West Point Bridge Designer 3.01 is an engineering sim for Windows 3.1. Considering it has a version number, it may have been used in classes at West Point, but predates the national contests, the first of which was given a start date in WPBD 4.0.6's installer, and an end date and specific prizes in WPBD 2002's, suggesting that 4.0.6 was redubbed WPBD 2002. 3.01 and 4.0.6 are the only two surviving pre-annual builds.
This PD software was downloadable as binary and source from SourceForge for years. 2½ months after my previous run, all installers and disk images were delisted to push people toward the new web version of Bridge Designer, sponsored by ASCE. To his credit, co-developer Gene Ressler preserved the source and all previous commits, I'm guessing because schools would continue to try and download only the old binaries. But I wasn't finished TASing these old versions, and believe public domain things belong to the public, so I preserved them on Archive.org and GitHub. With TAS-ready ISOs from iso_maker, naturally.
This improves my previous TAS by 0:01.556, though only 0.528 second was gameplay time. The rest of the timesave was from using a verification movie to install the game, which I did after finding that screen resolutions higher than 640x480 are slower due to some beams needing at least 2 more frames of mouse movement to draw including the delay after them. Changing the resolution needs a reboot, which I didn't want to include during the TAS.
About the run
- Aims for fastest completed bridge
- Has a verification movie
- Has extended input for encodes
- Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs (naming bridge's designer "TAS")
- Sync note: You may need to play back in TAStudio or unbind mouse controls for the ending to play correctly (per fsvgm777)
The verification movie
- The actual verification movie is straightforward, other than having to work around a bug: Any shortcut, whether from a Program Group or the DOS prompt ('win wpbd3.exe') will fail with an error relating to the game's cmdialog.vbx file after a restart. It doesn't matter which Program Group or Item, installation folder, or if autoexec is used instead. The trick I mentioned last submission – launching the shortcut without closing the Setup window – doesn't work here since Setup is closed during a restart, thus breaking the shortcut.
- The solution is to launch WinFile.exe (Explorer.exe's precursor) from DOS, and nest the game .exe as an argument for that program.
- You can also edit the Program Item to do this (which changes the WPBD icon to WinFile's), but it's 0.038 second slower than launching W3.1, WinFile, and the game directly from DOS.
- Perhaps due to an existing commdlg.dll existing in C:\Windows\System, WPBD can't be installed to the Windows folder, where it may have been fastest to launch. Instead it will give the puzzling error that the program needs a newer version of Windows.
- I confirmed this by deleting the game's commdlg.dll, which allows this prompt to work as it should. I avoided this since it would be modifying the game files.
- Installing to the C: root would also take extra frames, now that two needed files (WIN.COM and WinFile.exe) are located in the Windows folder. So, I installed to the subfolder C:\Windows\o. The one letter is easy to type, and guaranteed not to be a held key from previous frames.
- As mentioned before, screen resolution is set to 640x480 to minimize lag, at the cost of some graphical fidelity.
I was happy with my previous run, since you're not supposed to be able to succeed using only the default material and thickness. It was like starting at level 1 and defeating the final boss with starter weapons. I also liked the bridge's design, and that installing the game was fast and didn't require a verification movie. However, this sim has everything unlocked at the start so it wasn't a good comparison anyway. Also, this still uses mostly the default carbon steel 120 x 120 bar, so it still has the spirit of the old TAS.
The TAS
- The autoexec movie I linked above takes the exact same ms to launch the game as the fastest manually typed solution. So, to simplify the verification movie, I chose to type the commands myself, using Home and End to jump around on the line.
- This solution only draws 1 joint to go with the 7 required ones the game gives you.
- After that, drawing is switched to beams. Unfortunately, there aren't keyboard shortcuts to do this, the Load Test, or most other useful things, so I click on it.
- The strange webbed design of this bridge and the requirement to connect every joint with triangles means I have to pick up the cursor several times to avoid frame waits when I reach a dead end (joint that's already fully connected).
- You can normally only pick it up without losing time every other placement (2nd, 4th, etc.), so I draw beams mostly in pairs. I say "normally" because the game usually, but not always, lags rhythmically when running at 70 FPS. 60 FPS is more predictable to TAS with, but tends to lead to a slightly slower final time. That said, I haven't tested a WPBD movie longer than 4 seconds before.
- I switch to the max size beams near the end with a click and the End key. Only the outermost two top beams need to be this size, but it's a frame faster to pick up the cursor after the 8th draw than the 9th to switch sizes.
- Once again, the Load Test is triggered on the last frame. 2-frame extended input should be used for the publication to move the mouse cursor away from the success message.
Future
Todo: Expand and clarify my wording in several places.
I plan to submit the minimum cost movie soon, and show off the strategy of building a bridge that's cheap even for c. 2000. Maximum cost will similarly require a lot of thinking that could pay off in an entertaining way.
Thanks to
- eien86 for DOSBox-x
- The BizHawk team for continuously improving the DOS core and frontend
- You, for watching