(Link to video)

Frogger for Commodore 64

Safely hop frogs from the sidewalk to their homes on the other side of the street and river. Pretty simple premise, complex challenge and quite fun.

TAS Notes:

  • From what I can find, there are 2 official ports of Frogger for the Commodore 64. This run uses the Parker Brothers port.
  • This is a cartridge version of the game.
  • There an infinite number of stages. Difficulty increases through the first 7 stages.
    • This TAS completes these 7 stages only as nothing new is introduced beyond that point.
    • Stages 6 & 7 are the same configuration of logs/turtles/cars as stages 1 & 2 respectively but with the snake added.
    • Beginning with stage 8 the levels are repeats of previous stages.

Improvement Possibilities

I believe I have found the most rapid order for filling the frogs' homes in each level. However a better overall time may potentially result from the following:
  • Someone may find an filling-order that I did not attempt.
  • The cars' position at the beginning of a stage is dependent on the length of the previous stage. If a different order of filling homes resulted in a more beneficial starting position of cars for the next level, a faster time over multiple levels may be possible even though the first of them may not be faster by itself.

New video

From discussion on another game, I found out that BizHawk has different PAL and NTSC settings. It defaults to PAL. The original submission was using PAL settings. The current encode (and hopefully soon the .bk2 file) are the NTSC settings. I could not determine which version of the game this cartridge dump is (it may be an all-region version).
The only changes necessary to convert to NTSC from PAL and resync the input was moving the starting input and one other 1-frame deletion (to avoid a death). Otherwise the videos are the same inputs and visually identical game-play. The settings change simply speeds up the game slightly and improves the overall time of the run by roughly 40 seconds. I did not perceive any video or audio distortions from the change to region settings other that the slightly faster tempo.

drd2k9:Cancelling for now--I need to check PAL/NTSC settings
drd2k9:Un-Cancelling and updating the temporary encode to NTSC version. I request that someone who can, replace the submission file with the WIP uploadedhere. For timing comparison, the original PAL version can be watched here. If a new submission would be more appropriate than changing the file, please tell me and I'll re-cancel this submission and submit a new one with the faster video.
GoddessMaria: Resetting to "New" due to technical issues.
Fog: Judging.
Fog: Updating movie file with a 40 second faster movie due to using NTSC instead of PAL.
Fog: From the small amount of time I put into the game, I could not find any faster routes for completing the game.
The game itself is pretty meh, but this run seems to do the best with what it has.
Accepting to Vault.
fsvgm777: Processing.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5598: DrD2k9's C64 Frogger in 03:31.30
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Voting No for bad port and lots of waiting. Also, I'm concerned that you're not sure about the fill order. A bot should be able to easily test all 120 combinations per round.
Spikestuff
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Downtime that's not filled with screwing around. Meh Vote. Comparison to the Sierra Version which is more of an interesting and upbeat version. Link to video
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. These colours are pretty neato, and also these.
DrD2k9
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SmashManiac wrote:
Voting No for bad port and lots of waiting. Also, I'm concerned that you're not sure about the fill order. A bot should be able to easily test all 120 combinations per round.
Forgive my ignorance, but I don't have the knowledge/skills to use bots to TAS my games for me.
Spikestuff wrote:
Comparison to the Sierra Version which is more of an interesting and upbeat version.
I know the Sierra version is better (it's the version I had as a kid). I was planning on doing both versions at some point. I don't expect many C64 games to have Moon-level entertainment value, but I do feel that they should have their place in the vault for history's sake.
DrD2k9
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Also, I'm cancelling this for now. I need to check PAL/NTSC settings.
TASVideosGrue
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om, nom, nom... crunchy!
DrD2k9
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Un-Cancelling. Changing settings from PAL to NTSC resulted in a significantly faster video with minimal input changes to re-sync. See updated submission notes for more details.
mklip2001
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I think this turned out to be a pretty solid run! Even for a short run, it does get repetitive, but I think it's good enough for a Meh vote. Using a bot would be an interesting thing to try in the future, but it's certainly not a requirement at the moment. You don't have to prove that you've definitely found the optimal route at the moment for this to be publishable, as long as other people don't find easy improvements in a short time.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
DrD2k9
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mklip2001 wrote:
Using a bot would be an interesting thing to try in the future, but it's certainly not a requirement at the moment.
I'm sure I'd appreciate the ability to use bots to figure things like this out, but I don't know anything about programming bots ...or even where to begin learning to doing so. I don't have very much programming knowledge; just enough to recognize some basic things.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [3510] C64 Frogger by DrD2k9 in 03:31.30
kazblox
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I think this game was meant to be played in NTSC anyways. Parker Brothers and Sierra On-Line are American companies, and the most common versions of their C64 work floating around the internet are NTSC copies.
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Due to its time, the game's simplicity is definitely understandable. However, that also decreases the entertainment value of this TAS. The run is very well routed. Though I would have liked a bit of messing around on the wait times, the run is still quite impressive technically. Unfortunately, the run itself was not really very entertaining for me due to an extreme amount of repetitiveness. I voted meh, as the run still satisfied me in a general sense.
* http://tasvideos.org/ReadySteadyYeti.html - my user page on the TASVideos site * https://www.youtube.com/ReadySteadyYeti - my YouTube channel * My Discord username is "RSY#3799".
DrD2k9
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Ready Steady Yeti wrote:
...Though I would have liked a bit of messing around on the wait times, the run is still quite impressive technically. Unfortunately, the run itself was not really very entertaining for me due to an extreme amount of repetitiveness. I voted meh, as the run still satisfied me in a general sense.
Unfortunately many C64 games are probably doomed to fall under the 'meh' category due to repetition; games of that era were often simply about beating the previous high-score, not completing a story line to an endgame. As such, many of them are endless (infinite repeating levels), and the entertainment value from a TAS perspective is limited. Where modern gaming often relies on the visual quality and detail of games to supplement the entertainment value of the game-play itself, older games during the C64 era were often more concerned with the act of playing rather than the visual presentation for entertainment purposes. All that being said, I may have been able to consider messing around during wait times a bit more with this run. Though even that would most likely have been limited to horizontal movements on turtles/logs as any vertical movements (and possibly some horizontal) would introduce delayed arrival at the goal. In my opinion those entertainment improvements would not be enough to validate increasing game length. It's likely that many (if any) C64 games submitted in the future will have their entertainment value judged heavily on mess-around quality; especially when they are of repetitive nature and score based instead of having a definite endgame.