Wow. That's one impressive looking solution for a level that was looking kinda daunting. That horizontal movement! Thanks everyone for posting suggestions! And go Slamo!
In other news, you CAN die to monsters jutting out of blocks if they're far out enough (probably the hitboxes are just confusing). I added this and a couple of other things to the tricks section.
So I'm quite pleased to present you this... The level you see below is solvable.
See if you can figure it out ;) but I'll tell you this: I added the trick to the game resource page earlier. There's a similar jump in 06 in the bottom right corner and I'm SURE there must be places where it's legitimately going to save time.
In fact I'll bet many people know about the trick from just playing the game, but perhaps they didn't realize that you can make so much use of it.
Another thing: Could you Slamo create a list of links to the WIP videos you've made so far to be added to the levels subpage? Having all the route suggestions (those of everyone) up in one place under the right tab would be very useful for making comments on them retrospectively.
I started the integration of WIP's and route suggestions with the levels subpages. I'd like to ask for feedback on the formatting or what else should be included because it's easier to do that now than later.
EDIT
If you check it out now, you'll see two ways of limiting the line length. The first is adding a space at the beginning of each line, which is what I did to the first long comment. The other is to use %%%'s for manual line breaks, which take a bit of juggling to make look good. Adding spaces on the other hand doesn't seem to work with every line (they're placed at the end of the previous line instead). I also tried using "inline quotes". http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/DOS/Jetpack/Levels00To09.html
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
I embedded the videos for the first level using the new YouTube flashblock feature we have. Please weigh in with thoughts.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Level 23:
Link to video
This probably requires some explanations:
The reason I stop flying before going into the green teleporter is that I get bottlenecked by the marble even if I go fast as possible. Instead of wasting fuel and then just waiting, I walk there. This fuel conservation saves me time because it allows me to fly longer later in the level.
Fuel is also conserved by climbing up the scrolling ladder, which achieves the same speed as flying.
I tried using a trackbot to flip the red switch but it didn't work out. (after it falls off the ladder it just continues to the right)
In the last room, using the ladder to go down is faster than phasing through the brick.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
In this level, it's important to note that the marbles can greatly screw up your plans.
In some areas, you can jump over them, some not. In every case, you can blow the floor out from under you, to send a marble on a detour, which you can hop over.
If the marbles are really a problem, make note of the marble trap spots in which you can permanently trap some marbles (yes, multiple at once!).
Off the top of my head, here's an initial route idea:
I'll need to look closer though to see if I can come up with something better. I dislike the repeat travel.
It's important to note in this route map, the initial stages of it is around the heavy marble trapping areas. If they need trapping, probably best to do so early on.
Edit:
Another route:
Edit:
Our level editor image shows a full fuel tank on start, so ignore my routes.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
I embedded the videos for the first level using the new YouTube flashblock feature we have. Please weigh in with thoughts.
I think it's better like this. Is it a supported feature of Youtube or just something you did for this site?
EDIT
Would it be possible to make the preview box expandable? It's hard to see the layout because it's so thin.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Svimmer wrote:
Nach wrote:
I embedded the videos for the first level using the new YouTube flashblock feature we have. Please weigh in with thoughts.
I think it's better like this. Is it a supported feature of Youtube or just something you did for this site?
Everything you find on this site is special for the site.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
One quarter of the way through now, level 24:
Link to video
On the edge sections, doing the top or bottom first mostly depended on the missile timings. Thankfully they didn't get in the way if I went to the top first. The fist stunner lasts long enough to do the middle section safely - I tried a few patterns to collect those gems and this is what I found to be the fastest.
A couple ideas for 25 now that we know we get fuel.
Route #1
This one is mostly horizontal travel, going with a general row-by-row idea.
Route #2
Taking a couple passes vertically in this one.
The reason I get the last gem when I do is because I need to wait for the door to open. I'll have to experiment with adding/removing teleports - there is a distance at which you're better off traveling instead.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
There's tons of variations on what can be done with this level.
Here's an example where we go insane:
I think we'll need a lot of thought before we get close to the correct route.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
We should see which gems can be gotten while teleporting.
This should help us route plan better.
Did I miss any?
Edit:
The next part of planning is finding which travel point each gem is closest to, this should help identify some collection groups and strategy.
Correct me if I made any mistakes here.
Based on the above, it appears to me that we should start by either getting the gem above Jetman, or to the right of Jetman, then head to the group around that gem's nearest teleporter. It seems we should end by leaving the teleporter directly above and left of the exit, and grabbing the gems around the exit.
Edit:
I think I missed some teleporter gem grabs.
All these should be grabbable while teleporting.
slamo: Can you do some testing and ensure we have a full list?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Looks quite good, I think it's the route with the shortest amount of actual travel.
Edit:
Alternate Ending:
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
So here's the craziness in action. Huge amounts of luck manipulation involved here, but the result is worth it. It's slightly out of order from the route map but that doesn't matter. Nach's alternate ending was slower by around 0.3 s.
Link to video
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
The craziness is fantastic, I approve. I'm also surprised my alternate ending is slower, not sure where I miscalculated...
But this looks absolutely marvelous.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
This is another of those levels where the enemies cause a lot of issues.
This overall is probably the route though.
Note the two possibilities for the gem and switch on the right.
I change colors halfway through from pink to blue to avoid some confusion with 3 lines of pink in the same tiny passage.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
This is another of those levels where the enemies cause a lot of issues.
