Space Quest: Chapter II - Vohaul's Revenge
- This is a re-attempt after expected improvements were pointed out following my previous submission of this game.
- Special thanks to FractalFusion for suggestions on various improvement possibilities.
Introduction/Story
Sludge Vohaul is an ugly, evil genius and original brain behind the Star Generator of Space Quest Chapter 1. He's got a bit of a grudge against the people of Xenon for re-purposing the Star Generator into a mechanism to sustain life instead of being used as the weapon Vohaul originally designed it to be. Vohaul is also slightly peeved toward Golden Mop recipient, Roger Wilco (aka TAS), for foiling his plan of having the Sariens steal the Star Generator back for him. Mr. Sludge devises a new plan to infest Xenon with an army of robot Insurance Salesmen, which he somehow believes will sap the desire of life out of the people of Xenon. Vohaul also kidnaps Roger to prevent him from again foiling the plan.
Unfortunately, as he did with the Sariens in Space Quest 1, Vohaul doesn't hire the brightest goons; and Roger is marooned on the planet Labion. Will Roger survive? Will he escape the planet? Will he be able to stop the evil mastermind of Vohaul? STAY TUNED!
Game objectives
- Aims for fastest time.
- Speed/Entertainment trade-offs:
- The speed eliminates nearly all possibility of reading the humorous game text that would theoretically add entertainment value.
Emulator used: c-square's modified JPC-rr 11.2 with mouse and improved typing support
Game Version 2.0F
Challenges and Opportunities
Text Entry
The game doesn't display typed text every frame. However, multiple keystrokes can be buffered into emulator memory on a single frame and will all be displayed when the game polls for this input. This rarely hinders progress as text input can usually be accomplished during periods of movement unlike games as Quest for Glory or Space Quest 3 where the text input box can pause movements.
Desyncs
As c-square has mentioned before, JPC-rr is horrible for being able to splice in changes after the fact. Making a change causes many desyncs down the line. Therefore, it is imperative to make sure every screen is fully optimized before moving on to the next.
Space Station: This is basically an interactive prologue to the game, but there are pseudo-necessary items that may be collected from the lockers in the airlock to complete the game. One of the few skipable events happens here. I don't look at Roger's communicator watch when signaled at the very beginning.
The Mugging:
This is all story exposition.
Labion - Crash site to Canyon Rope:
Though unnecessary to win, the distress beacon is disabled to delay/eliminate the hovercraft goon's arrival.
I don't acquire berries before entering the swamp, but use a timing glitch to dive underwater before the bog-creature eats Roger. This saves time by the following:
- Not having to do the root maze
- Not having to watch the animations of the alien gathering berries or rubbing berries on himself
- Eliminates action of rubbing berries on self.
Side Note: I'm a bit disappointed that the root maze is skipped and not seen in this run. I may do a 100% run simply to reintroduce this maze.
Labion - Caverns and Canyons: Not much to say here...pretty linear. Look for some brief (and sad attempts at humor) during the tunnels.
Labion - Back on the surface:
Leaving/re-entering the terror beast's room before his animation still allows progress. The slingshot method used to kill/knock out the guard at the platform is faster than luring him so Roger can sneak onto the elevator.
Labion Escape & Travel to Vohaul's Asteroid: This is the insanely long portion of this TAS! He takes the shuttle off the planet and tries to escape but has the shuttle controls overridden by Vohal which brings Roger to the asteroid. It's a really boring portion to watch...so I attempted to give the viewer some degree of entertainment.
Vohaul's Asteroid:
Surprised that there's no goons waiting for him upon arrival, Roger goes off exploring the Asteroid's various floors and finds....the janitor's closets. Once a janitor...alwa...never mind. He also briefly stumbles into a unisex bathroom before finding his way to Vohaul's control chambers.
Vohaul's Control Room:
Though being shrunk and imprisoned by Vohaul, Roger manages to escape while simultaneously cutting off Vohaul's life support and getting himself re-enlarged. Unfortunately Vohaul is able to initiate the launch of the Robot Insurance Salesmen before he expires. It is not necessary to disable the salesman launch to reach the end-game.
Escape the Asteroid:
Roger makes a run for it through the cracking tubes of the asteroid (without aid of the oxygen mask). He manages to find the escape pods...which for some stupid reason are guarded by a robot. Through very brief and careful game-speed manipulation it's possible to both open and enter the escape pod without leaving the screen. Game-speed is again manipulated just before the escape pod jettison cut scene. This is necessary to slow the in-game countdown of the salesman launch; otherwise they will launch before the escape pod jettisons (resulting in a game loss). The escape pod countdown cut scene is unfortunately slowed as well adding quite a few frames. This results in only about a 6 second savings over the previous run. I could not modify the speed mid cut-scene.
