Hello. I might be making a TAS of this game. Currently working on making maps of the levels, and have half of the required ones done. In the process, I've noticed some potential improvements to area 4 in the current run by Nick_Andrews_:

1. You only need to speak to the commando in order to open the door to the boss room. The communication room isn't required. You still need to pass by it due to the way the platforms are set up, but you don't need to go inside.
2. There's a faster path to the communication room: Swing from the bottom of the platforms at the bottom of the level. Then you don't have to go up and down all of the platforms.
3. There might be a faster path to the boss room: When you first reach the waterfall, go up and to the right rather than down (around 09:20 in Nick_Andrews_'s video).

If you want, I can make videos demonstrating those things. The drawback to those route changes is that you won't get as many cartridges.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to make the game reset the horizontal subpixel value. It starts off at zero but only ever changes when Kuros moves horizontally. Actions such as entering doors usually change the horizontal position to fixed numbers, but the subpixel value is left alone. Walking into a slope will just add or subtract the appropriate subpixel amount based on how much Kuros moves.

All that's necessary is to be facing left when entering the door. Buffering a left press will get Kuros to the top step on the first jump with wizard 2. You don't need to press jump. This works consistently because of the height of wizard 2's jump. Wizard 1 has a slightly lower height, so the horizontal subpixels do come into play there.

The jumping thing in the wizard guilds is probably dependent on subpixel positioning. There IS one frame during which you can give input before the automatic jumping takes over, but I haven't been able to make the jump consistently if leaving the guild and re-entering it. If I'm right about the subpixels, the problem is that the wizard's maximum horizontal speed is too slow.

Also, there IS some type of input buffering that might be helpful when you go through a door. If you press and hold whatever buttons after the screen turns black, that input will be done when the next screen loads. This only applies if that input would be legal in the next screen. For example, you can't use it to switch costumes inside rooms that don't usually allow you to switch costumes. One use I've found is to call up the costume select window quickly after Kuros gets kicked out of a guild for wearing the wrong costume. This also gives you the chance to switch costumes right after entering the king's room and Malkil's room at the end of the game.

That's a good question (EDIT: about the method being allowed. xJackieBx posted while I was writing this). The terrain type in those spots allows one-way movement: Kuros can move up through it but not down. You can see this by jumping with the gold wizard. He'll move into that block but not into the block just to the right of it (using the leftmost one for this example). The other costumes likely would do the same if they could jump high enough.

This method obviously was not the intended route to get to the knight statue, but the terrain allows it. I don't know if there's a similar situation in another game that can serve as comparison.

Another potential route update: It turns out that the grey blocks surrounding the room to the guardian of the gold knight statue are not entirely solid. This is within the Palace, the area that has the rooms with the bronze knight statue and bronze knight guild. You can levitate up through the grey blocks from below with the wizard. Line up Kuros so that he's within one of the tall grey pillars while ascending. He doesn't have to be perfectly in the middle; there's a little leeway on either side.

I haven't tested to determine if this is actually faster than the outside route.

I've been working on a LiveSplit autosplitter for this game. Currently works with FCEUX 2.2.3. It splits when any of these conditions are met and has the option to toggle any of the conditions on or off:

1. Get any of the 9 statues.
2. Complete any of the 9 guilds.
3. Get any of the 4 gems.
4. Defeat Malkil.

You can set up your splits however you want and just toggle the appropriate conditions for your setup. You can get the autosplitter here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/fm4d6sc5edvhx6g/WizWar3-all.asl/file

Are there any other split conditions that you'd like to see or other emulators you'd like to have added?

The silver and gold knights have a fixed attack pattern. They do this once:

08, rest

Then this three times:

16, stab up 16, stab down far

Then this twice:

16, stab up 20, stab down far 24, stab down near

Then this three times again:

16, stab up 16, stab down far

Then this twice:

16, stab down far 24, stab down near

Finally this twice:

40, rest

Then they start over from 08, rest. The difference between them is that the silver knight stays in place and the gold knight moves. It does not seem to be possible to interrupt the loop. If Kuros is too close to the knight, however, each state in the loop only lasts for 2 frames instead of 8, 16, 20, etc. frames. Getting close enough seems to require taking damage beforehand.

You should have enough if you get the 50-point coin on top of the shop building and the 10-point money bag on top of the building with the UnderWorld passage. The coin is slightly out of the way, but the time save from skipping the shop will probably make up for it. The money bag is directly on the way from the guild to the shop.

