Introduction
Crime City was the chosen game for the Dream Team Competition 11, which ran from September 17, 2023 to November 4, 2023 and was organized by Darkman425. This submission is the combined work of the participants of the DTC, primarily the input of the winning team (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, + some 4th Guy: g0goTBC, Lightmopp, WarHippy, and enderpal7) and second place team (DrD2k9, CasualPokePlayer, ThunderAxe31, and RetroEdit), while still recognizing the contributions of all other teams and participants.
While not an incredibly technical game, Crime City still proves to be interesting and fun, with optimal play requiring strategies to maintain forward momentum and die to lose in-game time without sacrificing real-time frames.
In this run, and all of the DTC entries, player 2 is chosen because he spawns further to the right. Since most stages are right-scrolling, spawning more to the right means that it takes fewer frames of movement to reach the center of the screen and start the camera scrolling, and thus reach the end of the level.
You can find an explanation of the game mechanics on the game resource page of Crime City. The content of that page was added by us once the contest was over.
The above video is the alternate encode to be used for publication.
Level-by-level Analysis
Comparison with the contest submissions
Here's a table showing the best time that was achieved by a team during the Dream Team Contest 11, and the time saves that were found after the contest was over.
| Screen | Fastest Team | Fastest DTC time | Final submission | Delta | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-1 | 2, 3, and 4 | 2051 | 2051 | 0 | Teams 2, 3, and 4 too good to improve on them. |
| 2-1 | 1, 2, 3, and 4 | 1553 | 1553 | 0 | Teams 1, 2, 3, and 4 too good to improve on them. |
| 2-2 | All the teams | 2470 | 2470 | 0 | Everyone is too good to improve on the teams. |
| 2-3 | All the teams | 2466 | 2466 | 0 | Everyone is too good to improve on the teams. |
| 2-4 | 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 | 1911 | 1911 | 0 | Teams 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 too good to improve on them. |
| 3-1 | All the teams | 1694 | 1694 | 0 | Everyone is too good to improve on the teams. |
| 3-2 | 2, 4 | 1860 | 1860 | 0 | Teams 2 and 4 too good to improve on them. |
| 4-1 | 2* | 2113 | 2113 | 0 | *: Team 4 had the fastest time (2100) in this level due to a deathwarp that was used to reset the in-game time. However, due to the limited number of lives that we have for the entire run, it ends up being faster to not die in level 4 and die in level 5 instead. Team 2 had the fastest level 4 without a death, and we were not able to improve on them. They're too good. |
| 5-1 | 2,3 | 3561 | 3561 | 0 | Teams 2 and 3 too good to improve on them. |
| 6-1 | All the teams | 3751 | 3751 | 0 | Good job on not losing time in an autoscroller, everyone! |
| 6-2 | 4 | 1517 | 1509 | 8 | A faster way of fighting the boss was found after the DTC. |
Level 1
This level introduces everything that is reused in every level. Damage boosts, ledge boosts, the camera that limits how much we can save by going fast, a death to reset the timer to 85 seconds, and a fast boss kill. Dying to lower the timer means the score countdown at the end of the stage is shorter.
The boss must not shoot, since he does not count as dead until his bullets have left the screen. He takes double damage from ducking shots because it hits below the armor.
Level 2
2-1
Jumping on top of cars. Some of them move slightly back and forth, and you don’t want to be standing on them when they move back.
2-2 and 2-3
Both these rooms have two versions, one scrolling right and one scrolling left. We pick the right-scrolling versions, since we are P2 and start further to the right.
Both of the rooms also end in a shoot-out, where you see your character from behind. The stage ending trigger is very lenient, only the last enemy matters for finishing as soon as possible.
2-4
Boss room. The boss takes double damage from ducking shots and does not have invincibility frames after getting hit, unlike most other bosses. Killing him quickly is not crucial however, since the stage does not end until a few other enemies have spawned.
Level 3
3-1
The hydraulic presses are on some other timer than stage start, and might desync when editing earlier parts of the movie.
3-2
This room has a lot of tricky geometry to navigate around, until you find the L+R trick, and can just jump through it.
It is important to get damage boosted far enough ahead of the center of the screen, so you have time to clear out the enemies at the end, so the boss can spawn directly. The boss takes half damage from ducking shots.
Level 4
This level has a boss with a flamethrower, which is very tricky and where the teams diverged somewhat in strategy. He spawns offscreen and will fire at you as soon as you're within a certain distance. The hitbox is ridiculous, and it passes through solid walls to hit you. (so clipping into those blocks doesn't save you). The strategy is to make him fire immediately as he appears so that there will still be enough room to stand between the wall and flamethrower and shoot him throughout his whole animation. After the boss is dead you need to get to the left side of the screen and kill the molotov punk to end the level.
Level 5
Level 5 is a long enemy-packed gauntlet where the game expects you to waste all your quarters. There is no real end boss, only a number of enemy spawns.
Level 6
6-1
The first “room” is an autoscroller, and as long as you can kill the last 2 guys at the bottom of the screen quick enough, you don't lose time.
6-2
This room starts with the most annoying obstacle of the entire game: a stack of boxes which, even if you jump on the frame the stage starts, you collide with for 1 frame. We haven't found a way to save that frame, but if there is time that is left to save on this TAS, it's probably that one frame.
Final Boss
For the few who haven't kept up with the story so far the mayor was kidnapped back in stage 4 and replaced with a decoy. The FAKE mayor is now the final boss. The first obstacle is a stack of crates tall enough that you can't jump over them. You're supposed to wait for a barrel that comes in from off-screen and jump off it to get over the wall, but most teams found a way to clip into the wall and jump over it to reach the boss. The problem with that strategy is that the boss spawns on the ground below the crates where you can't reach him. (So even though you can go all the way left, you can't really do anything until he jumps up on the crates with you.) Some teams brought the shotgun so that the angled shot could reach him, but you have limited bullets and then you still have to wait for him to jump up to you for close combat. If you clip into the wall of crates at the start of the fight, though, you can fire through the wall while still being low enough to hit him when he appears. This presents another problem where you're so far away from the edge of the screen that the bullet limit for the shotgun and pistol was reached. I managed to grab the machine gun earlier in the level which lets me have 8 bullets on the screen at once for non-stop fake-mayor killing action.
Special Thanks
"There's only a handful of people to special thank: Darkman425 who ran the contest, Memory for being site admin, adelikat and the site developers for making the modern site, the judges, the reviewers, the encoders, everyone else who posts on the website, our parents, their parents, their parents' parents, Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the internet and making this possible, ... AND YOU for participating and making it a contest worth being a part of." -Invariel, Discord
Screenshots
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: This is EXCELLENT work! I was quite impressed with the execution of techniques found. Comparing this to the WR, it is clearly dominating work! Great work all.
Gladly accepting!
despoa: Processing...