Friendly Alien (Compute's Gazette)
A stranded visitor from another galaxy needs to get home and doesn't have much time. Designed especially for children, "Friendly Alien" is a nonviolent game which requires strategy and a little dexterity. The object is simple: You must guide a stranded visitor to a phone from which he can call home, then lead him to the ship when it lands.
The article for this game can be found on page 70 of Compute's Gazette Issue 27 (September 1985)
Why TAS This Game?
The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 69th TAS from this series.
Here is something that I know for a fact...I never typed this game in. I never was interested in it, mainly because this particular magazine had "Maze-Mania" and I was all over that game. So it eclipsed the other games in this issue and I completely forgot them, due to other issues and things.
Now that I have gotten to this game, it reminds me of ET...the game that brought the Atari 2600 to its death. Only this time, the creator of this game didn't leave faults that were hard to get around.
Game Difficulty and Ending
There is a difficulty selection at the beginning. The choices was from 1 to 5. In this run, I choose 5..the hardest. As for the ending, it is a race to get to the aliens spaceship, which then shows a clear ending of wining.
Effort In TASing (Not BOTed)
Here is another B.A.S.I.C. written game, which means that I have to use the following techniques to keep it running fast:
- Don't hold the direction: Polling in this game slows up other routines, so if you place the input at the right time...you can cut a frame or two off each movement.
- Find the right RNG Seed: Normally, I use the RND to alter the RNG for BASIC coded games before the load of it. In this case, I didn't have to use one...since the first seed was the best for this situation. In fact, I tried 12 combinations before I gave up.
As for other techniques, I had to work out a route for the first screen...which was the most critical to keep the optimization high.
Human Comparison
This game was played on the easiest level, and achieves a run of 1 minute and 10 seconds. My in-game time was 1 minute and 1 second...on the hardest level.