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Nicely done. At 7:01 you swim past a pearl that it looks like you could have picked up without losing time. Other pearls healed you, so I assume this one would too. If you picked that one up, would it allow you to take damage one more time in the Soda Shop?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2erajLeB-LI&t=421
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Ragnarokia wrote:
An enjoyable video. I fully approve of the "spiderman glitch" at the end since that having 3 ladders but only one works while on a time limit thing was pure bullshit design so it deserved to be glitched like that.
One of the POWs you can rescue tells you which ladder is the one that goes to the top. So I think it's giving an advantage to those who try to rescue all the POWs.
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dunnius wrote:
1) Unfortunately the oxygen tank is required because there is no way to use rations in the deep water.
2) Dying removes any items gained since the last checkpoint, so no.
3) Rank 4 is required to obtain the rocket launcher and the compass.
Cool, thanks! I think it's neat that if you kill too many hostages, it's impossible to win the game.
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That was very entertaining. Voting yes.
A few questions:
1) Do you need the air tanks? Making the trip to get them takes a long time. With item duplication, could it be faster just to duplicate a bunch of rations and use those to get through the deep water?
2) Is there any place that dying and continuing would put you closer to where you want to be, and would save having to walk there?
3) Do you need to get to rank 4? Would rank 3 or 2 do? Could time be saved from rescuing all those prisoners, and just using more rations instead.
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I was entertained. Yes vote for moons. As for rebranding, none is needed. The published run is already a "playaround". This would simply be a new publication without obsoleting the existing one.
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niamek wrote:
Too bad the boss are long. :(
Oh Cod, it makes me Eel when people Carp and Whale just for the Halibut, with no Porpoise. I'm Net that kind of Buoy, Sea? I'm Shore tired of Gills in School with their Tails of Roe.
(Coral, Bob, and Brine made me say this. Tanks for rising to the bait and falling for it, hook, line, and sinker!)
JK! Great work, it was a ton of fun to watch!
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I'm on the fence about the whole Nightmare thing. I can understand the argument for using the community standard. At the same time, TASVideo's standards are to use the hardest.
Perhaps a compromise would be to publish this (as it certainly is entertaining!), but allow for a slower Nightmare run to obsolete this one if it's sufficiently optimized.
Voting Yes.
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andypanther wrote:
The level select sounds like a debug feature, I don't think it should be used in a TAS. How long would this game be without it?
Looking at the world-map, I don't think so. All levels look accessible from the the start square. The spade tile is apparently the last level of the game (not the castle with the 'Help' coming from it).
And I know that I'd certainly vote 'no' to a game five times as long as this one. If you think differently, try surviving through this. And then imagine it another 60% longer!
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My ears, my poor ears!!
Because it had a level select, I'm okay with the single level for the TAS. But because of how painful this is to watch (and listen to) I would say this goes in the vault.
Meh vote.
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Mothrayas wrote:
TASVideoAgent wrote:
The whole TAS is set around the fact that money is tracked with an unsigned int. By losing money past negative 32,767,000 pounds, the value wraps around to be positive 32 million.
You mean it's a signed (16-bit) int - an unsigned int would not be able to become negative at all. (Unsigned 16-bit int has a range of 0 to 65535, whereas signed has a range of -32768 to 32767). Both signed and unsigned integers can overflow or underflow due to the limited nature of data.
On the run itself: it's a fun and short TAS, while also functioning as a political/economical commentary of sorts. Yes vote.
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jlun2 wrote:
Also, what happened at that last couple seconds before you win? :o
The flashing faces glitch happens whenever you play the game on Turbo speed. There's also the End of Period report which consists of a couple of screens of financial reports. Because it's on Turbo, the game automatically closes each screen as soon as it appears.
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MUGG wrote:
c-square wrote:
In my last post I was joking. But in all seriousness, the Stage Comparison (Ghosts) encode was way more entertaining than the straight optimized run. There ought to be a way that one can be hosted here on TASvideos, perhaps as a playaround or citing entertainment / speed tradeoffs or something. Also, the comparison run would be one that everyone would then get their names on.
I hope it can be done.
