Clone Machines for MS - Help!

[sombies]

Hello!

I've been working on a hobby CC emulator on and off for a little over a year and during this time I have been trying to mimic cloning machines so that all CCLPs are compatible. The one level that keeps haunting me - The Hungry Caterpillar!! (CCLP1 level 123)

Currently the cloning machines in my emulator mimic Lynx. However this does not work for this level, as my tile movement style is MS, which creates some sort of panic death run with no gaps between the chain of mobs.

So I downloaded SuperCC to take a closer look at how the vacant tiles between the mobs form. I noticed that red buttons are being pressed by mobs but do not always generate a new mob in the cloner. More specifically mob #2 and mob #6 both move to red buttons, but no new mob is generated in the clone machine. (See images below)

I've looked at all the wiki pages (maybe it could be that C&B glitch or something??). But otherwise I've been staring at this for too long and this one has me stumped. Can anyone give me a suggestion?

Thanks!
-sombies

[Ihavenoname248]

I can explain what's happening here- it's not the controller and boss glitch. It's a consequence of move order and how cloning works. If you look carefully in the first screenshot, you'll see a paramecium with a "7" on it on top of the clone machine. That's because a clone button was hit, activating the clone machine. A cloned monster essentially waits on the clone machine until it has space to leave it, and it hasn't been able to yet. On the next move, the monsters move in order- first the trapped ball checks if it can move (it can't), then the "2" paramecium moves onto the clone button. However, the clone machine still has paramecium 7 and can't clone again until it's cleared. The same thing happens with number 6, and then the paramecium on the clone machine moves off of it. Since this happened after both buttons were hit, no new one clones.

[sombies]

Awesome, thanks! That totally makes sense :)

I think what was hanging me up was that 6 and 7 were permitted to spawn back to back, but further button presses would be ignored. After tampering with the level in CCedit, I think I figured out that occured because of the force floor crossed by 2, generates 6 right after the slide, giving time for 6 to make room for 7.

Thank you for taking a look at this! Usually I can figure out these mechanics if I stare hard enough, but this one took me way too long.