Uploaded June 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Nothing particularly new or exciting, I just wanted an excuse to show more fun graphs because I'm addicted. I know nothing I say here makes any sense just look at the pretty graphs :3
Basically just a video about how I went about optimizing the death animation for my last end fight TAS(youtu.be/QKWM3jTSGxg). I alluded to how you'd do this in the original insta-kill TAS(youtu.be/czgSR9Z6U3M), but just didn't have the stuff/motivation to make it possible at the time. Plus in the past I've just ignored the little fly down phase/animation altogether, and I can't imagine I'm the only one, so ig it's probably not a bad idea to make something on it. Frankly I was quite surprised by how much of a difference it made, especially considering the extra waiting time. I mean going in I kind of assumed that the best results would be those tighter spirals, but I didn't expect it to work so well/at all. Building a bridge is probably still optimal, but eehhhhh this is more fun for now.
The basis of this video is an end fight TAS I made of a strat involving accelerating an arrow to extreme speeds using an odd quirk of dragon knockback. And since arrows deal damage proportional to their speed, this can be used to kill the dragon instantly. If you want more information on how it works/how I make it work, I'd suggest these videos:
Original Dragon Knockback Exploration: (youtu.be/DBYgB2sESmM)
Initial Insta-Kill Test: (youtu.be/ON8c6IhE7-E)
Lamer Insta-Kill Test with Misc Info: (youtu.be/OaIesw4T7YE)
RTA tests if you're interested? (youtu.be/czgSR9Z6U3M and youtu.be/MhQ3tQ5Av7I)
The two TASes referenced: (youtu.be/czgSR9Z6U3M and youtu.be/QKWM3jTSGxg)
To summarize/elaborate on this video though, the big time sink in the death animation is just waiting for the dragon to descend low enough to start its little light show. Specifically, it targets the bottom center of the highest block at 0,0(not counting certain blocks- usually those without collision) when it dies, and spirals towards those coords until it gets within 10m of it. But interestingly, the rate at which the dragon descends(or ascends) isn't static. Instead, its based on the dragon's vertical and horizontal distance to this target. The further away it is vertically, the faster it'll vertically accelerate towards it. But also, the further it away it is horizontally, the /slower/ it'll accelerate. The equation looks a little like vertical distance / horizontal distance / 100. This is actually the case for all dragon movement, but most of the time this acceleration is capped at +/-0.006 so it doesn't make much of a difference. But! During the dying animation phase thingie the cap is raised to +/-0.03, which makes quite the difference. And means if you're not staying super close to 0.5,0.5 laterally, you're probably not accelerating very optimally.
And as it turns out, the best way to stay near 0.5,0.5 is to just do super tiny circles around it. This rarely happens in practice though because the dragon is always just barreling straight towards the target. So it just flies past the target and by the time it can turn around its already super far out, and doomed to repeat the process as it speeds back. So in order to get these tiny circles you need to get the dragon to be already turning by the time it passes the target, so it can carry that momentum through and complete the turn before it goes out too far. This then just feeds back in on itself as it continues to preserve that momentum. It's not completely clear to me what the exact requirements are to get this going, it's more of a spectrum of circles anyway, but I suspect that the following give the best chances:
killing the dragon closer to 0,0
killing the dragon when it's already turning/traveling perpendicularly from 0.5,0.5(?)
knocking it off its path with knockback
killing the dragon when it has less speed(goes along with the last 2)
or, some combination of all of the above, which is what it looks like ended up being the solution here.
Anyway yeaazzzz that's that. I'd share the code to get where I got but I wrote over it a bunch making the graphs so oops. Basically just iterated through a bunch of differt insta-kill arrow shots at different angles at different amounts of time into the fight for a bunch of different starting yaws/first node heights, and then timed how long the fight lasted until it reached the center. I don't think the node heights made like any difference at all though. and tbh all the angles were fairly lenient too, within like 5-10 degrees. If you want the exact numbers I put them in the actual TAS's video(youtu.be/QKWM3jTSGxg).
