About the Game
The Golden Baton is a 1983 text adventure released by Digital Fantasia, and is the 1st installment in Brian Howarth's Mysterious Adventures series. Your mission is to recover the Golden Baton, a priceless artefact that holds within it a kind of life force that maintains the equilibrium between good and evil. Stolen from the Palace of King Ferrenuil, the kingdom is already beginning to feel the effects of drought and pestilence.
About the TAS
This TAS aims to complete the game as fast as possible.
Gameplay
Tape Loading
The first ~44% of this TAS is simply loading the tape. Loading finishes on frame 11174 (~4:40).
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:
- QUARTZ = QUAR
- MATCHES = MATC
- PADLOCK = PADL
You get the idea.
Gameplay continues like this while waiting through cutscenes until input ends on frame 25631, when we enter the command "GET BATO" (GET BATON).
That's all from me. Thanks for reading.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: These Spectrum "Text Adventures" were quite advanced back then. I only had experience with them on the Vic-20 and C64, which mostly had no graphical view to enhance the experience.
Your run seems good to me. You are buffering, and using the shortcuts for typing out the commands/objects association. Because the following of these games is low, there is not enough information to determine if routing can be improved...but not likely. These games usually had one path to victory. I'm calling this out as good.
Accepting.
fsvgm777: Processing.