Boulder Dash

This classic game is about a diamond chase underground with many obstacles. Try - as Rockford - to collect all required diamonds in a total of 16 caves (A-P) each with 5 difficulty levels, and find the exit in the time given. After every 4 caves (D, H, L, P) follows a so-called "intermission", a logical puzzle (without its own "cave letter"). Rockford can dig through the ground and push rocks. But these can also be dangerous. If he stands directly below a rock, Rockford can hold it on his head. But if a rock falls on his head, it will cost him a life. Rocks will not stay on each other or on walls. If Rockford digs away the supporting soil, rocks will start to slide. Furthermore, there are some not-so-friendly animals such as fireflies, amoeba and other things you'd better not touch. Butterflies and other inhabitants of the underground can only be defeated by letting rocks fall on them. When defeated, they turn into diamonds, which Rockford can pick up. As soon as the necessary amount of jewels has been collected (the number is shown in the upper bar), the escape tunnel opens into the next level. Strategy and thoughtful planning is the basis to master this game.
After completing these 16 caves, it returns back to Cave A on Difficulty 5 (which is selected at the Title Screen).

Tools Used

  • Lua Scripting (For BOTing Cave G's RNG)
  • RAM Watch
  • BizHawk 2.6.1

Why TAS this game?

Once again, another game that I used to play on the Commodore 64 in my youth. As usual, this game was difficult enough that I could never get past the first few levels. There are no official speed-runs that I could find, for comparison; however, runs do exist but don't seem to be serious enough for me to provide.

Re-Record Count

Yes, you saw that correct. I've been TASing this game for about a year. During the process, I realized that Cave G needed to be BOTed for RNG reasons. This is where a chunk of re-records were made. As for the other caves, tons of work was put in to routing and other strategies.

Strategies

This game is mostly routing. Timers exist in the game, which drive the movement of hostile obstacles. Not knowing where the timer falls, it was an experiment of constant tests...when coming in proximity to these obstacles. Knowing how you would react, within their deadly touch, could be determined and routing would be adjusted to make the best of the situation. Other than that, RNG was only an issue for Cave G. See below for details on Cave strategies.

Strategies by Cave

  • Cave A (Intro)
Pick up Jewels and exit before time is up. No special strategies. Committed to grabbing the fastest 12 diamonds.
  • Cave B (Rooms)
Pick up Jewels, but you must move boulders to get all Jewels. Getting jewels in the right order, helped to keep obstacles from slowing me down.
  • Cave C (Maze)
Pick up Jewels. You must get every Jewel to exit.
  • Cave D (Butterflies)
Drop boulders on Butterflies to create Jewels. The only strategy that I came up with, was to lure one butterfly over while I waited for a bolder crash to finish developing diamonds. This saved time, instead of doing one at a time.
  • Cave E (Guard)
The Jewels are there for the grabbing, but they are guarded by the deadly Fireflies.
  • Cave F (FireFly Dens)
Another level where each Firefly is guarding a Jewel.
  • Cave G (Amoeba)
Here, you must surround the Amoeba with boulders so it can't grow any more. Pick up Jewels that are created when it suffocates. RNG controls the spread of the Amoeba. I ended up BOTing this level to get the Amoeba to spread extremely quick. Not doing so, it took more than a minute to fully spawn and convert to diamonds. As I learned more and more about this game, I had to go back and redo rooms before Cave G...which meant that I was Re-BOTing it in its entirety. This is where about 90,000 re-records came from.
  • Cave H (Enchanted Wall)
Activate the Enchanted Wall and create as many Jewels as you can. Basically, a bolder must smash into this horizontal floor/wall, to produce the diamonds
  • Cave I (Greed)
You have to get a lot of Jewels here. Lucky there are so many.
  • Cave J (Tracks)
Get the Jewels and avoid the Fireflies. This is probably one of the more challenging routes of the game.
  • Cave K (Crowd)
You must move a lot of boulders around in some tight spaces. I took it a bit further, by performing some maneuvers to get the deadly moving obstacles to explode near some walls, reducing my travel time and optimizing it further.
  • Cave L (Walls)
You must blast through walls to get at some of the Jewels. Drop a boulder on a Firefly at the right time and place to do this. This was extremely difficult to time the arrival of these exploding obstacles, but I eventually worked it out so that time was minimally wasted on waiting...which doesn't seem to be all that much.
  • Cave M (Apocalypse)
Bring the Butterflies and Amoeba together and watch the Jewels fly. Of course, that is the statement made in the instruction manual. I took a total different approach...which yielded the wildest scene of the game, IMO. This is my favorite cave of the entire game, where I narrowly avoid death with all the falling diamonds.
  • Cave N (Zigzag)
Magically transform the Butterflies into Jewels, but don't waste any boulders and watch out for the Fireflies. Ha! I only use two boulders, timed and very creatively, which caused a chain reaction to provide all the diamonds on my trip to the bottom. A very fun cave to watch.
  • Cave O (Funnel)
There is an Enchanted Wall at the bottom of the rock funnel. Optimization was tricky, only performing the absolute necessary moves to allow enough boulders to come through.
  • Cave P (Enchanted Boxes)
The top of each square room is an Enchanted Wall, but you'll have to blast your way inside. Another example of performing the absolute minimal effort to allow for the boulders to convert and fall with little effort on collection.

