Castle Dungeon (Compute's Gazette)

Your quest is to find three bombs, hidden throughout the castle's rooms and corridors. They were placed by an evil wizard who is trying to destroy the castle.
The article for this game can be found on page 52 of Compute's Gazette Issue 12 (June 1984)

Why TAS This Game?

The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 35th TAS from this series.
This was one of the earlier games that I had experienced. The article's presentation was very interesting to me, and I ventured into typing it in. I enjoyed playing it quite a bit. Even today, I have checked out its code and thought of trying to re-write parts of it to speed up the slow configuration of the layout.
Previous Compute's Gazette submissions include (In order of submission):
1Astro-Panic!2Royal Rescue
3Miami Ice4Chopper 1
5Spike6Heat Seeker
7Omicron8Alien Armada
9Star Dragon10White Water
11Space Gallery12Bagdad
13Race Ace14Quolerus
15Trap16Maze-Mania
17Balloon Blitz18Bowling Champ
19Circuits20Going Up?
21Space Dock22Saloon Shootout
23Sno-Cat24Queens' Quarrel
25Stronghold26Lincoln Green
27Disc Blitz28SuperSprite
29Dunk30Basketball Sam & Ed
31Bee Zone32Q-Bird
33Space Worms34Powerball

Game Difficulty and Ending

This game has no selection of difficulty, but the ending is absolute and clear. The task is simple...find the three bombs and the game is over.

Effort In TASing

After having gone through a number of B.A.S.I.C. written games, I have discovered a number of strategies to help force the RNG to my liking. Even though this technique helps out tremendously, the placement of the items are still cannot be controlled to produce exact locations of items. So, since this game is very short, I have ran multiple scenarios and ran across a situation that allowed for me to get the bombs without searching for keys, jumping over pits, or having to fight the blind guardians...all within the shortest route that I found. So in essence, this is a "seeded RNG" run that was applied after the loading of the game to minimize the longevity of the "Load" command....where it was buffered to be faster. It does not alter the game code at all.
That command is
RND(-15) (seen on the screen as ?R/(-15)

Human Comparison

The only run that I could find, besides the VIC-20 version.

Darkman425: Claiming for judging.
Darkman425: Usually you don't find grenades in a castle. Anyways, the RNG adjustment for the grenade placement seems good for that fast completion.
Accepting to Standard.

despoa: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8604: nymx's C64 Castle Dungeon in 01:21.07
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15576
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [5587] C64 Castle Dungeon by nymx in 01:21.07