Dungeon Master Forum

Time to move this out of the "Toe-to-Toe"
thread.

Chaos Strikes back is more interesting than
Dungeon Master when it comes to a minimum
item picking competition. I managed it in
only 179 picks. You can probably do
better but I currently hold the record.
I even lost a corbum and had to search
through a pile of Worm Rounds to find it.

Get my result at:
http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Competition
and see if you improve on the current record.

Hm, I've got some problems with replaying this video, it says there is no file to load. When I take the mini.dat and rename it to csbgame2.dat, I can start it but after a while it crashes, and similarly with dungeon.dat renamed to csbgame2.dat (well, I was sort of trying everything even if it obviously made no sense... ). Could you upload it once more, please? Thanks.

Sorry about that. I forgot that CSB
requires the savegame to play the movie.
It should work now.

Will have a go tonight - a conservative romp through the dungeon.

Paul Stevens wrote:Sorry about that. I forgot that CSB
requires the savegame to play the movie.
It should work now.

Works fine now, thanks! It looks definitely much more challenging than the DM competition. I'll look at it more carefully when I have time - ie only on the weekend, probably. Damn my job! If there's a global recession, why do I have so much work? This is not fair!

It's just no fun entering competitions when PaulH is already participating - you just know you have no chance (unless you are Antman).

Lol, I really am not that good at CSB!

My feeling is that it will not be so obvious
when one has achieved the minimum in CSB.
There are so many ways to accomplish
things. And perhaps a bit of luck will
be involved. Just solving level 0 has
several options affected indirectly by
the randomizing Gigglers. I used four
B-Keys but I doubt the winner will do so.

I just tried the DM picks one, managed a respectable 43 with restarts.... but got completely foxed how it was done in 42... I spent most of last night not sleeping over just how it was done, recalling every step i made so played the recording back...and now wonder... why on level 11 does a torch act as a magnifyer??? I had picked up the magnifier on level 10 to do this, hence my 1 count different. Was this a bug in the orriginal programme?

You can use any object on Enlarge my view. Don't know if it was a bug or intended (maybe intended because it is a bit tough for beginners to get the magnifying glass on the scorpion level...).

EDIT: And, yeah, congratulations for 43 picks!

It's a bug in the original dungeon.

I've slashed the record by 171 items down to 8! Four keys and four corbums, although one of the keys is the Winged Key. I'm pretty sure that is the absolute minimum, unless PaulH or Paul Stevens has any more tricks. The end of this was very, very painful to record.... I'll mail it to Paul for confirmation anyway. It is a very different style to Paul's game, used four characters instead of one.

Stunning!

WTF!?!?!? Gotta see this...

S T U N N I N G

I'm really looking forward to watching this! I can't believe it! I can't imagine it!

Anyhow, it only proves Trantor's words: "It's just no fun entering competitions when PaulH is already participating - you just know you have no chance (unless you are Antman)." (italics by me )

Hah, was I right or was I right? Absolutely incredible job Antman! I have no clue how you did that, but the effort speaks for itself.

Antman's effort is recorded here:

http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Competition

"CSBMinimumPickingAntman4.zip"

You really should try this before you cheat and
see how Antman did it. Four Corbum...certainly.
Four keys...I cannot see how it could be done
with three. Zero everything else....wow.

Antman - you must have trained these folks
in the prison. And you saved over the top of
starting save file which makes replaying
annoying. I removed all your saves so it
will not affect anyone else.

I resurrected them but didn't train them, but they could've done with some more training as they only just survived to the end. I felt a bit sorry for Plague, but I'm sure he understood his sacrifice and Petal was mere seconds from the end when she succumbed to starvation. Yes I had forgotten how saving over the original game would cause problems, lucky I created a backup for myself. Anyway, enjoy the movie!

but... why did you kill Plague ?

Very well done indeed! You're the ultimate Dungeon Master, Antman! I'll have to watch this again tomorrow 'cause I'm soooo sleeeeepy now and I must have missed many interesting things... but it's fantastic. And a bit brutal - I think your party (or what was left of it) had to spend a few years in hospital afterwards. They looked like the Napoleon's army after the battle at Borodino in Russia.

Antman wrote:I felt a bit sorry for Plague, but I'm sure he understood his sacrifice

Heh, that's a bit questionable, isn't it? You did it because of his feet injury or because of something else?

Plague is female according to the data files.

Under the hood I always imagined her looking like Ni Chang from The Forbidden Kingdom, but maybe that's just me:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rqF7f1uUVE0/S ... +chang.JPG

Wow, if Plague looked anything like that I probably would have kept her alive, foot injury and all! But the reason I killed her is that I accidentally saved without realizing her feet were injured and slowing me down, which would have made getting the corbums impossible because I had no flask to heal her with, so she had to perish for the greater good.... Plus I didn't really feel like starting again. Hmmm now that I think about it I could have just replayed the recording from the start up to my last save before that and carried on.... Oh well it's done now, Lest we forget.

It's funny you mention the Battle of Borodino as I just finished reading War and Peace a couple of months ago, which describes it in detail, I can definitely see the resemblance of Napoleon's Army to Buzzzz and Mantia!

PS. Plague actually knew that Buzzzz and Mantia would ressurrect her in an Altar of Vi after vanquishing Chaos anyway

I've replayed it once again and it's really great. I knew that food, poison and inujuries would be the biggest issue in that, and I admire the way you tackled it.
May I ask you, Antman, how many times did you save your game? And how many times did you restore it? And how much time did you spend on it?

@Sophia: LOL - I don't think Plague looks that good. Actually, I don't think she looks good at all. I've always imagined him... I mean her like a wraith from the Lord of the Rings. I've never liked these strange characters from CSB - I always prefered the more human ones from DM.

@Antman: War and Peace is one of my favourite novels. We have it even in Russian original at home, but I'm not so good at it to be able to read it.

Antman wrote:Plague actually knew that Buzzzz and Mantia would ressurrect her in an Altar of Vi after vanquishing Chaos anyway

And what about poor little Petal lying ten tiles from the end?

Jan wrote:I've never liked these strange characters from CSB - I always prefered the more human ones from DM

I agree, that's why I imagine her as looking more human under her hood.

Jan wrote:what about poor little Petal

Petal wasn't ever actually dead to begin with, she just couldn't stand the hunger anymore and decided to sneak off early for some screamer slices. Who can blame her, the (non-Amiga) CSB ending is dull!

I probably saved the game between 10 and 20 times maybe. As for restoring, probably over 100 times but that was due to the extremely slim chance of a worm moving to the correct tile at 00,20,44 which activates the teleporter at 00,33,42. I just had to try over and over until it appeared and demons weren't blocking the way, if it wasn't for that I might have restored about 30 times. The first 95% of the recording probably took around 30 minutes but waiting for the teleporter to appear took an extra hour and a half