I created a simple TAS engine for eddynardo's current series of games, initially aiming to TAS "Sticky Sorcerer" (see: https://www.speedrun.com/Sticky_Sorcerer/thread/hwkw6 ). Today, I finished a TAS for Choppy Orc that improves @Neinet 's excellent RTA record by just under 10 seconds, reading 114.752 on the end screen. I worked carefully to plan and optimize each level and would be very surprised if so much as another half-second could be taken off the run.
I hope you enjoy: https://vimeo.com/310082708 . Gametime passes very slightly slower than normal in my replay but the in-game timer can nevertheless be trusted.
My most significant save is on level 14, where the TAS executes 4 frame-perfect jumps off the edges of deadly surfaces to save about 5 seconds over the strategy used on the leaderboards, but the TAS's optimized movement and "double-jump" tricks over the preceding 13 levels would still be a bit more than enough to push @Neinet or @LazyTitan below the 2 minute mark. I have no idea whether this goal is within human ability.
I'd be happy to answer any questions or send my tool, in the form of a patch to the game's JavaScript source, to any interested parties.
After ironing out an ad-hoc TAS engine for the game, I completed a respectable TAS that improves over our RTA record by 25 seconds IGT. I hope you enjoy: https://vimeo.com/309156733
I'd be happy to answer any questions, and if anybody is interested in taking their own shot at TASing I'd readily share my tools. A basic familiarity with JavaScript would come in handy.
@SiriusAshling: I used the strategy you found to charge an extra dash after slamming into a wall in a few places. You suggested in your videos that is was necessary to change directions after slamming into the wall before you jump, but this seems to not be the case; your horizontal directional input seems to not affect your window.
In general, the game is very casual about letting you jump after you leave the ground in any way other than jumping. For example, on level 1 I charge a dash by jumping shortly after I leave the center platform. Just pressing x after my dash animation dies above the chasm wouldn't have worked, but pressing up and x together on the same frame does. It seems like you always have a ~ 100 ms window to jump (5 frames for me) after leaving a ground surface.
Obviously, it is necessary to reset your progress when you are starting a new 100% attempt. Less obviously, level completion progress may confer small advantages in Any%. Therefore, Any% runs that do not reset their progress can expect to be rejected, as per the rules. (Non-competitive submissions---like the 10:50 on the Any% board that sees no dialogue popup on level 4---may be treated with a certain lenience in practice.)
Heads-up that I changed "Hat wizard" in the name and URL of this game to "Hat Wizard". I didn't do this a long time ago because I wasn't finding a way to change the name without changing the URL -- some sort of technical issue with the site apparently -- and I didn't want to change the URL because it would break links used in certain then-recent Twitter posts.
I'm changing both now because I don't think there are important standing links to the game. If there are any complaints posted here, I'll change it back.
If you grab the flagpole with Tetris mode active you will be able to place tetrominoes during the cutscene. Since movement inputs are killed when the mode switches, it's most reliable to do this by screen-scrolling yourself into the flag. Using the screen scroll to clip big Mario into the block at the bottom of the flag will work.
This glitch alone will let you get a few blocks into the castle before you're supposed to. However, damaging Mario with tetronimoes during the cutscene also has interesting effects. When big Mario takes damage, he becomes invulnerable during the castle construction. When little Mario takes damage he disappears from the screen entirely as if it were a game-over, but the game-over trigger is delayed for some reason.
The platform listed for this game is misleading.
This game already has the "Webgame" game type, but it should probably also have the "Web" platform instead of "PC" and "Mac". This seems to be the case for other in-browser games I run.
If anybody finds themself aiming at my 2:47 record, I suggest that they focus on improving level 16. A little bird tells you that several seconds can be saved there.
New category⸮ Of course, there are other places to softlock earlier into the game.
I found something interesting while practicing for my new run: https://vimeo.com/213327448
Wouldn't it be great if the final paddle-boss accepted hits on both sides? Unfortunately he doesn't, but that didn't stop me from trying:
(You have to line this up very exactly for it to happen. Maybe it's fortunate that this doesn't work, because it would be such a run-killer :))