ROOM
You see a nondescript table. On it rests a book. 

> look at table
I said the table is nondescript!

> look at book
It is an electronic book. "Don't Panic!" is written in large, friendly letters
on the cover.

> read book
You don't have it.

> get book
Taken.

> read it
It is the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is an electronic guidebook to the 
entire universe.

> read about hitchhikers guide
Which do you mean: 
	1) The wholly remarkable guidebook published by Megadodo Publications, 
	   one of the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor Beta.
	2) The science fiction series written by Douglas Adams
	
> 2
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction series 
created by Douglas Adams of Earth (see: Mostly Harmless). The broad narrative 
of Hitchhiker follows the misadventures of the last surviving man, Arthur 
Dent, following the demolition of the planet Earth by a Vogon constructor 
fleet to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Dent is rescued from Earth's 
destruction by Ford Prefect, a human-like alien writer for the eccentric, 
electronic travel guide The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by hitchhiking 
onto a passing Vogon spacecraft. Following his rescue, Dent explores the 
galaxy with Prefect and encounters Trillian, another human who had been taken 
from Earth prior to its destruction by the President of the Galaxy, the two-
headed Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the depressed Marvin, the Paranoid Android. 
Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978*, it was later 
adapted to other formats, including stage shows, novels, comic books, a 1981* 
TV series, a 1984* video game, and 2005* feature film.
(* all dates in Earth years)

> read about video game
An interactive fiction video game based on the comedic science fiction series 
of the same name. It was designed by series creator Douglas Adams and 
Infocom's Steve Meretzky, and was first released in 1984* for the Apple II, 
Macintosh, Commodore 64, CP/M, MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari 8-bit family and Atari ST.
The game loosely mirrors a portion of the series' plot, representing most of 
the events in the first book. As with other Infocom games (see: Zork series) 
the Hitchhiker's Guide is a text adventure game, where the player solves a 
number of puzzles to complete various objectives to win the game. The player 
has a limited variety of commands that they can enter to observe, move about, 
and interact with the game's world, such as "look", "inventory", "north" (to 
move north) "take screwdriver", or "put robe on hook". 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy gained a reputation for its difficult 
puzzles. The most notorious involved getting a Babel Fish out of a dispenser 
in the hold of the Vogon ship. This tricky puzzle appears early in the game 
and requires the player to use a variety of obscure items in a very specific 
fashion as to create a Rube Goldberg-like chain of events, and had to be 
"solved" within a limited number of turns. Failure to "solve" the Babel Fish 
puzzle did not kill the player, but rendered the remainder of the game 
unwinnable. That particular puzzle became so notorious for its difficulty that
Infocom wound up selling T-shirts bearing the legend, "I got the Babel Fish!".
Due to numerous other similar puzzles in the game, The Hitchhiker's Guide to 
the Galaxy ranks #1 on gamespot.com's list of games that can become 
unwinnable link.

Subsequent rereleases included a Solid Gold version, containing a built-in 
hint book, as well as 20th and 30th anniversary editions released by the BBC 
with augmented graphics (the interface remains text input) link. In
September 2018* an realtime speedrun was submitted to speedrun.com link and 
later that year a tool-assisted speedrun was submitted to TASVideos.org link.

> read about TAS
The tool-assisted speedrun was created by c-square using JPC-rr 11.2 augmented 
with TASScript link, on the Solid Gold version of the game (v.31). One goal 
of developing the JPC-rr TASScript improvement was to create a system that 
would make it much simpler to develop a text adventure TAS. To that end, 
c-square teamed up with DrD2k9 to tackle Zork I link. Unfortunately, it became 
quickly clear that significant luck manipulation would be required for that
TAS. In the meantime, c-square decided to run the simpler "Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy" game as a proof-of-concept and a learning exercise.

More information can be found under the following headings:
	- Objectives
	- Luck Manipulation
	- Strategies
	- Potential Improvements
	- Encodes
	- TASScript
	- Files
	- Color a Dinosaur
	
> read about objectives
The objectives of the run are:
	- 100% completion (400 points)
	- Beats current unassisted record by 9:46
	- Luck Manipulation
	- Finds and drinks a cup of tea

> read about luck
Although making the TAS was much easier with TASScript, there was still a lot 
of luck manipulation involved, including:
	1) Getting the shortest password for getting the plotter
	2) Always making sure the gift from the Aunt reappeared in the 
	   inventory when pulling the switch to avoid an additional text entry 
	3) Getting the desired destination to be the first destination that 
	   appears each time you go to the dark
	4) Getting the shortest path in the maze (3 steps)
	5) Getting the tool with the fewest letters (awl) as the tool to give 
	   to Marvin (you might say it was awl or nothing...)
	
> read about strategies
As with any text entry game, minimizing the number of letters typed is 
critical. Much of this run was finding smaller words for saying things (e.g. 
"don" and "doff" instead of "put on" and "take off", or using Mr. Prosser's 
first name) and when nouns could be omitted. This made it critical that the 
awl was the tool to be chosen at the end of the game, and the player had to 
visit the War Chamber last so that the awl was in the inventory. Each text 
entry was optimized to the millisecond.

> read about improvements
The TAS was made with shortest text input in mind. However, there are 
instances where a slightly longer text input results in one fewer line in the 
descriptive output, which may result in a savings. There were just too many of 
these situations to test out. 

> read about encodes

> slow it down
You don't want me to do that. It would spoil the entire game!

> slow it down
No! It will make the game no fun if you just see all the answers.

> slow it down
Fine, fine. Don't say I didn't warn you.

A few things to know about the slowed encode:
	1) The password to the plotter box is not manipulated to be the 
	   shortest like it is in the fast run
	2) Luck manipulation in the rest of the run is not optimized (as it is 
	   in the fast run)
	3) The fast run uses "Superbrief" descriptions which require an extra 
	   "look" command in the engine room. In the slow encode, the look 
	   becomes extraneous.

> read about TASScript 
The TASScript can be downloaded here link, where you can see all inputs.

> read about files
HDD, 16 tracks, 63 sectors, 16 sides.

Timestamp,MD5,Size,Filename
19900101000000,23abb66bad86a0fd8907a71705bca283,158413,HITCHHIK.DAT
19900101000000,173ff27e03b251e05b4cf46f362f192c,31924,HITCHHIK.EXE

> vote
Are you sure you don't want to see the "Color a Dinosaur" entry first?

> read about color a dinosaur
A dinosaur was not colored in this TAS

> vote
Go here to vote: link

> vote
No, seriously, you're going to have to click on the link above to vote

> click link
Listen, this is just stylized submission text. It's not actually text parser 
input. You'll have to click the link yourself.

> click link myself
Argh.. I give up.

> don't give up

> don't give up

> look

> inventory

> help

> quit