Edenal 2014-12-10 10:32:33 am

• I would be so, so interested in seeing a horizontal speed RAM address for this game. I think, like SMW, your speed is constantly oscillating when you're running. When you jump while running, it looks like you keep the speed you were at when you were last on the ground. I base this on watching how the background moves when I jump. Do you think there might be truth to this?

I've never looked at RAM addresses, but speed seems like you say to be constantly oscillating. I've got no further proof than that jumps and speed varies from time to time. I drew my conclusions the exact same observation you did. In what speed the background moves.

• Is there ever a reason throughout the run to take your finger off dash?

Rest your fingers during the carpet / swimming sections of the game. Otherwise no.

• How does dealing damage work? I seem to remember your cape itself does more damage than the sparkles. Are there many spots where you need to be sure to hit enemies with your cape instead of sparkles?

Again, I've never done any exact tests. But from my observations, sparkles only stuns the enemies. Cape does all the damage. The only enemies you ever want to kill are the walking accordions with a hat in world 5. However, they have plenty of health and are not guaranteed to be killed in one hit. It's generally faster to take damage than to attack them twice.

• If you take too many hits do you need to go out of your way to pick up more health, or do you just run with it and play safer? Are there any item pickups that are routed for to note, or do you pick up everything you need on the way without losing time?

Health management is only a thing in world 3 and world 5. You should always be able to get full health during the carpet ride. And there's a cake (full health refill) in the cork-ride in world 4. So you will always enter world 3 and world 5 with full health. Which are the only two places where taking lots of damage is beneficial.

There are cakes in both world 3 and world 5, but collecting them takes between 5-10 seconds. The possible time you can save from taking damage is less than that. Unless you have 1 health and don't want to risk death, it's a better choice to play safe. The margin of error with health management is plenty.

We never go out of our way to collect anything (except in autoscrollers).

• Does the fireworks pickup always freeze the screen? Are there any of these besides on the stage 5 autoscroller?

Fireworks freeze the screen completely. There are fireworks in the bottom route in 1-2. And the Donald section of world 4.

• It looks like there are 3 different "middle" level sets for Mickey/Donald/coop, right? The coop levels are slower than Mickey, and make the run at least 3 minutes longer (judging by TAS times). Any guess how much longer the Donald run would be? Are there any particularly ridiculous Donald/Coop levels to talk about?

Funny thing about the TAS times. The only Mickey TAS is uncompleted, and is over a minute slower than both of our PBs.

Correct about the middle section of each level. There's one for Mickey / Donald / Coop.

Donald is slower than Mickey. His levels are longer, and the world 2 section can't be skipped like Mickey's. Donald also has a very long World 5 section where he is trapped in a maze.

My PB with Donald is over 16 minutes, which is a decent run but I've not but more than 50 attempts into it.

As for coop. You can skip the World 4 middle part in the same way as Mickey. But in world 5 you need to revisit all 4 previous world. (Mine cart + Carpet Ride + Swimming + Christmas in World 4). The coop is really the highlight of the game, sections are longer and really requires teamwork. Showcase from our terrible ESA-run. (Jump to 17:30) You can see how terribly the game slows down, even without enemies on screen.

Me & Grukk have been playing it and ended up around 22 minutes. The TAS does some really crazy things which are not humanly possible. Health management and life management becomes very important in the coop run. When one player depletes their health, it will get instantly refilled at the cost of a life. But if one player dies (from falling into a pit), the other player can keep going for some time. Having to find the other player incapacitated somewhere and revive them. However, if both players are on their final life and one of them dies. You game over. To prevent soft-locks.

In my opinion, world 2 is a very good showcase of the coop nature of the game.

• Besides levels, do Mickey & Donald have any differences? Donald can't crawl under stuff, anything else?

Except that Donald's fat. There are no differences. Donald's style when running is funnier too I guess Smiley

• Lag management seems to be a pretty big concern throughout. Any spots in particular to talk about, or just generally any spot where there are a million enemies? Interesting that in most games you want to kill enemies to avoid lag, but in this run your attack causes lag, so you need to weigh if it's worth it.

World 1 and World 5 are the only places where I have noticed lag being a factor. However in coop it's another story. It's almost never beneficial to attack enemies there. The coop run is mostly a 1p run due to killing of one char reduces lag so much. Also the coulds in world 2 are impossible with 2 players alive. Edenal 2014-12-12 03:11:38 am Hockey enthusiast Stage 1

• For the final hit of boss 1, where are the different places he can appear? Just upper left & upper right, and you just hope for the 50/50 chance he's upper left? Is there anything bad about upper right, or you just have to choose one and it doesn't matter which?

