Most up-to-date movie file: userfiles/info/61773060081900787
This TAS completes Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Cloudy Mountain was later added to the title to distinguish from the sequels) in some ridiculous time of 11.482 seconds. Considering a casual playthrough takes like 10 minutes, I couldn't be happier with the result.
Objectives
  • Uses hardest difficulty
  • 2 players
  • Major skip glitch
  • Heavy luck manipulation
  • Genre: Action/Adventure
8-Frame Improvement By simply holding the direction we plan to run before the map screen transitions into each mountain, we were able to begin running slightly sooner and save six frames. The other two frames were lag that was saved by 1) entering the first mountain when it was red instead of black, and 2) manipulating the RNG on cloudy mountain inside the first mountain instead of on the map screen. The rest of the TAS notes are pretty much copied from the previous submission.
Difficulty The game was played on the hardest difficulty, which the manual calls "Hero" difficulty. Using any of the other three difficulties would not have made this any faster.
Using Two Controllers Intellivision controllers were programmed very poorly. You might think having 15 unique buttons per controller could lead to a wide range of options, until you realize that only 1 of those 15 can be pressed at any given time. That is horrid. Luckily, the Intellivision supports the use of two controllers in this game. So now we can press a WHOPPING two buttons at the same time! Two spaces can now be moved at once on the overworld map, and picking up items or shooting arrows can both be done while running.
The Corner Skip Go to position 21 on the map (refer to image below). For some reason, there are designated coordinates for spaces outside the playable area, and one of them, position 0, happens to be passable (reasoning in the next paragraph). Therefore, we are able to enter this out-of-bounds region by moving up-left. Moving up-left again from here causes an underflow of 21 units to position 235 (0=256; 256-21=235). This happens to place us inside the river, which is supposed to be impassable, but we can still progress by simply moving up-right to position 216. Corner Skip is not optimal on the majority of map layouts, so I had to advance RNG for 3 frames to get an agreeable outcome. All map values are derived from RAM address D3.
Position 0 is passable due to an oversight in the behavior at RAM address 34. Address 34 controls the intended gameplay aspect which restores the playability of a specific mountain, but only after playing through four others. Address 34 is originally assigned a value of 0, becomes 121 (the "home" coordinate) after playing through three mountains, and after exiting the fourth mountain, the address will change to whatever the coordinate of the first mountain you entered was (after exiting the fifth mountain, it will change to the coordinates of the second, and so forth). The purpose this serves is every time the value changes, the collision property of the previous coordinate value will change from passable back to default.
Since address 34 is originally assigned a value of 0, you're allowed to pass into coordinate 0 and perform the corner skip. When the address changes to 121, however, the original properties of coordinate 0 (impassable) are restored, and is hence why the corner skip will not work once you have passed through three mountains.
The First Mountain All we want to do is just get to cloudy mountain, so we've got to find the exit ladder here ASAP. By looking at RAM addresses AA and AB, we'll know immediately whether or not the snake guarding the ladder is in an adjacent room. Since the player's starting location is (0,0), and the caves are an array of 4x4 rooms, this means the three adjacent rooms are (1,0), (0,1), and (0,3). In this movie, AA=0 and AB=3, so the snake's location is (0,3) in the room directly above the player's spawn location. We then ambush the snake and grab the ladder right under his nose. 4 frames of RNG advancing were required to get this agreeable outcome.
Corridor Curvature Each room we visit can be one of eight possible shapes, as shown by the image below. The preferred room type is any which has a straight connecting corridor in the direction we're travelling. All the connections highlighted in red are bad, as they are curved and therefore waste too much time to traverse. Luckily, the majority of connections is straight, so getting good corridor RNG is more likely than not.
Cloudy Mountain All we need to do is find both pieces of "The Crown of Kings", each being guarded by a winged dragon, and we win. The first dragon we encounter must be killed using all three of our arrows; otherwise, escaping death is impossible. The optimal cave layout required here is absolutely absurd: both dragons must be adjacent to each other (RAM Addresses 9E,9F,A2,A3), one of which must also be adjacent to room (0,0) AND all of the connecting corridors must be straight. Of the literal HUNDREDS of scenarios I've tested, the one you see in this movie is the only scenario I've found to meet all three criteria at all.
