Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
I'm happy to help.
An important thing is finding out the fastest way to deal with the Arnoid bot. Intuitively I'd say that luring him to the ceiling pods is faster than luring him to the robot interior, because the pods are closer to your ship. Apparently you can use the metal pole (from Ortega) to grab his belt from the pods, but that's going to be much slower than buying the orat-on-a-stick.
Essentially, the second part of SQ3 is a series of pretty easy minigames. You can pass the Astro Chicken game by just dying ten times; completing it is only necessary if you want the full score.
This page outlines an easy AI exploit in the fighting robots minigame.
The space battle minigame require you to hit four enemy ships. Their pattern can probably be manipulated somewhat, but frankly this game is trivially easy even when not TAS'ing.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
One of the fun things of this run is that Sierra's text parser accepts all kinds of unusual and unlikely inputs for what you want to do. You can also use nouns as verbs (or vice versa) since the parser makes no distinction between the two. We've tried as much as possible to make the input ask for something unrelated to, or even the opposite of, what you'll actually get.
For example, "fill credit card from the slot machine" is considered a synonym for unlocking the elevator with the keycard.
In their later games with the SCI engine (e.g. Hero's Quest), typing any input pauses the game so for a TAS you're basically limited to the shortest inputs. But in AGI games, the game plays on while you type, so you can make inputs as complex as you want (as long as they fit on one line).
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Can I ask for a small correction? This movie's blurb lists the game subtitle (twice) as "So You Want To Become A Hero" whereas the actual subtitle is "So You Want To Be A Hero".
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
DrD2k9 wrote:
ANYWAY: I've finished the runs. Here's the temp encodes for full speed and 1/5th speed. BEWARE! The sound during the screen with the code panel on the Start Generator is REALLY ANNOYING; mute or skip this LONG section.
Ouch, so it does. Do you think you can hex in pressing the F2 key once, just before that? It would turn the sound off. Press again afterwards to turn it back on.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Congratulations, well done!
And thank you, I'm happy to be credited for this. That makes this officially my first TAS, too :)
(edit) LOL at the Buzz Lightyear joke :)
DrD2k9 wrote:
[/i]Hypothetically, if Radiant were to do a TAS of one of his own games, would it be deemed unfair? Because theoretically, he could just tweak a few files here and there to make a TAS extremely easy and then claim it a new version of the game with which he could then perform the TAS.
I'm actually not so sure how I could make a TAS extremely easy except by including a cheat code (which would obviously be banned). Regardless, publishing a new version for this purpose would be pretty obvious from the release history, and would get me (rightfully) called out for cheating.
Not so hypothetically, people are already speedrunning my games. So I hope to see a TAS one day.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
SQ contains an internal clock that few people know about (because it's not in the menu for some reason). It may be interesting to show this in the speedrun? Or perhaps you find it distracting. To try it out, on any screen type "clock"; or if you want to be fancy about it, "First, please clock me in, sir." Since this doesn't affect gameplay it may be possible to hex it into an early room.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Thanks. And,
DrD2k9 wrote:
I didn't think the bid amount affected the random seed.
No, it doesn't.
Since you can manipulate the gambling alien to die so quickly, talking to the barkeep doesn't seem to help. I just realized there's even more bucks lying around (behind the Droids-R-Us store) but getting those is also too slow.
Gambling looks impressively fast by now, well done!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
The idea behind writing
(3) Little is up with you, I guess, yes?
was to have the typed commands give the opposite result of what they appear to do, as much as possible. So Roger answers positively at first and he does not sell the skimmer, and the second time he answers negatively and does sell it. Writing YES!! kind of negates that.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Right, so those acid drops are pretty straightforward.
When entering the room, random() is called three times for their delays: 9-71, 1-71, and 1-71 ticks respectively. After that amount of ticks, they spawn.
When they do, an immediate is made check on EGO's X coordinate. This is done only once when the drop appears, not while it falls (note that this makes the sequence entirely unfair to a human player, as there is no way to see the drops coming!) If EGO is at X = 84 through 91, he'll get hit by the first drop. 94 through 101, the second drop. 109 to 116, the third drop.
I've tested a bunch of times and find that at fastest speed, moving straight through the room gets me past the drops 66% of the time. So this should be easy to manipulate; the odds are good that the seed you already have will get you past them.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
DrD2k9 wrote:
Now then...Do we want to try and manipulate acid drops, or just deal with the random seed where we are when we get past them?
Even without TAS'ing, I find that reasonably often I can enter the room and walk straight to the right without hitting anything. I'll check on the probability of that.
Does the guy who buys the skimmer work on an RNG timer? Does the blue droid in the Deltaur airlock work on one?
No to both. The skimmer guy appears immediately when you get off the skimmer. The blue droid appears 249 ticks after you enter the room.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
c-square wrote:
There's a lot of randoms going on that have nothing to do with the rock placement, and it's been very difficult taking them all into account.
They're about the time delay between rocks. But yeah, makes it more complicated. Since randomness advances each frame when you're moving, it should be doable to make all rocks spawn to the side while you stick in the middle.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
DrD2k9 wrote:
What I'm trying to figure out is a way to calculate what RTC time will yield the initial seed we want for the game. I don't particularly want to manually test 86,400 options.
Oh, I see: milliseconds is divided by thousand for some reason.
