WIP up until Visitor's Courtyard:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/25648152377346256
I decided to use the VBA-Next core instead of mGBA for this TAS. It seems like it might be a bit laggier than mGBA but I don't seem to have to worry about any desyncs, so that makes this process a whole lot easier.
I won't go as in depth with my optimizations as I did for my last post but there are a few tricks/glitches I feel I have to explain:
Damage Boosting: Getting hit by an enemy gives you a little boost in speed, if you enter toboggan mode before hitting the ground you can preserve that speed for an extended period of time by jumping. I use this extensively in the tutorial and Artic Pen, as well as once at the end of Visitor's Courtyard
Falling using toboggan: If I start falling during the grounded detobogganing animation (L>L on the ground), I start falling faster than I normally would be able to. How fast I fall is based on how far away from the ledge I start tobogganing. This trick also allows me to jump in midair and slide along the top of water, allowing me to make jumps that are normally impossible.
Bounce Boost: If you press L within a small window of bouncing of a bounce pad, you get a small boost in height at the end of your bounce. I use this in Artic Pen-2 to skip the second bounce pad.
OoB Trick: If you toboggan while jumping into a ceiling, the game will revert you back into normal mode automatically (presumably to prevent clipping into the ceiling). There is a small window in which you can do this off the top of a toboggan tunnel ceiling, allowing you to walk through toboggan tunnels in normal mode and also clipping you oob. You have to have some forward momentum in order to clip oob. I use this in Artic Pen-3 to skip a huge section of the level and also in general to save time when going through toboggan tunnels. I don't use this in Toboggan Courses because for some reason, this trick doesn't seem to work with ice physics.
General Routing: Because damage boosts save time in this game and I only have a limited amount of health, its in my best interest to pick up medals along the way to increase my health. In this TAS, I try to pick up every medal that doesn't waste anytime to pick up. keep in mind that collecting every medal in a level gives you an extra text box at the end of the level, wasting a few frames. I should get my first health upgrade in the middle of Zebra Pen (the next level), just before it will be neccesary
Levels:
Mr.Chew: straight forward fight; I have to wait for his recoil animation to end before I can hit him again. In phase 2 he has less knockback, so I switch to grounded attacks.
Training: because I don't have toboggan yet, this level is pretty straight forward. damage boosts/first-frame jumping on water to save time. Holding back for a couple frames after bouncing on the bounce pad keeps me from hitting the wall and losing all my speed.
Overworld: using toboggan mode allows you to enter levels a little earlier.
Toboggan Courses (Green Circle): heavy use of toboggan mode here to preserve as much speed as possible. continually entering and reentering toboggan mode preserves my speed up the ice slope. Autofire L produces the same effect, but since the window is so large I decided to mess around with it a bit more.
Giraffe Pen: mostly the same as my test tas with a few more minor optimizations
Artic Pen: In this level I have to destroy 5 fans in each section. The wind the fans produce pushes me in the direction it's facing, this can either help me save time or lose time depending on how the cycles turn out. The fans can only be destroyed by the incredibly slow grounded attack, thankfully I am able to use the momentum from the fan to skip the attack's cooldown animation in a few spots.
Artic Pen-1: All of the fan cycles worked out well and the walrus damage boost at the end is magical (took me a long time to get that to work)
Artic Pen-2: The second fan cycle didn't work out so well so I have to jump over the windbox here to save the most time. The toboggan in the middle of the section is much more precise than it looks and it's very easy to lose all of your speed before hitting the bottom. The fact that this toboggan worked out the way it did is practically a miracle.
Artic Pen-3: Showing of the OoB Trick for the first time, this skips a good half of this section by itself.
Minigame: Probably the worst part of this game; you have to sit through this bad DDR clone everytime you enter Visitor's Courtyard. You don't have to do anything to beat it but I do the minigame anyway for the medals. I enter one incorrect input to get 9/10 medals and skip the "you got all the medals" text at the end of the minigame. This part looks sloppy, I'll probably redo it later.
Visitor's Courtyard: In this level, I have to collect 20 shovels along with getting to the end. This level is also the introduction to stealth in this game, which unfortunately is very time consuming. I am able to jump over and knock out a couple of the NPCs, but for the rest of the time, you can enjoy me being a generally upstanding citizen while I wait for the NPCs to move.
I will probably upload the next WIP once I get through Bird Cages. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
