Posts for Kerio

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Voting no because the score isn't maxed.
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I was pleasantly surprised by the BitFS route. Voted yes.
Post subject: Thoughts so far regarding the glitchless route planning
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Because of NetHack's weird rules regarding alignment, there's no way to gain access to the quest - and, consequently, to the Bell of Opening - before turn 2000, when the maximum alignment becomes 20 (the minimum required for the quest leader to let you in the quest); this leads to a weird situation in which we have 2000 turns to "waste" before being able to enter the quest. This forces us to think about route planning backwards, because - given the large amount of "free" time we'll use for setup - we must first focus on what happens after the OK from the quest leader: from the assumptions we make regarding the post-quest game, we can then think about the best way to gather the items we need and to set up some weird situations in the first 2000 turns. Basic assumptions:
  • the fastest way to travel is self-polymorph to an air elemental, hasted (with the "haste self" spell, or with potions of speed; the former requires pw and enough skill - and to get enough pw, we'll need either the Eye (which will be locked until the quest if we're a wizard) or a lot of gain energy potions, while the latter just requires the potions) - this gives us 42 plus a chance of 6 movement points each turn; of course we can manipulate the rng to always give us the extra movement points when we need them, so that rounds up to 4 actions each turn - alternated with jumping (the jumping spell at the expert skill - reserved for wizards only - gives us the greatest range), that makes the turncount roll over to the start of the next turn; using the spell on the last action of the turn gives us the fastest way to act, thus we'll be "stuck" as a hasted airE for most of the time after T:2000 - since air elementals are intrinsically blind, we're going to need the eyes of the overworld to see and jump
  • the preferred role is probably wizard, given the expert jumping "restriction", but that prevents us from getting the Eye early, which would help by giving us extra Pw and branchporting while setting up - this can be worked around of course, with levelporting (either with the Orb of Fate or with cursed scrolls of teleportation), and the branchporting will be useful to get out of the quest really quickly even as a wizard anyway
  • A shorter dungeon is of course preferrable, and the shallowest possible dlvl for the Sanctum is dlvl45 - thus, we need to find a seed that gives us dlvl45 for the sanctum during the dungeon generation
What happens at T:2000 and onwards:
  • T:2000 - we kill something, and we wait for the quest leader to notice us - a hasted Neferet the Green has speed 16, so we have at least 2 actions before she does something - and grant us access to the quest NOTE: using speed monster on her makes her angry in the process, so we probably have to find another way; we have one more action so we levelport to the quest goal, appearing next to the D1.
  • T:2001 - we kill the D1, then walk over his remains, autopickupping the Bell and the Eye (we already have BotD and candelabrum from before, so now we're good), we branchport to the VotD and then we levelport down to the VS level, randomly appearing on the vibrating square
  • T:2002 - the candelabrum was lit from before, so we apply the bell (1 action) and then we read the book (1 action), then we teleport down, landing near the HPoM, and something instakills him (bounced wand of death? vorpal blade?), we then walk over his cadaver, autopickupping the AoY
  • T:2003 to T:2013: quaff cursed gain level, 'nuff said (44 potions, we're on dlvl1), or alternate quaffing and going upstairs (assuming the potions make you land on the upstair - this requires less resources but *way* more luck manipulation)
According to this schedule, we're on dlvl1 at the beginning of T:2014, but i don't have time now to lay down the route we came up for the planes - anyway, this for now tells us that we need the eyes of the overworld, at least a couple potions of speed, 22+ cursed potions of gain level, the candelabrum of invocation and the book of the dead before T:2000
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It's not cheating! Those are valid settings!
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Boring, not a challenge, useless, not fit for tasvideos
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good point - tsurugis have an higher priority for pets too, and they *deal* a good amount of damage regardless of the instakill we'd have to break artiwishless though :( ;) P.S.: what's the theorical turncount so far?
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heh, we should get as many unique monsters in the vanished creatures list - also... tsurugi? don't you mean vorpy? ooh, sarcasm. got it
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well, abusing the speed system you *can* move to up to 7 squares, as an hasted airE; get a monster to strike the two doors, and i guess you can solve the whole of Astral in 3/4 turns. It's lame though :( getting a seed that allows for an empty route between monsters will be a challenge, though
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After some chatting with ais523 we came up with a really good strategy for astral: get a random summon nasties that creates fire giants in a corridor, bringing boulders; genocide H and bam, instantly stuck; #pray to get ported over your altar and #offer - alternatively, bring boulders as a H (titan? although that screws up Water's strategy), dropping them and teleporting them, making them appear all around you - this strategy has the bonus of having no setup time, but requires you to be in a slower form.
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Faster run. 'nuff said.
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Sir VG wrote:
Show me a game that has zero bugs in it.
robotfindskitten.
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@thewumpus: Why would you steal the Bell over, say, getting the Dark One killed by a monster somehow? And there's no need to *carry* a monster with us :) @errror1: Monsters don't use wands of teleportation - the only teleporting attack a monster has is the teleporting touch of the quantum mechanic, but it's still blocked in the Planes - outside, does it really matter?
