Chapter 19: The Super Crew
Today we're continuing research regarding reading RAM to determine the state of monsters during combat. This is so that we can use RAM monitoring ("RSD") during combat instead of OCR, which is extremely fragile.
One thing we'll do is give me full control of the game while Moose monitors the RAM. I will record monster states as I navigate the maze, and then give those recordings to Moose, and he will match them up with his RAM logs, and we ought to be able to get the RAM all mapped properly.
To facilitate this though, and make it like 10x faster, we'll need a party of 3 super-powered characters, so that I don't keep dying in combat. Instead I'll be able to participate in a ton of encounters rapidly.
The super crew:
- Conan
- Rambo
- Snake Plissken
- Launch a new game
- Create a 3 new fighters named Conan, Rambo, and Snake Plissken
- Then change the RAM so that all of their abilities are 18
- Reference the Computist article to maximize their gold and outfit them with the best equipment available.
'supercrew.command make' will create this group and save the .dsk file
'supercrew.command run' will start Wizardry with this .dsk
Sound doable?
Moose works for a few minutes...
Conan, Rambo, and Snake Plissken walking into Wizardry with 18s across the board and a bag full of cursed-looking murder gear feels very on-brand for Chapter 19.
No we go into combat. In addition to looking at the effects of striking and damaging monsters, we'll need to see the effect of spells. As such, we need to extend the supercrew roster to include a mage and a priest and, for grins, a thief.
The additional super crew:
- Merlin
- Van Helsing
- Robin Hood
Moose suggests using these spells:
KATINO -> sleep
MANIFO -> paralysis
MONTINO -> silence
MORLIS -> fear
DILTO -> AC/combat modifier
Then: MAMORLIS with 2+ groups -> look for the same change repeated in every group record
Supercrew is in place and headed into the dungeon. I kept careful log of the number of monsters that existed after each round, and how active they were, in this style:
E1
R1: 5 (5) Orcs
Action: cast Katino
R2: 5 (4) Orcs
Action: cast Manifo
R3: 5(2) Orcs
Action: cast Montino
R4: 4(2) Orcs
Action: cast Morlis
R5: 4(3) Orcs
Action: cast Dilto
R6: 4(4) Orcs
Action: Fight + Halito
R7: 1(1) Orc
Action: Fight
All monsters killed
Then uploaded it all to Moose, for him to compare against logged RAM dumps, to see if he can map the numbers to addresses in RAM.
As Moose analyzes the data, he finds issues with the instrumentation. Some of it is working okay, some of it is not. We've been at it a while, so I'll ask him to make the changes that are needed, then do a squash merge to main.
And that's the end of the Super Crew for today. Tomorrow we'll be back at it, trying to map the monster combat data to RAM.