This TAS beats AD&D: Treasure of Tarmin, the second AD&D game released for the Intellivision, in a stupid quick 19.309 seconds.
Objectives
- Uses Easiest Difficulty
- Heavy Luck Manipulation
- Genre: Action/RPG
Difficulty
Though TASVideos usually requires the author to play on the hardest difficulty, I wanted to showcase just how ludicrously short this game can be. The final boss (the Minotaur) first appears in the 2nd chamber on "Easiest". On "Hard", the Minotaur would first appear in the 12th, and you have to survive one hell of a gauntlet just to get there. A "Hard" TAS would be a much more difficult, longer, and ambitious project which I simply don't have the time for.
Chamber 1
All we have to do here is manipulate the exit ladder to be as close as possible to our spawn point, determined by when we press start on the title screen (frame 19 in the TAS). Stalling about 60 frames before we actually exit sets up a nice layout for the second chamber.
Chamber 2
For manipulation of the layout, there are four considerations in order of importance:
- between us and the Minotaur, there must be a weapon powerful enough to one-shot him (blue axe has 27 attack, which can be sufficient)
- minimize the number of doors we open (~90 frames/door)
- minimize the number of turns we make (~60 frames/turn)
- minimize the number of spaces we walk (~30 frames/space)
In this layout, we only cross two spaces and turn once. I believe the best pattern possible would be walking forward a single space (which also must contain a suitable weapon) to the Minotaur, but I've never witnessed such a godly pattern. And I've tested every suitable combination of patterns up to a starting frame of 200, so this is probably as low as the time is getting.
For killing the Minotaur, the amount of HP he can have is between 13 and 20, and also has varying levels of defense. Both of these variables change every frame. Given this, We were lucky enough to be able to one-shot him on the first possible frame.
Methods
Unlike my first AD&D TAS, I didn't look at any RAM addresses to see where objects were; rather I searched for them manually by freezing addresses 35 and 75 at values of 4 and 76 respectively, such that I would be able to see through walls and always have a teleportation book in my right hand.
Suggested Screenshot: Frame 998
Noxxa: There's a lot of disagreement on the difficulty choice here, with all posts in the discussion topic mentioning that a movie on the hardest difficulty would be more preferable. This would also follow the Guidelines, which also still apply for the Vault. As such, rejecting this movie for easy difficulty choice where a hard difficulty is significantly preferred.