By my count, this route requires you to purchase 14 keys:

1. Thief 1 statue
2. Thief 1 guild
3. Passage from City to UnderWorld
4. Wizard 1 statue
5. Wizard 1 guild
6. Thief 2 statue
7. Knight 1 statue
8. Knight 1 guild
9. Knight 2 statue
10. Thief 2 guild
11. Wizard 2 statue
12. Wizard 2 guild
13. Knight 2 guild
14. Thief 3 guild

There are two other doors that can be opened with regular keys, but you will probably have the thief 3 costume for them:

1. Wizard 3 statue
2. Palace jewel

The enemy spawn for the window jump is based on RNG, so the current route is much more consistent.

After the gold thief trial, drop down to the wooden building underneath the guardian. There is a hidden entrance near the top left of the room, approximately over the middle bird painting. It puts you into a treasure room, but exiting the room puts you into the castle interior. My tests indicate that this can save about one second compared to the current route.

There is also a faster way to get to the third princess after the gold wizard trial. After going up the shaft lined with teal blocks, keep going up until you reach the open door that is above and slightly to the right of the shaft. The door almost lines up with the treasure chest that you would pass using the current route. The door puts you in a treasure room, but exiting the room puts you at a different door that is closer to the princess. My tests indicate that this saves about four seconds compared to the current route.

I can post videos if the explanations are not clear enough.

It's possible to position yourself so that the staff never hits you during the wizard boss fights, so the only potential damage comes from projectiles. I'll list their attack patterns here for completeness, though. The bronze wizard does this loop:

staff up x4 staff down staff middle staff down x2 rest

Each staff state lasts for 16 frames. The resting state lasts for 32-62 frames, which depends on the RNG. When it's taking damage and the invincibility counter reaches the value 8, it skips to the staff middle state and continues from there.

The silver and gold wizards do this:

08, rest

16, staff down 12, staff middle

14, staff up 16, staff down 22, staff up 12, staff down 26, staff middle

08, rest

16, staff down 12, staff middle

56, rest

Each group of staff states is done three times. In the staff up state, any of the three bosses can randomly spawn that green (fish? flame?) thing. In the staff middle state, the gold boss will spawn those little white balls every time the frame counter at RAM address $0010 reaches a multiple of 16, as long as there is room in RAM to do so.

I've looked into the archer spawn, and it does appear to be based on the RNG rather than positioning.

It turns out that the bronze knight boss has a fixed attack pattern. First, it does 82 frames of stab up. Then it loops the following:

rest stab up stab down far (the tip of the sword is far away from the boss) stab up stab down far stab down far stab down far stab up rest stab down far stab down far stab up stab down far stab down near (the tip of the sword is near to the boss) stab down far stab down far rest stab up stab down far stab down near stab down near stab down near rest stab up stab down far stab down near stab down far stab up stab down far stab up

Each rest lasts for 128 frames. The duration of the other states decreases as its health decreases, starting at 82 frames when it has 8 HP and ending at 8 frames when it has 1 HP.

Here's a tutorial video about how to defeat the bronze thief boss by making it lean back:

Getting the bronze thief boss to lean back is very easy once you get the positioning down. This is because it returns to the resting state after any other state, such as leaning back or attacking. So you can get it to keep alternating between the resting and the leaning back states.

The silver and gold thief bosses don't do that. They have a fixed attack pattern that loops from the time they spawn until either you defeat them or they defeat you. The values below indicate how many frames each state lasts. First, they do this sequence twice, moving toward the left side of the room during the second time:

08, rest 16, stab forward 16, stab downward 16, stab forward 16, stab downward 16, stab forward 16, stab downward 16, stab forward 16, stab downward

Then they do this sequence twice while near the left side of the room:

04, rest 08, lean back 04, rest 24, stab forward

Then they do this sequence once while moving back to the right side of the room:

04, rest 08, lean back 16, stab downward 16, stab forward 16, stab downward 60, rest 16, rest

They can be forced to lean back during the resting states, but you can see that the timing is very tight. Furthermore, all of these criteria have to be met during the resting state for them to lean back:

Kuros_left < Enemy_right Kuros_right >= Enemy_left Kuros_top < Enemy_bottom Kuros_bottom >= Enemy_top

Kuros_left and so forth refer to the edges of the hitbox for Kuros's weapon. Enemy_right and so forth refer to the edges of the hitbox for the boss's weapon. Values increase from left to right and from top to bottom across the screen. If you do get them to lean back, they do that for 80 frames, then go into the next state in the sequence.

The crowbar's hitbox is weird. For the forward and crouching attacks, it is only one pixel tall and one pixel wide. That one pixel is located at the hilt where Kuros grips it. The hitbox for the other standing attacks, such as up + forward, is more consistent with the actual crowbar graphic.

