Difference between revisions of "Addams Family (NES)/Any%"

Revision as of 09:22, 14 September 2022

The route discussed and shown on this page uses deaths to save time.

Route discussion

Quest items

About the "incentivized" dependencies:

• Both the wooden key and the snorkel are found in rooms reached via the left landing. The wooden key is in the room further away and it's difficult to imagine a route, where it would make sense to first collect one of the items and then return again to the left landing to collect the other.
• There will be a few seconds of a splash screen when picking up the wrench if Granny has already been saved. That is skipped completely by getting the wrench before going to Granny.
• The furnace is a little out of the way and it's difficult to see a scenario, where it would end up saving time by visiting it twice. So Wednesday should be freed from the freezer before heading to the furnace and saving Granny.
• Having Thing saves time when doing the freezer and furnace. By avoiding health loss in the freezer, the furnace can be played more aggressively, saving time.
• Thing is useful on the roof to avoid losing time dodging falling tiles
• The umbrella is technically not needed to get the fog. However, unless something is found to skip the 1M$ requirement for entering the last room, the money bags in the chimney (next to the fog machine) need to be collected and the umbrella is needed for that.
• Right after the wrench has been collected in the pond, it makes very good sense to teleport to a bone room from the pond's secret room. Since the bone is found in the green bone room, it's literally on the way after the wrench.
• After death abusing in the garden after picking up the bone, you'll be at the foot of the tree and it's logic to then use the occasion to enter the tree and collect the blue egg.
• Letting Lurch play the left music manuscript early on would open up several shortcuts in the chain room. An idea could for example be to use the shortcut to the kitchen after giving Lurch the right music manuscript, which would be a faster way to get to the hallway than having to go through the gallery. The problem is that Lurch can't be summoned again until he has actually finished playing a music manuscript. So getting the left and right music manuscripts played one after the other would introduce a lot of downtime waiting for Lurch to finish the first one, without enough tasks to complete in the meantime. Without introducing additional trips back and forth to the library, the right music manuscript should therefore be used first as the pond needs to be done fairly early in the game.
• Pugsley can be reached either via the chain room, which requires giving Lurch the right music manuscript, or by dropping down in Pugsley's room. Unless some major discovery is found on how to free Pugsley, the latter doesn't fit the item route (at all).

The theoretically fastest route is indicated by violet arrows. By studying the item dependencies in the chart, there should only be three possibilities that are not immediately slower than the violet route (or simply incompatible).

Orange route - Collecting Thing has a few benefits.

1. There are two money bags on the way to Thing that need to be replaced from elsewhere if Thing is not collected
2. By activating Thing in the freezer instead of tanking damage from the snowballs near Wednesday, time can be saved in the furnace by taking more damage. Not to mention that it can be challenging in a real-time speedrun to get through the freezer and the furnace on just one lifebar.
3. There are 10 falling tiles on the roof that each need to be dodged, costing up to almost half a second each (and that's the theoretical limit - losses in real-time are going to be bigger). Other than the time loss, dodging the tiles can be a challenge in its own right and the birds dropping stones on Gomez will lead to additional loss of health, which can become a problem towards the end.

In theory, it's a few seconds faster to skip Thing. However, the challenges that are introduced by skipping Thing both increase the difficulty of surviving the route and also require tighter execution to avoid additional time losses compared with the theoretical optimum.

Green route - First collect the umbrella in the conservatory and then head to the kitchen/freezer/furnace or the other way around?

Other than maybe a few pixels of difference from entering/exiting the door to the kitchen, both options are of the same distance. The difference instead lies in the health management. By first heading to the conservatory and the umbrella, you'll enter the kitchen at full health. If the kitchen/freezer/furnace is done first, the lifebar will already be somewhat reduced from the walking outside the house. Since health is a big concern in the kitchen etc area, but not for picking up the umbrella, it's better to first go to the conservatory and then to the kitchen and beyond.

Red route - Group everything on the right of the hallway or group the right and left landing together?

If Thing is collected, it should be done before visiting the freezer, which gives two options. Either the first time entering the house, meaning the right and left landing are done together (orange route). Or it can be done the second time entering the house, after visiting the tree to get the blue egg (red route). In that case, it's everything on the right side of the hallway that is grouped together. It's not obvious from looking at the different movements involved which option is faster. However, it turns out the latter is almost a second faster in theory. Likely more like a few tenths of a second in a real-time attempt though.

Money

There is in total 1.056.300$ in the game (+ the money that can be collected on the balcony, but they're of no interest in a speedrun). In order to discuss which money items to collect, it's useful to consider the money bags (worth 10k each) separately from the other items. The two tables below list all money items in the game, how out of the way they are, if they're recommended to be included in the route and any relevant comments. Some things to consider before getting into the details:

• The time cost is based on (sometimes a bit rough) TASing, so the real-time cost will likely differ a bit
• The time cost can depend on route choices and it's not always easy to summarize this easily in text

The first table lists all money bags (10k) in the game:

Regardless of it's a TAS or RTA, the target to aim for is 940k$ of money bags.

• Collecting a money bag in the gallery while death abusing requires precise movements for only a comparatively small overall gain (~half a second) compared to collecting the rightmost money bag while heading for the ballroom. It would require another level of optimization of the speedrun before a death abuse in the gallery should be considered.
• If Thing is skipped, so are also two money bags along the route. The best candidates for replacing them are the top two ones in the blue bone room.
• Assuming Thing is picked up, it's theoretically a close call between the top two bags in the blue bone room on one hand and the bag in Pugsley's room + the top right one in the attic. However, in practice it's likely going to be bigger execution losses in a RTA in the blue bone room than getting the Pugsley+attic bags. None of the alternatives require any impossible inputs to get the theory time, so it's in the end going to be what works best for the individual player.

The second table lists all other money items (with a value <10k).

It's difficult to see any real alternatives to collecting 60k in smaller value items:

• Collecting less items and compensate by another 10k money bag would clearly not be time-efficient.
• Collecting more items to reach 70k would end up being very time-consuming and clearly not pay off by skipping just one 10k bag (the top-right one in the attic would be the candidate in that case).
• There is a decision regarding whether to collect the 500$ bill in the garden or in Pugsley's room, but other than that there aren't really any good alternatives for collecting other items with the 60k target in mind.

Section-by-section

VIDEOS AND A MORE DETAILED ROUTE DESCRIPTION FOR RTA TO BE ADDED