Submission #3483: Cpadolf's Genesis Vectorman 2 in 08:35.58

This is an improvement of 1559 frames over mmbossman's currently published run of Vectorman 2. The improvement consist mostly of a generally higher level of optimization, and there are few points where I gain a really big amount of time in a specific place. Over 100 frames of lag where removed as well. The only new trick I found was that if you jump just as you walk of the edge of a platform, you can make a second jump within ~5 frames of the first jump without activating the booster, which enables you to do a sort of triple jump. This allowed me to make some otherwise impossibly high jumps and probably saved a couple of seconds in total throughout the run. Also, shoting diagonally upwards directly after landing makes you regain max running speed faster, but if you already have a high speed when landing you only gain a very small amount of speed, and it's therefore not always worth it due to lag.

Since I don't have control over my speed in this level, the only improvement that could be made was reducing lag. I can't shoot anything either because it causes a slight delay in your descent.

The single biggest improvement in this level was killing the last snail in a much more effective manner, reducing the delay to almost nothing. Other than that I managed my jumps a bit better and avoided some lag.

The Tripple jump came in handy a couple of times here, nothing else comes to mind as worthy of notice, just small optimizations.

I make sure to space out all the shots on the heads between boosts to cause minimal delay. I also make sure to not fire any shots downwards as that slows down your downward momentum a bit.

Very straightforward level. I kill the shelled enemy more effectively, and thanks to the triple jump I can clear a ledge that mmbossman lost his momentum on.

Lag reduction, mostly. Going down closer to the left on my way down the mountain allows me to get down faster at the cost of some forward momentum, but it works out for the better.

I get more shots in before he disappears the first time, and then I space out the rest of the shots better to not cause a delay before the last boost.

I noticed that by slowing down slightly and then speeding up again, I could increase my max speed by 1/32th of a pixel per frame. This added up to a couple of frames saved over the course of the level. Other than that I manage lag and speed a bit better in general.

The largest improvement by far is from the initial climb, where I break the blocks and jump upwards much more effectively. Continuously moving forward while breaking two rows of blocks turned out to be a bit faster too, even though your average speed is kept quite low from all the ducking.

Same as stage 9.

Going down to the bottom after breaking the first run of blocks made my progress a bit more effective than going through the middle. The triple jump helped me get up again without hitting the wall.

Same as stage 9.

The triple jump helped me get up at the first climb without middle landing on the second platform.

When getting the rhino powerup I managed to increase my max speed in the same manner as the roller blade levels, though the increase was a bit greater in this level. I manage to navigate more tightly around corners after getting the powerup too, which saved a decent amount of time. Also, while having this powerup my speed is maintained even if I touch a wall, which is why I sometimes hug the wall when falling down a shaft while I have this powerup.

Shooting the snakes at the start of the fight turned out to be redundant and also made it take longer to reappear, removing those therefore saved some time.

I manage to get a shot in at the first breakable wall, making it break as soon as it comes in contact of my boost damage, which means I can avoid running into the wall here.

This stage was really weird to optimize because breaking a block starts to destroy more blocks in a somewhat random chain reaction. This made it tricky to quickly destroy blocks while leaving ledges to jump up on. On the boss, I manage to get in a little extra damage while he is still fazing in and out, which in combination with some extra shots was enough to reduce the amount of boosts needed to kill him by 1

The whirlwind part in particular is improved a lot here. And by improving it, I had enough time left on the powerup to skip the middile landing mmbossman had to do on a pillar towards the end.

Pretty uninteresting level. Jumping continually is faster, and you can get a slightly higher speed by jumping at the right moment when going up or down a slope (this boost in speed can the be kept until you stop or do a damage boost, no matter if you keep jumping or not. I run in to a wall at one point and lose my speed, but this doesn't slow me down as I have to wait for an elevator. It was needed to do in order to get to the point where the elevator was triggered as fast as possible.

Pretty much the same as the last level.

Standard run and jump stuff. No significant improvement, just better jumping.

The boss was quite tricky to optimize, as it's legs was constantly in the way. I managed to do more damage on average with my boosts and managed to do them more frequently. The second platform breaks when his HP hits 36, so I made sure to get his health to 37 before the last boost to minimize the amount of shots it took to kill him from the ground.

Thank to mmbossman and mike89 for their previous work on this game, which provided a very good baseline to work from.

Truncated: Accepted!

Dacicus: Publishing