About the Game
Circus is a 1984 text adventure published by Digital Fantasia and is the 6th game in Brian Howarth's Mysterious Adventures series. Your task is to sneak into the circus, blow it up and escape unharmed. It is not to be confused with another game called Circus published by Load 'n' Run in 1987. which is an action game that I will also be trying out at some point.
About the TAS
This TAS aims to complete the game as fast as possible.
Tape Loading
The first ~88% of this TAS is simply loading the tape. Loading finishes on frame 11454 (~4:40). The loading segment is not included in the temp encode and the actual gameplay is only about 30 seconds long.
Disabling Pictures
For the Mysterious Adventures series, we can press enter to toggle between pictures or text description. This saves a MASSIVE amount of time due to the games not having to process all the pictures.
Typing Patterns
The usual optimal typing pattern looks like this:
T
Y
P
I
N
G
Y
P
I
N
G
But a few times, this pattern can be disrupted by typing the 2nd letter of a command 2-3 frames after the first during text loading. Then the pattern looks like this:
T
Y
P
I
N
G
Y
P
I
N
G
It's possible to input the 1st letter of a command while a picture is loading. Depending on whether the game lags from this or not, this can save 1 frame every time it's done.
Also, we can only press one key 10 times a second, meaning that when we have to type 2 of the same letter in a row, there's a 5 frame delay.
Word Shortening
Words that are 5 letters or longer don't have to be typed out in full, and can instead be shortened to 4 letters, for example:
- PANEL = PANE
- TRAPDOOR = TRAP
- TERMINAL = TERM
You get the idea.
Gameplay continues like this while waiting through cutscenes until input ends on frame 12966, when we enter the command "DRIV CAR" (DRIVE CAR).
That's all from me. Thanks for reading.
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