Special Thanks

  • DrD2k9 for the talks on submission viability.
  • feos, for reviewing my concerns over submitting this, and confirming the choice of difficulty.

Samsara: Judging.
Samsara: File replaced with a version that trims the input from the bonus cave, and also a bonus 132 frame improvement.
Samsara: Due to bot usage, file replaced once again with a version that wipes the re-record count... But also, accepting!
fsvgm777: Processing.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7232: nymx's C64 Boulder Dash in 11:56.00
nymx
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Something that I failed to mention in the submission text, yet I feel it needs a discussion. The last input, which terminates the final bonus level...can actually be removed. This means that this movie could be reduced by 525 frames. The only thing is..the ending would have a scene that will be confusing...where the main character just sits there for about 20 seconds, before automatically ending. Anybody got a word on the choice for this ending? Should we just leave the termination input in?
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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Absolute chaos, I love it!
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End input early! A 20 second wait is not so bad.
nymx
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£e Nécroyeur wrote:
End input early! A 20 second wait is not so bad.
Thanks. Interesting...this is very strange and probably keeps the game from ending early. I just pulled the bonus ending input, on frame 36541, and it times out...but doesn't continue. This would tell me that the input is needed in order for the game to cycle back around to the beginning (Cave A on hardest difficulty). hmmm, I don't know how the rules would apply in this situation, for removing it. Question for the Judge: Do the rules support a "dead end" situation like this?
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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nymx wrote:
The only thing is..the ending would have a scene that will be confusing...where the main character just sits there for about 20 seconds, before automatically ending.
That's basically having a good movie end with a whimper, not a bang. Personally I'd prefer not to have the char standing doing nothing for twenty seconds.
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Boulder Dash is one of a very few games I had access to earlier in my life and it left a profound impact on me. I would stagger through the Amoeba level repeatedly attempting to get it to be as large as possible without turning into rocks or running out of time. Seeing this mastery on display definitely gets my attention and my Yes vote.
I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
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nymx wrote:
Question for the Judge: Do the rules support a "dead end" situation like this?
I took a look at the run and had a brief talk with other staff and we're generally in agreement that the final input isn't needed here. It's a looping game with the final input leading to the next loop, it doesn't lead to an ending or credits or anything final, so it isn't necessary to include in the input file.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
nymx
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dwangoAC wrote:
Seeing this mastery on display definitely gets my attention and my Yes vote.
That is about the best compliment I could have hoped for. That was exactly the reason I had to BOT that level. Sad that it was the only level that I could do that on. Thanks man!
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
nymx
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Samsara wrote:
nymx wrote:
Question for the Judge: Do the rules support a "dead end" situation like this?
I took a look at the run and had a brief talk with other staff and we're generally in agreement that the final input isn't needed here. It's a looping game with the final input leading to the next loop, it doesn't lead to an ending or credits or anything final, so it isn't necessary to include in the input file.
Ok, that is good to hear. So do you want me to remove it or will you handle it?
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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FINALLY!! I've always wanted to see this one done. Would have done it myself by now, but I really wasn't sure how to even go about C64 TASing or how to find the correct version of the game or anything. I thought about attempting a run of the GBA version, but that wouldn't be very ideal since the screen size is so small. And I even thought about running the Wii VC port. But now that a run actually exists, I'm very interested in copying the setup and examining this for improvements. I see that you used a bot to manipulate the amoebas. I assume that the amoeba AI here is nothing compared to the NES version, which was eventually solved and found to be very deterministic (it had to do with objects touching the amoeba blob that changed its growth pattern, and number of free spaces around the blob that sped up its growth rate). So if I take a stab at this game, I'd be more than willing to try using your bot to deal with that cave. I might be in the minority here, but I'd also love to see a full-game run. I know of the precedent set by the NES run of running only loop 4 as the "hardest difficulty", but there's a rather huge difference between the