bottomless pit zone. As a result, their disappearing act is one-way, and we instantly win.
Stage 11 - Dark Forest World
We can beat this stage quickly, but for a skip to be possible, we need to slow down for the loader. The magic tile we need won't load otherwise.
Boss ouch frames seem unskippable in this battle. But it's still down pretty quickly.
Stage 12 - Castle World
Multiple segments, but for some reason, ending on tile 0x30 in Stage 11 lets us skip a great deal of castle. To the extent we can tell, this is the best warp we can get from Tile Storage.
Ghosts won't disappear into the "phantom bottomless pit zone" like in Stage 10, so they are apple'd as normal.
Snake-like boss, can't think of any special comments.
Hamburgler's boss, we realize attacking the wall is just as valid as attacking the boss itself.
Final boss, attacking the floor is just as viable a target.