new competition?

[Jenda]

I agree with rain. These rules are gonna to be some kind of masochism or what. I don´t think it´ll be very nice to watch this competition. In my opinion: What about to come back to the beginning - one hero (specified) and who will be the fastest (no. of moves)?

[Gambit37]

Can you enforce the 1 item at-a-time by simply preventing movement WITHOUT putting invisible walls before the player??

[PaulH]

Will the winner be the person who completes this scenario in the least amount of time/moves? If this is the case, then you will need to complete the dungeon in one go with no saves. Unless you can get the counters to 'carry on' from the last save. Even then, you could just repeat a section time after time until you get it perfect. No, I think the no saves rule has to stand, or we make the conditions of this tournament a little easier. It has to have appeal, and not be tedious. Unfortunately having to throw keys down the corridor or carry them one at a time in the dark is tedious.

All posion does heal eventually, but injured feet do not. However there are ready made Vi potions in the game.

Can we use spell options on staffs? Well, we have to if we want to fuse Chaos, and I would hate to hit 'invoke' by accident and breach the rules.

I think being able to carry two objects is a better idea. This way you have the option of light and carrying a key, or if you think you are really good, drop the torch and carry 2 keys to save time if you think you can do it. At least you have the option.

Whatever is decided, I am willing to have a go anyway, but I would like to see a competition that shows more of peoples' playing styles such as killing monsters, the champions they choose etc.

[beowuuf]

How about you can place an item in the hand, where it is usable, or you can plae it in the backpack, where you cannot use it again except once on the dungeon itself

Eg you can pickup the bow, but unless you carry it around in your hand as your one item, then it stays in your backpack until the riddle room - etc

This way you can stockpile keys, or clue items but not food, weapons or flasks - not in your hand, never use them
Also gives you useless items for pressure pads


And why must there be only one competition : )

So far there seems to be four differnt ones:

1) One item DM
2) Speed DM
3) Armour DM (get the lyte and darc armours)
4) Minimum movement DM

I'd suggest a fifth one, or an additional flavour for the item one - torch DM
You have one character, and you HAVE to have a working torch in your hand at all times, with at least one light grade.
You can place it in your off hand or action hand, but there must always be one in your hand apart from milli-second swaps. You must sleep with one and ensure it doesn't go out, etc
Obviously, there will be a no stockpiling rule - one torch in your hand only at any time, none in the other spaces.
No magical light allowed, which also retards your wizard levleling up for a good while.

[Paul Stevens]

The timers and counters do carry over across
save/restores.

I do not know how to reasonably implement
the 'Once in the backback' or the 'Must have
a working torch' rules. Sorry. You could still
have the competition but you would have to
enforce these rules manually.

***** COMPROMISE *****

1) Tiggy - resurrect or reincarnate
2) Carry two objects (including cursor) but each object
could be chest containing 8 objects. All clothing is OK.
No invisible walls - just inability to move.
3) Three save/restores allowed.
4) Only spell is ZoKathRa. This is the 'essence' of the
competition, IMHO. Tiggy without magic.
5) Sleeping can heal wounds. Every 90 seconds there
is one chance in 3 that one wound will heal.
6) Eat only what you kill. As best as I can implement it.

Winner is the person who gets deepest into the dungeon.
DM is pretty linear and there might not be too much
argument about 'deepest'. In this way the competition
can have some immediate results.



***** NOTE *****
Rule 3) means that the 'movie' may have multiple parts
and must be spliced together. Therefore the player must
keep carful track of which pieces are needed to make
the complete movie. Only I know how to 'splice' and it
is impossible to make 'invisible' splices. Another way to
do it is to playback the first part of the game while at the
same time making a new recording and then continue
play where the movie ends. Even in 'super fast' mode
this might become tedious if you have to do it many
times.

I'll post a CSBtiggy with these rules later today.

PAul

[PaulH]

I can't see a problem with more than one competition, but it would be hard work verifying all the different attempts for different scenarios.

Beowuuf, the 4 or 5 competitions you list are good examples, but when it comes down to who wins, it will always be either least time or least number of moves no matter how you look at it. I suppose you could have 1st person to complete a competition, but this would invariably be the person who can spend the most time on their computer and then the competition ends as soon as the first entry is posted.

