I've been toying with my first TAS and decided to create a thread so I can share my observations and issues.
Mine Bombers is a mining/combat game released originally in 1995 as shareware and in 2001 as freeware. The main attraction is 2-4 player death match mode but the game also features a 15 levels long single player campaign.
The goal of each level is to reach the exit (black square). Between the levels you can buy weapons and equipment.
An unoptimized test run of the first few levels. In a proper run it's probably necessary to collect treasures and items so I'll be better equipped for the later levels:
Link to video
Early issues:
1) I haven't been able to get the sound blaster to work. I'm getting this message:
2) It's one of those games that run notably faster with a faster CPU. Despite being a late era DOS game, I feel that the default 20MHz CPU speed is optimal for this run as it makes the run still relatively easy to follow despite being quite fast (with the fastest in-game speed setting).
Early observations and strategies:
-Info screens: https://imgur.com/a/ucxRo
-Levels can be viewed in game's editor. I'll post pics later.
-Before starting the game I set the game speed to 100% and number of players to 1 (otherwise it would start a death match mode).
-Item boxes contain random amount(?) of random items. Box's content is decided when player picks it up so RNG manipulation will be really important as some items are very expensive and can be sold.
-Getting enough money for good digging equipment and armor is probably worth it
-Player can buy teleport items (round hole) that can be used to move to the teleports that are already on the map (the second level in the test run skips half of the level)
-The fourth level and some of the later levels got several exits. But it appears that only one is available. I haven't yet tested if the exit location is random.
Early issues:
1) I haven't been able to get the sound blaster to work. I'm getting this message:
Does the game work with any other sound settings, or do they all produce this error? (obviously works without sound).
Kenttsu wrote:
2) It's one of those games that run notably faster with a faster CPU. Despite being a late era DOS game, I feel that the default 20MHz CPU speed is optimal for this run as it makes the run still relatively easy to follow despite being quite fast (with the fastest in-game speed setting).
New processors in 1995 averaged in the 150-200mhz range (see here). Even for the few years before that they were well above 20mhz. I'd bump the CPU speed up myself. This can be done by decreasing the CPU divider during assembly in JPC-rr. A CPU divider of 5 will yield a 200mhz system; 6.6.... will yield a 150 mhz system (I don't remember if you can do decimals in the CPU divider setting or not).
While the resulting video at this speed may be incomprehensible a slowed down version can be encoded as well to watch what's actually happening while still getting the shorter time for the completed TAS itself.
Kenttsu wrote:
Early observations and strategies:
-Levels can be viewed in game's editor. I'll post pics later.
-Before starting the game I set the game speed to 100% and number of players to 1 (otherwise it would start a death match mode).
-Item boxes contain random amount(?) of random items. Box's content is decided when player picks it up so RNG manipulation will be really important as some items are very expensive and can be sold.
-Getting enough money for good digging equipment and armor is probably worth it
-Player can buy teleport items (round hole) that can be used to move to the teleports that are already on the map (the second level in the test run skips half of the level)
-The fourth level and some of the later levels got several exits. But it appears that only one is available. I haven't yet tested if the exit location is random.
Use RNG manipulation as efficiently as possible to yield your best box contents within reason for frames lost to manipulation.
Look into the teleport stuff more. You may be able to cut a lot of game out using these.
For sound, make sure you type in "set BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 T6" before you start the exe. If the game doesn't autodetect the sound card, go into the setup and choose Sound Blaster 16 (DMA16 5, IRQ 5, Port 220).
Not sure if the error message is related to sound, but if it is and my instructions don't fix it, there's not much that can be done about it.
Yeah, I've tried different SB options but it crashes every time either immediately, or bit later if I set the no music option. PC speaker doesn't crash, I haven't tried to encode with it, but it probably works. Gravis crashes with a different message.
Setup screens:
Here's another test run. This time with 100 MHz CPU. Shopping screens are sadly quite slow (well relatively speaking) and each input takes bunch of frames. This means that with faster CPU it's often faster to take a bit more time consuming route in the actual level if it means that we don't need to buy stuff.
I also managed to fine tune my strategies in each level.
Link to video
200 MHz CPU makes things much trickier since the character moves ~3 squares in every frame. I wasn't able to get out of the doorway of the first room when I tested it.
Level maps.
https://imgur.com/a/zJhvA
Icon explanations:
https://i.imgur.com/wYp92Sw.png
After some analysis I'm starting to think that buying digging equipment might be unnecessary since there's not much required digging and bomb can solve most those situations.
Probably going to try the first semi serious playthrough next week.
The first full playthrough.
Link to video
It's still possible to shave bunch of seconds. The main goal was just to beat the game without losing too much time and I didn't try more than few times to optimize each rng pick up.
Nice run, Kenttsu! Re: Sound Blaster, are you using the Sound Blaster 1 option? When you assemble the system, do you include the org.jpc.modules.SoundCard module? Have you tried not bypassing fdconfig.sys and autoexec.bat?
Thanks for suggestions, but didn't work. For what it's worth the game crashes every time (even with PC speaker or without sound) if I try to play multiplayer game so it's not the most stable game to begin with (Dosbox works fine though).
I just noticed that the command prompt gave error messages:
Here's a sample test video in case I'm doing something wrong:
Link to video
And here's the assemble screen:
I tried it myself, and I'm getting the same fault, although it happens even before the first game screen loads (immediately after I type in MB). I tried playing with a few settings, but no luck. :(
2) It's one of those games that run notably faster with a faster CPU. Despite being a late era DOS game, I feel that the default 20MHz CPU speed is optimal for this run as it makes the run still relatively easy to follow despite being quite fast (with the fastest in-game speed setting).
Early observations and strategies:
-Info screens: https://imgur.com/a/ucxRo
-Levels can be viewed in game's editor. I'll post pics later.
-Before starting the game I set the game speed to 100% and number of players to 1 (otherwise it would start a death match mode).
-Item boxes contain random amount(?) of random items. Box's content is decided when player picks it up so RNG manipulation will be really important as some items are very expensive and can be sold.
-Getting enough money for good digging equipment and armor is probably worth it
-Player can buy teleport items (round hole) that can be used to move to the teleports that are already on the map (the second level in the test run skips half of the level)
-The fourth level and some of the later levels got several exits. But it appears that only one is available. I haven't yet tested if the exit location is random.
Here's another test run. This time with 100 MHz CPU. Shopping screens are sadly quite slow (well relatively speaking) and each input takes bunch of frames. This means that with faster CPU it's often faster to take a bit more time consuming route in the actual level if it means that we don't need to buy stuff.
I also managed to fine tune my strategies in each level.
Link to video
200 MHz CPU makes things much trickier since the character moves ~3 squares in every frame. I wasn't able to get out of the doorway of the first room when I tested it.
Here's a sample test video in case I'm doing something wrong:
Link to video
And here's the assemble screen:
