Adventure

[FireTiger]

Talk about an unbeatable game -

 

I had no keys, no bridge (not that it would nmatter), no chalice

 

all three dragons and the bat... nothing else but the magnet

 

 

Wow!

 

I have had the black and gold keys missing (in oppsite castles) before but never all three.

 

any other lose before you start games?

Edited August 4, 2005 by FireTiger

[+SpiceWare]

Cehck this - Interview 2: Warren Robinett

I did make a mistake in my random object placement code, and there is a 1 in 18 chance that the yellow key will start out in the yellow castle, making the game unwinnable. This only happens in level 3.

[FireTiger]

I know, but I've never had all three dragons and the bat out at the same time that no objects are out... it was really hard to get around like that only to have the bat come by and trade a dragon for the magnet.

[maibock]

I heard, that if the bat can't find anything over a certain period of time, it get's pissed and grabs you the square, and takes you for a ride

[Nukey Shay]

Total bunk

 

Although the bat can carry you if you happen to be inside the dragon it wants to pick up (i.e. eaten).

 

What happens if it can't find a valid object to pick up when it becomes "fed up" is that it just remains in that mode until it manages to touch one. If no valid objects appear on the screens in it's flightpath, it just continues flying in the same trajectory infinitely (you can use this to your advantage by "training" the bat to fly in a given direction).

[FireTiger]

naw it kept dropping dragons near me and picking up other dragons, I know that dragons are real low in the bat's priority so that was a dead giveaway...

 

20min and about as meny respaws later no keys no shiny things no bridges...only one magnet and three dragons...and the batty bat.

Edited August 5, 2005 by FireTiger

[shadow460]

LOL, that's messed up.

[FireTiger]

Random code made up for it the very next game I started out with all three keys, one dragon, the sword and the no bat.

[ulij20]

Talk about an unbeatable game -

 

I had no keys, no bridge (not that it would nmatter), no chalice

 

all three dragons and the bat... nothing else but the magnet

 

 

Wow!

 

I have had the black and gold keys missing (in oppsite castles) before but never all three.

 

 

904521[/snapback]

Now THAT is a game that I've never seen before. I do remember one with just the bat and the magnet, but no dragons. In that game (and in your game, I'm sure), the black key is inside the gold castle, the white key is inside the black castle, and the gold key would be either in the white or black castle. No idea where the other items are, however, because they can start out anywhere. However, there's only eight possible rooms they could be in. For the bridge, nine, since I have found it in the gold castle along with the black key before.

[FireTiger]

It was my lucky day to be killed repeatedly... also the first time I've ever been swallowd by all three dragons, two on top of yeachother the other facing the other way, I think Yorgal was the odd dragon out.

Edited August 6, 2005 by FireTiger

[Room 34]

There are only 18 initial arrangements for the objects in level 3, right? Has anybody documented what those 18 are? (Nukey, I'm looking in your direction. )

 

I'd like to find out of this arrangement is really possible. The bat never takes things in or out of locked castles, correct?

[FireTiger]

I respawned a couple kazillon times, there were no other visable objcets, I didn't see anthing I couldn't get to... So I'm pritty sure I didn't miss anything.

[Raiu]

I'm pretty sure he meant 18 starting positions for just the gold key. The problem is that the golden key uses the set up for the other objects, and therefore sometimes starts in the Gold Castle, just like any other object can, rather than the more limited possiblities for the other two keys and the chalice.

 

From looking at the code, and using the game's internal numbering for the rooms:

 

Most objects (the dragons, the bat, the sword, the bridge, the bat, the magnet, and the gold key) have can appear in any room from 1 to 29, which is 29 possibilities, not 18. (I think he got confused because room 18 is the interior of the gold castle).

 

The Chalice can appear in rooms 19 through 26, or eight possibilities. (Rooms 19 through 22 are the Black Castle's maze, rooms 23 through 26 are the White Castle maze). The white key can appear in rooms 1 through 22, so it can appear inside the Black Castle or Gold Castle but never inside the White Castle. The black key can only appear in rooms 1 through 18, so the only castle it could appear in is the Gold Castle.

