Submission #8817: LoganTheTASer's ZXS Arrow of Death Part 1 in 10:00.80

Arrow of Death Part 1 is part 1 of a 2-part text adventure game published in 1983 for home computers. The worshipped rod's famous glow has been stolen. It's your task to rescue it with the aid of a magical arrow. Part 1 requires you to find the whereabouts of the parts which make up the arrow. It is the 3rd installment in Brian Howarth's Mysterious Adventures series.

This TAS aims to complete the game as fast as possible.

The first half of this TAS is simply loading the tape. Loading finishes on frame 13610 (~4:32).

The usual optimal typing pattern looks like this:

T



Y
P



I
N



G

But a few times, this pattern can be disrupted by typing the 2nd letter of a command 2-3 frames after the first during text loading. Then the pattern looks like this:

T


Y

P


I

N


G

It's possible to input the 1st letter of a command while a picture is loading. Depending on whether the game lags from this or not, this can save 1 frame every time it's done.

Also, we can only press one key 10 times a second, meaning that when we have to type 2 of the same letter in a row, there's a 5 frame delay.

Words that are 5 letters or longer don't have to be typed out in full, and can instead be shortened to 4 letters, for example:

You get the idea.

Gameplay continues like this while waiting through cutscenes until input ends on frame 30087, when we enter the command "CUT BRAN" (CUT BRANCH).

2023 has been a great year for TASing. I've met new people, learned new tricks, and pushed my TASing skills to the limits.

Last year I only had 1 publication, as I was a newcomer to the TASing scene. This year, with much more experience, I've had 70, beating the world record for most publications for one TASer in a year. However, I don't hold the record for most publications in 2023. That title goes to my good friend nymx, with a whopping 73 publications! All of those publications were different games/branches, whereas a few of mine were improvements of my old TASes, so I think he deserves that title.

Spikestuff also beat the record with 65 publications. Good job, you two!

That's all from me. Thanks for reading and see you all in 2024!

nymx: Claiming for judging.

nymx: I used to play a lot of "Text Adventure" games on the Commodore. Well, these kind of games can be hard to judge...mainly because of the right item collection and routing needed to make it faster. But, the things that I remember from these games are the short cut commands, such as "N" for North and short phrases to perform actions. They are being used here. I also compared to this to a human run, not for speed purposes, but to see if the adventure was following the same story line. It appears to be so, with minor differences in short cut commands.

Accepting.

despoa: Processing...