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King's Quest: Quest for the Crown

This game is the first in Sierra's King's Quest series.
Story: The king is dying without an heir, so he sends Sir Graham out on a quest to recover three magical items from the realm. If Sir Graham is able to recover all three items, he will be granted the crown as the next king of Daventry. Graham must search high and low, using his wits to solve problems and recover the three magical items (A chest of never-ending gold, A mirror that shows the future, and A shield that guarantees safety and victory in battle).

General Info

  • Goal: Aims for fastest time
  • Emulator used: c-square's modified JPC-rr 11.2 with TASScript
  • Game Version: 2.0F

Run Info

This is an improvement to the currently published run using a different route and implementing recently (within the past year or so) discovered glitches. Differences are listed below:
  • Water walking glitch (fairly recently discovered)
    • On many screens, getting Graham's feet on the final pixel possible before a screen transition occurs will allow him to walk over water (and some other objects) that would normally kill (stop) him. Doing this in a couple areas allows for a more optimal squence of object retrieval.
      • A treasure is no longer needed to get by the troll on the bridge to the gnome's island.
      • The bird is no longer needed to get to the mushroom island/underground
      • The route variation allows for acquisition of both the pebbles and sling; this allows for killing of the giant instead of waiting for him to fall asleep before obtaining the chest.
  • RNG info.
    • As the bird is no longer needed to get to the mushroom island, this RNG issue from the previous run is negated.
    • Deeper investigation of the game code revealed that the thieving cave dwarf will never show up when Graham enters the staircase from above, so this RNG event is not an issue in this run or the original (where it was believed to be an issue).
    • While this run does cross a couple screens where an RNG event may occur, neither of these happen in this run due to the initial RTC time set during emulator assembly.
      • A fairy godmother can randomly appear one screen south of the 4 leaf clover and give Graham a spell of protection.
      • A Wolf can randomly appear one screen east of the well and can kill Graham if it cathces him.

Time Comparison to Current Publication

This new TAS is 15.844 seconds (according to JPC-rr itself). The current publication is 18.297 seconds. So this new run is an improvement of 2.453 seconds. Given that the first 2.9 seconds of the run is the loading time gettign to the actual gameplay, the actual duration of gameplay is 15.397 seconds for the old run and 12.944 seconds for this submission. The 2.453 second impmrovement is therefore a roughly 16% cut (2.453s/15.397s) off the original publication in terms of gameplay time saved.

Potential Improvements

  • Even with TAS control, moving at the 'Fast' game speed can prove rather difficult to have Graham end up where you want him to go. There may be better movement patterns or route which I have not found.

Suggested screenshot:

Any beanstalk screen: This is an extremely difficult task in RTA runs. Or one similar to the current publication with the Dragon.

Files

These are extracted from the GOG release of the game with all the unnecessary GOG files removed. This run uses the same disk image as the current publication; so if anyone created a disk image for that run, it should also work for this submission.
HDD TRACKS 16 - SIDES 16 - SECTORS 63
TimestampMD5SizeFilename
199001010000004771062c7f64bf64c185178613fd665a39424AGI
19900101000000d83459a8643dfc67b4629ec4afe64e138192AGIDATA.OVL
19900101000000e34849e963efdcc942b67ee9bf5c15331024CGA_GRAF.OVL
19900101000000714c88fa15b8327c585b86f3e619b0681024EGA_GRAF.OVL
19900101000000f3d4c66e195491aa759b7c5ef996488b3072HGC_FONT
199001010000008eb68e541e8ea93da96c7fc4cfde7f3f1536HGC_GRAF.OVL
19900101000000a8f5aabf72ed3d4165038275faf8b5271024HGC_OBJS.OVL
19900101000000119949f12a5fc14a082794350c19118b512IBM_OBJS.OVL
199001010000004488067df5a7201e34ee3b01252e9860512JR_GRAF.OVL
19900101000000f579e8fb39209a321d575ebdc5f790143121KQ1.COM
1990010100000010ad66e2ecbd66951534a50aedcd0128315LOGDIR
199001010000006eca02fa540337308529ff13e9e764aa331OBJECT
19900101000000d468936618bed024ea453a315aba1958255PICDIR
19900101000000cf37ab2f6af09afee3598b92c9a42983144SNDDIR
19900101000000df5f5263d61e250495c249002c6210a1512VG_GRAF.OVL
19900101000000ac7048eceb628c07f452ecd1662d7b3d432VIEWDIR
199001010000008ec91effac02ba476f823f065ca1017248472VOL.0
1990010100000077c3be070fc9bf9c69952ed56821efe1200630VOL.1
19900101000000b33d0a9938c095da1a69b5ee3c9209d490891VOL.2
1990010100000050e00d15fa3e25b512c19608119111cf3144WORDS.TOK
feos: Checked/confirmed. Nice stuff, accepting over [3793] DOS King's Quest: Quest for the Crown by DrD2k9 in 00:18.30.
fsvgm777: Processing.

