The Rat - for Commodore 64
Story: (At least as best I could come up with ....I was unable to find a copy of the manual. I do have an email out to the game's designer to see if he's cool with this description or if he can give me the actual story. I'll update this if/when he gives me further information.)
You are a rat. You're hungry. You've found a cheese store that you intend to raid; it, unfortunately, rests atop an 8-story tall building.
Does this discourage you? No! You're a rat!
Choosing to defy the odds, you saunter into the main floor of the building to start your quest. It is only then you realize that not only will you have to dodge spiders and snakes as you move from floor to floor, the building's security system (for some insane, ungodly reason) requires six signal pads to be triggered before the door will open for the elevator to the next floor.
On top of all that, on each individual floor, the signal pads begin moving around once one of them has been triggered; making your task that much more difficult. To add even more confusion; as each signal pad is triggered, a random effect will occur on that floor. These random effects may impact you (the rat itself), the snakes/spiders, the walls of the level itself, or possibly even release a mechanical security guard hellbent on permanently interrupting your quest.
Can you make it to the great cheesy realm above? Only time will tell.
Game Basics
- You're the red triangular rat.
- Snakes kill you. Spiders only stun you. Both should be avoided.
- You can shoot (spit?) at the snakes and spiders to stun them. When they are stunned, they cannot kill/stun you.
- Signal Pad effects
- The six signal pads's effects are unique on any given level.
- While each floor has the same six letter-coded signal pads, what each letter-coded pad does varies from level to level of the building.
- Some effects used on one level may be seen on other levels.
- Examples of effects that occur on every level
- Kill/remove one snake and one spider
- Remove some portion of the level's walls
- Release the mechanical security guard.
TAS Goal
- Beat the game as quickly as possible by reaching the Cheese Store at the top of the building.
Potential Improvements
I do not believe this run is 100% perfect, but I do feel it's a very well optimized run.
The RNG of this game is affected by both the rat's movement and its spitting. All enemy movement as well as signal pad movement is affected by RNG, thus it's absolutely possible there are better routing options. While I feel there may be room for improvement in this area, changing RNG anywhere will affect all subsequent aspects of the run requiring significant re-syncing if not a complete re-do of all subsequent levels to that change.
I will continue working on this game to try and improve it, but I feel this submission is satisfactory for publication.
DrD2k9: Cancelling: I was able to manipulate RNG in Level 1 and get a 19 frame improvement. Looks like this was a premature submission. Sorry everyone.