He can appear in 3 places. Left, middle and right. None of them are better than the other. But over the course of all my runs he has been more likely to appear on the upper left side. Which is why I stick to my tactic of hoping he will appear there, force of habit.

Stage 2

• Mashing jump doesn't speed up carpet, right?

Correct. You can also never go backwards with the carpet.

Stage 3

• How important is mashing to rising in the bubble?

Not very. There's a quiet big gab between the time the game will register your inputs for jump when ascending in the bubble. Even with turbo speed mashing it would not make a noticeable difference.

• It seems the best way to phrase how the bubble works is that your "max speed" is capped at different values depending on what you do. Bumping into walls/ceiling does not lower it, but touching the floor does. You can raise your max speed by mashing left/right (but this just ¤changes¤ your max speed, not necessarily for the better).

I guess you can compare it to Sonic. Where you initiate the speedcap by holding any direction on the d-pad. But in this case you initiate the speedcap by hitting the floor.

I've found two relatively safe ways of obtaining maximum (or close to maximum) speed.

1. Descending and tapping left/right. Stage begins in this state.
2. Ascending to reach maximum downward velocity, then push left/right.
3. From a standstill (the area with bubbles which needs to be covered by the clam). I'm starting out facing left, then at the same time turn and mash the jump button to ascend.

You can also kind of slide off the clam, this might work kind of like a ledge jump. Does this all sound right to you? I'm not sure exactly to which clam you are referring to :S

• In the pink area, when does a clam cycle begin? When it appears on screen, when you start that room, or some global timer? I believe they are on a proximity trigger. Which is triggered when you ride the fountain up. Got no evidence to back this observation, since it works in our favor I never bothered to find out the details.

Stage 4

• Any idea on the frame window to jump off the collapsing cloud? It's pretty large. 3-4 frames? I've never failed it

Stage 5

• I assume the spikes under the rolling carts are insta-kill? Actually they are not. But it's not beneficial to try to outrun the moving carts. From my experiments you are likely to take 4 points of damage. Every time you get hit, you are crippled by the damage animation and the carts will catch up. You could in theory cancel the damage animation by crawling but, you will end up with 1 HP in the best case and will be forced to play overly safe. Resulting in an overall net time loss. Sad

darbian 2014-12-15 07:48:07 pm I just finished messing around with this game using frame advance/RAM watch.

I confirmed that the see saw jumps are in fact 1 frame tricks. It appears that you need to jump 3 frames before the log lands on the other side of the see saw (this was weird to me since I felt like I always try to jump when the log hits the see saw, might have messed this up).

I also think I found the address for Mickey's speed (I watched 00FFA018 as a signed 4 byte variable). When running, the variable oscillates between 4 different values (positive when running right, negative when running left). When jumping while running, the value gets locked in until Mickey lands again (unless you slow down/change direction mid air). I also studied how the cape affects speed in the air, since it seems like sometimes you get a boost when the cape animation finishes. Here's what I found (I'm labeling the 4 values of the variable above as 1 - 4, with 1 being the slowest speed and 4 being the fastest):

If you jump and lock in a speed of 2, 3 or 4, using the cape mid air has no effect on Mickey's speed for the duration of the jump. If you jump and lock in a speed of 1 (slowest) and use the cape mid air, Mickey's speed will increase to a value slightly faster than any of the 4 speed values possible on the ground (let's call it speed 5). Note that boost doesn't occur until after the cape animation finishes, and only lasts until Mickey lands. Unfortunately, the cape animation takes a really long time (over half of the time you're in the air if you're on level ground), so you have to move at the slowest speed for over half the jump in order to enjoy the boost for the last part (probably averages out to just running without jumping over the same distance).

This does mean that anytime you jump it would be beneficial to use the cape (when possible). The reason being it won't make any difference 3/4 of the time, but it will save frames on the remaining 1/4 of jumps (where you get the lowest speed). This is because finishing a jump normally with a speed of 1 will be slower than using the cape and getting the boost. As far as a I know, if you cape early enough in the jump it doesn't cost any time. This does NOT mean that you should be constantly jumping, just that using the cape when you do jump may save a little time.

The last thing I looked at was ledge jumping. I basically confirmed that it exists. One interesting note is that the speed you get from a successful ledge jump matches speed 5 described above.

Of course, all of this could be wrong, but if nothing else this is a starting point for understanding some things about this game.

