This game is the first in the fantastic King's Quest series released by Sierra.
Story:
The king is dying without an heir, so he sends Sir Graham out on a quest to recover three magical items from the realm. If Sir Graham is able to recover all three items, he will be granted the crown as the next king of Daventry. Graham must search high and low, using his wits to solve problems and recover the three magical items (A chest of never-ending gold, A mirror that shows the future, and A shield that guarantees safety and victory in battle).
General Info
Goal: Aims for fastest time
Emulator used: c-square's modified JPC-rr 11.2 with mouse and improved typing support
Game Version: 2.0F
Run Info
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 SCI interpreter games like Quest for Glory or Space Quest 3 where the text input box will pause movements.
Desyncs 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.
Other notes on the run
This game has RNG that affects two scenes of the run.
The bird has a 50% chance of showing up on the screen. Thankfully no manipulation was necessary for this run.
In the cave staircase (coming down from the clouds), a dwarf has a chance of showing up and stealing your treasures. Again, no manipulation was needed to avoid the elf for this run.
As this TAS foregoes multiple point gathering opportunities, it's definitely not a 100% run.
I'm hoping we can get at least one run of each official game in the KQ series published on the site at some point.
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.
From a pure speed perspective, about 2 seconds could be saved by turning off the sound effects during the scene where the castle door opens. This would eliminates the wait currently present for the SFX. As the game is already mostly silent--with only the occasional beeps/boops for SFX--I elected to leave this sound in the run.
Note to the judge: If it is preferred that I eliminate this SFX for a faster run, it wouldn't be too difficult to do this and resync remaining inputs as the event is near the end of the game.
Suggested screenshot:
Any of the screens with Graham climbing the beanstalk. This is an extremely difficult task in RTA runs.
Files
HDD TRACKS 16 - SIDES 16 - SECTORS 63
Timestamp
MD5
Size
Filename
19900101000000
4771062c7f64bf64c185178613fd665a
39424
AGI
19900101000000
d83459a8643dfc67b4629ec4afe64e13
8192
AGIDATA.OVL
19900101000000
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1024
CGA_GRAF.OVL
19900101000000
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1024
EGA_GRAF.OVL
19900101000000
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HGC_FONT
19900101000000
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HGC_GRAF.OVL
19900101000000
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1024
HGC_OBJS.OVL
19900101000000
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512
IBM_OBJS.OVL
19900101000000
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512
JR_GRAF.OVL
19900101000000
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KQ1.COM
19900101000000
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LOGDIR
19900101000000
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OBJECT
19900101000000
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PICDIR
19900101000000
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SNDDIR
19900101000000
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VG_GRAF.OVL
19900101000000
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VIEWDIR
19900101000000
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VOL.0
19900101000000
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VOL.1
19900101000000
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VOL.2
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WORDS.TOK
EDIT:
I realized that typing "fast" to change the game-speed is actually faster than using the menu. Unfortunately this happens at the very beginning of the run. This required a complete redo of the run.
Here is a link to the new movie file. Someone with the power, please update the submission.
Notes on the new run:
I decided to go ahead and cut the sound from the castle door opening sequence to save the time. It is restored immediately after entering the castle.
The only other major (which are actually fairly minor) differences are as follows:
An extra screen transition was needed to alter RNG and spawn the bird.
Slight movment variations occurred throughout the run due to the change in how speed was altered and way the game processes movement.
The position of the Giant's nap changed.
The above encodes are of the new movie file.
fsvgm777: Replaced movie file with an improvement of 166 frames.
This is one I'd considered doing myself, as I was sure it'd be pretty quick. But I wasn't prepared for it being this quick!
Great work DrD2k9! I'm going to have my Speedy TAS nomination ready at year end. :)
OMG yes, more Sierra classics!
For this game in particular, please consider a 100% run as well because (unlike most of their later games) KQ1 is pretty elaborate in allowing multiple different solutions on most puzzles.
For people unfamiliar with this game, this is the original and the SMS version (also on this site) is a very different port; the game was built assuming typed sentences for commands. King's Quest was the killer app of the IBM PCjr launched some 35 years ago.
For this game in particular, please consider a 100% run as well because (unlike most of their later games) KQ1 is pretty elaborate in allowing multiple different solutions on most puzzles.
