Thanks Bloops, yeah there's just something hypnotizing about pixels. And yeah Sbaffo feel free to; I'll put the file up at https://mablak.bandcamp.com/ in a while.

Hey worming comrades, it's really been a while. I've just been working on my band and also some solo music. I just made an 'actual' music video with some cool colors, check it out!



I'm gonna be releasing indie/dream pop/alternative stuff like this on YouTube; if anyone wants to subscribe/show a friend, would help a lot. I'm probably going to do another one in this style called "My Dolphins," because it's weirdly fun to pixelize things.

Thanks Kory, and yeah lacoste, feel free. If you tell me which missions you want, I can probably give you better replays than those.

Yeah Chicken the lack of competitors is a bit unfortunate, people are generally into speedruns though when it comes to records. I finished my speedrun months ago; I really can't think of further ways to optimize it. But I don't have a good enough laptop to actually record it without constant lag, so I haven't been running it like at all. Here's one run via replays though (not that great but shows the methods):

Man, really sorry you've had to experience depression/withdrawal on that level Voltage. You will get through this!

I'd never think worse of someone who's experienced these things, on the contrary it takes guts to relate something that personal and to try and get through it. And I'm glad suicidal thoughts are out of your head. Your life definitely matters.

Yo thanks Dave, and I'll mention that to our drummer! I may be too busy to collab but vocal samples are always cool by me.

U2; not so much, but definitely some other 90s alt bands.

Hey peeps; my band has another single for our EP, quite different from the last one. Listen and share if you like it! 

https://castlespdx.bandcamp.com/track/pleasantries

Hey bar, yeah I've seen Pichi, he's done a good job showcasing WA. Those methods are mostly suboptimal, except for the last mission which works really well. With my routes, my first run was roughly 1 hr 23 mins. But video capture lags my computer, so I'm trying to practice playing at 800x600 res so I can actually record stuff!

I can quickly touch on warming, since that was where the 'respect' was at, like skating. Really early on for me, like circa 2001 on WWP, it was players like Moose, fudo, and Andy and odo from the n00b clan, and some OaP (old age propers) people like Leviathan. Also eN (elite ninjas) members like shad, Scorpion, and maybe FieryDeath was in that one? I'm forgetting. There was also MrE, used to be skilled, but then got into cheatz. All these players really had their own impressive style.

The physics were slightly different there, and I think some of our ideas were out of the box, since a lot of us had little contact with the WA rope scene. So some unique styles were developed, like Moose's use of wall shadows, or maybe my repetitive pumps/kicks. But also, the overall WWP skill level was simply lower on the whole with a smaller community, I just didn't see too many ropers that made me realize how insane it could get.

When I came to WA I got impressed in warmers by people like Anub (tappy and insanely fast), oijogja (twitch master with 1 hand), saltyk9 (seemed like the best warmer with his fast reflex moves), Komo (double handed taps), volrin (creative + fast, had some similarities to me), KRD (style master), Marco (crazy ideas and experimental), franz (Flowing Water, also very creative), OutofOrder (top creative mind), tenchi (nice kicks/taps) and learned a lot from Pure, aka Magic, who made the Magic and qp rrs (he was like 7 aliases in the qp clan, really aesthetic style). Pure probably spent the most time shaping me of any pros at the time. I'd definitely say all those people left marks I can remember, but there really were a ton more.

Thanks boys, link a friend if you have the inclination 

I'm hoping to make a music vid too, just trying to find a cool idea with a low budget

Cool beans. I'm not sure what the applications would be, but it could be useful for something.

One improvement you could make is inputting your angle in the form of 'position' or 'notch', since you have a discrete number of angles to aim at.

Might want to count yourself, but I think there are 132 angles, going from straight up to straight down. That is, doing 131 notches. So a user could enter notches, and you could convert to degrees to do the calculation, just multiplying by 180/131. Also just going frame by frame, I think there are 76 possible powers (including the first frame where space is detected), though judging 0-100 might make more sense in a person's head.