I am still in favour of a competition where monsters have to be killed and items collected in least time/moves as this will show the best combination of team selection, tactics, speed and knowledge.

[sucinum]

how about fastest lo master in any profession?

[Paul Stevens]

There is a CSBtiggy1.zip at:

webpages.charter.net/patevens1

Everything except the automatic healing.
Should I put that in?

[PaulH]

This version of Tiggy seems to work fine. Not easy though!

I think the healing should be included but the chances upped from 1 in 3 to say, 1 in 1...

Paul, you made a error in your link above (it looks like you hit the 'a' key instead of the 's'!)

webpages.charter.net/pstevens

[Paul Stevens]

Yes. It is too difficult for my taste. I am willing
to see how far I can get. I tested down to the
"Choose your door-Choose Your fate".
But others wanted:
a) No Healing.
b) Bare hands.

There is an error in Tiggy1 that causes instant
healing, I think. So don't start the competition
until we decide what the official rule should be.
*****************
I missed the 's' and you missed the '1'. So here is the
correct link:

webpages.charter.net/pstevens1
filename CSBtiggy1.zip

Hope I got it right!

[PaulH]

Those darn keyboards ;-)

Before I had read your last post Paul, I got down to the Test Your Strength door. But as my Tiggy only has 31 strength there is no way I can kick it down, unless I gain a lot of Ninja levels.

So I think the competition may be better if we used Zed. With the minimum of 40 strength he should be able to overcome this, and he is slightly better as well so it will make this comp a little easier.

I am happy to test any more versions you put out Paul.

[Paul Stevens]

Well, I am not running this show. I'm trying to
help organize it so that it might actually come
to pass. I'm trying to form a coalition via
compromise.

Everyone else seems to think a magic-less tiggy
is the way to go. Is there any need to chop down
that door? The 'Cast you Influence" door is
another that you will not open, I think.

[Jenda]

Umf, i have lost myself in all these ideas. Reincarnate or ressurect (will be tiggy able to cast zo kath ra spell?)?

[PaulH]

Sorry Paul, I meant the 'Don't let a closed door stop you' door on the worm level. I renamed this door in my dungeon hence the confusion...

[Paul Stevens]

Yes...That door definitely has to go. I forgot
about it.

This competition seems quite impossible. I
put CSBtiggy2.zip at
webpages.charter.net/pstevens1

It heals wounds as you sleep at a relatively
slow rate.

But after playing it down to to the "Choose your
Fate" room and collecting a couple of gold keys it
starts to be clear that I am going to starve
to death. In my view. the rules need to be relaxed
to allow any and all food to be used. Perhaps then
there will be time enough to build strength sufficient
to chop down that door. Carrying a backpack full
of items seems like a good thing, too.

Things would be difficult enough even with those
rules relaxed, IMHO.

PaulH: I would like to see how you got to the Worm
Level. Do you have a recording? I'd be happy to
compress it and put it where others can see it.
Or I could send you the compression program.

[Lunever]

Maybe Kate would like to show us how she intends to succeed in a competition according to these rules.

[Kate]

Well, perhaps it works better as a 'personal challenge' than a competition. If you want to record the whole game for someone to watch, then the darkness makes it dull, and the limited saves probably would make it impossible. I played it on the officially released PC version (after having grown up with the Amiga version), and the ability to drink directly from water fountains without a waterskin or flask made the dehydration threat less dangerous. For the wooden door on worm level, I must have picked up the axe, bashed in the door, and left the axe behind. I didn't have the limitations programmed into the game. I think I chose to carry a torch for about the first half of the game- I remember how odd it was when the best treasure you could find was a torch. It took about half an hour to throw my 'storeroom' of screamer slices and the ra key through level 5, but that was the worst of it- after that I just made forays to and from level 6.

So anyway, I'm not sure exactly how to turn it into a feasible competition. It tests your knowledge of the dungeon, and forces you to adapt your techniques. I don't know enough about what can and can't be programmed in to enforce rules. Can we do away with the restrictions on saves, and still count moves? If so, than anyone who can make it through to the end would win, and the person with the least amount of moves get the most honors.

[Paul Stevens]

There is no save/restore restriction built in the
programs I have released as CSBtiggy. The save/
restore is only important because it is not much
fun to construct a continuous 'movie' from dozens of
separate pieces of 'film'. But it can be done if you
are careful to save all the pieces. The moves are
properly counted, I believe.

