(Link to video)
WARNING: This game contains dialogue related to suicide and sexual harassment. Please don't play it if you're easily triggered by any of those 2 things.
My Dinner with André is a homebrew storybook game released for the Game Boy by GumpyFunction. It's based off a clip from the famous American cartoon The Simpsons, which itself is based off the titular 1981 comedy/drama film. You play as Wally and engage in a conversation with André at a restaurant.
Tags:
  • Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8
  • Genres: Homebrew, Storybook
About the TAS:
The gameplay is very trivial. All you have to do is press A as fast as possible to mash through the dialogue, with one exception of pressing START to start the game.
There are several places in the dialogue where you have a choice of the following 3 options:
  • TELL ME MORE
  • TRENCHANT INSIGHT
  • BON MOT
The RTA world record by BeetZero chooses "TELL ME MORE" every time, which is believed to be optimal. However, it's actually faster to choose "TRENCHANT INSIGHT" instead of "TELL ME MORE" for the last 2 options to save a fraction of a second.
This is my first Game Boy TAS and, potentially, my first Game Boy publication.
I don't have anything else notable to say here. Thanks for reading.
Improved!
BlackWinnerYoshi and myself have since improved this TAS by 1073 frames, mainly due to using the GBC version which has a longer startup but significantly reduces lag. - https://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/638159727394350862
BlackWinnerYoshi: Added new used emulator version, embedded encode. The amount of rerecords can remain as originally (430 on this and 1236 on the other GBC submission if it's also replaced).

ViGadeomes: Claiming for judging.
ViGadeomes: Sorry for the delay once again.
Replaced the movie on Gambatte 2.8 as the original movie with the improvement both in gameplay and by passing in GBA mode from BlackWinnerYoshi, taking rerecord count from the original movie, adding cycle count to the movie file.
Nothing to say, everything fits !
Accepting.

despoa: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14772
Location: 127.0.0.1
Post subject: Dialog options
Sand
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Player (124)
Joined: 6/26/2018
Posts: 154
Nice game choice, I found this interesting.
LogansGamingRoom wrote:
The RTA world record by BeetZero chooses "TELL ME MORE" every time, so I took a page out of his book and did that.
The developer's page says there is unique dialog for each option:
Each retort will lead to unique dialogue: Tell me more: André will keep talking. Trenchant Insight: Wallace will offer some insight of his own. Bon Mot: Wallace will offer a witticism.
I would like to know if choosing options other than "Tell me more" could save time. It is possible that "Tell me more" is always the fastest option, because Wallace says just one line before André resumes talking, but maybe in some cases the sum of the lengths of Wallace's speech and André's speech is shorter overall when choosing a different option. (You will have to take cursor movement into account too.) It may turn out that all the choices are independent: in that case optimization will be easy, just choose the fastest of the three options at each decision point. If there are dependencies (past choices affect future choices), then it may be harder. As a preliminary test, you could try all three choices at the final decision point, and record the time for each. Then, try different choices for the second-to-last decision point, and see if the the final decision point remains the same.
LoganTheTASer
He/They
Banned User, Experienced player (765)
Joined: 7/3/2022
Posts: 458
Location: Berkshire, UK
hi sand! thanks for the recommendation. i’ll try this right away and see what i can do. EDIT 1: from my testing, selecting different options doesn’t seem to change dialogue in the far future. EDIT 2: 17 frames saved. the minute barrier has been broken! https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638154511851953874
Player (21)
Joined: 1/13/2023
Posts: 55
Location: Poland
I really wanted to do this earlier and not upload this during April Fools, but I chickened out earlier and now it's being judged, so here it is: User movie #638159727394350862 Yet another BIOS + AGB improvement (for potential console verification ofc). Or maybe not? I reach the same point as you(r improved movie) in 2525 frames (42.28 seconds), I'm not sure if it's an actual improvement though. I also left blank frames for encoding, and to get to the title screen too. Oh, and it's using SameBoy too. You still need to have the CGB+AGB BIOS for it. And no TAStudio again, and still using BizHawk 2.9-rc3. Sorry.
LoganTheTASer
He/They
Banned User, Experienced player (765)
Joined: 7/3/2022
Posts: 458
Location: Berkshire, UK
BlackWinnerYoshi wrote:
I'm not sure if it's an actual improvement though.
feel free to compare my 59.93 to your version of this tas. if it is an improvement, i’ll add you as a co-author.
Player (21)
Joined: 1/13/2023
Posts: 55
Location: Poland
No, I'm pretty sure it's an improvement, somehow. You press Start at 249 and press A at 3580, that is 3331 frames (55.77 seconds). I press Start at 418 and press A (where "Don't know what I was thinking..." appears) at 2525, that is 2107 frames (35.28 seconds). Maybe it's because of the CGB+AGB mode? I think it looks better anyway. Oh, and my embedded temp encode works now, and I also shared both the lossless native encode (FFV1 + pcm_s16le) and the YouTube 4K encode (AVC + AAC) to Google Drive too, for some reason: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1okMeR6miDPNXcuL8PLxEzuoQDC948Aw0
LoganTheTASer
He/They
Banned User, Experienced player (765)
Joined: 7/3/2022
Posts: 458
Location: Berkshire, UK
very good! i’ll be happy to add you as a co-author then.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14772
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [5260] GB My Dinner With André by LoganTheTASer & BlackWinnerYoshi in 00:42.52