In the 1995 Shareware game Tyler, you navigate a purple orb through ten levels, reaching the red goal tile while clearing all white tiles. The full registered version is said to contain 20 more levels but it seems lost to the passage of time.
About the Run
- Used Emulator: Bizhawk 2.11 (DOSBox-X core)
- Genre: Action Puzzle
I had been on a search for this game I fondly remembered and had played in my childhood and after finding it again, I played around with it and managed to create a
key macro run in October 2015, finishing the game in 1 minute and 2 seconds, using AutoHotKey with the game running in Win XP SP3 within VirtualBox. Naturally, there were a lot of desyncs and the strats were somewhat more cautious and inferior.
Recently, I got interested in the DOSBox-X emulator and tested some old Windows 3.11/95/98 games in it. After I started a topic for
Pool Champion (1995) and while researching that game, CoolKirby helped me get familiar with the setup and verification steps for Bizhawk's DOSBox-X core. This opened a whole new world of TASable games for me!
Since a TAS of Pool Champion turns out to be a long project, I decided to take a break from it to look at some shorter games such as
Tyler. Some more games I will be interested in researching and/or running are listed on
this page.
Anyway, this new run more or less uses the same strats as the key macro run, except for some optimizations. You can press Space while standing on the goal tile to finish a level only after all white tiles are removed and no longer visible, so some strats involve going for all the white tiles first even if it means using more key strokes. Although cutting down on key strokes was not a goal for this movie, I didn't want to play around while waiting for the white tiles to disappear and instead opted for waiting on the goal in each level. The only trouble-maker was level 10 where I had to wait for the blue tile next to the goal to re-appear.
I'm under the impressiong that the game running under Win 3.11 may have longer loading times, requiring split seconds here and there throughout the game, compared to my older key macro run that ran on Win XP. Therefore it might be worth looking at running the game in Win 95/98 in the future but I don't think it's that much of a deal.
For some reason, the dog barking sound is not playing when I started up the game at the beginning. It would play the sound if I waited about 0.5-1.0 seconds before starting up the game but I'm going for fastest time and I think it might just be an OS-related thing.
Like my key macro run, I didn't want to end the run at the nag screen and instead clicked it away to end the run at the intro/title screen to show all the credits and play the intro music. Unfortunately, the intro music turns out to be inferior, I guess due to the sound device being sb16vibra , which is the only compatible sound device known at this time of writing. But again, I'm happy we are having a verifiable run so I'm not disappointed.
The mouse isn't really required and you can just close the game via Alt+F4 and start the game again to show the intro, instead of clicking at the nag screen. (The game wouldn't let you choose New Game via hotkey or via navigating the drop down menu while on the nag screen.) This might also be worth considering for future attempts.
Verification Steps
1) Create w311.hdd
Use the steps outlined at this time of writing under the "Windows 3.11" tab
here to create the HDD image containing Windows 3.11.
2) Find the game files
The file hashes:
| File name | MD5 hash |
|---|
| README.WRI | 83 62 2d e7 d0 e3 7a b9 92 12 30 6a 9c 67 c7 b0 |
| FILE_ID.DIZ | 20 ae 33 49 29 78 8b 01 9c d6 33 79 0b d4 16 43 |
| SETUP.BIN | e0 01 40 78 85 1b 79 b9 fb 13 a8 12 e8 da c7 bd |
| SETUP.EXE | b0 94 8b cf 4f 35 66 24 b2 83 13 ea 68 af fd d0 |
| TYLER.DAT | 57 a5 4a 30 57 e9 7a 3c cb 9c a4 c6 9a 3c 8c 58 |
3) Create ISO of the game files
4) Download Sound Blaster 16 drivers
Download the file
Install.IMA from
here. This is a floppy Image file containing sound blaster drivers which allows music/sounds to run. (Thanks CoolKirby)
5) Verification Movie
Load an XML file into Bizhawk 2.11 with this content:
<BizHawk-XMLGame System="DOS" Name="Tyler verification file">
<LoadAssets>
<Asset FileName=".\w311.hdd" />
<Asset FileName=".\install.ima" />
<Asset FileName=".\Tyler.iso" />
</LoadAssets>
</BizHawk-XMLGame>
What the verification movie does:
- Installs the sound blaster drivers and sets interrupt setting 7
- Switch Display to S3 Trio (...) 640x480 64k
- Installs the game
- Plays the game and confirms to not show MIDI errors in the future
6) TAS Movie
Load the exported HDD directly into Bizhawk and run the bk2 movie file from this submission.
I verified the steps and there should be no ROM hash mismatch.
Note about mouse cursor when movie ends: When the submitted bk2 movie ends, the user re-gains control over the mouse which will cause the mouse cursor to go to places unintended. Please make sure during encoding to extend the input so the mouse will not move until the end of the encode.
Bugs
- You can move out of bounds diagonally if there is no adjacent tile.
- Green spinning objects will push you off to a direction by 1 tile and if you move into that direction on the same frame, you can clear gaps without dying.
Links
Thanks to
- CoolKirby for introducing me to Windows TASing in Bizhawk2.11-DosBox-X
- Dimon12321 for additional help
DrD2k9: Obviously superhuman play. Nothing stands out as obviously sloppy or sub-optimal to my casual viewing. Accepting.
