Hi there,
Just wondering. Doing a quick search to see if there was any TAS available strats for the run, I found out about this glitch. The TAS' author claims that it can "modify the ball's angle when hitting screen", in his own words. This is the video in question:
The thing is, has anyone tried this out? I've experimented a bit but I don't see any difference in my patterns.
Hi, nice video-find!
I tried to reproduce what is showcased in this video. It works! :D (EDIT: i should explicitly say, that everything i did was tool-assisted. I figured, this might not be obvious from the context alone, sorry, I didn't notice this earlier.)
Apperently, pausing for a few frames results in a change of the ball's angle the next time the ball hits a wall.
Unfortunately, the seemingly random button-presses throughout the video don't seem to have any effect though :/
You can download the (reproduction) movie here (play it in the bizhawk emulator): https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/637891853906469898
Here is an encode:
Hm, interesting find. I didn't know about that either. I'm gonna take a look into it once i fire up the game myself again.
That's amazing, Cracker! :O Based on you recreation (and my lack of experience in speedrunning in general), can a few frame input be donde by a human consistently? If so, I need to start practicing! Is that the specific window in this case?
Thank you so much for taking the time to research this! :) And everyone for showing interest. Maybe this can spark some activity in the game!
Well, i haven't looked too deeply into this, so i don't know the full details of this glitch either.
There only seem to be three angles the ball can fly in. So exactly one of these is choosen after (the wall-bounce after) a pause.
As far as i can tell, the angle is (only?) determined by the duration of the pause: A one-frame-pause results in one of the three angles, a two-frame-pause results in o. o. t. t. a., a three-frame-pause results in o. o. t. t. a., a four-frame-pause results in o. o. t. t. a., ... Unfortunately i couldn'f find a pattern as to which one of these angles is chosen for which duration. (Maybe with some research we could find out how the angle is determined.)
Unfortunately, I think if you'd try to use this glitch in real time, it would probably feel a bit like playing the lottery, since, firstly, you wouldn't know for how many frames you'd need to pause the game to get the desired angle, and, secondly, even if you'd know, you'd need to execute a frame-perfect pause each time. Sadly, this is probably far outside the scope of what humans can (reliably) do (in a somewhat long run).
However, I can imagine this being useful or coming in handy in some scenarios:
- Assume a position, where the ball is in the upper half of the room (above some tiles). When it is obvious, that the ball will come down after the next wall-bounce, you could play the lottery, and if you hit the jackpot, the ball will continue to fly in favouring angle, staying in the upper area of the room.
- When you're stuck in a run for a while with the ball flying in cycles, you can pause for a moment, and hope for a better angle / resulting position / cycle.
:) have fun experimenting!
