Joined: 7/18/2016
Posts: 91
Location: United States
Bagel Brothers is done, and another 10 seconds of time save has been found for both TASes! Incredible! Though the video enters the level as Berzerker, you would actually enter as Cyclone in the full-game TAS. Not to worry though as there is a hidden Berzerker helmet near the start.
Favini also describes a time-saving technique I've never thought of nor have I seen anyone else discuss (edit: RandomPieIV has talked about it before). If you align the camera in a certain way when touching the flag (i.e., aligning the screen edges to the block grid), you can reduce the number of blocks on-screen and therefore the total time it takes for the screen to transition to the holodeck style. Even the types of blocks on screen make a difference—blank and background tiles appear to be removed at a rate of 7 per frame, while solid tiles convert to gray at a rate of 3 per frame. Favini saved 6 frames in this video just by taking all this into account. I calculate that at the two extremes (all-blocks misaligned vs no-blocks aligned) the holodeck transition can take anywhere from 40 to 105 frames.
Link to video
Joined: 7/18/2016
Posts: 91
Location: United States
I don't think anyone is tackling improving those TASes right now, though there are many known improvements that have been discovered but not yet reported in a centralized manner. Maybe I should do that one day in this thread. Anyway, Favini's main focus seems to be on TASing the ROM hack Kid Chameleon 2: Heady Metal's Revenge, and a TAS of the full game was being worked on for a while, but I believe the project had to be put on hold for a bit due to the immense amount of work involved. I don't blame them, optimizing movement in this game can be a real pain.
