Joined: 2/12/2015
Posts: 159
Location: Everett, WA
I can't really think of any examples aside from BreakQuest and maybe the first two Age of Empires games. The latter probably needs no introduction, but the former is an obscure, but still very fun, Breakout clone with neat 2D physics, a hundred levels with different themes, a variety of powerups and -downs, and demoscene music.
:shrug:
I'm more active on Twitter nowadays: @HunterCoates5
Joined: 1/9/2023
Posts: 45
Location: Quebec Province
Parking Garage Rally Circuit. Its a Sega Saturn-inspired indie racing game available on Linux. I don't think there is much RNG and the game is time trial based like Trackmania, where you have to beat ghosts to advance. The one weakness of the game is that you need to technically go through it three time with faster and faster cars to complete it. The strategies does change car by car but a viewer will still have to watch all tracks three time.
Recursed was recently made available on Itch for Windows and Linux. It's a puzzle game rendered as a 2D platformer, where chests contain rooms which are created when you jump into them and deleted when you leave. The game features analogues of many concepts from functional programming, such as global variables, continuations, shallow copies, and coroutines, and their interplay is truly remarkable. On top of that, the physics are highly abusable. I think a TAS could be a thing of beauty.
Bat to the Heavens, a platformer based around mechanics that multiply and redirect your momentum. A TAS of this would be very difficult but immensely satisfying.
Link to video
The Frozen Fruits and Bound games by Blueskied (https://www.blueskied.com/) would make for some really cool TASes. There's some interesting quirks in the physics engine for these games that make it possible to bounce the ball in unintended ways and even clip out of bounds, as seen here:
Link to video
You need 33 of the 35 stars in Frozen Fruits to do this wrong warp without it crashing the game, but it still saves time over completing the last two levels.
I'd like to do a TAS of Frozen Fruits 1 some time this year, but I still need to learn how to TAS first, so it could take awhile. If anyone wants to help out with this, let me know. There's also several other games running on the same engine, so I definitely won't have time to TAS them all.
Link to video
Pool Champion (1995)
One of my childhood games.
EDIT: Got the game to run. I will try to play through and find bugs.
The game basicly goes like this: You can go to certain locations in your town to play against other opponents to earn money.
You start out with 50$, and a flight to las vegas costs 250$, where a tournament is held - winning the tournament is the goal of the game.
The help pages mention there is also a smaller tournament every 1st Saturday in the location "Billiard Hall" where you can quickly earn the needed money for the plane ticket.
(The game starts out with the date used by the operation system.)
More games from my childhood:
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2
Just mentioning, it might be superior to the currently published N64 version.
Sheep (2000)
It seems this game also released on PlayStation.
In this game you need to guide sheep through levels and make sure they don't get lost or killed.
Link to videoTwigger (1996)
In this game you play against a computer-controlled opponent, controlling a cart and shooting at the enemies.
From what I can remember, there are about 10 levels so it is fairly short.
Link to videoYucatan - Das Gold der Mayas (1995)
Apparently this only released in Germany. There is even a TCRF page for it.
A Myst-like click adventure game, therefore should be solvable very quickly in TAS.
Link to videoMystic House (1997)
Another Myst-like click game. VideoMoorhuhn Jagd (1999)
Popular German shooter game series. As far as I remember, the original game was only one level, just aiming for the best highscore. There are several sequels and spin-offs, see "Die Racher der Sumphühner" (2000) for example, and also "Karnickeljagd Beach". See if TAS can go higher than any known human records.
Link to videoSiedler 4 - Hiebe für Diebe
This minigame consists of about 10 levels and was supposedly released shortly before The Settlers IV, so I guess this minigame was released in 2000 or 2001. The objective is to protect gold from thieves. I think you can't really speed up the levels so maybe TAS should be aimining for highest score like Moorhuhn Jagd.
Link to videoHot Wheels: Crash
In this game you launch a car at a building or scene and gain points the more things you destroy.