 

So there are, in fact, a lot of different item combinations overall. It's just that 1/29 of those combinations feature the gold key starting inside the Gold Castle, with more complex probability formulae for the chances of the gold and black keys starting in each other's castles and the threesome of black locked in gold, white locked in black, gold locked in one of the other two. (I hesitate to calculate those because it requires calculating the positions not just of the keys in question, but of all the other objects in the game, since no two objects can start in the same room)

 

It's actually a really easy problem to fix (making it so the gold key will only appear in rooms 1 through 17, outside of all the castles), requiring changing only one nybble of the code.

 

-DS-

 

Edit: Added suggestion where the "one-in-18 chance" statement may have come from.

Edited August 6, 2005 by Raiu

[Room 34]

So are the positions of all of the objects really random, individually, in game 3? I have always been under the impression that there were 18 preset arrangements of the objects, and the game would randomly pick one of those 18 each time you reset.

[Chris++]

What's so awesome about the PS2 version on Atari Anthology is that there are dozens of new "object maps." That made the whole disc well worth the price, to me. It's almost surreal seeing things start out in different places after having gotten used to the handful of Game 3 deployments over a quarter-century.

[FireTiger]

I have played more then 18 diffrent maps on settiong 3

 

I think its 18 places for the gold key, 16 places for the black and white keys, 23 places for anthing not a key...ect

[Raiu]

No, as I said, the gold key uses the SAME initialization values as the other non-key non-chalice objects. That's 29 possibilities, not 18. I don't know where he got 18 from, though there are a few possibilities. (It was probably that he didn't have the code in front of him, and it'd been years since he'd worked on the game, so his memory was a little off)

 

There's 18 different possible locations for the black key, 22 locations for the white key, 8 for the chalice, and 29 for everything else, including the gold key.

 

I think the reason for seemingly few combinations of items is the nature of the random number generator of the 2600 hardware, not the game code.

 

-DS-

Edited August 9, 2005 by Raiu

[Nukey Shay]

No, as I said, the gold key uses the SAME initialization values as the other non-key non-chalice objects.  That's 29 possibilities, not 18.  I don't know where he got 18 from, though there are a few possibilities.  (It was probably that he didn't have the code in front of him, and it'd been years since he'd worked on the game, so his memory was a little off)

 

There's 18 different possible locations for the black key, 22 locations for the white key, 8 for the chalice, and 29 for everything else, including the gold key.

 

I think the reason for seemingly few combinations of items is the nature of the random number generator of the 2600 hardware, not the game code.

 

-DS-

907871[/snapback]

 

 

Things are a bit more complex. You need to keep in mind that nothing that happens on the 2600 is really random...so the game does not allow every combination of every object based on just what range is allowed for each object. The game initializes an object, and the next result also has a direct connection to the first object placed, same for the next after that, etc (there's not a whole lot of objects, and they are "randomized" in the same order every game...starting with their original positions-which is the same as game #2's). 18 is probably a pretty good guess if it's not the correct number of results.

I did try mapping them out before, but gave up when I discovered that the hacks that I'd done to the program (in order to find out object starting positions) was somehow affecting the results. There's a lengthy thread about this someplace

[silverpoodleman]

Boy, you RPGer's sure do love this game. Through three "long" forum discussions, time studying the manual, and a revised attitude when I tried this game again.....sorry, it didn't take. I still do not get it (admittedly b/c I did not have this game in the 70's when it first came out and thus, did not get wrapped up in how cool home it was for the D&D set to have RPG games on a TV set which you could control - was that a run-on sentence?).

 

Fortunately, I got two new games in the mail today which I have been waiting for - Ram It! and Thrust + Platinum. I think I'll keep Adventure on the shelf for now.

 

Good luck for all of you who love Adventure and yearn to play it as often as I love to play Solar Fox!