The Frantic Fisherman (Compute's Gazette)

Idly floating in your boat, waiting for the fish to bite, is a fine way to relax. In this game, however, an angler's dream becomes a nightmare when sharks get the notion that you're the bait and thunderclouds threaten you with gargantuam raindrops. It's good you remembered to bring your shark swatter and an umbrella.
The article for this game can be found on page 58 of Compute's Gazette Issue 12 (June 1984

Why TAS This Game?

The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 64th TAS from this series.
This was a packed magazine and I just can't remember what I went for first. I do know this...it was during the time before my C64 arrive, so I quickly started working on my Vic-20 instead. I really liked this game because it had really good graphics (Vic-20 version only). As for the others, in that issue, they were not as good...yet they had better game play.
As I played this game, I quickly got bored with it...as it became very monotonous and I discarded it very quickly.

Game Difficulty and Ending

There is only one kind of difficulty available here, and that is the speed of which the game plays. To change it, you just select one of the "Function" keys. I choose the fastest selection (F7), because it makes for the fastest TAS.

Effort In TASing (BOTed)

After I found out that a "Maximum Score" run was the only possibility, I decided to BOT this game. There was no way that I was going to put tons of time in crafting these inputs. Especially since I saw that it was going to be hours long. So...I modified my AI architectured BOT to sense when to apply inputs for a given situation. Every input of this game was created by this BOT, which took about 4 to 8 hours to run (I don't know, because I wasn't in front of it and I was too lazy to add a time stamp of completion). Many problems were detected, which meant I had to go back and re-run this a few times. Once I got this to a submit-able state...I noticed another detail that needed to be addressed.
This game started breaking, the longer it ran. The score started changing colors, the "Lives" indicator was pumping out PETSCII characters, and the screen started to disappear. Well, I realized that when the "Lives" indiator rolled over from 255 to 0 (being an 8-bit value)...the game ended, as if it detected no lives remaining. This was when I discovered that the maximum score can change, if I were to loose lives in preventing this glitch from occurring. DrD2k9 and I talked about this and he had a statement that I think covers this situation. Please wait for his comments in the discussion thread.

Human Comparison

Please note that this run was done on normal speed.

Darkman425: Claiming for judging.
Darkman425: This submission avoids deaths as otherwise this results in an infinite scoring loop that, assuming there isn't some score that also crashes the game, delays the end point of the game ending via crashing. Thus not dying makes sense in this case for game completion via maximum score. A small part I noticed is that a water droplet is blocked for 50 points to the crash rather than hitting a shark for 75 points. Due to how sharks spawn 2 at a time, barring the one shark at the very start of the submission, it doesn't seem possible to end the game with 25 more points. Nice botting on an incredibly repetitive game!
Accepting to Standard.

despoa: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8965: nymx's C64 The Frantic Fisherman "maximum score" in 2:13:41.72
Patashu
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There's something hilariously existential about this fisherman's tiny world slowly breaking down as you go deeper and deeper into a perfect run.
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DrD2k9
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Regarding the endpoint of this run: The lives rollover creates a kill screen for this game, and we consider kill screens valid endpoints. In aiming for a score attack (max score) run, our rules state “Infinite scoring loops that delay completion are not allowed.” For this game, an extra life is gained every 2000 points. Therefore, it’s possible to attain a higher score by dying to delay reaching the kill screen then scoring more points (including enough to gain extra lives). However, there is no limit to how many deaths/extra life cycles could occur. This creates an infinite scoring loop that only allows for increasing the score by delaying the kill screen completion; this breaking the current rule. Therefore, the highest attainable dale score at the kill screen should be considered valid for a max score run of this game. As an odd caveat for this game, deathless should also be a requirement because of the potential scoring loop.
Hopper262
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Between the glitches and the interesting rationale for the endpoint, this is one of the most entertaining TASes I will never, ever, not in a million years ever watch in full. :)
nymx
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Hopper262 wrote:
Between the glitches and the interesting rationale for the endpoint, this is one of the most entertaining TASes I will never, ever, not in a million years ever watch in full. :)
I'm with you on that. Unfortunately, I had to endure it for quality reasons. 😐
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 laughed so hard, when I saw this response on my YouTube channel. I can't believe someone took the time to find these details. It actually makes me like the TAS more. Apparently, the glitches are entertaining to some. @gordontaylor2815 wrote the following: ------------------------------------------------- Highlights: 0:32 First extra life (2,000 points) 3:40 Extra life stock goes beyond 9 and starts cycling through PETSCII characters as more lives are earned 26:08 100K score reached 39:43 Lives counter freezes on a right triangle shape (= 80 lives), although extra lives are continuing to be stocked 40:47 Score digits turn red! (156,075 points and 81 lives stocked) 48:39 Score digits revert to black color (186,125 points and 96 lives stocked) 50:11 At 192,000 points (99 lives stocked) all graphics except fisherman and enemies as well as indicators disappear! Score digits reappear after next score increase but rest of screen remains empty. 51:16 At 196,125 points and 101 lives stocked, the score digits will begin changing colors each time an extra life is added! 53:52 Score digits disappear again (presumably having turned same color as background) and do not reappear until next extra life threshold is reached (54:24); color changing continues on afterwards until it "sticks" at a light blue color. 57:31 Symbols colored the same as the score digits start appearing again where the lives counter had been before the screen was cleared earlier. 1:46:48 The symbols where the lives counter had been "sticks" on a light blue pi symbol. 1:49:58 Score digits turn white at 420,075 points - although the lives counter remains at a light blue pi symbol (represents 213 lives in reserve at this point). 1:54:41 Lives symbol changes to a checkerboard pattern (438,050 points and 222 lives) 1:56:47 Score digits "invert" (blue digits in white box) at 446,075 points and 226 lives. 2:02:02 Color cycling begins again with the box surrounding the score digits at 466,075 points and 236 lives 2:04:07 Extra dark blue box appears next to "checkerboard" at 474,025 points and 240 lives - the box around the score digits also "sticks" on that color. The dark blue box shows symbols that change with each additional life accumulated beyond that point. 2:12:30 At 506,025 points the lives counter overflows from 255 back to zero and the game crashes, abruptly ending the run.
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
Darkman425
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Hypothetically, if the lives bug wasn't an issue would the game still break if the score went over 1,000,000 points?
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nymx
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Darkman425 wrote:
Hypothetically, if the lives bug wasn't an issue would the game still break if the score went over 1,000,000 points?
I've wondered that myself. I'm just glad that I didn't have to go that far. When I got this BOT set up, I was testing to see how far it would go. Thankfully, the lives counter stopped it...which was something that I didn't expect. btw, for the record...I know the reason why the screen got cleared out. When the lives counter hits the value for 147, it basically was the representation of the "CLR" command...which eliminates all the characters on the screen that come from the "customized" area for the normal character set. As for the other glitches, I have no idea why things start changing color in specific spots.
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. ---- [5893] C64 The Frantic Fisherman "maximum score" by nymx in 2:13:41.72