About the Game

The Golden Baton is a 1983 text adventure released by Digital Fantasia, and is the 1st instalment in Brian Howarth's Mysterious Adventures series. Your mission is to recover the Golden Baton, a priceless artefact that holds within it a kind of life force that maintains the equilibrium between good and evil. Stolen from the Palace of King Ferrenuil, the kingdom is already beginning to feel the effects of drought and pestilence.

About the TAS

This TAS aims to complete the game as fast as possible.

Why Such a Massive Improvement?

This is an improvement of 11,596 frames (3:51.55) over the previous TAS. This improvement was made possible thanks to a new discovery where pressing enter without typing a command gets rid of the picture. This does make loading between typing non-directional commands a bit longer, because the game's keeping track of everything you see and own with text, but it doesn't have to load the pictures, saving up to 10 seconds or more per directional command. We press enter just before typing our first directional command (N/E/S/W/U/D/GO/CLIMB), which happens to be the 1st command in this game. Input ends on frame 14262 when we input the command "GET BATO" (GET BATON).
That's all from me. Thanks for reading.

nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: I'm dropping off of judgement here, because I found a large cut of frames. I'm going to set this submission to "Delayed" so that I can review the movie file once more. I'll post in the thread when I'm finished reviewing.

eien86: Claiming for judging.

eien86: The BATO's been retrieved!
This is a well optimized movie that finishes the game in almost half the running time of the current publication. Most of the improvements came from the discovery that scene loading can be skipped. The movie was then further refined by the intervention of its former judge, Nymx, who is now the co-author. There is not much to add: after briefly playing around I couldn't improve this movie by a single frame.
Accepting to Standard
Note To Publisher: who ever grabs this for publication, please hold until i can replace with an update from Logan.

nymx: 3 frame imprvoement has been applied. Good to go publisher.

despoa: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8920: LoganTheTASer & nymx's ZXS The Golden Baton in 04:40.61
nymx
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During judging this, I notice something odd. I tested it out and found 226 frames. https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638456130874458229
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
nymx
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I see that Logan has already added me to this submission. I'll will drop, once I'm satisfied that the movie doesn't have anything else to cut.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
LoganTheTASer
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interesting improvement. i think you've removed some of the commands to make the TAS shorter?
nymx
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No. I saw that you had two graphical screens instead of one. I reworked that area and got the rest of the inputs to sync up. So...they still have all the commands that you had.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
nymx
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Ok...I'm good with the improvements. Another judge can take over now. Let me rephrase, since I've been added this submission by Logan, I wanted to make sure that I'm happy with the entire movie's optimization. I am satisfied and have uploaded the newest movie.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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. ---- [5864] ZXS The Golden Baton by LoganTheTASer & nymx in 04:40.61
Induviel
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Was playing this one casually and it seems that at the start of the game you can wear the cloak without first getting it, should save a few frames from skipping the GET CLOA command
GJTASer2018
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I wouldn't be surprised if the parser used for this and the other games in the series has a bug in that implementation, considering even Infocom (creator of some of the best text adventures known to mankind) had a similar bug in a few of their games, as you'll be able to see by browsing the Infocom Bugs website.
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...