Link to videoAncient Conquest: Quest for the Golden Fleece (1998)
A fairly simple strategic ship-fighting game with scenarios you have to complete one by one.
Link to videoGold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Not sure it can be run in Dosbox-X. This is an adventure game where you solve puzzles to continue, similar to Monkey Island.
Hercules (1997)
Also released on Playstation but I'm not sure if the releases are identical.
Roller Ball
This looks like a very good candidate for TASing.
This was distributed with the german magazine Computer-Bild-Spiele on the same disc that Forsaken was distributed with; I have not found the game as a standalone version.
Itch!
By JoWood, the same developer that made Neighbours from Hell. A puzzle game.
Unfortunately I have not got it to run in Windows 95. It might require Direct-X 8 or 8.1, which I couldn't install on Win95.
Maybe will run on Win98...
Link to videoTony & Friends New Adventures
I got this from some Kellogg's cereal pack as a kid. It's like a Donkey Kong Country rip-off, lol.
I have had some trouble getting this to run. Out of 5 tries, 4 times it softlocks on the intro screen, and 1 time it loaded the main menu.
TKKG - Katja's Geheimnis (1997) (aka. TKKG - Jennifer is missing)
The game contains both the German and English version. Runs without problems in Win95 on DosBox-X.
Jiji and the mysterious forest (1994)
This was on one of my shareware collection CDs. Archive.org link
More games from my childhood:
Moorhuhn Jagd (1999)
Popular German shooter game series. As far as I remember, the original game was only one level, just aiming for the best highscore. There are several sequels and spin-offs, see "Die Racher der Sumphühner" (2000) for example. See if TAS can go higher than any known human records.
I tried TASing it, but its spawn logic is difficult to pull. With no access to RAM Search (those awkward struggles in Cheat Engine don't count), it's gonna be a tedious bruteforce. I don't know if you will create a separate topic for it, so I'd just write what I found here.
1. The random doesn't take milliseconds into account, only plain seconds. So, I would recommend aiming for in-game time, at least to get an optimal starting roll of chickens.
2. The spawn logic is made around "offline mode". Objects spawn and move very fast in the areas where you don't look (plus, some more space beyond the screen). If you constantly scroll around the field, you will not get rich spawns. It's important to wait for some time, like at least 2 secs, without (major) scrolling to have chickens fly in to be shot.
3. Shooting in the air or in static objects (sign, trees) doesn't seem to affect random. Chickens spawn in the same spots.
4. There seems to be an array of objects in RAM which indicates which objects are on the field. It's better to not manipulate air balloons and planes, because they occupy space in that array. I somehow managed to spawn 5 balloons once and regardless of what I was doing, the spawn of chicken was poor. Maybe, sprite size is a factor to consider too.
5. Keeping the crosshair near the edge of the screen can be combines with Left/Right key presses to scroll faster.
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2
Just mentioning, it might be superior to the currently published N64 version.
The runs are completely identical between platforms. Biggest issues for the pc version are 1) without external mods most people can't even boot the game.
2) the game is can be incredibly unstable even if it runs
Since loads don't matter I'll probably just end up doing it on n64. Keeps in line with all the work on the game that came before.
I was actually most of the way done (up to Philly), but i came up with a crazy Hangar strat that should be a couple seconds faster. Biggest problem is trying to do the helicopter strat Nahoc does. For the life of me I can't figure out how he did it and can't get mupen running correctly to see his inputs. Once I crack Hangar it'll take me only a few days to get the rest of the tas done
The runs are completely identical between platforms. Biggest issues for the pc version are 1) without external mods most people can't even boot the game.
2) the game is can be incredibly unstable even if it runs
Ok, my assumption was it has got to have better graphics and performance since N64 ports are usually watered-down versions of PC releases, or at least so has been my impression. The best times on the speedrun leaderboards use the PC version. The PC version of THPS2 was released about 1 year before the N64 release.
Wait a minute...
Yeah... use the PC version.
Yeah... use the PC version.