Mind Boggle (Compute's Gazette)
"Mind Boggle" is a game of logic based on the popular game "Master Mind".
Why TAS This Game?
The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 75th TAS from this series.
I never typed this game in my youth. It just didn't appeal to me, at the time, and I didn't understand what I was looking. Too bad, since I bought "Master Mind" years later and loved it. Oh well. Now, I've decided to get this one out of the way. I know it is probably to dullest TAS I've every submitted, but I want to get the library completed for this magazine series.
Game Difficulty and Ending
If you understand the premise of "Master Mind" then you understand that guessing the hidden colors is the goal of the game.
Effort In TASing (Not BOTed)
Two simple points to TASing this:
- Play the game until you get the color right. By doing so, I had the pattern and entered it on the first try.
- Buffer the inputs. (You can enter the inputs very early, which gets buffered into a specific range of addresses). I was able to back up the inputs, very very close, to the point where the game was initiated by the "Run" statement. This is the largest buffering cut that I have ever made in any B.A.S.I.C. written game.
Human Comparison
Couldn't find one for the C64, but here is the same game...ported for the Vic-20 from Compute's Gazette.
But believe it or not, someone actually liked this game enough to modernize it. Its the same game, only made to look prettier. I only wish this was the version that I was TASing.
DrD2k9: Considering there's only 4 frames of actual gameplay input (all other input is for loading/running the game), this is probably the easiest acceptance I'll ever get to make. The only way I can imagine this being faster would be to find a way to buffer the inputs even earlier; even then, that may not qualify as a gameplay improvement.
Accepting.
