Story: (At least as best I could come up with ....I was unable to find a copy of the manual. I was able to contact the game's designer via email to see if he was okay with this description and/or if he could give me the actual story. He loved my version and couldn't really remember the original story anyway as it's been 30+ years.)
You are a rat. You're hungry. You've found a cheese store that you intend to raid; it, unfortunately, rests atop an 8-story tall building.
Does this discourage you? No! You're a rat!
Choosing to defy the odds, you saunter into the main floor of the building to start your quest. It is only then you realize that not only will you have to dodge spiders and snakes as you move from floor to floor, the building's security system (for some insane, ungodly reason) requires six signal pads to be triggered before the door will open for the elevator to the next floor.
On top of all that, on each individual floor, the signal pads begin moving around once one of them has been triggered; making your task that much more difficult. To add even more confusion; as each signal pad is triggered, a random effect will occur on that floor. These random effects may impact you (the rat itself), the snakes/spiders, the walls of the level itself, or possibly even release a mechanical security guard hellbent on permanently interrupting your quest.
Can you make it to the great cheesy realm above? Only time will tell.
Game Basics
You're the red triangular rat.
Snakes kill you. Spiders only stun you. Both should be avoided.
You can shoot (spit?) at the snakes and spiders to stun them. When they are stunned, they cannot kill/stun you.
Signal Pad effects:
The six signal pads's effects are unique on any given level.
While each floor has the same six letter-coded signal pads, what each letter-coded pad does varies from level to level of the building.
Some effects used on one level may be seen on other levels.
Examples of effects that occur on every level
Kill/remove one snake and one spider
Remove some portion of the level's walls
Release the mechanical security guard.
Change the background colors.
The level layouts of Levels 1-4 are repeated for Levels 5-8, but the signal pad effects are different (as are where destroyed walls are positioned).
TAS Notes/Goals
Beat the game as quickly as possible by reaching the Cheese Store at the top of the building.
The RNG of this game is affected by both the rat's movement and its spitting. Both enemy movement as well as signal pad movement are affected by RNG, thus it's possible there are better routing options than what I've accomplished via different RNG manipulation. While there may be room for improvement in this area, changing RNG anywhere affects all subsequent aspects of the run requiring significant re-do of all parts of the run subsequent to that RNG change.
All spitting in this run is utilized for RNG manipulation; any stunning of snakes/spiders is simply secondary benefit.
Level specific Notes:
Level 1 - Nothing needs explained, IMO.
Level 2 - Hitting the "R" signal pad sends the rat back to the beginning of the level. Due to the proximity of the just-spawned security guard enemy, this can appear to be a death; it is not.
Level 3 - Unless collected last, hitting the "R" signal pad resets the level to its initial state with no signal pads triggered.
Level 4 -
Hitting the "T" signal pad temporarily freezes the motion of the other pads. This is collected first to simplify collection of the rest.
Hitting the "H" signal pad temporarily freezes the rat's motion.
Level 5 - Nothing needs explained, IMO.
Level 6 - Nothing needs explained, IMO.
Level 7 - Hitting the "A" signal pad causes the rest to turn invisible. Being a TAS, I was still able to track the pad locations using an lua script and thus complete the level.
Level 8 - Hitting the "A" signal pad causes the rat's controls to be reversed....this is not apparent to a viewer due to TAS precision controls.
slamo: Replaced movie file with one that uses a better disk image (coincidentally, this saved 134 frames of loading time).
slamo: Nice job optimizing this one. After trying to improve certain parts, I can appreciate the routing and luck manipulation that went into this.
There was a bit of a question about which medium this game came on because information about it is so scant. You've managed to contact the author, who believes the game was released on disk, so we'll allow this disk image to be used.
As for entertainment, feedback was somewhat positive but limited. C64 games with similar feedback haven't fared that well with ratings in the past. So, accepting to Vault.
Joined: 11/14/2014
Posts: 927
Location: South Pole, True Land Down Under
Commodore 64 = Love
Funny, I never remember seeing this game in any advertisements of my Compute's Gazette Magazine. When I saw the word "Rat" I immediately thought of "Radar Rat Race". Planning on doing a TAS of that soon?
