A game-breaking trick has been found.. input storage. This trick has many uses: it allows you to create
exactly one fake segment, start drawing one frame earlier and create the two disctint segments of the drawing
without lifting the pen (saving one extra frame).
Essentially, this saves 2 frames on every drawing, and the current TAS is now horribly unoptimised.
How does it work? It's simple to execute.
- Get a right answer. During the interval of doing the last drawing input and your drawing getting crossed off, you have exactly
7 frames.
- 2 frames before the accepted drawing is crossed off screen, do an input. This input is now
stored and will transition over to the next drawing.
- There is a small, hidden loading time for the game to load the next question. You must start input maximum 2 frames after the drawing vanishes (counting the frame where the drawing vanishes as one frame) to keep your stored input. You can do any input before, but it doens't affect anything.
Hold the input until 3 frames after the vanish.
The visual result
- At 4 frames after the vanish, your input appears! You may note something very particular: you're drawing a line out of nowhere, where you would be supposed to draw a single pixel. What's even more odd, hovewer, is that your stored input, while being drawn on screen, actually doens't exist in memory and belongs to the answer before! This means your segment actually starts at your first input on the new drawing field, even though it doens't visually appear so. We have just created a fake line! This is showcased in the following picture: we get a 7 because this is only one individual input (which will always give a 7), even though it doens't show as such visually. The orange is the stored input (which doens't exist), blue is the real input (which is registered.)
Behind the scenes
- An even odder thing: after having an input into storage, you can continue that segment as long as you want. However, edge breaking will not start another segment, but allow you to be able to draw further on, as shown in the third picture. In this example, I succesfully draw a 0 with it. Here, I move from my initial blue input to the top of the screen to edge break (demonstrated by the red line) then maneuveur out of bounds (dark blue) and get back in bounds for one frame (light blue). I have executed basic edge breaking.
New segment without dropping input
- Even odder: if you don't edge break to do another segment and do an input that is not close to any of your current inputs, the game gets insanely confused and gives you an ?, unable to be recovered from.
This is a huge discovery: it can save many frames, the starting (fake) input will make manipulation a lot easier, and allow me to start with an invisible input without using godspots (what I was forced to use before, really limited..) However, it will make drawing much harder, since you can't edge break with this trick, unless you want to draw another segment. This trick can also only be used once for each manipulation.
This (again) brings up the question of: is this cheating? Is drawing one fake line decieving the viewer? I'll leave that up to you.
Analysing and fixing a wrong picture