Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
You can beat the game in a matter of seconds if you press the right buttons :P
On a more serious note, I'll take a look.
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Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Okay, I checked it out.
In terms of entertainment, you should try to aim to jump into enemies without getting hurt. For example, if a ball/egg is about to fall, jump onto the square, and barely escape with Q*Bert's life.
In terms of speed, one would need to make use of discrete mathematics to ensure the routes were optimal. I'm sure some of our crazy math whizzes here would love such a challenge. It's hard to say by just looking at it how optimal the route is.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Thank you for the answer.
Yes, it's a little game. I think it is just press the right button at the right frame finally...
6 levels, 3 game modes: classic, adventure and one against one.
But I want to try, we never know...
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
phoenix1291 wrote:
Yes, it's a little game. I think it is just press the right button at the right frame finally...
6 levels, 3 game modes: classic, adventure and one against one.
I know the game quite well. I got it as a present when I was young, and played it for years.
What I meant by:
Nach wrote:
You can beat the game in a matter of seconds if you press the right buttons :P
Is that you can literally beat the game in a matter of seconds. You don't have to play any of the levels.
As for bugs, the only bug I know of is if you reset the game (A+B+Start+Select) while Q*Bert saws off the floor from the tree cut scene. If you do so at the right point, the floor will keep falling off over and over again after resetting until you reach that cut scene again.
To elaborate, it seems that the programmers set certain bits at only certain times in the game, despite the fact that the engine uses them throughout, and you can abuse them by resetting. Unfortunately I don't have a full list of such glitches, and have not really experimented much.
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Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
phoenix1291 wrote:
but the math for the best route ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_mathematics
I had two semesters of that way back when, and did fairly well. But I never used the raw algorithms and techniques outside of classes, so while I understand the ideas, I wouldn't be the correct person to figure out the correct algorithms.
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Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
ais523 asked that I describe the game instructions a bit.
The game requires that Q*Bert change the color of each square to a certain color. Square color changes by visiting them.
In early levels, squares are binary, they begin in one color, and can only become another color. In later levels squares have trinary states, and the final color is the farthest from the starting color. Some levels also have the colors cycle. Meaning if Q*Bert visits a square an extra time, it will return to the original color.
Squares can only be traveled to diagonally.
In the process, there are some enemies jumping around. Coil Snake chases after you and kills you if you are hit. There are eggs/balls which fall and bounce down towards the bottom, and kill you if you're hit. If it's a ball, it falls off the screen, it it's an egg, it turns into a Snake. There are also enemies which travel on the sides of the blocks as opposed to the tops, one of them homing in on Q*Bert.
The most annoying of enemies in terms of the math is Sam, he's the cool guy with shades who you can kill by touching. If he touches any squares, they revert to the starting color.
The other enemies can't really be killed, although in some cases will fall off the screen.
There are floating discs at certain places in the level, which if taken, return Q*Bert to the closest square at the top of the map. Although some of the later levels get a bit more creative with how the discs work.
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I also think that this could pose the biggest problem is Sam, but maybe it is possible to be helpful on some levels.
Thank you for the description of the game Nach.
Joined: 3/9/2004
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phoenix1291: ais523 asked if you can post screenshots of a couple of the levels so he can see if he can figure out some optimal routes for them.
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Thanks, I think I have a better idea of how the game works now.
I'm not as convinced as Nach that discrete maths is so useful here. You can definitely work out routes through the level disregarding enemies like that, but there are likely way too many possibilities in even simple levels to brute-force it based only on the grid shape.
Thank you for your reply.
I'll do the map of all levels but in the coming days.
After, the problem in the next levels is Sam. Just like said Nach in is description of the game:
The most annoying of enemies in terms of the math is Sam, he's the cool guy with shades who you can kill by touching. If he touches any squares, they revert to the starting color.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
So it turns out that the NES version was pretty well received.
Since this game has even more level variety and far less of them, it may do even better, given a well played TAS. Several of the techniques (ab)used in the NES version may also work here.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Sorry for my bad english!
