WIP 8 continues from where WIP 7 left off until the end of the day. This includes sneaking into Snape's storeroom, escaping, and finding the Mirror of Erised.
These have been very tricky sections, and took a lot of work, mainly due to strict platform cycles and complicated enemy manipulations. There's also a lot of unavoidable waiting for platforms unfortunately.
At some point I'll make a video with commentary, but for now I'll just address the things that may be least obvious.
Escaping the Storeroom:
The first part of this level is complex but there's nothing new. The fun starts at the end where the doxies are. For some reason there are two doxies on top of each other (I assume a programming mistake) in the lower right side-room, and taking damage from this double-doxie eats up two health as a result. Because of this, and because of the other doxie in the lower-left room, I need to have full health at this point in order to even survive. I pause when pressing the last switch to manipulate the doxies' movements so that I can ride the final platform to the end without taking damage that would kill me.
I'm pretty confident that taking damage as I do and manipulating the doxies as I do is the best route possible. It would be nice if I could take one less damage and therefore not need to collect health earlier in the run, but the time saved by taking damage here is far greater than the time it took to collect the health earlier.
The Path to the Mirror of Erised:
Loads of moving platforms in this level, and lining up their cycles is very difficult. The main thing to explain is in the top-right section. After making my way up the middle of the pit and onto the three horizontally moving platforms, I cast flipendo upwards from a very precise position, hitting an off-screen switch. This switch would normally be hit later to activate a moving platform that returns you from the end to the start. By hitting it now I can use this 'return platform' to shortcut to the end instead, saving a considerable amount of time. I have to hit the switch as late as possible to make the cycle, but it can be done.
The place that this platform takes you to has a small statue which must be hit with avifors to activate the three horizontal platforms in the top left of the level (the last part before the exit). You then have to loop right back around to the start and up across those platforms to the exit. I have to wait a while for the return platform when standing by the statue, which gives me a large amount of time during which I can hit the statue at any point (to start the final platforms moving).
Depending on when I hit the statue during this unavoidable waiting period, the final platforms will be in different positions when I eventually reach them. Ideally I would like them to be lined up, so that I could easily run across them, but after much testing I discovered that the only timings that would allow this would be if I could hit the statue earlier than I can get there at all. After a lot more experimentation it turns out that my best option is actually to just hit the statue as early as I can, as that way when you get to the final platforms it only takes a short wait before they line up. This seems rather anticlimactic since hitting the switch as early as you can is what you'd instinctively do in a TAS anyway, but whatever.
This does mean though that if a way were discovered to get to the statue on an earlier cycle, then there would be a better timing available (which wouldn't be to hit it as early as possible), but I cannot see any way that I could get to it any earlier.
That's probably all completely indecipherable to anyone other than me, but at least my thought process has been recorded somewhere.
TL;DR I'm making slow but steady progress. The next major level is learning Wingardium Leviosa, which should actually be pretty simple once I get used to the clunky levitation movements.