I'm all for doing the 100% run. That said....I could really use some help with routing it.
RNG may not be quite as easy to manipulate on this one. Unlike SQ1, this game doesn't have the option to type "Y" to advance the random seed. Screen scrolling would work, but would be a slightly slower than "Y" was in SQ.
Can you tell us where you got your FreeDOS image from? Its ID doesn't match with the imported image that came with the JPC source (yours is 45c3f118cbca79f176307142c73f780c, the imported one from the JPC source is f334bc4d5dc5f393feb0ca2d1e1cdc25 (which you have used in the past, mind you)). In fact, it doesn't even match with the imported 1.2 image (b47e30f0d3574d8be004742104ada494).
Does the ending song freeze or something? It's a well-known tune that I'm too lazy to look up, but it doesn't seem to actually reach the end.
The music does freeze. The song is "Greensleeves".
DrD2k9, does the game freeze at this point, or is it only the music? Is it still possible to clear the credits dialog box after the music has frozen?
Can you tell us where you got your FreeDOS image from? Its ID doesn't match with the imported image that came with the JPC source (yours is 45c3f118cbca79f176307142c73f780c, the imported one from the JPC source is f334bc4d5dc5f393feb0ca2d1e1cdc25 (which you have used in the past, mind you)). In fact, it doesn't even match with the imported 1.2 image (b47e30f0d3574d8be004742104ada494).
The only thing I can think of is that my FreeDOS is a slightly modified version of the one with the JPC source. I edited the autoexec.bat to automatically load the mouse into linear mode instead of accelerated (this makes TASing mouse based games much easier). I then extracted the resulting drive to a new image.
I can get you a copy of the image if you like.
Side note: The input event stream syncs with both of these version of FreeDOS.
Dacicus wrote:
Some questions that didn't affect my vote:
Does the ending song freeze or something? It's a well-known tune that I'm too lazy to look up, but it doesn't seem to actually reach the end.
Is the RNG in the cave for a dwarf or an elf?
I have no idea why the ending music froze. Bad movie dump maybe? I'll re-dump to see if this is the case.
I had done a quick TAS using debug mode as joke for the RTA community. The end music played fine on that one.
According to the game logic files, it's a dwarf in the cave.
£e Nécroyeur wrote:
The music does freeze. The song is "Greensleeves".
DrD2k9, does the game freeze at this point, or is it only the music? Is it still possible to clear the credits dialog box after the music has frozen?
If a new dump doesn't clear the problem, I'll have to do some checking on whether or not the credits can be cleared after the music freeze.
As a side note: The credit's message can be cleared immediately upon showing up....however this results in just seeing the newly crowned King Graham sitting on his throne while the music plays.
In my opinion, the TAS should end on the last input to get to the credits message, not on the input to clear those credits.
MAJOR EDIT:
I realized that typing "fast" to change the game-speed is actually faster than using the menu. Unfortunately this happens at the very beginning of the run. This required a complete redo of the run.
Here is a link to the new movie file. Someone with the power, please update the submission.
Notes on the new run:
As the mouse isn't needed, I used the stock FreeDos image instead of the modified one. I also bypassed the Autoexec.bat and fdconfig.sys files on boot.
The submission text has been updated to detail changes.
Regarding the concerns addressed earlier in this post:
The game did indeed freeze on a re-dump of the original submission. Clearing the credits wasn't possible.
I've confirmed that this new movie does have normal music through the end, and the credits could be cleared after the music ended.
Though I did not test the event stream of the new run on both FreeDOS images, I'm guessing it would sync on either as it did before.
I'm all for doing the 100% run. That said....I could really use some help with routing it.
I'm happy to help, just tell me when :)
Dacicus wrote:
Is the RNG in the cave for a dwarf or an elf?
The guy who steals your stuff is the dwarf. The elf walks around near a lake and gives you an invisibility ring.
I suppose you've tried this; just to check: killing the giant with the sling may be faster than waiting for him to fall asleep? And climbing down the beanstalk may be faster than using the stairs. An odd detail in the run is that the screen shaking (when you fall) is so slow; I suppose that's because it waits for vsync whereas nothing else in the engine does.
