Lexitron (Compute's Gazette)
Like a bowl of alphabet soup, the "Lexitron" screen appears to be just a jumbled mass of letters. Can you find the ten hidden words before time runs out?
The article for this game can be found on page 44 of Compute's Gazette Issue 32 (February 1986)
Why TAS This Game?
The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 90th TAS from this series.
I think the moment I got this magazine, and opened it...I was disappointed. I really didn't like cross-word puzzles, and I was fed up with two players games (my brother didn't want to play these games with all that much).
This time around, this game was a challenge...in terms of TASing. Even though I still wouldn't play it casually, it was a good exercise in the many BOTing ways that I have come up with solving games.
Tools
Bizhawk 2.9.1
Lua Scripting: used to BOT out the RNG for layouts displayed.
Game Difficulty and Ending
Difficulty is measured differently in this game, but it doesn't matter for a TASer. Level 1 would layout all the words from left to right in their spelling, in a horizontal or vertical placement. Level 2 is where words are spelled backward or forwards, with the same horizontal or vertical positioning. Level 3 includes diagonal placement, with the same forward or reversed spelling.
Effort In TASing (BOTed)
This game was a bit of trial and effort, as I would BOT the RNG until I found the pattern that played the fastest. This included hundreds of RNG seeds, which I would manually complete the game after reviewing which ones met my qualifications.
Human Comparison
None to be found. :(
Darkman425: It took a distressingly long time to realize the thumbnail had the word "stapler" with a different word's "l" above it. I kept reading it as "relpatsl" like the fool I was. Take that as you will while I claim this for judging.
Darkman425: Canada is a proper noun and shouldn't have been in the word pool but I didn't write the word pool.
This looks good and the RNG seed chosen looks fairy fast and optimal. Nice work!
Accepting to Standard.
despoa: Processing...