INK is a fast-paced platformer about using colorful paint to uncover your surroundings. You play as a cube who spreads ink through walking and double jumping where your goal is to get to the rainbow box at the end of every level. The box only opens up once every enemy is defeated.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: libTAS 1.3.3
  • Plays the game fast
  • Abuses unintended mechanics

Comments

General Movement

Your cube is very fast. Turning around is nearly instant. General walking is equally fast. Wall jumps are easily used to ascend large walls and occasionally used to save a few frames when turning around.

Cube Jumps

Quickly ascending is a very important part of movement in this game. Enemy cubes provide a very small bounce when landed on, but there are ways around this. Landing very closely to a cube allows you to jump while killing the cube at the same time, granting a much larger bounce than what the cube would provide. In situations where this doesn't work due to bad angles or positions, you can instead double jump as you land on the cube. If you've used your double jump already, you can hold jump to cancel out the cube's bounce, allowing you to land on whatever platform is beneath.

Boss Skips

For the first boss against the evil cube, we skip large amounts of waiting (and RNG) by hitting the boss on the same frame that it lands on the ground. This sets the boss to become damageable, but doesn't fully reset its speed value, resulting in it teleporting back up as if it was starting its hover phase while slowly floating down and remaining damageable. We then jump off to the side of the platform where the boss doesn't follow so we can hit the boss.
For the second and third boss, the cutscene after the bosses are killed are skipped by dying at the same time that the boss dies.
The final boss is supposed to move around the stage and force you to follow it while you dodge its laser beam and occasional projectiles. However, we can quite easily get it stuck beneath a platform to immediately hurt it before it can start trying to run away.

Other comments

Shoutouts to WillWare for gifting the game (and EZGames for the idea)

feos: Judging...
fsvgm777: Replaced movie file with one that syncs to the end and is 31 frames faster.
feos: Nicely played; not much to say about this movie otherwise. I find this game cute and hard, but also quite boring, thought the audience enjoyed it, and there was no negative feedback. Gameplay looks like a polished version of the real-time run, mostly because there's not much variety you can introduce in this game.
Verified on Xubuntu 18.04.2 i386; have to note that libTAS required OS updates to be installed, otherwise it all ran smoothly.
Accepting to Moons.
fsvgm777: Processing.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15584
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6294: lexikiq's Linux INK in 08:52.57
nymx
He/Him
Editor, Judge, Expert player (2234)
Joined: 11/14/2014
Posts: 932
Location: South Pole, True Land Down Under
I would have to say that this any% version is my preferred one of the two you have submitted. From what I can see, looks pretty good. Yes vote.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Editor, Player (44)
Joined: 7/11/2010
Posts: 1029
This entertained me, so I voted Yes. One concern I had watching it is that it's unclear how this would differ from an unassisted speedrun (but I haven't seen one of those for this game). It feels like it could look the same, but maybe not? However, given the cube bounces don't seem to be an intentional part of the game, presumably they'd be too hard to get consistently without tools, providing the difference we need. (They should be part of the game, though! It's a very fluid form of movement.) The levels also started to get a bit repetitive near the end of the run, but not quite by enough to bore me.
Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4043
Looks like this is substantially (1.5ish minutes) faster than the real time WR: https://www.speedrun.com/ink
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
lexikiq
She/Her
Active player (400)
Joined: 8/13/2018
Posts: 109
Location: United States of America
RTA primarily loses time by dying a lot, although other tricks like the faster vertical ascension through cube bounces, precise movement, frame-perfect boss skips, and pixel-perfect projectile avoidance further help save time beyond deaths.
EZGames69
He/They
Publisher, Reviewer, Expert player (4462)
Joined: 5/29/2017
Posts: 2762
Thank you so much for doing this game! This was one of the first indie games I ever purchased on steam and I still considere it to be a fun one. Yes vote.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
lexikiq
She/Her
Active player (400)
Joined: 8/13/2018
Posts: 109
Location: United States of America
uploaded the wrong movie file, here's the right one that actually syncs: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/53906822701021504 (also a second faster)
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15584
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [3925] Linux INK by lexikiq in 08:52.57
lexikiq
She/Her
Active player (400)
Joined: 8/13/2018
Posts: 109
Location: United States of America
yay :)
lexikiq
She/Her
Active player (400)
Joined: 8/13/2018
Posts: 109
Location: United States of America
As a small note for potential future time saves, the 2nd boss has RNG sources that I didn't think to manipulate, such as the times between the boss attacking. I don't plan on revisiting this game right now, but if someone else does, you should probably look into that. (I'd estimate only 1-2 seconds of time were actually lost from this, so it's not too bad.)