I think it would be slower. The bronze thief moves at a max horizontal speed of 2.25 pixels per frame, whereas the gold thief has a max horizontal speed of 3 pixels per frame. This means that you lose slightly over 28 frames for each screen (256 pixels) that you're moving horizontally with the bronze thief instead of the gold. Horizontal speed while jumping is only 75% of what it would be while moving on the ground, so you lose even more time if you're jumping horizontally without ascending.

The largest time loss would probably occur as you get the knight statue and then go to the guild. There are about 847 pixels between the door of the guild and the statue room, so you lose about 1.5 seconds just traveling between those two points. You won't always be moving at maximum speed, of course, and much of the movement in the palace is vertical, but I think you'll end up losing a few seconds over the entire area with the bronze thief versus the gold. The knight costumes are worse, since their maximum horizontal speed is only 2 pixels per frame. The difficult thing is estimating how much time might be saved with the route change in other places.

By the way, you can use the next higher window to get outside the palace even without a thief costume. The vertical distance is the same both inside and outside between the two windows.

Also, I've done further analysis of the attack pattern of the bronze thief boss. There's actually no randomness involved once you get within 45 pixels of it. Its behavior is determined upon Kuros's state when the counter for its resting state reaches 0. First, it checks if Kuros is attacking. If not, it checks if he's crouching. If not, it will do the forward stab that I believe can't miss at that distance. If crouching, it will do the downward stab that will miss unless you're too close. If you're attacking, it will do either a forward stab, downward stab, or lean back based on what other buttons are pressed. It leans back if you're pressing forward or up + foward. It does a downward stab if you're pressing down or down + forward. It does a forward stab otherwise. When you let go of down or B, Kuros temporarily moves into a state that may cause the boss to do the forward stab that will hit you. You can prevent it from attacking at all by alternating between attacking forward and up + forward.

You want to be as close as possible to the boss when defeating it so that you don't waste time walking over to pick up the statue; this applies to all of the bosses. With optimal positioning, the forward/up + forward attack method is only 6 frames slower than the crouch attacks that all of the runs have used to date. Getting hit costs you about 80 frames each time before you regain control of Kuros, however. I can make some videos to explain this stuff, if you guys want.

After disassembling most of the code that spawns enemies, I've figured out theLimitBreak's glitch. Three memory spots are allotted for enemy information in the Town of Piedup. The two dogs that you see at 0:55 and the guy in black at 0:58 in his video take up all of the memory, so the guard never actually spawns when it should. All you have to do is get and keep those three enemies in memory (not necessarily on screen, but not too far off) when the guard should spawn, and they will prevent it from spawning. This is pretty simple to do using the path in his video.

There is one caveat. If you kill any enemy in the outside portion of the town, that second dog from the video dies permanently. This happens regardless of whether you kill the enemy by attacking it or by pushing it off a ledge. It seems like every other enemy respawns except for the beehive, the guild guard, and that second dog.

EDIT: After replacing the current TAS input with a quick and unoptimized implementation of this glitch, it looks like it saves at least 31 frames over using a damage boost to get past the guardian.

The green enemies spawn on a timer as long as your distance from the spawn point is within 64 pixels. The spawn location is based some combination of RNG values, the camera's position (upper left corner of the screen), and Kuros's position. I wrote up a detailed explanation on the TASVideos forum. I've always thought of them as clouds with faces, so that's what I call them.

I was able to replicate and record theLimitBreak's skip on an emulator, so now there's an input file for analysis. It's also available at TASVideos (I'm not trying to advertise the site; it's just where I put my findings).

The latest TAS WIP improves the thief statue miniboss fight using the strategy you describe. Thanks to Ferret Warlord, the next one will probably eliminate all of its long jumps by taking damage to get around it when it's at the left side of the screen. The idea is to walk into the miniboss rather than attacking it and making it jump to the right side. It will do a shorter jump to get closer to Kuros, and you can use that time to go under it so that it's now on Kuros's right side. Then resume attacking. Time savings will come from the shorter jump. This hasn't been recorded yet, but it seems faster based on unassisted playing.

I've done some work on the criteria to get the bosses to lean back. My detailed findings are in the game's thread on the TASVideos forum. In short, the hitbox for your sword has to overlap the hitbox for the boss's weapon, but the boss has to be in a resting state. I don't think it's possible to avoid taking damage because of that resting state component. I can't guarantee that I've found all of the code that leads to a leaning back state, but using the above criteria works consistently.