C64 and NES versions of the game: whereas the NES version increases the difficulty of each level on subsequent loops by loading the base level and running a script to make small tweaks (a blocked passage here, an extra enemy there, and so on), the different difficulty levels on C64 are practically entirely different levels from one another, requiring drastic changes to the routes and strategies. I estimate that such a TAS would take about 30 minutes more, but I don't think that fans of this game who have waited so long for a TAS would mind watching that. About the ending input thing, personally I would consider it a perfectly valid speed/entertainment tradeoff if the movie hits the reset button (assuming one exists on the C64, which I'm not familiar with) to return to the title screen and leave the viewer with the music. That all being said, I will now go and actually watch the video. Thank you for this, it's really made my day!
nymx
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CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
FINALLY!! I've always wanted to see this one done. Would have done it myself by now, but I really wasn't sure how to even go about C64 TASing or how to find the correct version of the game or anything. I thought about attempting a run of the GBA version, but that wouldn't be very ideal since the screen size is so small. And I even thought about running the Wii VC port.
Well...thank you very much. I am well aware of your effort on the NES and have watched it to see how the C64 and NES compare. As you aware, the two are dramatically different in mechanics and how the game runs the obstacles on each room.
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
But now that a run actually exists, I'm very interested in copying the setup and examining this for improvements.
No objection to that. It only confirms that I picked a good game for showcasing.
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
I see that you used a bot to manipulate the amoebas. I assume that the amoeba AI here is nothing compared to the NES version, which was eventually solved and found to be very deterministic (it had to do with objects touching the amoeba blob that changed its growth pattern, and number of free spaces around the blob that sped up its growth rate). So if I take a stab at this game, I'd be more than willing to try using your bot to deal with that cave.
How about this...look me up on Discord and we can talk.
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
I might be in the minority here, but I'd also love to see a full-game run. I know of the precedent set by the NES run of running only loop 4 as the "hardest difficulty", but there's a rather huge difference between the C64 and NES versions of the game: whereas the NES version increases the difficulty of each level on subsequent loops by loading the base level and running a script to make small tweaks (a blocked passage here, an extra enemy there, and so on), the different difficulty levels on C64 are practically entirely different levels from one another, requiring drastic changes to the routes and strategies. I estimate that such a TAS would take about 30 minutes more, but I don't think that fans of this game who have waited so long for a TAS would mind watching that.
This was a concern of mine. After talking with a few people on the judges thread, I treated this game like I do others...where I choose the most difficult level to TAS.
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
About the ending input thing, personally I would consider it a perfectly valid speed/entertainment tradeoff if the movie hits the reset button (assuming one exists on the C64, which I'm not familiar with) to return to the title screen and leave the viewer with the music.
I'm really cautious about following the rules. Since Samsara and the staff have come to a conclusion on the final input, I would certainly choose to end the inputs earlier, since I strive to find everything that is allowed by the rules to make the time as fast as possible.
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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I really rather enjoyed this run! Especially the second half of the movie because the game gets so incredibly hectic. You did a good job of making a game that might otherwise be uninteresting to watch enjoyable.
nymx
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Zinfidel wrote:
I really rather enjoyed this run! Especially the second half of the movie because the game gets so incredibly hectic. You did a good job of making a game that might otherwise be uninteresting to watch enjoyable.
Thank you!
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
nymx
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Samsara, I'm really sorry. I found a dumb mistake on the last Cave that improves this run by 132 frames. While I was at it, I removed that ending input from the bonus cave. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/75368131588809927
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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Thank you man... This is is a pure pleasure to watch : ) I remember this game from my childhood days, could never beat it, still remember that infamous "never-ending" falling diamonds and rocks and other antics earlier/later... thank you so much for running this through, and in such a beautiful style too! : )
nymx
