So this is another DOS game that I got a lot of fun out of. I just finished playing through this for 6 hours.
The main objective in the game is to kill all monsters, find a bomb and place it in the monster generator machine in the third floor. Then find the golden pedestal where the red tower key appears when you have done the above, and leave the tower. In the first few towers, the pedestal is in the first room.
* The monster generator will create new monsters (revive?) at random times. This can be prevented by saving beforehand and loading. This, and enemy movement is RNG dependent it seems.
*
Gamefaqs wrote:
When a Bomb Trap or Bomb switch is pressed, bring up the Save/Load screen just
before it hits the ground. If you time it right, when you exit the save/load
screens you will see the Bomb on the ground. You can pick it up and make use of
it as with any bomb.
If you do this with a switch bomb, that switch will no longer drop bombs
Unfortunately it didn't work for me in DOSBox SVN build 02-20-2012. And I'm not sure if there are several versions of the game and if I got v1.0 or not... I can pick up the bomb but it says I have none, and when I step over a bomb trap that I glitched, and try to "load", it suddenly crashes the game.
* There are more glitches involving saving and loading:
** When you are levitating and load a savegame, you might end up levitating in your loaded game.
** When you are poisoned and load a savegame, you might end up being poisoned in your loaded game.
** When you press a switch that opens a door and closes another, and bring up the "save" screen at the right time, it will keep both doors open but you can't press any switches anymore. You have to restart the game.
-> I didn't do much glitch testing in this game yet, but saving & loading is the key! ;)
I really doubt it and why should it work, but what if saving and loading will lead to a glitch that lets us complete every tower early...
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
MUGG wrote:
saving & loading is the key! ;)
This seems to be the case with many DOS games! These glitches have the potential to ruin some otherwise interesting runs, but they can also make some uninteresting games interesting. A separate category for "savegame abuse" will be useful.
Also, funny game choice.
This is a great game, and I didn't know that saving and loading could break it so badly. IIRC when you first enter a tower, the entrance/exit is open for a short while - maybe saving and loading on the right frame will leave it open, so you can just turn around and complete the tower?
This is a great game, and I didn't know that saving and loading could break it so badly. IIRC when you first enter a tower, the entrance/exit is open for a short while - maybe saving and loading on the right frame will leave it open, so you can just turn around and complete the tower?
I tried and can't do it. I'd also like to go back and try around with the lever that closes one door and opens another, but I don't have a nearby savegame anymore and the game doesn't allow saving&loading in practice mode... I can't be bothered to play another 5 hours through this game..
There might be a few emulation glitches. If I have any bombs to spare, I can't use them. And on those spell duplication niches, I can't use any attack spells - only healing, levitate or teleport works (maybe that's intended like this?). Plus the crash when I glitch the bomb pad.
I in fact did play through the game again until tower W1 to test the glitch with the two doors:
- There is at least one lever in an earlier tower that opens a door and closes another, but the glitch will not work on it because they open/close almost simultaneously. In W1, they open/close after each other.
- To do the glitch, press F2 or F3 to bring up the save or load screen at the moment one door has been opened and the other hasn't been closed. When done correctly, both doors are now open but you can no longer pull any levers for as long as the game is running. You can however save and restart the game.
- On the loaded save, both doors will now be open and pulling the lever again will close them both. Other levers operating one of the affected doors will also be glitched, so they close or open two doors too.
I saw some strange behavior when doing this door glitch and then starting a new game. Possibly it was just a graphical glitch though.
EDIT: !!! This glitch can be used to complete towers early it seems!
EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxa_7pN3SG8
EDIT: It seems the game will glitch up severely when you interrupt the doors opening / closing at a very certain moment and then start a new game.
Please watch my twitch recording to see what I mean
http://www.twitch.tv/mugg1991/b/525827476
- runtime errors (i.e. game crashes for good)
- graphical glitches, reduced framerate, until you visit a new room or press ESCAPE to go to main menu. Game may crash later with a glitched screen (in menu) or freeze (in a level).
And it seems towers cannot be ended early in a way that I hoped they can. Doors opening & closing rapidly only works when starting a new quest cycle or practising a tower, but not when loading a savegame. So there is no hope for a TAS that completes 7 towers and then glitches through the remaining 5.
EDIT: In fact, A5 is the earliest tower where you can do the door glitch, it seems.
There seem to be a few versions of the game:
- 1.0 Shareware (?)
- 1.1 Shareware
- 1.1 Full game
1.0 is said to be an incomplete version released
to a magazine in the UK. 1.1 is the finished game officially released as shareware and then fullgame.