The initial seed is (time in seconds) * 20 + ((time in milliseconds) / 1000) * 20
BUT note that creating the seed will immediately advance it once (i.e. to generate the first random number in logic 2, which is then ignored since guards can't spawn the first time you enter the room). So the value you'll see in your lua panel is the seed AFTER one advancement.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
DrD2k9 wrote:
According to c-squares lua script. The number of 'changes' when the initial is set varies drastically with different initial RTC values as well.
Any ideas?
Well, yes. First, although the initial seed depends on the amount of milliseconds since midnight, the game's internal framerate is only about 12 frames per second. That means that every batch of (1000 / 12) = 83 milliseconds will yield the same seed.
Second, when the seed is initialized, it is immediately advanced once. The way the random algorithm works, adjacent values end up being non-adjacent after one step.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Final set of commands.
Deltaur outside
(1) first in!put: on the jet, pack it all
(2) exit pod
(3) turn off now, I will handle it for you
The robot may reposition you, but will never place you closer to the door so that doesn't help.
Deltaur inside
(1) open up from inside the chest (note, leave two spaces after 'open')
(2) enter <F3>
(3) open <space> <F3>
(4) open second cartridge retrieval unit (note, leave two spaces after 'open')
(5) enter <F3>
(6) open <space> <F3>
(7) look for the space suit inside of me
Final conflict
(1) redeem it in I: id is in it, is in I
(2) grab the first, second, third bombs
(3) Is the cast off? The grenade is inside
(4) explore with me for a second, dude
(5) the press is off; switch it on now
(6) this is view control, panel is inside
(7) you stand out from every vessel
push switch
Note, you can briefly type something on the second screen where you fly away; type something like "That's all, folks!" without pressing Enter.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
DrD2k9 wrote:
So was the initial seed value set at room 2, or at room 4?
Room 2: the first time random() is called.
It looks like the acid drips and skimmer sequence are going to have a much greater impact on where we are seed wise when we get to the slots.
Yep.
The acid drop room calls random() three times when entered, to set a timer for the upper three acid drops. There are actually FOUR acid drops (the fourth being in the pool below) but the fourth doesn't randomize its timer. When their respective animation finishes, each of the four drops calls random() again to get a new timer.
Initial timers are 9-71 ticks (left drop), or 1-71 ticks (middle and right drops). Later timers are 17-53 (bottom drop), or 26-44 (all three top drops). Of course you do enter this room twice.
I'd say that definitely suggests that we try to maximize the timer for the spider droid.
Yes, that makes things easier.
Note that when you leave the pod, you can check this timer by pressing alt-D (to enable debug mode), then type SHOW VAR <enter> 93 <enter>. You'll need to reload to undo this, of course; can't have a run with debug mode. v93 is intially between 130 and 250 and decrements each tick.
It turns out that blowing up Orat with the Spider can only be done AFTER visiting the alien visage, making this method much slower in any run.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
DrD2k9 wrote:
Ok for the spider droid timer...
There's a set number of random calls before he arrives correct?
There's one random call, that initializes the countdown as you specified. There are no other random calls caused by the countdown.
DrD2k9 wrote:
On the note of random calls....If a guard is triggered on the Arcada, the guard logic (logic.103) also calls random. Yielding 2 total random calls.
Correct. The second one is the delay (50 - 100 ticks) until the guard appears. This may matter because you can ignore a guard spawn if you can make it into an elevator quickly enough.
Your overview is mostly correct, but note that logic 4 doesn't call the second random() if you enter it on the top floor (which in this run you always do).
DrD2k9 wrote:
The key question is, does the spider droid random call happen when the crash site room is shown DURING the crash or does the counter not start until AFTER exiting escape pod into room 30?
The latter: when you leave the pod.
Unfortunately room 30 itself is complicated (to me). It calls logic.110 which itself has 6 random calls in it. So the actual number of random seeds before the spider droid counter may be more.
Logic 110 regulates the spider. It calls random() once when initializing the room; the other calls only occur when the spider is already there. One is for when it appears (after landing, it waits 8-26 ticks before it starts chasing you). All the others are for its recurring sound effect.
DrD2k9 wrote:
If I understand Logic.000 correctly,
Getting something increases the random seed.
looking at something increases the random seed.
entering something increases the random seed.
specifically typing "use" something increases the random seed
Not exactly. Trying to get, look at, enter, or use something that is not otherwise scripted calls the random seed to give one of several synonyms for "you cannot do that". The f2/f4 combo is a similar message for input that is completely not understood. It does not affect this run.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Ulence Flats.
Note that there's only a 34% chance when you leave the room that your skimmer gets stolen, so taking the key out isn't necessary.
(1) Get out into sand, skimmer is with you
(2) That is for you now, sir I.A.N.
(3) Little is up with you, I guess, yes?
Since you're waiting for the alien to die, it may be possible to stand at the right-hand side of the bar, and when the bartender gets to you he'll give you more cash gambling if you type #4. This may need luck manipulation.
(4) At present, little is under the coupon
(5) I give up, this old coupon is over now
('buy droid' probably has to be short again)
(6) I buy you out. Craft another for me.
(7) The old scale is through inside ladder.
(8) Some of that is the third load now.
(9) HH
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
And let's get some more commands.
Kerona surface
(1) Toss at that little sir, for you can!
(2) Pick another, for you part at first.
(3) To turn you on a little, dial me now!
Kerona underground
(1) Get up please, rock me now!
(2) Fill the old boulder to steam it off
(3) A second set of glass is light for me.
(4) You put these on to please that hunk.
(5) Stand up, the bike is a little off now.
('turn key' probably needs to be quick?)
Oh yeah, let's not forget the acid drops are randomized, and can be manipulated.
