[TAS] Croc (GBC) in 10:21.238
4TAS notes: https://tasvideos.org/9003S
An integral element of this TAS is the fact that Croc loses a random number of crystals (between 1 and 4) for every hit he takes. Because of this, I made this TAS in two passes: the first pass hacked the crystal count so Croc would not die from enemy hits, meaning I could pay sole attention to optimizing movement and the like and not worry about RNG. The second pass would then rework the first pass with the crystal count unhacked. It is fastest to just run through enemies, but unfortunately, there are A LOT of enemies and comparatively not a lot of crystals. This means we need to manipulate enemies to only damage us by 1 crystal most of the time. It is a massive headache to find the most efficient combination of inputs to minimize crystal loss while maximizing distance gained for one enemy hit... let alone the 165 or so enemy hits that take place over the course of this run. For this reason, I developed a script which would test a reasonably exhaustive set of inputs at each enemy hit, and keep the set which optimized crystal count and distance gain the best. This script was the only reason I even finished this TAS, showing that knowing how to program something simple can go a long way.
The first pass TAS had a final time 10:17.38, meaning we lost less than 4 seconds over the entire run to RNG manipulation—that equates to about 1.4 frames lost on average per enemy hit which is WAY below what I was anticipating at the outset. Saying I'm *quite pleased* with the results the script has brought to the table would be an understatement.
6:11-6:42 The skipping of Worlds 2 and 3 is NOT a hack. This is a real exploit wherein each time you hit "Retry" after beating a boss, you'll skip one extra world. It's that stupid simple of an oversight (found by mrchukthebeaver in 2020).
Other Videos By Winslinator
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Winslinator currently has 1,025 views spread across 3 videos for Croc. Less than an hour worth of Croc videos were uploaded to his channel, making up less than 0.72% of the total overall content on Winslinator's YouTube channel.