Worst CSB character

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Toufman
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Worst CSB character

Post by Toufman »

Greetings, fellow denizens of the forum

We tend do compare and discuss characters in an attempt to find the best (or the favourite) of the bunch... Always striving to find that top of the crop... But what about the really terrible ones we dare not to free from their mirrors ?
From the depth of the CSB prison, who do you reckon shall rise as the worst possible character in the game ? My Gor coins are squarely on Talon, with his pitiful base stats and his atrociously average mana. I just cannot find another worse characters in there...

What about you, folks ?
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Paul Stevens
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

* C * O * M * P *E * T * I * T * I * O * N *

I claim that Toadrot is the worst. And I
plan to prove it by showing how quickly
Talon can finish the dungeon. In fact, I
have already begun.

[Quote from another thread]

Here is how I see it might work.

Example:
You claim that Talon is the worst. I claim that
Toadrot is worse.

So I take Talon into the dungeon
and finish the game in 60 minutes. I have proved
that he Talon is better than Toadrot (because Toadrot
has never finished the game) and therefore
I am right. But you take Toadrot into the dungeon
and finish in 59 minutes, proving that Toadrot is
better than Talon and making you the winner.
But I return and finish with Talon in 58 minutes,
making me the winner. But you try again and....

Rules would be very relaxed for this 'negative-
competition'. Save and restart is OK. Playing at
low speed is OK. Resurrect or reincarnate - your
choice.

Training in the prison is NOT allowed - to avoid
cheating by editing the initial savegame. The
savegame and complete set of recordings are
required as documentation. A batchfile to
automatically select the recording option is
probably wise. We can set up a game and
executable so that everyone is using the same
game. And, of course, the 'tick timer' is the
measure of 'best'.

[/Quote]

Go to:
http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/WorstChampion.zip

There is a complete editor, runtime, CSB setup.
1)Select your champion in the prison, save.
2)Create new adventure with UTILITY
3)Edit new savegame to select 'AutoRecord' in global settings.
So you won't forget to record your entire game and you
don't need the batchfile I mentioned previously.
The batchfile is still an option though.

The latest CSBWin allows 10000 recordings. Hopefully
enough for seasoned CSB competitors.
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Toufman
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Toufman »

OK I got started slooowly with Toadrot He Who Isn't The Worst and ended up being pwned by a dragon on the quest for the emerald key in ROS :lol:

This is quite a bit tougher than I had thought. I have only my bad management of items to blame here though: I dropped some Ven Bombs earlier that would have come handy here.
Toadrot behaves alright: at least he's got enough strength to wear mail (unlike Talon) :mrgreen:
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Paul Stevens
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

I doubt you will have much trouble demonstrating
Toadrot's superiority. I am not a very aggressive
speed runner. Talon has the Emerald key and is
on his way to get the Turquoise key.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

Talon tossed the Corbi at 63447.

2 hr, 56 min , 14.5 sec

This proves he is a better champion than Toadrot.
Toadrot is the WORST!


I'll attempt to put together a playback file and
publish it later today.
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Toufman
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Toufman »

Congrats ! Right now Toadrot holds 4 corbums in his fragile hands and will attempt his first entry to level 00 soon.

I totally messed up lower KU and ended up surrounding myself with more worms than I could stand... Twice :shock:

This isn't over yet though and Talon will soon become (rightly) our worst champion :mrgreen: Stay tuned !
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Gambit37 »

I'm sure I can find a character worse than Talon or Toadrot ;-)
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Toufman »

Gambit, you're well free to join our little contest :D

... if you think you can find worse than Talon of course !

OK, I'm done: Toadrot threw the 4 corbums after some rather disjointed mess in the dungeon (this is my 1st time running a comp so it isn't pretty !)
My biggest mistake was to go through KU... while I didn't need it at all to finish the game...

How do I go about finding the time it took me to run it ? My logs are in 10 parts (including the quest for the missing Keys of B which caused some frustration)
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Paul Stevens
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

On the Credits screen at the end.

Select "Misc/Size x1" and the time will be displayed.
If that is gone......look at the end of your
last log.....the time is in hexadecimal in the first
column of numbers.

To make a playback file.....you cannot. I am building
the program to splice together the new version of
recordings (the ones with 5 digits in their names).

If you want to send them to me, I can do it for you.
Or you can wait until I release the new splicer.