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turska wrote:
It seems like the Warp speed setting in CD-Man is not capped, and mostly dependent on system speed. Tested in JPC-RR and Dosbox by adjusting emulated CPU speed; with CPUDIVIDER 250, the game moves at around two moves per frame - as opposed to the twelve per frame of this movie, which uses the default speed (CPUDIVIDER 50). Dosbox also slows down when emulating a slower system, and at 500-600 cycles, the Warp speed is even playable in real-time.
Interesting. Thanks for investigating that, turska. I've updated the goals and description to reflect that this TAS was then done at JPC-rr's default CPU speed.
I think this TAS is still valid, as JPC-rr's default CPU speed is comparable to the speeds of PC CPUs at the time the game was released (1992) (see http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/micropro/proc1990.htm).
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thecoreyburton wrote:
What's the licensing like on this game? I know we can't share images unless it's freeware, but I'm finding it hard to come by this exact copy.
To be specific, HIGHSC.CDM has a different checksum that varies in most cases, and I'm yet to find a copy that has XMUSE.BIN, DPS.NFO and FILE_ID.DIZ.
I got my copy from http://www.myabandonware.com/game/cd-man-1d0
As for licensing, DosGamesArchive and Archive.org list it as Shareware, which version 1 certainly was. The copy protection on version 2, however, seems to put that in doubt for this TAS.
It certainly would qualify for ''Abandonware'' if such a legal thing actually exists.
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Warp wrote:
I think you bring up a good point. Many really old DOS games did not have any timing routines, and instead assumed that the PC had a fixed speed (like if it were a console). Thus if you run the game in a faster PC, the game will run faster.
Thus, you can speed up a game by running it on a "faster PC"... which doesn't feel right. It's essentially like emulating the game at a higher speed than normal.
(Granted, I don't know if this is really the case with this particular game, but it certainly is the case with some other very old DOS games.)
I'm pretty sure JPC-rr limits the clock speed. Otherwise, the Commander Keen and other DOS TASes would have just zipped through them. I kept the default settings for JCP-rr to make this TAS.
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Nach wrote:
I've replaced your submission file. In terms of that, you followed the correct procedure.
However, the site does not automatically generate disk image info. Your last submission had it because Ilari added it: http://tasvideos.org/diff.exe?page=3317S&rev=2&prev=1
You can get a listing from JPC-RR, please do so and add it to your submission.
Great. I've added the file info to the submission. Please let me know if there's anything else missing.
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Nach wrote:
Please edit your submission to include details on the disk image used for this run as other DOS runs do. Thank you.
Hi Nach,
I'm not sure how to do that. Last time I think it did it automatically for me. This time I submitted the wrong file (a save.jrsr) so I'm wondering if that's the reason why it wasn't added. I've since uploaded what I think is the right thing (the movie file I saved to use for the dump that created my quick encode). I was told just to link to it in the comments, which I did. Is there something else I need to do? If so, would you point me to where I can find instructions to do it?
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AngerFist wrote:
Dear lord..... This was one of the funniest tases I have ever seen! Hahah wow just wow man.. I am sure this run will be remembered for a very long time and rightfully so! Easy yes vote and I am personally already claiming this will be a contender for a few categories for this year's TAS awards :)
Thanks! I just saw the awards for the first time in January, and had a hope this one might contend for the Speedy TAS award in 2015. :)
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Techokami wrote:
Patashu wrote:
But can't you provide sub-frame input in DOS games? I've seen another TAS on this site that does it.
I don't think JPC-RR supports sub-frames. If it did, then that could be one way to get around the limitations.
I'm impressed at how mind-numbingly fast this is. You blink and you miss it.
Thanks!
I'm not sure what you both mean by sub-frame input. Each frame is about 14 milliseconds long. Each input takes between 2 and 3 milliseconds to enter. So, I can cram between five and seven inputs into each frame. Any more simply spill over into the next frame.
Depending on when I enter an action, the game will process it at different times in the frame, resulting in different timings for the action. There were several times where I simply hit space bar to delay entering an action, because entering it immediately was too soon.
I've added an example of what it's like to TAS one frame in the Trial and Error section of the submission description.
Is that what you mean by sub-frame input?