Hey dudes, my band CASTLES is putting out an EP called Tangerine High; more psychedelic, dream pop, indie kind of stuff. It'll be out soon, y'all should take a listen to the single!

https://soundcloud.com/castlespdx/spaceburbs

I wanted to hit one of the sloggiest missions next; I'll finish filling in the others soon.

General Strategy: So there are really only 2 feasible strategies if you want to reach the crate that spawns on the far left side of the map in time. You absolutely need the girder crate, so you can A) kill your rightmost worm, giving your left worm more turns to snag the crate and then dig left, or B) move your left worm towards the incoming crate, while your right worm tries to reach the girder crate.

Option B seems the most promising at first, but there's no reliable way to do it. If your rightmost worm stays where it is and digs down, it simply won't reach the crate in time unless the AI help you dig, which is too luck-based. The other method is sending your right worm between the middle of the tapes, and digging from there. This can be done if your worm firepunches the barrel in just the right way, or uses grenade, while also pushing the AI worm so it can't attack you. But both these methods only work maybe 30-50% of the time at best, and that's too much of a time loss to risk on the final mission. Ultimately, option A and B seem to yield around the same time, but option A is way more reliable. I'll just go over option A, though B is included as 'risky route'.

Turn 1: So, your first worm wants to snag the girder crate. I'm just torching down right, then going horizontal once I start to destroy the darker colored pixels.

Turn 2: Now your rightmost worm has 2 jobs: 1) be a target for the first AI worm, so that it doesn't waste time walking left and shotgunning, and 2) die! So just stand on the barrel and let nature take its course. I think standing on the right side of the barrel so the AI launches you into the water saves a couple secs with no grave animation. If you want to be 100% sure the AI kills you, it's fine to just press up to the left side of the barrel.

Normally it seems like an immense waste if a worm is just skipping go without doing anything, so it's worthwhile to go into some of the things this worm could do (but shouldn't do) before dying. For one, it seems impossible to kill the top 2 worms in one shot, which might save some AI turn time. It's possible to open your left worm--at least if you had torched straight to the right--but it doesn't seem to be possible to do this while hitting the barrel and halting the leftmost AI worm's path down. And there's a lot of extra aiming time there. Your worm can kill the rightmost AI worm by jumping, but this accomplishes nothing; that worm skips go every time after the first turn, so it should be left alive. Your worm also could boom race up to where the middle AI worm is, perhaps doing something for 1 turn before dying, but it's just going to be killed if it does this. You could also clear mines on the far left side of the map for later, but might as well do that with a shorter turn by your left worm. It seems the best thing this worm can do is not waste time.

Turn 3: 2 sec nade straight up blows open a hole and hits the barrel, making it easier to get to the girder crate.

Turn 4: On this turn, the goal is to make sure the AI worm can't walk right and get to you. So destroy the land as shown (the AI wants to avoid fall damage), then shoot toward the girder crate to make torching easier. You're going to need to backflip back up after you get the girder crate, so your first shot needs to be done with this in mind. It's good to end your retreat just around the torch hole, walking any farther right can lead to the AI nading some crucial land.

It's important to note that it was entirely possible to torch a little lower on turn 1, nade an opening, then torch to the crate in 1 turn, saving a turn. But for various reasons, that route comes out slower, even though you're doing things 1 turn faster. It's partly because the walking path is a bit less smooth. So this turn is kind of a waiting turn, which is fine since you have to wait a set number of turns anyway.

Turn 5: Move right, planning your jumps in advance, and torch to the crate.

Turn 6: Get back to your starting location and torch up left; the AI will airstrike above you, doing some helpful digging.

Turn 7: Torch up left again, and remember you can hold space before the turn starts to make sure it's entered immediately.

Turn 8: If your worm is free, all you really need to do is clear some mines. I like to toss a 2 sec nade aiming for the right side of the health crate, since this can be done quickly. If your worm isn't free, you should shotgun out, then either shoot the health crate or 1 of the mines. Your retreat is important; try to make sure when the AI targets you that it isn't going to destroy land so as to cut off your route left.