Yes vote.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence.
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SOYZA: Are you playing a game?
NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing.
SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real?
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Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes?
Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :)
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BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Joined: 11/14/2014
Posts: 927
Location: South Pole, True Land Down Under
DrD2k9 wrote:
I never played Radar Rat Race. Isn't it basically a clone of Namco's Rally X?
Yes, you are correct.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence.
----
SOYZA: Are you playing a game?
NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing.
SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real?
----
Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes?
Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :)
----
BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Is there any evidence that this game was ever released on a disk? Information for this game is extremely limited, there aren't even any pictures of it, but people who collect these games only have it on tape.
Also, after the program is loaded, the run idles at the prompt for over a second before running the program. This isn't evident in the temp encode because the loading section is omitted. I tried removing a bunch of the idling frames and the run still synced.
Is there any evidence that this game was ever released on a disk? Information for this game is extremely limited, there aren't even any pictures of it, but people who collect these games only have it on tape.
I emailed the developer to check if the game was officially released on Disk or not. I'll let you know as soon as I get a response.
I did have this game on disk when I was a child, but it was not an original (thus the copy I had may have been a program extracted from a tape).
I don't remember where I acquired the disk image I used for this run.
If I hear back that there was no official disk release, I don't mind trying to resync this run using a tape image (assuming I can find one of those in .tap format). While the .t64 format is recognized by BizHawk (can be opened in the "open rom" menu), it's not usable--See here for more details on that problem. Conversion programs exist to convert between .t64 and .tap formats (which are both tape images), but this is a grey area.
Also, after the program is loaded, the run idles at the prompt for over a second before running the program. This isn't evident in the temp encode because the loading section is omitted. I tried removing a bunch of the idling frames and the run still synced.
Regarding the "Run" command idling on screen, I don't understand why that would be the case.
When you say idling, is the cursor flashing? If not, the C64 has accepted the "run" command and is in the process of running the program even if the text is displayed for a brief time before the screen changes to the game's title screen.
In this example, the "Run" command is displayed immediately upon the "Ready" prompt. The inputs for the "Run" command can be done on any non-lag frames during the loading sequence prior to the "Ready" prompt showing up. Doing so typically allows for a VERY slightly faster start to C64 games. These inputs can also affect the sequence of subsequent lag frames.
Regarding idling, it doesn't have a flashing cursor on mine. Here's an encode of the loading sequence from power-on through the first stage of this run. The "run" command is seen around 1:13ish.
Link to video
Are we using the same version of BizHawk?
Have we just discovered a loading inconsistency in BizHawk for C64Hawk core?
EDIT: We should probably set the judgement decision to "Delayed" until we get some of these questions answered.
UPDATE/EDIT 2: Received an email back from the developer. (Screenshot)
I don't really know if or how much that helps us.
For those curious, the PC Museum Rick's referring to is this one; whose primary curator/operator passed away last June at the young age of 46.
Thanks for looking into it. If this is all the information we have, then I think the disk version is allowable.
I should have communicated this in the first place, but I haven't yet found a disk image that matched the hash from your run. I did find a different one that synced anyway, and this is probably the difference in the loading times we're getting. I'm using the same BizHawk version you used. Your encode of the loading looks fine, so that's my mistake. If nobody can find the disk image you're using then that's still a problem, however.
If nobody can find the disk image you're using then that's still a problem, however.
Yea, I understand.
At least the actual gameplay inputs appear to sync on other images of the game. In the meantime, I'll see if I can find a different disk image that can be matched by others and re-sync.
EDIT:User movie #53667010499459408 Here's a new .bk2 using a different game disk image. The only re-sync necessary was moving the input for the run command and adjusting the first button press to start the game.
Added bonus, this version is 134 frames faster than the original submission.
The 'ROM Filename' for this version is "Rat_The_1983_Cymbal_Software.d64"
I'll update that part of the submission notes myself if possible.
This movie has been published.
The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie.
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[3919] C64 The Rat by DrD2k9 in 04:30.82