Yeah, that was the main theme with this one. 26:
Link to video
I tried numerous combinations doing different sections in different orders, and this is the fastest thing I came up with. This is the first level to use a random powerup; I figure it's there and it makes the run faster, so I may as well use it. This is the longest level to date, but a lot of it is just waiting unfortunately.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
slamo wrote:
I tried numerous combinations doing different sections in different orders, and this is the fastest thing I came up with.
Based on what I'm seeing, I think this can be done faster.
slamo wrote:
This is the longest level to date, but a lot of it is just waiting unfortunately.
The biggest wait is the circling the middle. The rest of the level needs to be planned around eliminating that.
I see you wait the moment a missile passes before you go towards the innermost gem, then you need to wait based on the second missile coming for you.
There's three very important points about this:
1) The two missiles distance from each other while constant, shifts their meet, as one direction is longer than the other. Meaning what may just barely lose out on being able to return directly may have some leeway on a different cycle. By how many tiles do you miss your escape by?
2) Your top speed matches that of a missile, can you manage to follow a missile around that at top speed? If so, you can follow the missile in, duck down the latter in your one tile leeway to avoid certain death, grab gem, and return hot on its tail.
3) A stunner appeared on the level. Perhaps with manipulation, you can make it appear sooner? The main point it can be helpful is for the middle.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
you guys realize that if you use the random powerup and if it should happen that someone later comes up with a way of manipulating them more efficiently, the whole run could be obsoleted by an almost certainly less interesting one?
if on the other hand you could manipulate the power-up not to get in your way, you could be sure of avoiding that problem.
The biggest wait is the circling the middle. The rest of the level needs to be planned around eliminating that.
I see you wait the moment a missile passes before you go towards the innermost gem, then you need to wait based on the second missile coming for you.
There's three very important points about this:
1) The two missiles distance from each other while constant, shifts their meet, as one direction is longer than the other. Meaning what may just barely lose out on being able to return directly may have some leeway on a different cycle. By how many tiles do you miss your escape by?
2) Your top speed matches that of a missile, can you manage to follow a missile around that at top speed? If so, you can follow the missile in, duck down the latter in your one tile leeway to avoid certain death, grab gem, and return hot on its tail.
3) A stunner appeared on the level. Perhaps with manipulation, you can make it appear sooner? The main point it can be helpful is for the middle.
1) I tried entering the middle chamber at all sorts of points and it didn't result in a faster run, surprisingly. I also went with the philosophy that the run should be centered around getting into the middle chamber efficiently, but there are too many bottlenecks to make that worthwhile. Ideally I would have a missile closely follow me in so that by the time I'm done collecting, it's passed and I can safely escape. I got a run that came close to achieving that (there's an early cycle that works) but it resulted in too much time loss elsewhere.
2) I wish it worked like that, however it's impossible to keep up with it because it can turn corners perfectly and I cannot.
3) This is something I haven't tried, perhaps I can make this work.
Svimmer wrote:
you guys realize that if you use the random powerup and if it should happen that someone later comes up with a way of manipulating them more efficiently, the whole run could be obsoleted by an almost certainly less interesting one?
if on the other hand you could manipulate the power-up not to get in your way, you could be sure of avoiding that problem.
We agreed that using powerups as they appear is reasonable. They can't be manipulated efficiently, that I'm sure of, and it would be unreasonable effort to optimize an RTC time to perfectly place powerups when and where they're needed.
I will probably need to spend some time in the charging area since fuel is necessary to get to the exit. Fuel/time tradeoffs will be investigated just like I did with Underground.
Perhaps it's faster to go through the green teleporter the first time I pass it, get the gem below it, and then teleport back? Especially if you factor in fuel requirements.
I'm fairly sure it's better to get the enclosed gem from the bottom instead of the top because of fuel drain differences. (10 units/frame vs 20 units/frame)
EDIT: There is actually a gem behind the rightmost marble. Shouldn't change much, I think...
See if you can figure it out ;) but I'll tell you this: I added the trick to the game resource page earlier. There's a similar jump in 06 in the bottom right corner and I'm SURE there must be places where it's legitimately going to save time.
In fact I'll bet many people know about the trick from just playing the game, but perhaps they didn't realize that you can make so much use of it.
Another thing: Could you Slamo create a list of links to the WIP videos you've made so far to be added to the levels subpage? Having all the route suggestions (those of everyone) up in one place under the right tab would be very useful for making comments on them retrospectively.
Off the top of my head, here's an initial route idea:
I'll need to look closer though to see if I can come up with something better. I dislike the repeat travel.
It's important to note in this route map, the initial stages of it is around the heavy marble trapping areas. If they need trapping, probably best to do so early on.
Edit:
Another route:
Edit:
Our level editor image shows a full fuel tank on start, so ignore my routes.
This one is mostly horizontal travel, going with a general row-by-row idea.
Route #2
Taking a couple passes vertically in this one.
The reason I get the last gem when I do is because I need to wait for the door to open. I'll have to experiment with adding/removing teleports - there is a distance at which you're better off traveling instead.
I think we'll need a lot of thought before we get close to the correct route.
Did I miss any?
Edit:
The next part of planning is finding which travel point each gem is closest to, this should help identify some collection groups and strategy.
Correct me if I made any mistakes here.
Based on the above, it appears to me that we should start by either getting the gem above Jetman, or to the right of Jetman, then head to the group around that gem's nearest teleporter. It seems we should end by leaving the teleporter directly above and left of the exit, and grabbing the gems around the exit.
Edit:
I think I missed some teleporter gem grabs.
All these should be grabbable while teleporting.
slamo: Can you do some testing and ensure we have a full list?
Note the two possibilities for the gem and switch on the right.
I change colors halfway through from pink to blue to avoid some confusion with 3 lines of pink in the same tiny passage.