I suppose you've tried this; just to check: killing the giant with the sling may be faster than waiting for him to fall asleep? And climbing down the beanstalk may be faster than using the stairs. An odd detail in the run is that the screen shaking (when you fall) is so slow; I suppose that's because it waits for vsync whereas nothing else in the engine does.
I eliminated killing the giant from my routing plans simply because of all the extra screen transitions it requires. Specifically going out of the way to get the pebbles by the beach, then out of the way again to to get the sling before returning to the giant to kill him. I did not test this option, as I felt all the extra travel would add time (perhaps I should have tested it).
Routing was also the reason I went up the beanstalk instead of the cave climb. There are simply more screen transitions to use the cave going upward (and more distance traveled on those screens for the cave as well).
As far as coming down the beanstalk...from the giant, the cave is closer than the top of the beanstalk; and the bottom of the cave is much closer to the castle. So while the beanstalk is faster routing going up, it's slower routing going down.
Can you tell us where you got your FreeDOS image from? Its ID doesn't match with the imported image that came with the JPC source (yours is 45c3f118cbca79f176307142c73f780c, the imported one from the JPC source is f334bc4d5dc5f393feb0ca2d1e1cdc25 (which you have used in the past, mind you)). In fact, it doesn't even match with the imported 1.2 image (b47e30f0d3574d8be004742104ada494).
The only thing I can think of is that my FreeDOS is a slightly modified version of the one with the JPC source. I edited the autoexec.bat to automatically load the mouse into linear mode instead of accelerated (this makes TASing mouse based games much easier). I then extracted the resulting drive to a new image.
I see....but that's now moot, since you have an updated movie file that syncs on the stock FreeDOS image. I also noticed you used the BIOS from the latest stable Bochs release (2.6.9 as of this writing) instead of the one included with JPC-RR.
I apologize if using the different FreeDOS and BIOS images made/make things difficult.
I had done a bunch of testing a while back while trying to get CD based games working on JPC-rr.
Some of that testing I held over, as I felt it was better to use an updated BIOS and FreeDOS image with linear mouse function (from a TASing perspective).
If these new(er) images need to be provided somewhere (assuming it's legal to do so). I can get them to whoever wants to post/host them.
Specifically for the FreeDOS image; I can't imagine trying to TAS anything (at least in c-square's click/drag modified JPC-RR 11.2) using accelerated mouse movement when linear is an option and the mouse pointer can typically cover the entire screen in any given frame. Even TASing in a different version of JPC-rr that doesn't have the click/drag support, moving a mouse pointer the same distance using linear vs. accelerated would simply require inputting a different (often larger) number into the mouse movement box for linear than it does for accelerated; but this wouldn't change the frame count that it took to move the mouse (at least in any game I've tried in JPC-rr).
I eliminated killing the giant from my routing plans simply because of all the extra screen transitions it requires. ... There are simply more screen transitions to use the cave going upward (and more distance traveled on those screens for the cave as well).
I apologize if using the different FreeDOS and BIOS images made/make things difficult.
It's fine (at least from my perspective). I found the BIOS image in the source for the latest stable Bochs release (2.6.9). As for the modified FreeDOS image, I believe it's legal to post it, since the only thing that changed from the stock FreeDOS image is autoexec.bat, with everything else intact (and FreeDOS itself is available for free).
Huge fan, so huge yes. I'm thrilled to see more Sierra DOS games come through the ranks. (For the record, I'm still paying bounties on the Quest for Glory series.)
This movie happens to sync on kq1.com whose md5 is e87b344230d6b3354f3f916250bb0f85 (all other files identical). I just had to replace the HDD hash in the movie with 0f60cbcf15f13de06d0a29ba9b22349b.
BIOS: BIOS-bochs-latest
CRC32: 48E3B9C8
MD5: 476804F76B096FC1A84785B41D818638
SHA-1: A15D5993B7ACE5DCF555FFE018502E8228D7676A
VGABIOS: VGABIOS-elpin-2.40
CRC32: D825A7C8
MD5: 0686A0B0AB8D81082BFC5CC927C84979
SHA-1: 2FAF0B7ACBD60FC4545B895435F76749349CE963
Both must be imported the same way as game images are.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