There also seems to be a 1.0 fullgame version. The 1.0 fullgame and 1.1 fullgame versions should be compared.
Cheats:
Cheats are activated by typing "BALDRIC" during a level. Once activated, your score is reset to zero, and you can press the following key combos to achieve what is listed:
[lshift] R xx - where xx is a number of a room to jump to (01-45)
[lshift] H - to get maximum health, also food and drink
[lshift] K - to get all keys except the end tower key
[lshift] W - to get full weapons
[lshift] C - to get ten coins
Only the health cheat works in the shareware version; the rest require the registered version.
You can set the game speed high, which could be used in speedruns (TAS should be ok, normal speedruns it depends what the community wants - but this game doesn't have any active speedrun community).
The dropping bomb glitch can cause other items to change into bombs (that if picked up, don't add to your bomb count - you still have none). It seems this can render a level unwinnable.
------------------------
Version differences between 1.0 and 1.1:
- In 1.1, the main menu's option "Ordering information" is highlighted in yellow, whereas in 1.0 it is the same color as the other options (purple).
- The helpscreens have been changed between 1.0 and 1.1: In 1.0, there are 13 help screens and 3 preview screens that show monsters in future towers. In 1.1, there are now 14 help screens and the 3 preview screens are not present. The 14th screen basicly tells that there are 6 harder towers after you beat the first 6 easier ones.
- When you start to play the game, there are three options 1) Play 2) practise a tower 3) load a saved game. In 1.1, a note was added below "Practise a tower" that says "(allows you to preview Towers)".
- one screen in the "story..." option has been updated. http://i.imgur.com/PrIWIYS.png
- The config screen has been visually changed. You can now select Sound option digital-lo and digital-hi in 1.1, which replaces 1.0's soundblaster option.
- When bringing up the load or save screen as a dropping bomb touches the ground, you can then pick up the bomb - Alternatively, you can walk across the trap tile, turn around and pick it up (it will explode but it will count). The game gets confused if the dropping bomb was actually spawned and may try to spawn another, invisible object when you walk across the trap tile again. When this happens and you try to load, save or quit now, the game crashes (in 1.0). This does not happen in 1.1.
- In the pre-title screen screens, there is a text beneath "Apogee". This text differs between the versions:
"The height of gaming excitement" in 1.0
"Apogee means Action(TM)" in 1.1
- Cheat mode does not work in 1.0 practice mode it seems
I guess it is now possible to get free bombs from bomb traps. This works only in v1.1.
All glitch hunting I did previously was done on 1.0, so I didn't find it before. The game crashes on v1.0 when the bomb glitch is done.
The game will count it as a random amount of bombs in your inventory though, but at least you can destroy the monster generator with it. This should save time in a speedrun.
Link to video
EDIT: The bomb glitch as seen in the video still has potential to crash the game later on (by pausing - pressing P -, by loading a saved game or by starting a new tower). It depends on where the glitch is done.
Also I have a better insight on how the glitch works. Basicly it will overwrite any item it finds, starting from the furthest point in the room and approaching the closest point in the room. When the glitch is done, it takes the furthest object and tries to convert it into a bomb. This can overwrite fire, water springs, switches, levers, platforms that can be pushed, poison tiles...
When the object that was overwritten was pickable before, it may still be pickable and give you a random amount of bombs as seen in the video (although it still counts as only 1).
When you convert any treasure into a bomb, it will count as 254. When done with an apple or meat, it counts as 4. Some other items count as 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 33, 44, ...
EDIT: It looks like in v1.1, the door glitch can be done as early as tower #5 (A5) instead of #7 (W7).
Maybe it was possible in 1.0 and I just overlooked it, though.
Did a long streaming session today but did not find anything new. Door glitch behaves the same on 1.1 as it did on 1.0.
EDIT: Savegames for anyone who wants to test stuff
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ueuozoancx66vnx/savegames.zip
(A2, A3, A4, A5)
(v1.1 was used, idk if these savegames work in 1.0)
I have thought a bit more about the door glitch (which I had deemed useless) and I think it is actually very useful.
The doors opening and closing only happens when you start a new tower and from the main menu that means it happens only when selecting a new quest cycle, a practice tower or the demo, yes. But I figured, it can also happen when you load a savegame near the exit of a tower and then starting the next tower.
I'm investigating the usefulness right now. Maybe a TAS that beats 5 towers and skips the other 7 is possible after all.
Ok, 4 towers can be skipped. It is a bit difficult to explain everything right now, but I will put this "route" so you understand it:
1) Play tower 1, 2, 3, 4 normally
2) In tower 5, make a savegame A near the lever that opens/closes two doors, one after the other
3) At the end of tower 5, make a savegame B
4) Load A, pull the lever and bring up the load screen again immediately.
