King's Bounty is a turn-based strategy game. The objective is to recover the Sceptre of Order. Map pieces that reveal the location of the sceptre are gained by defeating villains and finding special artifacts. A normal play session would involve exploring four large continents and battling hundreds of creatures, but in this movie nobody gets killed and everyone is happy. After the game begins (at frame 585) it takes 25 frames to complete it.
Plays at hardest level
Aims for fastest time
Manipulates luck
Ignores semi-important goals in the game
If someone wants to improve it, watch these RAM addresses:
00FFE8A8 (sceptre x-coordinate)
00FFE8AA (sceptre y-coordinate)
{11,5} would be the perfect coordinates, but a) I'm not sure if the sceptre can be under the starting location and b) it may take more time to manipulate that than it takes to walk to the location I got, {11,4}.
adelikat: Accepting this run. The response is good and the run shows amazing luck manipulation. This should be the easiest job an encoder will ever get :p Hell, compressing the .png screenshot will probably take longer than the .avi. Come to think of it, there isn't much to choose from in the screen shot considering only 25 frames of gameplay :p
Bisqwit: Submission file replaced. According to the author, it is now 5 frames faster. It is indeed now only 610 frames long.
Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 632
Location: Seattle, WA
adelikat wrote:
What does rejecting this run say to the concept of TAS? "complete a game as fast as possible at all costs but if you do it TOO fast then it is boring and will be rejected"
And yes, if watching paint dry can be done in 25 frames of gameplay then you got a yes vote from me :p
haha, I should go right to work on seeing how quickly one could paint the most complex picture in 'Color-a-Dinosaur.' Not only would there be a fair bit of thought put into figuring out the fastest possible way, but, hey, you'd even have your paint-drying desires met right there!--oops, wasn't on the last page yet.
No entertainment, I spent 15 minutes trying to get the rom, the movie and Gens set up and that was so not worth it. I was actually ouright disappointed watching the game just...end, and it was a dumb ending too. Heh.
What does rejecting this run say to the concept of TAS? "complete a game as fast as possible at all costs but if you do it TOO fast then it is boring and will be rejected
I think this justifies it all.
I was under the impression that we were hosting movies that were entertaining, not just fast. If completing a game fast was all it took, why don't we publish Front Line and/or other boring games/runs, just because they're fast?
(I miss the old distinction of "Tool-assisted superplay movies"...)
If completing a game fast was all it took, why don't we publish Front Line and/or other boring games/runs, just because they're fast?
At least for the reason stated on the second page by me: a game several hours worth beaten in 25 frames by nifty luck manipulation. This run is entertainning from conceptual point of view, not cinematically entertaining of course.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I was under the impression that we were hosting movies that were entertaining, not just fast. If completing a game fast was all it took, why don't we publish Front Line and/or other boring games/runs, just because they're fast?
I find this run entertaining because it is so fast. I could watch it 10 times over and not get bored with it, to boot - something I can't say for most of the videos that are published - they lose their entertainment value the second, third time through. Maybe it's just entertaining for me for what it DOESN'T do and for leaving you speechless about how they could make a game beatable like that...
EDIT: Imagine how amazed/entertained/confused you would be if you were playing this game on the console and managed to do this exactly? High wtf-factor there.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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Joined: 11/3/2004
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You wouldn't ever do this on a console though. You have to use the search option to find the septor, which takes days of your time.
What would really happen is that you fight many villians to uncover the map only to find the damn thing was right in front of the castle to the whole time (what a dumb-ass king, btw).
Well, what do you think — there are a lot of books and movies describing just the exact situation: a powerful artifact that would make everything fine has to be somewhere in the close and ridiculously obvious place (or in the heart of the main character, which is the worst scenario).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
I improved the movie by 5 frames and now the sceptre can't be manipulated any faster to the location {11, 4}. I tested all meaningful button sequences for it.
Now the only possible improvement is to get {11, 5} within 9 extra frames of manipulation. There's almost 20 000 combinations to test, even though the only meaningful input values for each frame are left/right/idle. I can't do that, so this is my final movie. I hope someone improves it somehow someday. :)
It's essentially the same movie, so I'd better not re-submit it. I guess Bisqwit is the only one who can replace the submission file? Please replace it with this: http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/kbtas.zip
Here's a screenshot for it, if it gets published:
or
Now the only possible improvement is to get {11, 5} within 9 extra frames of manipulation. There's almost 20 000 combinations to test, even though the only meaningful input values for each frame are left/right/idle. I can't do that, so this is my final movie. I hope someone improves it somehow someday. :)
The RNG is that volatile? I didn't know that.
Anyway this calls for a disassembly, although technically, with only 20000 combinations, you could use a bot.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Oops, I miscalculated something...
It's ~20 000 for the additional 9 frames, but there is actually a total of 18 frames available. I missed the fact that the 9 frames I used for manipulation in my movie have a meaning too.
It's more than 380 000 000 combinations, but it comes down to ~150 000 000 for various reasons. For example, pressing left/right costs 2 frames. Also, some of the combinations lead to the password screen which is a dead end.
An idea. Hack the memory to see if getting the scepter from 11,5 is any faster than walking a bit. If it is say, three frames faster, then you have 12 frames to play with, much less work, I think.
Of course it might be 9 frames faster in which case...
A better idea: correctly calculate that the number of combinations of left/right/idle in 18 or fewer frames where left/right take 2 frames each is actually 349,525. While still too much for a human, a bot may be able to deal with that.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Thanks for your math Nitrodon. (I seem to suck at it.)
Yeah, the possible input for each step would be:
a) L-idle
b) R-idle
c) idle
I'd be honored to be beaten by a bot. :)
or
