'Toe to Toe' with the dragon

[zoom]

so one could think that while the atari version was the first version, they(the gamedesigners) improved things in later versions
did they not alter the csb atari version to have the gigglers work on both hands? it would be striking if they only changed something on the engine when there had been a different computer architecture involved!" then again, maybe not

[beowuuf]

I forget the exact tweaks, the DM atari and CSB atari engine were not the same, but they still seemed close compared to the PC and Amiga - drinking frm fountains, and the hand a giggler stole from for example

[Paul Stevens]

I have posted a second "Minimal Picking" movie at:

http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Competition

I cut two picks off the old record. It now stands
at 43. I doubt it can be improved. The total
time can certainly be improved.

I did it very differently than Antman. My journey
is no speed run. Up and down the dungeon with
four champions collecting water and leveling up.

Taking part in this competition was interesting.
I learned some new things about Dungeon Master.

[MasterWuuf]

is left hand actually the left hand or the right hand? champions all attack with their left hand!!

I'm sure it helped the thinking process in the game, but this feature irritated me (when the game came out on Atari).

I read through all the comments on the competition. Isn't it hard to believe such an old game can still draw such interest?

DM was definitely a 'classy' classic.

[PaulH]

Keen to give this a go, but the file is just a load of garbled text. What do I do with it?

[PaulH]

Sorted

[PaulH]

Just having a practice, non recording - on the worms with 18 picks.

[PaulH]

Taking a break for now, but on the scorpion level after 27 inc ra keys.

[beowuuf]

Glad you are managing to get in on this one! What's your party?

[PaulH]

Had two attempts so far - first with Wuuf: 18 picks first try to the worms. Then decided to take Wuuf, Stamm and Linflas, current position as above.

Interesting challenge. Is very apparent some characters consume food and water quicker than others. And hopefully this will spawn similar challenges ie minimal HP lost, least mana consumed.

[Paul Stevens]

some characters consume food and water quicker than others

Indeed. Do you know why? I don't.

[beowuuf]

Indeed, I seem to recall stamm as being very conservative with the food/water

[Ameena]

Maybe 'cause he's a Dwarf, so he's already used to living underground where there's not much food and stuff .

[PaulH]

some characters consume food and water quicker than others

Indeed. Do you know why? I don't.

Just doing some experiments. My initial thoughts were vitality, so have resurrected Hawk (55), Stamm (50) and Tiggy (35) and are letting them sleep, no actions. Tiggy's food seems to drain slightly slower, Water looks identical on all three.

My second thought is spell casting. So going to repeat but wake tiggy obn full mana and cast spells.

[PaulH]

A marked difference! Stamm and Hawk who just slept stayed about the same as before, but had more than half the food bar full when Tiggy was deep into the yellow.

Need to repeat for accuracy, and other actions. Noticed that Tiggy's stamina dropped whilst sleeping before topping back up. Will have to look at other stamina zapping tasks.

Stamm in stamina stakes has been the best in all my speed records.

[PaulH]

Taking Hawk and Tiggy as a reference again, I took Leyla for the rope, as I know that reperated climbing down on no pit drains stamina fast. She was in the yellow on food whilst the others were at about 80-85%. And much quicker than Tiggy's spell casting.

So whether it is the actions that so it, or stamina drain (or both) I do not know, but I think that is what it is based on. Now to find why some staminas drain quicker than others

[beowuuf]

Note that the more mana you possess, the more you restore per 'tick', with your wisdom determining how fast that 'tick' is. So tiggy with her above 40 mana would restore 2 points per tick, and much faster. So combined with her low stamina, you will really see her stamina deplete during sleep, whereas a lesser mana figure with lower wisdom like hawk would probably keep uo staina restoration in line with mana

Or something

[Paul Stevens]

Or something

Rrrrright.

Cursory examination of the code indicates that
the food bar goes down as some sort of function
of stamina. Anyone interested can look at the
function named TenSecondUpdate(). Or something.
Water is handled nearby but I did not look at it.

[Sophia]

For DSB, I pretty much just converted that code from C to Lua without thinking very much about it. The algorithm is... strange.

[PaulH]

Proving a little more difficult than I thought - but using very different tactics to Paul S. Just realised I can't outrun the firepit below the knight level (without the BOS) once I have dropped the knight down the pit! And don't have the mana to kill it.

[PaulH]

Did it in 43 - pretty sure that is the minimum! Got five logs I need to splice. Ended up being a time of 26028 and 13288 moves.

Was messy!

[Paul Stevens]

I have added your game to:
http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Competition/

I find it very frightning the way you leave creatures
behind you to potentially box you in. But it worked.
And I never realized you could skip a very dangerous
part of the Knight Level via a back-door entrance
to the Master Key. Tricky. And grabbing that gold
key on level 2 is obvious once I saw it but I did not
think to do it.

I suppose everyone else has known these things
for years.

Would the same competition using the CSB
doungeon be more interesting? It is certainly
less linear.

[PaulH]

The 'back passage' is a useful one for this comp as you don't have to fight all the way through the lower levels again. However in a pure speed run I found fighting (dodging) through the knights and using a skeleton key and the main stair case to be faster overall.

CSB comp sounds interesting! I have still not mastered all the tips and tricks for this place!

[PaulH]

Well I managed DM in 42 picks! Took longer, but used different, safer tactics (ie some wizard levels to kill the wasps) and killed a few monsters that could cause problems. Had a think about the Iron keys on level 6 and found a way of reducing one pick

Interesting dance with the worms on 4... very close!

[Gambit37]

I didn't really pay attention to this thread and when I finally do, PaulH is discussing his back passage. I shall go away now. As you were.

[PaulH]

It's not the worms lol.

[beowuuf]

:scared:

:runs:

[PaulH]

Lol, just waiting for Paul S to verify then you can see my stroke of genuius to knock a pick off!

[Paul Stevens]

Well, you did it in 42. Thought it impossible.
I won't tell how you did it. People will have to
look for themselves.

http://www.dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Competition/

Get MinimumPickingPaulH42.7z

[PaulH]

Thanks Paul.

I was suprised how smooth the run went, once relaxed and leveled up it all fell nicely together.