Thanks £e Nécroyeur and zoboner, I didn't expect to receive so much support for this TAS idea.
My reason for submitting this movie was to test the rules and see how such submission could be handled. The text for the relative
rule was soon improved in order to make it clear that the password usage is permitted only for unlocking a hard-coded difficulty, which does not apply for the situation in this submission. As feos mentioned, the password in this game is used for storing and resuming game progress, which is different from unlocking game contents.
Another important thing to note is that the rule can be objectively enforced by doing some basic reverse-engineering. I did it myself before making this movie, as I used trace logging in order to see how the password system works. As feos mentioned, the password is merely storing 4 bytes of data, which are used by the game for determining the game data. I couldn't spot any function that looks for a specific password, so there is really nothing hard-coded to unlock here.
I also understand the reason for this rule now. For games that use a password for storing game data, it's basically impossible to figure out how to make the game objectively harder. The data used by Rolan's Curse is very simple, however I had to put some thought in order to decide if using the Sword or the Wand. Let's look closer at the problem:
- The Sword can only hit from point blank, while the Wand can hit from some distance but does half damage.
- The Sword is the initial weapon when starting a new game from scratch, while the Wand needs to be found in a chest in order to be obtained.
- Sword and Wand replace each other when one of them is picked up from a chest.
- The Sword is always faster for killing bosses, which is the biggest time save in the whole game, however the Wand makes casual play much easier.
So, which one to choose?
For my TAS I decided to stick with the Sword, just because it's the stock weapon. However, making a password that makes you start with the Wand would inevitably result in a slower movie, and thus it could
feel harder. In any case, we would enter in an endless argument about which one is more appropriate for a truly
hardest play.
And this is just Rolan's Curse, which stores very little data in the game password. Now just imagine how messed it could get if we had more settable data to debate of. This doesn't allow for any kind of clear cut, so it shouldn't be allowed as main branch for publication. And the other hand, this submission isn't providing enough differing movie contents for warranting a separate branch, nor meeting the entertainment requirements of the Moons tier.