It should be noted that cloudy mountain can actually be entered from the left or the right side on the overworld map. While the placement of enemies and objects doesn't change between the two sides, the room shapes do. As a result, we're given two chances to have good corridor RNG, given that dragon position is optimal when entering on that frame.
Suggested Screenshot Frame 673
Suggested Publication Notes (feel free to edit if necessary)
"The gameplay of AD&D: Cloudy Mountain involves exploring a series of randomly generated mazes, searching for tools or arrows with which to progress on the overworld map, or to defeat monsters. The end goal is to reach Cloudy Mountain and recover the Crown of Kings from the fearsome winged dragons!
Winslinator uses a major skip, two controllers, and substantial luck manipulation to tear through the game's content, only visiting two mountains in the process.
This is an improvement of 8 frames (0.134 seconds) over the previous publication ([3384] INTV Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain "warp glitch" by Winslinator in 00:11.62), thanks to better movement and lag reduction.
If you're itching for more Advanced Dungeons & Dragons we also have a run for the second title Treasure of Tarmin."

ThunderAxe31: File replaced with a 5 frames improvement.
ThunderAxe31: Judging.
ThunderAxe31: Accepting as improvement over the published movie.
Spikestuff: Published.


TASVideoAgent
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Spikestuff
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Now with 193 extra rerecords. Here's my Meh vote and here's my claim for pubs.
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Zinfidel
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Another 'meh' from me because the featured gameplay just isn't interesting, but beating the game this fast is neat.
nymx
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I've always been interested in Intellivision, but never really got to play one. This looks to be a good game for the time, although it doesn't grab me for entertainment, the fact that you found a way to cut 3 frames for a game that is done crazily short is impressive.
Winslinator wrote:
Winslinator uses a major skip, two controllers, and substantial luck manipulation to tear through the game's content, only visiting two mountains in the process.
Curious, for such stated luck manipulation...I would have figured the re-record count would have been higher. For my first submission, I had submitted a raw text file which showed "0" rerecords and the true count was never realized. For this, you have some really interesting findings that helped you to cut frames, but how much time did it really take? I can't imagine that you made these discoveries among 194 tries. Would you care to elaborate a bit further on how you approached your experimentation? Also, I found the technique of using the 2nd controller interesting. I have also done this for one Commodore 64 TAS. Systems, as awesome as they were back then, were not programmed with extensive routines to prevent controller input from making any changes to what a "First" player would experience. I remember playing around with "Player 1" and seeing rare but random characters type up...which is one reason why I believe c64 programmers used Player 2 mostly for single player games. Btw, Yes vote.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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The methodology was simple: look at the coordinates of the rooms that the enemies are in when the mountain is entered. If they're good, continue testing. If not, move on to the next situation. The reason the rerecord count is so low is because I started this project 3 years ago when the Intellivision core was still under development. When I was about ready to submit for the first time, I realized the movie didn't work on the newest version of BizHawk (due to new intellivision features) so I redid the entire movie and it reset the rerecord count. The original rerecord count is forever lost but I estimate it would've been somewhere around 5000. The extra 193 rerecords are simply from testing the new strategy. By the way, just found another 2-frame improvement, so I will be cancelling this submission.
Post subject: Don't cancel please
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Please don't cancel, there is no reason. We can replace the movie file in this submission, since it's a minor improvement.
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Ok gotcha. Saved yet another frame since my last post as well.
nymx
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TheWinslinator wrote:
The methodology was simple: look at the coordinates of the rooms that the enemies are in when the mountain is entered. If they're good, continue testing. If not, move on to the next situation. The reason the rerecord count is so low is because I started this project 3 years ago when the Intellivision core was still under development. When I was about ready to submit for the first time, I realized the movie didn't work on the newest version of BizHawk (due to new intellivision features) so I redid the entire movie and it reset the rerecord count. The original rerecord count is forever lost but I estimate it would've been somewhere around 5000. The extra 193 rerecords are simply from testing the new strategy. By the way, just found another 2-frame improvement, so I will be cancelling this submission.
Ok...sounds good. :)
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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OK the submission text has been edited with a new temporary encode. link below is to the improved movie which is now an eight-frame improvement over my 2017 submission! http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/61773060081900787
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. ---- [4142] INTV Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain "warp glitch" by Winslinator in 00:11.48
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Thanks for publising, guys. Only thing is that the description forgot to mention that this was an 8-frame improvement over the predecessor movie, and I'd like to request it be added in. Thank you :)