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A truly optimal "least turncount" run would probably involve YEARS of realtime luck manipulation - anyway... In 2000 turns, you should take the candelabrum and the book, then, lighting the candelabrum and killing a monster at T:2000, you should (assuming this is a wizard or someone with the Eye at least) get permission by getting the QL to talk to you (abuse the speed system as needed to get permission on T:2000), levelport down to the quest goal level, oneshot the quest nemesis, move to his square where you'll autopickup the quest artifact and the Bell, then branchport to gehennom (landing in the VotD), levelport down to the vibrating square level (landing on the VS if possible), then ring the bell and read the book, then levelport down, landing in the sanctum, near the HPoM, oneshotting him, moving to his square autopickupping the Amulet, then c!oGL until on Earth. Assuming perfect luck, always getting 3 actions/turn as an air elemental, you should reach the plane of Earth on turn 2022. I'll let someone else calculate the closer portal there, and what's the best form to reach it. To carry enough cursed gain level pots, one would need to place stashes on some levels in gehennom - this shouldn't be a problem because we have 2000 turns that we *need* to wait for the quest to unlock.
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You're ignoring pettype, although i'm not sure it will be helpful in a TAS - but yeah, if we don't allow cosmetic patches, the only thing that can't be set ingame is monsters (the only helpful thing - you can set objects or dungeon too, but nobody does that). I just think that having a separate nethackrc is better for the watcher and for the TASer - and DS tases allow external settings already, so...
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Setting role, race, gender, alignment and name in the nethackrc saves time, setting monsters makes the video show ghosts (has no effect otherwise, this being a TAS - you could farlook every square to look for ghosts, if they're set to the default value of " ") and thus makes the movie more entertaining, pettype lets the TASer choose whether to have a starting pet or not (the type of pet is not important for the distinction between kitten and puppy because they're effectively identical), not sure if there's something else that's DOS-only.
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By not setting the monsters option, you sacrifice entertainment for... nothing (can't be set ingame). /me disapproves
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Setting the options ingame is probably counter-productive, unless we aim for something else than realtime: the options screen is confusing to an experienced player, and there are A LOT of options that can be changed; I vote we allow a custom defaults.nh - even though its main purpose is to set autopickup exceptions which i now realize are out of the picture here. What about purely cosmetic patches though, if they don't mess with the chosen time measuring system?
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Shortest gametime is probably the best option, being NetHack a turn-based game; the defaults.nh file should be provided by the TASer, since there's no way to set some of the options from within the game (it's popular to set monsters in a way that shows ghosts as 8 or X instead of a blank space, and it makes some areas more interesting to watch - I'm also thinking of autopickup exceptions, which are possible to set ingame but the interface is flunky and having a premade file lets the watchers also know what's going on without having to go frame-by-frame at the beginning of the game).
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How about we just measure CPU time? Consistant, fits nicely to a turn-based game like NetHack, wouldn't penalize multiletter commands too much.
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No, it doesn't use key combinations, except meta+key or ctrl+key for multimove or extended commands (that you'd have to do using "#command").
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Some would just say that it's NetHack that's not sane. :) Shortest input is what other TASes are pretty much doing right now - the only difference would be that "no input" is not a valid input - it makes sense if you consider each input from the player as a "frame".
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ais523 wrote:
Those are not TASes. They did not use savestates, and did not manipulate luck (except via the mechanism of starting the game repeatedly until good inventory was found, in Maud's case). They also both abused bones files. Just because a good non-TAS speedrun exists does not mean a TAS would not be interesting.
Yeah, but the fact that you never get stopped by the mysterious force in gehennom, and the fact that you find things on the ground instead of a big pile is not enough change, imho, to need a proper TAS - that said, I'll happily watch one, if only to know what's the actual lower bound in turncount (I mean, if you end up choosing that as the way to measure the time).
A glitched any% could be a fun diversion, but would hardly show any of the game; it would consist of a few random actions on the dlvl 1 upstairs, followed by arbitrarily winning. (And it would be hard to define just what counted as a "win" in a situation where running arbitrary code is possible.)
I didn't know you could run arbitrary code - I thought pointer black magic was limited by the stack/heap separation; anyway, I seem to recall that the end condition for a RPG-like game like NetHack was just to reach the final cutscene somehow - pray.c, starting with line 1290: pline("An invisible choir sings, and you are bathed in radiance...");
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I'm not exactly convinced that a non-glitched any% NetHack TAS would be so entertaining to watch, because it's something the community has already watched, somehow, in nht's (2185 turns) and maud's (2239 turns) games. On the other hand, a glitched any% TAS would involve starting a tourist, wielding and then applying a cream pie, dropping and picking up things and then whacking a monster, or something like that - NetHack has a couple of serious bugs that allow for memory manipulation, involving a dangling pointer due to object destruction without cleared references.
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voting yes, but wouldn't killing Kenny be faster if you had weapons?