#PastebinMonday 07/22/2019

How Am I Supposed to Do This? Edition

Hey guys, how’s it goin?

I went back to Nintendo Puzzle Collection on Tuesday. For reasons known only to my past self, I started with VS COM Easy mode. In the Puzzle League series, Easy mode is always the biggest pain in the ass to run because it’s short so it gets optimized pretty quickly, meaning more and more RNG is needed to align in order for the time to go down. My current best is 3:41. I got 3:44 once and 3:48 a couple of times. I’ve been close several times, but RNG manages to find a way to foul up at least one stage every time. It’s one thing to play perfectly. It’s another thing for the CPU to also do nothing at the same time. That kind of run has eluded me over 200 times this week, after taking only 13 tries to get 3:41 back in 2017. The struggle will continue this week.

The other thing I started to do this week was construct my any% TAS of Rhino Rumble. Since lives are not going to be a concern, I’m just going to take it one level at a time. The plan is simple: do each level the way I normally do it, then test every jump, enemy, collectible, and attack variation to see if it saves any time over the course of the whole level. The good news: I was able to confirm that jumping does not slow you down at all. That minimizes the movement options that I will have to go through. The bad news: even pressing buttons differently changes the lag based on what’s on screen. Rhino Rumble lags SO MUCH! If there’s even a single other sprite loaded (it doesn’t even have to be on screen), you’re going to see over 10 lag frames per second (~60 frames). Unfortunately, killing enemies tends to create even more lag than they would have created in the first place. Therefore, you just have to deal with the lag. I will be interested to see if this comes to fruition in Clouds 1 as I always believed it did.

So far, I’ve combed through Jungle 1 as well as I can do it. I was jumping over the very first turtle in the level every time--turns out that shooting it saves one lag frame and is immensely safer. That’s the only discovery so far. I’m also ready to analyze tests of Jungle 2, which will have a lot more variation to it. I might post GIFs of every world as I complete them. Haven’t decided yet.

That’s my life story for the week. Until next time, everyone, thanks for reading!

--Cards