TetraVex for Win3.1 is a puzzle game that was first released in WEP 3, and later included in BOWEP. Drag tiles onto a grid so that their border numbers match. Meanwhile, any number can face the grid border, so gameplay is simple. The game has customizable grid sizes, digits, and an optional timer you can race to get a high score. It is partly named for its four ("tetra")-sided tiles, and apparently
vex, meaning to irritate.
About the run
What's WEP?
While it is today known as the
Microsoft Entertainment Pack series,
articles around the time of release would call it
Windows Entertainment Pack, or W.E.P.. It was apparently known as such internally, as a message in Chip's Challenge's 145th level thanks "the WEP 4 test team".
Best of also installs by default to C:\
BOWEP, so that's what I've called it as well for 20-something years. I haven't seen it called BOMEP.
This TAS uses the smallest grid size, since Easiest difficulty is a Standard (always acceptable) category compared to the default 3x3 which is slower than 2x2. The game also offers 4x4, 5x5, and 6x6 (hardest).
Settings and strategy
In the Options menu at the top, only Size is applicable for a TAS. You can change how many digits appear or use Latin or Greek letters instead. but that all only affects the difficulty for casual play.
The Game menu has three more relevant actions:
- Hint will put a tile in the correct spot or return one you placed in an incorrect spot. However, using a hint bars you from logging a high score and the ending smile will be less enthusiastic. It's like an in-game cheat.
- Solve asks the game to complete the puzzle for you. This bars high scores as well as skipping any kind of ending.
- Arrange moves tiles around the starting area. It doesn't affect the scoring, so it could be a legitimate strategy in other grid size TASes. DOSBox-x's mouse can only move 255px per 1-2 frames, so it could be faster to take 3 frames to Arrange a tile closer to the center to save round-trip mouse travel.
Scoring is a mystery in this game. Here, I get 402 points for a 0:00 finish, but in another test I got 410 points for a 0:03 time. In both cases, there was a 10 point drop for every extra second of play, but I don't know what caused the other test to start at a higher number. This isn't a max score TAS though, so I don't have to understand it.
- After the verification movie, the run starts by launching TetraVex.exe from the DOS prompt into W3.1. Doing this instead of launching Windows normally without arguments adds frames but takes fewer cycles overall, saving 0.041 second according to the calculated movie time. This is possibly because other windows get minimized to Program Manager so they don't take time loading in at the start. I also think it looks cleaner.
- Due to how these WEP games draw, Maximizing the game window would have just as much negative space, only in a different color than W3.1's background. It also would've taken at least an extra frame (with mouse) to do so anyway, as both window and game input start being read on the same frame, before the desktop is visible on the '94 preset, so I don't have any downtime to fill.
- The main strategy for each tile takes 3 frames: clicking it; moving onto an empty grid space while holding Left Mouse; then releasing it, ideally while keeping the mouse on that space so the tile registers as being dropped there. This is repeated 4 times, which would make the gameplay 12 frames long, except for a frame of mouse lag in the middle. This lag prevented the third tile from being picked up immediately.
- Chip's Challenge, in the same collection, seems to read input more accurately at 60 FPS, so I tried this for TetraVex too. Unfortunately, while this cleared the lag frame, time was still lost, maybe during a longer Windows boot. A less laggy custom framerate could still be a viable strategy for a longer category of this game, depending on how CycleCounts compare.
- Input ends before the game window is drawn, and all mouse and tile moves play out in the next second. After the victory smiley fades in, if the Timer was not turned off in the Options menu, you're prompted to save your score. I have a separate movie that enters a name, which adds 3 frames. That's the one in the encode above.
This run is too short to add subtitles to; definitely one for the amusing "This was a tool-assisted speedrun" overlay that's popular in TVC encode comments. Next time, though!
Thanks to
- MUGG, Dimon12321, and eien86 for inspiring me to finish and submit my own early-Windows project
- BizHawk devs for another awesome core
- You, for watching