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Posted: 4/20/2021 5:15 PM
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TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7105: DrD2k9's DOS King's Quest: Quest for the Crown in 00:15.85
Posted: 4/20/2021 5:52 PM
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Dacicus
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Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
Nice improvements. Yes vote. According to several sources, at least one version of this game was available as a PC booter, which means that it can run from a floppy without need for an operating system. IDK if JPC-RR emulates that, but it might save some of the loading time by eliminating the need for FreeDOS.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Posted: 4/20/2021 6:15 PM
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DrD2k9
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Arcade TAS of 2023 Exotic platforms TASer of 2020 First edition TAS of 2020 Gameboy TAS of 2020 Exotic platforms TASer of 2019 Computer TASer of 2017
Dacicus wrote:
According to several sources, at least one version of this game was available as a PC booter, which means that it can run from a floppy without need for an operating system. IDK if JPC-RR emulates that, but it might save some of the loading time by eliminating the need for FreeDOS.
While that may save some startup time, it wouldn't affect the gameplay aspect of the run. Given that loading times aren't considered for improvements/obsoletion, the resutling time savings would be moot. Considering it'd be less than 3 seconds of time saved, even from a publication standpoint, it'd hardly be noticed. As a comparison, consider Commodore 64 games. Games loaded from tape or disk can take multiple minutes (sometimes over 10) just to load the game. When one of those same games is on a cartridge, it will load near instantly. In that situation using the cartridge version would be nicer from a publication standpoint because it would elimiate minutes worth of loading times even though the gameplay itself is completely unchanged.
Posted: 4/21/2021 12:51 AM
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nymx
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TASer of 2023 Atari TASer of 2023 Exotic platforms TASer of 2023
I like the cuts. Love the speed...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. ---- 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
Posted: 4/21/2021 1:18 AM
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c-square
Active player (378)
Joined: 9/25/2011
Posts: 652
Speedy TAS of 2015
Nice job! Good work improving an already insanely fast TAS. Yes vote for sure.
Posted: 4/21/2021 9:29 AM
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Radiant
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Dacicus wrote:
According to several sources, at least one version of this game was available as a PC booter,
It was; that's the AGI0 (1984) version. However, that version doesn't use the white popup boxes to display game text, but has the text appear word-by-word at the bottom of the screen (similar to e.g. Zelda games). That strikes me as a substantial slowdown. The most common version of KQ is the AGI2 version from 1987, which backports the engine from later games. The pulldown menus I think were first used in King's Quest III (AGI version 2.2, or maybe it was 2.4). Anyway, yes vote.
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Posted: 4/21/2021 10:04 AM
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PLANET
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Joined: 1/3/2018
Posts: 73
Absolutely Yes vote : ) Love to see old PC gems done one by one in perfect form!
Posted: 5/8/2021 6:13 PM
Post subject: Movie published
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TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4447] DOS King's Quest: Quest for the Crown by DrD2k9 in 00:15.85