Right now I am debugging the playback of my adventure.
It does not work. Ouch. We may have to do without
a playback file. Very sad. But perhaps it is
recoverable.....let us hope.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Toufman »

Ok, I get 000104b0 for the last entry in the 1st column. Is it 66736 then ? It looks like Toadrot is indeed the worst then :lol:

I will send you the logs + save game for the records as planned.
It would be a shame if the playback of your record didn't work: I would love to know how you did it !

I think I made some pretty big mistakes myself so I'm not sure I'd love to see a playback :oops:
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

I replayed TALON to get a proper playfile. Here is the
result:

http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/WorstCS ... 08m38s.zip

Much better than my first effort. I left several
monsters alive behind me this time.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Jan »

Do we have the Toufman's "Toadrot" video?

I just finished watching PaulS' "Talon" video. I had to smile a little when I saw the long stares into the full inventory with something in your hand. I just could hear you saying "Oh my, what do we leave behind?" :roll: And I also had to laugh when I saw you sleeping on the "zoom" slide when killing that demon. I'd like to see the sleeping Talon moving around from a third-person perspective. :)
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

Toufman and I got a bit crossed up and failed
to produce a video for his Toadrot run.
I believe he is repeating the exercise and
hoping to do better the second time. Especially
now that I have improved TALON's time on
the second attempt.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Toufman »

I hope to have another go with Toadrot in the next few days (I'm away on business travel so it could take me a little longer than expected).

And this time, I will carefully save the original game instead of merely overwriting it :roll: .... And prove that Talon is indeed the worst out there !

One can sympathize completely with the "oh my, what do we leave behind" feeling though. :lol:
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by ferala »

Is it just me or does is depend a lot on the player playing :)
Suppose i was the best player in the universe i could choose any character and claim it to be the worst and play with all other characters to create insane speed runs to prove my point.

But then again i should keep my mouth shut as i have never finished CSB. I did play it a bit back in the days on my Amiga, but i remember it to be a lot harder than DM.

Anyway, the reason i write in this thread is because i really like competitions like this. Alas, i will need to conquer CBS and memorize the solution to be able to compete here. Until then i will remain silent about the matter.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

play with all other characters
I certainly encourage you to do exactly that!
I'll be happy to make room for all your videos.
I look forward to the first dozen or so.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Toufman »

Greetings,

My other attempt with Toadrot yielded a much faster outcome. The last entry in my log shows 0000c95f which is 51551 if I'm not mistaken ?
I have left the logs and save game in Paul's careful hands. It may just be that Talon is a lot better after all... making Toadrot the worst CSB character !

Still awaiting Gambit's contribution to our little comp :-)

EDIT: cos I got the name of the characters mixed up
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Gambit37 »

Ah. sorry, I was just jesting -- no time at present to enter the competition.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Jan »

I was thinking about joining the competition, but I'm just not good enough in speed runs - so the only thing I'd prove would be that I'm the worst CSB player. Moreover, I even don't like the idea of leaving some riddles unsolved and some creatures unkilled behind. I just like doing things "properly", going everywhere and killing everyone - well, except the Fulya level, where I'm extraordinarily fast. :) Moreover, once Antman joins the competition, we're all out. :roll: (*)

(*) This all is just a poor excuse, of course. :wink:

I was also thinking of another sort of competition - The Lowest Death Toll Competition (kill as few creatures as possible). But, because of my nature of "cleaning the dungeon as much as possible", I don't think I'd be good at it. :wink:
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

For those of us who are really uncoordinated.....

A minimum move competition with any number
of champions. Sleep a lot
because that is only one move. Use the
slowest setting so our fingers have time to
react. Because sleeping is so inexpensive I
suppose it would boil down to fireballs and
dragon steaks.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by ferala »

It sounds a bit like you are advising it us to do it but then not to do it :)
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

It would be very different. I was just guessing
how people might proceed. I would start:

Select four champions with high mana.
Drop those Mummies down the pit.
Fireball the Scorpions with the shooter.
Kill a few Dragons to get enough meat.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

Toufman's race through the dungeon with TOADROT is at
http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/WorstCS ... 3m-15s.zip

It too TOADROT 143 minutes and 15 seconds.

TOADROT is clearly the worst champion of all.
But TOADROT did very well considering the
path he took through the dungeon.

