By using a not before featured technique, the previous record gets improved by 34 frames.
Game Objective
Beat the first stage of the game
Aims for earliest input end
Strategy
The new technique is an easily executable horizontal size-change of the player (="cannon"). It is done by toggling the difficulty-switch.
A short explanation (citation) from a forum post which i wrote in december of last year:
[The size-change] alone probably wouldn't change much for us [...], but the important part is, that the cannon isn't centered at the middle (where the lazer-shots come from), but at the very left of the sprite, thus pushing the lazer-shot-origin slightly to the right when expanding - which turns out to be very powerfull :)
Possible Improvements
Finding out (mathematically) which order of shooting the invaders (within one column / within two columns / all together) is optimal will probably help (i haven't done it). This seems rather hard, as the timing (bullet fired until invader killed) changes as the invaders come further down to the ground, so one has to account for all different kinds of scenarios. I thing bruteforcing through a simulation of the game (similar to what Chef_Stef did in [3943] NES Arkanoid "warpless" by Chef Stef in 11:11.18) might do the trick (more easily).
slamo: Replaced movie with a 12 frame improvement, and judging!
Yo, thanks a bunch!
Seems like we have a common interest in A2600 games :) If you want to, we can collab on a project sometime! (rn my time is rather limited :/ but in general i'm open for it :) ).
Btw, If you ever find yourself working on Miniature Golf or Skateboardin, feel free to dm me or to create a forum post about it! :) At the moment (for some months now) I've paused progress on both these games, and haven't uploaded any userfiles yet, since progress is either too little or too inevitable, so it probably wouldn't make much sense.
btw, there might be quite some frames to save just with the tech alone in this game by finding a better path. I haven't investigated it all too much ;) so feel free to still look into this!
(minor) edit: deleted some parenthesis, which made the readability worse.
Yo, thanks a bunch!
Seems like we have a common interest in A2600 games :) If you want to, we can collab on a project sometime! (rn my time is rather limited :/ but in general i'm open for it :) ).
Btw, If you ever find yourself working on Miniature Golf or Skateboardin, feel free to dm me or to create a forum post about it! :) At the moment (for some months now) I've paused progress on both these games, and haven't uploaded any userfiles yet, since progress is either too little or too inevitable, so it probably wouldn't make much sense.
btw, there might be quite some frames to save just with the tech alone in this game by finding a better path. I haven't investigated it all too much ;) so feel free to still look into this!
(minor) edit: deleted some parenthesis, which made the readability worse.
Miniature Golf and Skateboardin aren't on my radar currently but that can always change.
I'll poke around with this tomorrow and see what I can find! And I'm always open for collaboration as well though my time also tends to be limited (health reasons)
just wondering if, for entertainment factor, the player's canon can be left "wide" for longer periods of time, or if that affects gameplay when not actively shooting. For instance, if the canon is "wide" from just after the previous shot until just before the next shot, it would be more apparent to viewers.
just wondering if, for entertainment factor, the player's canon can be left "wide" for longer periods of time, or if that affects gameplay when not actively shooting. For instance, if the canon is "wide" from just after the previous shot until just before the next shot, it would be more apparent to viewers.
Yes, it can be left wide! I've added this variant to the userfiles.
Here is an encode (I've also added it to the submission-page)
Link to video
Actually, i think i like this new variant more then the submitted one. If more people / the judge think(s) this is the case, it would probably be best to change the movie-file.
Thanks for the suggestion! :D
(minor) edit: typo, and removed a colon
Yoo very nice improvement! I tried changing the route at the end a bit more as that one shot coming from above at the end was a bit in the way and found four more frames. There's probably still more to save...
Userfile: User movie #637899393648723554
Yoo very nice improvement! I tried changing the route at the end a bit more as that one shot coming from above at the end was a bit in the way and found four more frames. There's probably still more to save...
Userfile: User movie #637899393648723554
Nice! When I looked at it yesterday I couldn't find anything missing in your early game route. I even tried a few ideas of my own. It all turns into a giant math problem. Shooting every 18th frame as often as possible, having 2 shots on screen as much as possible, all while balancing the fact that the later shots have to travel farther rendering the previous 2 steps harder.
Unfortunately I am not a math wizard haha. 15:X is so close though!
Yoo very nice improvement! I tried changing the route at the end a bit more as that one shot coming from above at the end was a bit in the way and found four more frames. There's probably still more to save...
Userfile: User movie #637899393648723554
Nice! When I looked at it yesterday I couldn't find anything missing in your early game route. I even tried a few ideas of my own. It all turns into a giant math problem. Shooting every 18th frame as often as possible, having 2 shots on screen as much as possible, all while balancing the fact that the later shots have to travel farther rendering the previous 2 steps harder.
Unfortunately I am not a math wizard haha. 15:X is so close though!
Hell yeah! Great stuff!!
Since you wrote "WIP" in the userfile; if you want to continue working on this, I will just cancel this submission, this way you don't have to worry about time trouble or similar things :)
I'm probably not gonna work on this anymore (i kinda have to concentrate on other stuff), so i leave it up to you.
Hell yeah! Great stuff!!
Since you wrote "WIP" in the userfile; if you want to continue working on this, I will just cancel this submission, this way you don't have to worry about time trouble or similar things :)
I'm probably not gonna work on this anymore (i kinda have to concentrate on other stuff), so i leave it up to you.
I just use wip in file names sometimes so I remember to actively back them up and I don't auto save a change that I forget about. I'm finished with this one and am happy with it. I'd say we did a bang up job on this.
Updated it. I hope you can edit the submission text now too, so you can add or change what you feel fitting :)
If you can't, then a judge or similar should give you the permission, unfortunately idk how this really works.
If you have any screenshot suggestions, feel free to add them :)
and a judge should change the movie file ofc :)
