Atom Shoot (Compute's Gazette)
The rules are simple, but you can't win without some intelligent deductions...and maybe a little luck. In this game, you're a physicist engaged in important research into subatomic particles. As part of the research, you must find 25 quarks within a super thin quartz crystal.
- The presented video is not represented by the submitted inputs. I didn't re-encode it, because the video will demonstrate the idea of what is going on. Since it is 2 frames slower than the provided BK2...I decided not to remake another one.
Why TAS This Game?
The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 55th TAS from this series.
I don't remember this magazine at all. So, I missed in my subscription or either picking up from the tobacco store where I chose to buy them. Even if I had it, I don't think I would have been excited about this issue, since the games in this magazine wasn't all that appealing. Back then, I WOULD HAVE BEEN WRONG! Even though this TAS makes this game look boring, it is absolutely an amazing puzzle/strategy game. In fact, I sit down to play this because it is so powerful.
Previous Compute's Gazette submissions include (In order of submission):
Game Difficulty and Ending
There is no selection of difficulty, as it s a random puzzle to solve. As for the ending, if you find 25 quarks...the game is over.
Effort In TASing
Every game, in this magazine series, presents a different approach to optimization. Here, I realized that key stroke minimization was the key. So, after finding a good RNG Seed, I was able to get what I wanted. RNG in this case was changing the layout of quarks to find; however, they needed to be represented by the "Forward Slash", to prevent me from having to key in a extra input to pin down the correct orientation of a quark. the other thing was to avoid having quarks in the "G" column. By doing so, I had to wait a frame to press "G"...since it is being used to make a guess.
Human Comparison
None to be found. :(
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: This is basically a guessing game, and in a TAS where you control the RNG you can always guess perfectly, and it's just a matter of finding a more optimal RNG to get quicker. Score is gained by guessing wrong, wasted by guessing wrong, and it can go below zero just fine. Shooting is a way to lose the game if you wasted all your shots, and finding all quarks is how you win. So in a TAS shooting is useless, and you can't complete it quicker with lower score. Accepting a fastest completion.