NOTE.....You get one error at the start of
the playback. It is harmless.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Jan »

Paul Stevens wrote:Toufman's race through the dungeon with TOADROT is at
http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/WorstCS ... 3m-15s.zip
I've just finished watching this video. Well done! :)

By the way, Toufman, this return to the lower parts of the dungeon with the 4 corbums - was it intended from the beginning, or did you just forget to get the B-keys? I'm asking because I'd find it easier to take them on the respective ways and not to return back.

Anyway, there's still someting about this competition that I don't understand:

If anyone - theoretically - wants to prove that - for example - Petal is the worst, what should he do? Of course, playing with Petal to prove that Petal is the worst is out of the question (he could intentionally play it too long and this wouldn't be fair). But we already know that Toadrot is the worst, so playing with any other character than Petal, Toadrot and Talon wouldn't prove anything (I mean if he/she wants to be fair and tries to play as fast as possible). So - as I see it - if I claimed that Petal is the worst, the only possibility for me to "prove it" would be to wait until someone else plays with Petal and is too slow?
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

I don't understand
I think you understand perfectly.

You declare that Petal is the worst. We all
know you can play Petal more slowly than the
current worst character (TOADROT). So, since
I know TOADROT is worse than Petal, I will
play the game with Petal to prove that she
is better than TOADROT.

Now the fairness doctrine declares that
you will not make such a claim just to
force me to play dozens of games. So
I think the rule must be that before you
declare Petal to be worse than TOADROT
you, yourself, must submit a game using
any character just to demonstrate his/her
capability and to confirm your commitment
to the competition. You need not improve
TOADROT's performance although that
would be to your advantage in the
competition.

Good Luck.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Ameena »

I'm thinking that maybe to compare characters, the person wanting to declare a character as "the worst" would be required to play the game at least twice - the first with a "good" (their opinion) character, one the person thinks is better than the others, to set a "standard" time, ie the time that particular person can complete the game in. Then they should play it with their "worst" character, trying to do it exactly the same way, and see if their time is significantly shorter. I suppose they should possibly play with other characters too, or with the "good" character multiple times before trying with the "worst" one, so the time difference would be obvious. Then again, this completion time might still be way longer than someone else's (eg with Toadrot) if the person playing isn't as good at the game/doesn't know the dungeon as well as whomever set the "slowness record" previously.
Am I even making sense here, lol...oh well, I know what I mean. I never play games for speed so I won't be taking part in this anyway - there's no way I'm gonna beat anyone else's time no matter which character I play (plus last time I tried a solo run of CSB I got stuck and gave up :P) and I'd probably die zillions of times pretty early on and give up ;).
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

Well, this competition was meant to be
a bit of a joke......There is not much sense
in it. But I hoped to encourage several
people to take part in the joke and thereby
collect several CSB 'Movies' that might
demonstrate alternate ways of playing
the game. Newcomers would probably
like seeing various ways of getting it done.

TOADROT and Talon certainly took
different routes.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Jan »

That sounds very reasonable, Paul! I'm going to train CSB a little bit and join this competition later this year. I haven't played it for years and do have to "recover my skills". But don't expect a speed run. I'll be back. :)
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Paul Stevens »

But don't expect a speed run.
The relaxed rules make it very much easier to
perform a speed run:

1) Play at very low speed. Uncoordinated folk like
me can compete.
2) Save and restart allowed. Keep lots of
saves. Learn as you go. Forgot about that
teleporter? Back up and try again.
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Re: Worst CSB character

Post by Toufman »

Jan wrote:By the way, Toufman, this return to the lower parts of the dungeon with the 4 corbums - was it intended from the beginning, or did you just forget to get the B-keys? I'm asking because I'd find it easier to take them on the respective ways and not to return back.
To be honest, I'm just really rubbish at using the 4 ways and always end up at the 3 other levels where the respective Key of B cannot be found. So it wasn't intended but it just happened to be necessary :mrgreen:
Well, this competition was meant to be a bit of a joke......There is not much sense in it
Exactly. It's just a nice idea to challenge ourselves and see how others play the game.
I had never played Toadrot before... At least now, I know why :lol:
I might try with a ressurected character next because the first few levels are very slow with a reincarnated one. It would be great to see other forum visitors contributing their own little adventures.
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