Turn 9: Get as far left as you can, and place the girder to catch the crate next turn, getting as far up the gird as possible. This placement really changes each time, and sometimes you may even need to set off a mine right after you place, to clear the path. If the far right AI worm happens to be dead though, then the AI will be attacking you instead of skipping go, and you really need to be able to place and then move right so the final crate isn't destroyed.

Turn 10: Snag the crate. As with the other missions, it still counts if you get it while dying, not that you need to.

"Everyone has a choice, I don't agree with your cavalier take on morality.  You or I could blame our decisions on trauma or this or that, but at the end of the day, everyone makes decisions, and everyone is liable for them."

IMO no and yes. I don't think we make freely willed choices; I'd say free will just doesn't exist, because it's not a coherent concept to begin with. The general assertion of free will--the folk or libertarian free will most people believe in--is that at least some of our thoughts are 'freely willed', i.e. that's how they arise in consciousness. But I'd argue 'freely' and 'willed' are mutually exclusive terms, like say, a square circle. A thought made freely would be one entirely uninfluenced by anything, with no prior causes, if that can be imagined. A thought that's willed would be one that's influenced by yourself; aspects of your memory, emotions, sensory input, etc. So the next thought I have can't be both. It's either willed, i.e. determined by me and the environment, or it's free in which case I had nothing to do with it. My 'will' is certainly involved in the next thought I think, but there's nothing free about my will at the present moment; every aspect of my personality and overall brain/mental state is how it is, and will contribute in a particular way to my next thought.

But yes we should hold people liable for what they do; if someone does something terrible, they should be condemned, imprisoned, etc, because these things actually help society in general, e.g. changing those people for the better, and keeping them away from the rest of us. This would be a good thing to do even if their actions were the result of trauma, upbringing, etc. But I don't think we should hold people liable in the sense of, for example, holding deep-seated anger towards them. Especially if this is based on the idea that they could have acted otherwise, since I think we can't act otherwise. Or wishing for eternal torture; this would just be punishment without an upside, in which case I wouldn't call it a moral form of punishment.

Method Credit: Wyvern, Lex, Deadcode

I'm a bit unsure which route to choose here: the normal route I've developed is about 20 secs slower than the LG route. But to do the LG route, you need to alt f4 to get to the 5th attempt, which takes a little time, and the route isn't 100% certain. I'll go over both methods.

Normal Route

You can't power through the mines, since they'll kill you if you set them off beneath them, and they'll blow you off the chateaus if you're to the left. And there's no handgun for a few turns, so that's out of the question. You also can't really launch a worm by any means either. The only option is to girder efficiently and then bat a mine. Fortunately the AI are just skipping go.

Turn 1: Jump/skip walk as shown to stack your worms and climb up; use air time to select SW. It's good to position the first two worms so the 3rd can just crawl up them. Try to have your hand on f7 to select a girder as you get the crate. It's easiest to position the girder so that you just have to backflip off the oil drum to climb up.

Turn 2: Now to get past the second mine, just select worm and girder again, no need to change the orientation of the girder.

Turn 3: This horizontal girder needs a bit of a good eye to place; just make sure you can jump back over to it. And make sure it's far left enough that it's not blocking the mine you're going to bat. Then jump efficiently as shown to get the crates.

Turn 4: Finally, jump back and get close enough to the mine to bat; there is literally one angle that will work here. I remember it as the sprite change as you're going down, where the crosshair is closest to an upright X. And even though the mine activation seems really close every time, it seems to be 100% successful from what I've seen. Here's a pic of the placements and the angle:



LG Route

First, make sure to alt f4 + space to the 5th attempt.

Turn 1: Same as the normal route, just make a longer girder instead. And try not to block your worm's flight path.

Turn 2: Select the same worm, activate LG, and jump/skip walk to the fire punch crate as shown. Select worm and backflip up to the oil drum. Now get to the right of the oil drum and start nudging yourself left, just stop at the first position where your worm is standing on it. Do a single backspace jump, and try to hit firepunch the moment before you land, as close as you can make it. This will send your worm flying in just the right path to kill the far right worm. I seem to be able to get this quite often, so I'll see how this feels during full runs.