Captain Comic (PC)

This page is for tricks in Captain Comic (PC).

Technical details

• Frame rate is about 9.1 fps
• There are 8 levels, each consisting of 3 segments
• Each segment is sized 256 units horizontally and 20 units vertically. The graphics are made from 128x10 blocks so each block is sized 2x2 units
• The player walks exactly one unit per frame
• Teleporting moves you by 6 units in 6 frames, so it's exactly as fast as walking. Exception: from odd positions (i.e. player not standing on one block) it moves you 5 units to the right or 7 to the left - within 6 frames. So to walk left as fast as possible you can alternate between stepping and teleporting (however as the scroll window doesn't catch up you'll eventually get too close to the left screen edge for teleporting).
• To finish the game you need to get jewels (from space), crown (from castle) and gold (from cave)
• The teleport-into-wall trick from the NES doesn't work in the PC version
• I'm using the same level name the game uses: forest, lake, comp (= the level with atoms flying around), space, base, cave, shed.
• Enemy spawn just outside the screen edge the player is looking at. They always spawn in the lowmost empty block that's right above a solid one and not below the player's feet. Also, there's a bug: about in the middle of each level part there's a region in which no enemies are spawned at all if the player is facing right.

Glitches

Version 1.0 has a glitch that saves like 50% of the required time.

The glitch: Both when the game starts and when respawning after death the game incorrectly initializes the available jump acceleration to 255. This means that if you are holding space at that moment, Captain Comic can accelerate up for 255 frames (the same amount of time it takes to cross one level segment). Because this glitch is pretty useless to use right after start this means that Captain Comic must suicide in order to use this glitch for actually saving time.

One obvious use is to reach otherwise unreachable locations (the lantern in the "comp" level would be such a candidate).

It can also be used for getting into the crown room in the castle level early due to flaws in the collision routine (and the crown room being sealed off with just 1-block-wide walls): When moving horizontally the game checks just Captain Comic's feet for collisions but when moving up it checks his head only. So to exploit that hover from the left so that just his feet are below the floor of the crown room. Then hover to the right while still holding space pressed, as soon as Captain Comic's head is no longer in the wall he can fly up and grab the crown.

Routes

Route 1 (castle last):

• Go right and grab the key
• Enter the lake level
• Go left
• As soon as part 3 is reached suicide-hover to base
• Get boots (and optinally corkscrew), walk right, enter space and grab jewels, go back to base, back to lakeside
• Go to cave, go to first door, suicide-hover to get gold, go back to door, go to exit
• Lake: go back to forest
• Forest: go left to castle. On the way back enter comp and grab the lantern if you can't stand dark castles.
• Castle: corner-glitch to get the crown

Route 2 (castle first):

It's faster to get the crown early in the game. And in theory you don't even need the lamp. However there's one issue: you need to eventually get out of the crown room again. You could of course walk through the entire castle but that might waste more time than visiting the castle last - the only way is to manipulate enemies to spawn in that room and use them for suicide-warping back to the entrance (of course after getting the crown).

• Go right and grab the key. Enter comp and grab the lantern if you can't stand dark castles.
• Suicide to save time, go back to the castle, enter it
• Get the crown and exit the castle again
• Go right to lake level
• Go left
• As soon as part 3 is reached suicide-hover... and now there are 3 options and I'm not sure which one is the fastest:

a)

• Enter spaceship, get boots and optionally get corkscrew, walk right, enter moon and grab jewels, go back to spaceship, back to lakeside
• Enter cave, go to first door, suicide-hover to get gold

b)

• Enter cave, suicide-hover to first door (because it's unreachable without boots which you don't have here), suicide-hover to get gold, go back to door, go to exit
• Enter spaceship, get corkscrew if needed, walk right, enter moon and grab jewels

c)

• Enter spaceship, get boots, exit again
• Enter cave, enter to first door, suicide-hover to get gold, go back to door, go to exit
• Enter spaceship, get corkscrew (also neccessary for TAS?), walk right, enter moon and grab jewels