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Oh...something that I forgot. Assuming this gets accepted, I would like to suggest frame 29371 for publication. I think this spot represents the most chaotic moment in the entire run.
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. ---- [4550] C64 Boulder Dash by nymx in 11:56.00
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The SUper Boulder Dash release by Electronic Arts loads considerably faster. assuming bizhawk supports .g64 images, it should boot. if not you can convert this .g64 to a .d64 and it should still work. there's fault in the protection checker where if it fails it will keep retrying, and then continue and load the game anyway. whoops! This is without a fastload cart. if action replay v5 NTSC is attached as well as the .d64, nearly any disk release of the game will will load very rapidly, and faster than this one. But with no external hardware, this one loads fastest. It is indeed the same game, just with an extra EOA logo on the title screen.
nymx
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zaphod77 wrote:
The SUper Boulder Dash release by Electronic Arts loads considerably faster. assuming bizhawk supports .g64 images, it should boot. if not you can convert this .g64 to a .d64 and it should still work. there's fault in the protection checker where if it fails it will keep retrying, and then continue and load the game anyway. whoops! This is without a fastload cart. if action replay v5 NTSC is attached as well as the .d64, nearly any disk release of the game will will load very rapidly, and faster than this one. But with no external hardware, this one loads fastest. It is indeed the same game, just with an extra EOA logo on the title screen.
I usually end up using a tape version, because most of the disk images tend to be "cracks" and I would rather have an official release, over taking a chance on a version that has trainers and other non-related content (with cheat prompts). As for the Fast Load, that would be only for Disk Drives...where all Pins were used on the cable...instead of one. The Tape drive had its own socket, which was painfully slow.
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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that version i mentioned IS an official release, sold in stores. it loads faster that the tape. i can provide the game for you if you want. but turns out the fastest loading original is the first star software PAL release. but it runs just fine on ntsc. game code for all releases of bd is confirmed identical. ftp://8bitfiles.net/archives/c64-preservation-project/g64/b/boulder_dash%5Bfirst_star_1984%5D%28pal%29%28%21%29.zip the game does not actually function correctly on PAL anyway. intermission 3 is impossible, though this does not prevent progress.
nymx
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zaphod77 wrote:
that version i mentioned IS an official release, sold in stores. it loads faster that the tape. i can provide the game for you if you want. but turns out the fastest loading original is the first star software PAL release. but it runs just fine on ntsc. game code for all releases of bd is confirmed identical. ftp://8bitfiles.net/archives/c64-preservation-project/g64/b/boulder_dash%5Bfirst_star_1984%5D%28pal%29%28%21%29.zip the game does not actually function correctly on PAL anyway. intermission 3 is impossible, though this does not prevent progress.
Thanks.
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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Note that a lot of the smooth motion tricks from NES version don't work at all here. BUT you can still slip past enemies at times. notably, you can walk upwards past a trapped enemy on the left side to set it free without getting hurt. This is because of the way the game scans from upper left to lower right. When the enemy is higher, it's scanned first, and doesn't see you next to it. then you move up, and are now next to it. but because it's been scanned already, it doesn't kill you. then when you are scanned again before the enemy, you can move upwards again . Then when the enemy is scanned again once again you are not next to it, so no explosion If an enemy is directly above you, or to the left of you, it will blow up when it sees you next to it because it's scanned first. but If you are above or left of it, you are scanned first, and can take a step away before it sees you. enemies scan for you before they move. you can appear to walk right next to an enemy, provided you are above or left if it, because it scans before it moves next to you again, and then you can move before it sees you again. Many levels created by other players for this game (with level editors) depend on this all important behavior to even be solvable. Cave F showcases this in the TAS, where he keeps slipping past enemies over and over again when it seems like he should be dead. but with framestep and knowledge of the cave scan, it's clear how this works.
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also, you may want to try TASing Supaplex in DOS. this has a ton of different levels, and the smooth motion for everything allows lots of crazy stunts that are easy for a TAS.
nymx
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zaphod77 wrote:
also, you may want to try TASing Supaplex in DOS. this has a ton of different levels, and the smooth motion for everything allows lots of crazy stunts that are easy for a TAS.
Ok...I'll check that out. Thank you.
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