The Forbidden Crypt (Compute's Gazette)

You're a leading archaeologist who's happened on a fabulous treasure. But spiders, bats, snakes, and ghouls guard the riches. How long can you survive in the forbidden crypt?
As a local legend, long dismissed as mere myth, speaks of a great and powerful king who once ruled this area. While investigating the orgins of this tale, you've discovered a cenotaph covered with unusual glyphs. They're difficult to translate, but seem to say something about the king and guardians and forbidden treasure. Undaunted, you open the door and enter. The door slams shut, leaving you stranded in the crypt!
The article for this game can be found on page 53 of Compute's Gazette Issue 20 (February 1985)

Why TAS This Game?

The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 40th TAS from this series.
I remember this very, very well. I quickly jumped on this, when the magazine arrived in the mail. My reason...it looked like the game "Venture". Well, it was similar, but not as exciting.
Previous Compute's Gazette submissions include (In order of submission):
1Astro-Panic!2Royal Rescue
3Miami Ice4Chopper 1
5Spike6Heat Seeker
7Omicron8Alien Armada
9Star Dragon10White Water
11Space Gallery12Bagdad
13Race Ace14Quolerus
15Trap16Maze-Mania
17Balloon Blitz18Bowling Champ
19Circuits20Going Up?
21Space Dock22Saloon Shootout
23Sno-Cat24Queens' Quarrel
25Stronghold26Lincoln Green
27Disc Blitz28SuperSprite
29Dunk30Basketball Sam & Ed
31Bee Zone32Q-Bird
33Space Worms34Powerball
35Castle Dungeon36Pool
37Snake Pit38RADs
39Spy Defense

Game Difficulty and Ending

This game doesn't have a difficulty setting, but it can be classified as complete upon finishing level 27. Why? On Level 28...the speed of the game goes down to a crawl, just like it does in Astro-Panic!.

Effort In TASing

I was surprised, but this game actually has a fair of details to focus on for optimization, listed below:
  • Diagonal movement: Allows to progress forward, while moving up and down to dodge enemies
  • Sprites don't always move at the same time, so you can route through tight situations to avoid collision with any enemy by alternating directions back and forward.
  • In some cases, performing a Level in the reverse direction to get a different RNG pattern...upon entering a room.
  • For when the enemy layout is completely against a straight forward effort, you have the ability to shoot; however, shooting delays about 5 frames. So I have to pick my situations and resort to this when nothing else can be done.
Total amount of time spent on this, was about a 3 weeks. As I progressed, I discovered mechanical exploits that I had to go back and reapply to the beginning parts. Not a big deal, but certainly adds time in production of making this movie.

Human Comparison


Darkman425: Claiming for judging.
Darkman425: Finally, Venture for tired people. Jokes aside, this looks pretty well optimized with some room layout manipulations and minimized shooting.
Accepting to Standard.

despoa: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8658: nymx's C64 The Forbidden Crypt in 10:34.07
GJTASer2018
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This is interesting given that it's clearly based on the Venture arcade game, which never got an "official" port to the C64 back in the day. However, someone has done a homebrew port in recent years - perhaps that version would be worth TASing at some point in the future?
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [5617] C64 The Forbidden Crypt by nymx in 10:34.07