In this run, I destroyed all of the targets, except a few. The ones I didn't shoot all of were the troops in the base levels, because of how often they respawn. I also didn't shoot all the carts in the hangar level because I didn't realize they were destructible until I was completely done with the TAS, and shooting them would've changed the trajectory of the rest of the run. Other than that though, I shot every troop, every power up box (grounded or flying), shot every turret and cannon, killed every boss and all the troops they spawned (not including bullets), and every other target you could think of. So more like a 95% run than a 100% run.
arkiandruski: Welcome to TASVideos. Unfortunately I will have to reject your run for a few reason mostly centered around the goal choice.
At TASVideos we like our goals to be clear and definite. Goals like maximum kills, all collectibles, etc. The more qualifiers you have to add onto the goal, the less solid it usually is, especially if that qualifier is "almost", like "I killed almost all enemies." If that's the case, you need a very good explanation for why you didn't kill more enemies. Also, if those cart could have been destroyed you should have gone back and destroyed them because as it is, this TAS doesn't accomplish said goal.
I also question the decision to not pick up powerups and stay with the base gun. In TASes the goal is to use the most effective strategies and there's nothing in the stated goal preventing you from switching to the spread gun, which is one of the best weapons in Contra.
As Scrimpeh mentioned in the thread, there are moments in the run which are fairly obvious imperfect play, such as missing shots or slowing down.
I think maximum kills could be very entertaining if done right. However, if enemies spawn infinitely then there needs to be a mechanism which prevents the player from standing in one spot and farming kills.
For the reasons outlined above, I am rejecting this run. Good luck on your future endeavors an I invite you to communicate with other members of the site through Discord or the forums.
I've taken the liberty of making a temp encode. If anyone more qualified wants to take a shot at it, I can take mine down.
Link to video
Hi and welcome to the site, fanTAStic!
For a first attempt, this run wasn't so bad. However, in my eyes, the problems outlined in the submission text pretty much disqualify the submission from publication immediately. Since you can in theory hang around forever to let more and more enemies spawn, there is no maximum kill count, which makes the run ill-defined in terms of goals in my eyes. Unfortunately, I don't think the category is publishable at all because of this. It'd be much better to just maximize the kill count as a secondary goal in a regular speed-focused run. You also definitely miss some enemies, for example at frame 27429 in the lower left corner. It's also somewhat unclear and inconsistent what counts as a kill in general and what doesn't. For example, you spend time destroying the lower two hives in the final boss, but not the upper two. I'm not sure why.
The run is probably better suited to the Discussion Thread. You can upload it to Userfiles if you want to share it with others.
The run also looked quite unoptimal in some places. For example, was it really necessary to turn around and drop down multiple times in the first level? You also miss a lot of shots in some boss fights, which loses time, since those shots do not contribute to lowering the boss's HP. During the first boss fight, while you were waiting for one of the turrets to open, you could've already hit the boss to lower its HP in advance. There's also Spread Gun optimization, which is incredibly powerful, but that's more difficult.
Overall, this was a good first TAS. The gameplay was overall very frantic due to having to kill every enemy, which was quite entertaining. The Waterfall level was an especially good example of that. I liked seeing that. However, there is still lots of work to be done in regards to optimization and planning. Keep at it!
Another thing is that, there actually isn't such a thing as "all targets" for this game, as the amount of enemies spawned depends on RNG. Instead, we could talk about "maximum targets".
I made a quick test to see if I could improve your movie, and I was able to spawn and kill 7 more enemies before passing through the second bridge, and I also did it faster than you: User movie #637779334293682349