The End:
Roger has safely escaped the asteroid and can breathe a sigh of relief...but wait...no...there's precious low oxygen in the pod and Roger must put himself into cryo-sleep to survive. Asleep and drifting alone through the universe...Roger's fate is unknown.
Potential Improvements
- Moving at the 'Fastest' pace is extremely difficult, and hard to end up where you want to go. There may be better movement patterns which I have not found.
- Thereare limited choices in different paths/actions to take to beat the game. Exceptions below:
- In the cave tunnels after meeting the alien king, there are multiple path options, but few. I've chosen the one I perceived as fastest.
- The upper levels of the asteroid can be accessed from elevators on either side of the shuttle bay. I chose the side that got me to the needed rooms/closets the fastest while also avoiding the lip-alien (not seen in this run).
- There are a couple places where alternate methods of solving a problem exist; I've chosen the actions I found fastest. i.e. the slingshot to the guard, and screen skipping the terror beast (thanks to Radiant for this strat).
- There are no arcade sequences in this SQ game. (The only SQ game not to have one unless you count the root maze. Which is not seen in this run.)
- THANKFULLY this game has very little RNG that affects the run. Roger's sweeping at the beginning can be affected, as can the floor polisher in the asteroid. But that's about it.
- EVEN BETTER...THERE'S NO SLOT MACHINE to overcome.
- As this game foregoes multiple point gathering opportunities, it's definitely not a 100% run.
- An earlier SQ1 TAS was canceled due to a text display glitch with Sierra's AGI interpreter. This glitch has been overcome as is demonstrated in this submission which also uses the AGI interpreter.
- A new run of SQ1 is in the works with anticipated time improvements over the cancelled submission as well.
- I'm hoping we can get at least one run of each official game in the SQ series published on the site. Official SQ1 VGA remake included.
- No suggestion for a screenshot this time...I'll miss the root maze. <sniff>
Files:
HDD
TRACKS 16 - SIDES 16 - SECTORS 63
| Timestamp | MD5 | Size | Filename |
|---|
| 19900101000000 | 572d740c2c8c45e84f90b08aae01b57f | 39424 | AGI |
| 19900101000000 | 2448e157a2ffb485e14e56940ec5bb88 | 8192 | AGIDATA.OVL |
| 19900101000000 | de2902ddc953dbdb182d32d7ab34cd4a | 1024 | CGA_GRAF.OVL |
| 19900101000000 | d198a7d5262c0cf0bf3965b446326166 | 1024 | EGA_GRAF.OVL |
| 19900101000000 | f3d4c66e195491aa759b7c5ef996488b | 3072 | HGC_FONT |
| 19900101000000 | 002a3655407292ffb799dbf6327668aa | 1536 | HGC_GRAF.OVL |
| 19900101000000 | b0b03c425f7b9eff8cddc86e4ec0e153 | 1024 | HGC_OBJS.OVL |
| 19900101000000 | e8be8de90ec7d4e8d89bf83a59c24cc7 | 512 | IBM_OBJS.OVL |
| 19900101000000 | 175dbb19508d8d4ee72a1bca51d3ccf1 | 512 | JR_GRAF.OVL |
| 19900101000000 | 28add5125484302d213911df60d2aded | 426 | LOGDIR |
| 19900101000000 | 5024d50d42801aaea7170a756218a7e6 | 331 | OBJECT |
| 19900101000000 | 514534df82237848dfcd760e476a766e | 444 | PICDIR |
| 19900101000000 | 129347541c73331906e9af00ddaeb756 | 3121 | SIERRA.COM |
| 19900101000000 | 877c4361faa514745cc27e427d5781c4 | 606 | SIERRA.INF |
| 19900101000000 | eab6a5f4cb071c906df674e98891a432 | 210 | SNDDIR |
| 19900101000000 | 730535011acee0ece94e1a64fe6231e8 | 83 | SQ21589 |
| 19900101000000 | 19cdc18ae5cc5548eb77bbb89e73a978 | 512 | VG_GRAF.OVL |
| 19900101000000 | efb1f93513d57eeca9a539e019df7b89 | 720 | VIEWDIR |
| 19900101000000 | 3e09c8580506212cd3494b5df8ea6cbc | 70313 | VOL.0 |
| 19900101000000 | fa5415f7cbc6e78c69d94ef3c92d000d | 161225 | VOL.1 |
| 19900101000000 | f7015465702a24333a0e799ad0d967bb | 411824 | VOL.2 |
| 19900101000000 | 552e2b31bf8825eea5a46e6eebb4cb3e | 6828 | WORDS.TOK |
