http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/238732292/Crystalis-test1.fm2
I've been making steady progress, developing new methods and scripts and figuring out some new tricks. Here's my current progress on a test run, I plan to start over on the final version as some parts can be improved. Still, after only playing 7 minutes I am about 2 minutes ahead of tmont's published version. There are several surprises here, but I promise there are many more to come!
By the way, most of my major insights have come from hacking into the hit detection engine on a broad level and displaying really anything that looks like a hitbox. I found that the coins dropped by enemies occupy a slot in the same table as the enemies themselves. The slot picked seems almost random. Each enemy that spawns in a certain location will always occupy the same slot in that table. If a coin is in that slot, he won't spawn. Coins won't replace enemies that are already spawned, even if offscreen, so there are ways to manipulate which coins spawn in which slot. Of course my script can tell me what slot the coin is in and I can use that to know whether or not I need to pick it up. Also, by changing the order or timing of when I kill enemies, I can affect the slot of their coin. All this knowledge is important when hunting spawning enemies for xp.
Hitbox visualization was also key to my strategy on Stom. The method used can be done on a console but requires a lot of precision.