Blechy 2014-12-16 07:34:52 am Really cool! From what you could tell, were all ledge jump speeds equal to speed 5, or did it vary?

darbian 2014-12-16 01:30:02 pm I'm defining ledge jump as "a jump from a ledge that achieves speed 5". If you don't get speed 5, I guess it would be a failed ledge jump (meaning you failed to jump at the right frame(s)). Failed ledge jumps behave as normal jumps, so you'll have a speed between 1 and 4. I have not tested how many frames you have to perform the ledge jump, and I also haven't tested whether you have to wait until the last possible moment to jump (it may be possible to jump too late off of a ledge).

I plan to research this some more tonight, in addition to other things like how speed works in the water.

darbian 2014-12-16 09:39:58 pm Alright guys, got through another round of research. Here's what I found (incoming wall of text with lots of parentheses):

RUN SPEED: I didn't explicitly state it (or know this) in my last post, but just for the record Mickey's speed changes every frame (in descending speed, so 4 - 1, then back to 4 again, over and over).

LEDGE JUMPS: In order to perform a ledge jump, you must have the correct speed as your approach the ledge. Since a human can't really control this, it means that you only have a 1/4 chance of successfully performing the ledge jump even if you jump at the correct time. I also determined the window for a ledge jump (using the log in world 1-1). This is a 5 frame window (the last 5 frames you can jump before running off of the ledge entirely). I didn't test any other spots, so it may be possible that that there are different windows for other ledge jumps in the game (doubt it).

SWIMMING

I also figured out the swimming. As we already knew, there are different swimming speeds. There are actually a ton of different swimming speeds, not just 4 (but many more than 4, maybe thousands, although the game likely rounds them somehow). Also, as we suspected holding right as the level starts results in Mickey getting maximum speed.

As long as you're holding right and and Mickey is not touching the ground, the swim speed will never change, even if you hit a wall and stop, once you start moving right again you'll have the same speed. While Mickey is swimming forward on the ground, the speed oscillates like it does when running on ground (every frame, albeit with different values). Once you leave the ground, you'll be stuck with whatever speed you were at (same as jumping on land).

As I said above, if you're off the ground and holding right your speed will remain constant. If you hit left then right, again your speed will likely end up with a new value. I suspect that this depends on how many frames you aren't hitting left or right (since going from right -> left -> right won't be frame perfect). Your speed will slightly decrease for each one of those frames (probably not enough where you'd notice). I'm not positive on how this works , but it doesn't really matter (see below).

There are 2 parts in the level where you must hit left and/or touch the ground. The first is during the vertical shaft, and the second is when waiting on the clam. I was able to discover how to achieve maximum speed when you lose it. The trick is to get Mickey's speed to 0 while off the ground, then hold right. This results in the maximum speed (and that's how you get maximum speed when the level loads, since you start with a speed of 0).

For the vertical shaft, as I'm going up at the end I make sure my horizontal speed is 0 (it will naturally go to 0 if you don't press left or right), then just hold right after clearing the top. For the clam, wait on the ground until it covers the bubble, jump (to get off the ground), then press right. I guess you could also wait against the bubbles off of the ground, that should work as well since your speed will be 0 while waiting.

Random finding: The difference between the maximum swim speed and the slowest swim speed equals the difference between speed 4 and speed 1 on the ground.

darbian 2014-12-16 09:43:12 pm I'll try to think of some more things to investigate (like getting max speed out of bounds in 2-2). Cloud boost is probably the same as ledge jumps (1/4 chance if you jump correctly).

I would also like to see if there's a way to speed up the last hit of the shark fight since he always takes forever to turn around.

I'm not going to try to figure out manipulating spider boss to go top left since I suspect it depends on the frame you start the fight.

Blechy 2014-12-17 09:35:32 am Cool! Just went in and tried ledge jumping myself, and my results matched yours. A few extra clarifications:

• As you approach a ledge, it actually ¤freezes¤ the speed you're currently at before you're technically falling. This is why you have a 5-frame window to jump instead of just 1-frame, since your speed is frozen to a value while you're still technically running & able to jump. (It might be more accurate to say that you have a small window to jump as you begin to fall. Whichever.)
• As you might expect, when falling off a ledge, you keep the most recent speed you had before falling, just as if you had jumped. So if you get the right speed but fail to time the ledge jump itself, you will still be falling at speed 5 regardless. This no doubt comes into play in the stage 2 skip, and Edenal's setup probably sets you to speed 5.
• The reason getting the ledge jump is a 1/4 chance (instead of 1/5, since there are 5 speeds in question) is that ledge jumps will never set your speed to speed 1.
• While we're technically defining ledge jumps as "jumping from speed 5", there of course may be jumps which would work with speeds 3-5 but not speed 2, etc.