CSBtiggy2 has the following restrictions built in:

Eat only what you kill.
Only ZoKathRa Spell.
Only two items - they can be chests! Clothing OK.
Sleeping heals.

Even with chests, I find it very difficult.

[Paul Stevens]

I am very sorry. The CSBtiggy2 that I posted has the
wrong executable. I have replaed it with the correct one.
You can recognize the correct one because it has
"Version TIGGY2" in the "Help"-"About" menu item.

[PaulH]

That door is causing me a lot of problems. I can't seem to load the savegame file into any editor to open it. Which would be technically cheating anyway; what is to stop you deleting a worm here, or a scorpion there... it would be difficult to trace. Anyway I would not like to cheat.

So the options are a dungeon.dat with the door removed:
Enough resources so you can train the character up to the required strength (which will take ages);
Or take another character who has the strength.

Personally I like the last option. This is quite hard enough how it is with these rules (as anybody who has tried it would testify). But if you could pick anybody, I would enforce the 'reincarnate only' rule.

Does anybody have any opinions?

Also I cannot see how Kate hacked that door down anyway, even with an axe (40 strength required) unless she trained Tiggy for a very long period of time.

I actually now find this challenge quite intriquing, and am determined I'll do it...

[Paul Stevens]

You cannot edit the game and delete
monsters (for example) because the resulting
movie would no longer work with the unedited
dungeon. Your trickery would be discovered
and you would be banned from competition for
life. Or worse!

You cannot edit savefile with the standard editors
because it has the expanded databases, etc.
You can edit it with CSBuild.

[beowuuf]

not...slapped in the face by a wet herring?
noooooooooooooooooooooooooo! : )

you only need to earn 9 strength, so a combination of ninja and fighter levels combined with luck can earn you that by level four, especially if you are throwing your inventory i would guess : )

[PaulH]

I would hardly call an extra 9 strength points 'only'. I gained two ninja levels by the time I got down to the worms and got one point of strength. We can't use weapons (apparantly) and I don't really fancy standing in front of a rock pile and war crying it to death. This just becomes boring.

[Paul Stevens]

I have been trying it with a reincarnated Tiggy.
The program does not prhibit use of weapons
and I have been using the Falchion. It is not
very effective in Tiggy's hand but it did get me
one fighter level.

[Sphenx]

Join me in an unofficial competition where you can select four champions, equip them, train them.. You can pick up several items in your backpack at one time. Overloaded champions are even allowed. You can bump them into walls, make some of them die. You may take damage from monsters and kill them with too much spells if you want. Ah.. well, you may feed your champions, but only with comestible items. No time limit.
Competitors will be ranked according to their artistic playing style.

Who's first? :)

[PaulH]

???

And back to the Tiggy competition. There is a way of giving Tiggy a head start with a bit of patience. While I was aware that the primary stats roughly halved in CSBWin when you reincarnated a character, I was unaware that their secondary stats increased slightly. (I know they did in the amiga version). This increase in stats appears to be random across the range of about 0-4. So just keep on starting new games until you get a Tiggy with a good strength bonus. This will make attaining that magical 40 strength a little easier. Maybe.

'Competitors ranked according to their artistic playing style'
Oh dear...

[PaulH]

Well, I got to the 40 strength eventually, but killing the end worms sure is hard. Is anybody else apart from myself and Paul Stevens attempting this? It wouldn't be much of a 'competition' if it were just a two horse race, but I am going to have a go anyway.

[Gambit37]

Am I the only one who got Sphenx's joke? :-)

[Antman]

I am willing to attempt this, i am just waiting for the final version.

[Paul Stevens]

Well, Paul and I have been using Tiggy2. Nobody has
said that they want it changed. One thing I should point
out....it allows you to use the 'Glacial' mode and 'Player
Clock'. The fact that you have done this is recorded
indelibly in the recording file. So you cannot cheat (if
you want to call this cheating) without being detected.
Should it be allowed? Should I make a final release
that prohibits slowing the game to below 'Normal' speed?
I suggest that we allow it but do not recognise record-
setting game that use it. In that way I won't have to
make another release and Paul and I won't have to repeat
what we have done. But allowing it makes for faster
'movies'.

P.S. I used it! But I plan to back up and repeat the portion
of the Worm Level in which I used it.