mmm this description is a mess but I don't feel like organizing it better. Consider it an abstract artistic reading comprehension test
Nothing particularly new or exciting, I just wanted an excuse to show more fun graphs because I'm addicted. I know nothing I say here makes any sense just look at the pretty graphs :3
Basically just a video about how I went about optimizing the death animation for my last end fight TAS(youtu.be/QKWM3jTSGxg). I alluded to how you'd do this in the original insta-kill TAS(youtu.be/czgSR9Z6U3M), but just didn't have the stuff/motivation to make it possible at the time. Plus in the past I've just ignored the little fly down phase/animation altogether, and I can't imagine I'm the only one, so ig it's probably not a bad idea to make something on it. Frankly I was quite surprised by how much of a difference it made, especially considering the extra waiting time. I mean going in I kind of assumed that the best results would be those tighter spirals, but I didn't expect it to work so well/at all. Building a bridge is probably still optimal, but eehhhhh this is more fun for now.
The basis of this video is an end fight TAS I made of a strat involving accelerating an arrow to extreme speeds using an odd quirk of dragon knockback. And since arrows deal damage proportional to their speed, this can be used to kill the dragon instantly. If you want more information on how it works/how I make it work, I'd suggest these videos:
Original Dragon Knockback Exploration: (youtu.be/DBYgB2sESmM)
Initial Insta-Kill Test: (youtu.be/ON8c6IhE7-E)
Lamer Insta-Kill Test with Misc Info: (youtu.be/OaIesw4T7YE)
RTA tests if you're interested? (youtu.be/czgSR9Z6U3M and youtu.be/MhQ3tQ5Av7I)
The two TASes referenced: (youtu.be/czgSR9Z6U3M and youtu.be/QKWM3jTSGxg)
To summarize/elaborate on this video though, the big time sink in the death animation is just waiting for the dragon to descend low enough to start its little light show. Specifically, it targets the bottom center of the highest block at 0,0(not counting certain blocks- usually those without collision) when it dies, and spirals towards those coords until it gets within 10m of it. But interestingly, the rate at which the dragon descends(or ascends) isn't static. Instead, its based on the dragon's vertical and horizontal distance to this target. The further away it is vertically, the faster it'll vertically accelerate towards it. But also, the further it away it is horizontally, the /slower/ it'll accelerate. The equation looks a little like vertical distance / horizontal distance / 100. This is actually the case for all dragon movement, but most of the time this acceleration is capped at +/-0.006 so it doesn't make much of a difference. But! During the dying animation phase thingie the cap is raised to +/-0.03, which makes quite the difference. And means if you're not staying super close to 0.5,0.5 laterally, you're probably not accelerating very optimally.
And as it turns out, the best way to stay near 0.5,0.5 is to just do super tiny circles around it. This rarely happens in practice though because the dragon is always just barreling straight towards the target. So it just flies past the target and by the time it can turn around its already super far out, and doomed to repeat the process as it speeds back. So in order to get these tiny circles you need to get the dragon to be already turning by the time it passes the target, so it can carry that momentum through and complete the turn before it goes out too far. This then just feeds back in on itself as it continues to preserve that momentum. It's not completely clear to me what the exact requirements are to get this going, it's more of a spectrum of circles anyway, but I suspect that the following give the best chances:
killing the dragon closer to 0,0
killing the dragon when it's already turning/traveling perpendicularly from 0.5,0.5(?)
knocking it off its path with knockback
killing the dragon when it has less speed(goes along with the last 2)
or, some combination of all of the above, which is what it looks like ended up being the solution here.
Anyway yeaazzzz that's that. I'd share the code to get where I got but I wrote over it a bunch making the graphs so oops. Basically just iterated through a bunch of differt insta-kill arrow shots at different angles at different amounts of time into the fight for a bunch of different starting yaws/first node heights, and then timed how long the fight lasted until it reached the center. I don't think the node heights made like any difference at all though. and tbh all the angles were fairly lenient too, within like 5-10 degrees. If you want the exact numbers I put them in the actual TAS's video(youtu.be/QKWM3jTSGxg).
mmm this description is a mess but I don't feel like organizing it better. Consider it an abstract artistic reading comprehension test
