Sky Diver (Compute's Gazette)

A game of skill and luck in which you try to control a parachutist to a safe landing. It's up to you to choose when to jump and which landing pad to try for. You'll also have to learn to compensate for varying winds.
The article for this game can be found on page 52 of Compute's Gazette Issue 1 (July 1983)

Why TAS This Game?

The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 44th TAS from this series.
I've made up my mind to complete a library of all Compute's Gazette games...starting from the very beginning. This game is very primitive, but a good memory...since I didn't have many games and was curious about this one. Not my favorite, but this is the very first game ever published. Not bad, but it certainly put the competition in perspective, as the upcoming games were about to blow this one away.
It is also worth noting that this game is sorta broken, as future issues put some fixes in that would correct some of the problems that you might see. Basically, this disk that was issued with this game was provided a few months after the issue was made. So it was not exactly in sync with everything that was published for correction.
Previous Compute's Gazette submissions include (In order of submission):
1Astro-Panic!2Royal Rescue
3Miami Ice4Chopper 1
5Spike6Heat Seeker
7Omicron8Alien Armada
9Star Dragon10White Water
11Space Gallery12Bagdad
13Race Ace14Quolerus
15Trap16Maze-Mania
17Balloon Blitz18Bowling Champ
19Circuits20Going Up?
21Space Dock22Saloon Shootout
23Sno-Cat24Queens' Quarrel
25Stronghold26Lincoln Green
27Disc Blitz28SuperSprite
29Dunk30Basketball Sam & Ed
31Bee Zone32Q-Bird
33Space Worms34Powerball
35Castle Dungeon36Pool
37Snake Pit38RADs
39Spy Defense40The Forbidden Crypt
41Cosmic Combat42Canyon Cruiser
43Cell Runner

Game Difficulty and Ending

This game can be completed by landing all 3 landing pads. The difficulty is random, in regards to how fast the wind blows. Because this game was written in BASIC, I had to use the "RND" function to "Seed" the RNG to find the fastest game that I could achieve.

Effort In TASing

I spent a few days on this simple game, only to find the best RNG that I could obtain. It was sorta interesting, but I found out also that the fewer inputs you create, the faster the game runs. So I had to find a good balance and an "Early Input" ending to make this the fastest that I know how to.

Human Comparison


ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.
ThunderAxe31: Accepting for publication.

despoa: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8742: nymx's C64 Sky Diver in 00:53.77
nymx
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So just to make things clear...I'm not super excited about this submission, but I have decided to start making a complete library of all the TASable games from Compute's Gazette. These beginning ones are very basic, but they get better as the issues go on. If you are one of the followers of this series, you will already have figured that out. Note also that this game was completely done with PETSCII (Commodore's version of ASCII) characters.
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
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. ---- [5693] C64 Sky Diver by nymx in 00:53.77