Game Details
Venture is a fantasy-themed action game released in arcades in 1981 by Exidy. The goal of Venture is to collect treasure from a dungeon as a round smiley-face named Winky. It was released as a launch title for the ColecoVision in 1982 and then ported to the Atari 2600 and Intellivision.
Winky is equipped with a bow and arrow and explores a dungeon with rooms and hallways. The hallways are patrolled by large, tentacled monsters named Hallmonsters, which cannot be killed, injured, or stopped in any way. Once in a room, Winky may kill monsters, avoid traps and gather treasures. If he stays in any room too long, a Hallmonster will enter the room, chase and kill him. In this way, the Hallmonsters serve the same role as "Evil Otto" in the arcade game Berzerk. The more quickly the player finishes each level, the higher their score.
The goal of each room is only to steal the room's treasure. In most rooms, it is possible (though difficult) to steal the treasure without defeating the monsters within. Some rooms have traps that are only sprung when the player picks up the treasure. For instance, in "The Two-Headed Room", two 2-headed ettins appear the moment the player picks up the prize.
Winky dies if he touches a monster or Hallmonster. Dead monsters decay over time and their corpses may block room exits, delaying Winky and possibly allowing the Hallmonster to enter. Shooting a corpse causes it to regress back to its initial death phase. The monsters themselves move in specific patterns but may deviate to chase the player, and the game's AI allows them to dodge the player's shots with varying degrees of "intelligence" (for example, the snakes of "The Serpent Room" are relatively slow to dodge arrows, the trolls of "The Troll Room" are quite adept at evasion).
The game consists of three different dungeon levels with different rooms. After clearing all the rooms in a level the player advances to the next. After three levels the room pattern and monsters repeat, but at a higher speed and with a different set of treasures.
The different dungeons in each level are as follows:
- Wall Room, Serpent Room, Skeleton Room, Goblin Room
- Two-Headed Room, Dragon Room, Spider Room, Troll Room
- Genie Room, Demon Room, Cyclops Room, Bat Room
Human Comparison
This was a deathless run, played on skill level 1, and probably will stand for a long time. This submission was played on the hardest skill level of 4, which I only know of runs done as high as skill level 2 successfully. I wish I had a human run for comparison on skill level 4...it would be quite a spectacle of comparison.
In regards to timing differences, subtract 11 seconds from the TAS and you'll have a comparable time between human and TAS. So the adjusted time would be roughly 06:20:00, making this 1 minute and 36 seconds faster than the WR.
Effort in TASing
Because this game is being played on the highest level of difficulty, it has taken me about 10 months (on and off) to complete. Most games, that I've seen developed on the Coleco, take this level to the extreme and is almost unplayable. To date, I can only find a non-published run that was done on Level 2. The WR; however, is done on Level 1. So...I was never satisfied and would come back to see things that I couldn't see before. As of recent, Winslinator's submission got me thinking about my version again. So...I finally ran through it once again and was not able to find any more frames. Near the end of this, I was finally recognizing patterns and the potential of being BOTed, but I just don't have the drive to come up with something. One thing that I'm not really certain about, is that the intense AI probably would have rendered any BOTing useless....since it would have required more coding than I cared to perform.
Strategies
There are a number things going on when trying to optimize this game:
- RNG is controlled by movement and shooting. At the beginning, RNG has a higher percentage of being manipulated; whereas, in the end...RNG is almost not controllable. As for AI, the further you progress...the more the enemies directly home in on you.
- Changing direction in this game causes delays. Because of this, RNG and AI must be played around with to minimize your turns and extra traveling. This was the primary difference between Coleco's version and the Intellivision version.
- Routing can make the best difference. Moving across a "Level Area" is faster, than inside a room. For instance, the 3rd visited room of Level 1 can be entered from the left or right side; however, it takes more time to go from the left side to the right side of the room, if you have entered from the left.
- A discovered glitch, which can only be done by a TAS, gives me some advantage to control RNG...but I loose the ability to shoot enemies; however, it is still possible. This glitch was used a few times in earlier levels. You'll notice that Winky doesn't have his Bow and Arrow. To perform this glitch, the following inputs must be held for 2 frames simultaneously: Down / Up / Right / Left. It was a matter of experimentation, to find out if it it would help or not.
feos: Claiming for judging.