( 5) If necessary, start a fresh tower at this point - by starting new quest cycle, starting a practice tower, or by watching the demo. While the rapid doors opening and closing glitch is active, enter a new room. If the demo plays, watch the demo walk into the next room.)
6) Load B and walk into the goal
7) In tower 6, the rapid opening and closing of doors will sometimes open the goal door. When it does, bring up the save screen and save savegame B. If it does never open and the glitch stops, redo from 4) and include 5).
8) repeat 4)~7) for tower 7
9) play tower 8 normal, save savegame B at the end
10) repeat 4)~7) for tower 9
11) play tower 10 and 11 normal, save savegame B at the end of tower 11
12) repeat 4)~7) for tower 12
13) the end
This way, you can skip 4 towers:
- 6 (A6)
- 7 (W1)
- 9 (W3)
- 12 (W6)
It is not known if the goal door in 8, 10 or 11 can open if you do something special before entering those towers. They did not open in my extensive testing at all, on both versions of the game.
Also, when doing the door glitch there is always some risk of the game crashing. Just a heads up.
All the testing in this thread done by me so far was on DosBox 0.74, and I don't know if the glitch will behave different in JPC-rr (the emu that I still don't know how to TAS with - someone please teach me).
Teleporter glitch
Link to video
I guess this happens because the enemy and I were on top of the teleporter destination tile at the same time. The tile glitched out: I couldn't move through it, but only hop on it. Hopping on it made something explode. It wore off when I paused and unpaused. Also, it seems like it messed up the "enemies left in floors" display in the bottom left (where floors are marked red if enemies are still in them): By the time no enemies were left, the 4th and the 1st floor were still red even though there were no enemies left.
EDIT:
I studied this bug. It indeed occured because the enemy was inside of me - In fact, it seems to happen always when teleporting to that room. Maybe enemies have a set start point that they can be in when you go to a room, and it just happens to be right on top of the teleport tile in that room due to the developer's oversight...
Anyway, when the "glitch tile" is spawned, hopping on it causes the enemy to lose health as if you had hopped on the enemy. Hopping on it when the enemy is dead causes the explosion, the same kind of explosion that happens when you kill the enemy.
If you push an object to where the enemy died and then hop on the glitch tile, the explosion will occur inside of the object. You can then walk through the object and push objects inside of each other until you pause and unpause again - but this is useless so far.
I've come up with a bit of a breakthrough. It turns out you can activate the door glitch in practice mode and then apply it to any tower in the quest cycle by loading your quest cycle save. In the case of tower 1, it's not necessary to open the load screen, just back out to the main menu and start a new quest cycle after activating the glitch. Room 9 in tower 7 is the fastest switch to reach in practice mode, as far as I know. Once you reach tower 5 you should make a save in room 15 to expedite the glitching process, but for towers before that it's much faster to set it up in practice mode than do an entire tower. Combining mine and MUGG's testing it seems it's possible to skip 7 towers:
- 1 (A1)
- 3 (A3)
- 4 (A4)
- 6 (A6)
- 7 (W1)
- 9 (W3)
- 12 (W6)
I can also confirm that the glitch works the same in JPC-rr as it does in DOSBox, even the corruption and crashes.
Progress so far:
Link to video
First tower was skipped in the way described in the previous post. You have to wait a little before exiting because otherwise you'll get unwanted door closings in the next tower. I'm fairly happy with the route for the second tower. The RNG is more flexible than I originally thought. Jumping forward affects the RNG and is a really nice way to manipulate without taking any time. I was able to do pretty much whatever I wanted with the enemies, including baiting several of them into traps. I put together a Lua script to track enemy locations as well.
Note that exiting the second tower is just for presentation here. The full run will set up another door glitch before exiting, as tower 3 is skippable.
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 309
Location: Stafford, NY
I am going to suggest for the final submission for this game that there be a reduced speed encode alongside a full speed one, because at full speed I think it's a little too fast for a viewer not already familiar with the game to follow what the player character is doing...
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Looking good!
As an advice, try going for jump kills, too. It might be faster than shooting in some cases. You can keep jumping onto the same enemy in the direction that it is going. Consider that this means you might not need to pick up weapons in some cases.
What do you think?
I've been playing around with jumping on enemies in tower 5 since there's an enemy that can be jumped upon. I haven't had any luck chaining jumps together since the enemy tends to flee after being jumped on, and trying to jump in its retreat direction doesn't work. Jumping is a good finishing move though.
