Addams Family (NES)/Game Mechanics and Techniques
From SDA Knowledge Base
Contents
Items
In total, there is 1.056.000$ (+ a few thousand in hundred dollar bills raining down on the balcony) and 3 chunks of cheese in the game.
- Dollar bill, worth 100$
- Dollar bills, worth 500$
- Gold bar, worth 2000$
- Diamond, worth 4000$
- Money bag, worth 10000$
- Cheese, restores 16 health (56 max)
RNG
Most of the movements in the game run on local timers (item on screen and in a few cases room timers). However, at least the bats appear to have a random element to them. This has not been described or investigated in detail. In TAS conditions, it can easily be seen that adding even small jumps, delaying a frame or jumping over/on a previous enemy can change the behavior of upcoming bats. Based on these observations, it's assumed that bat behavior can't be manipulated in real-time.
Movement mechanics
The basic movement in this game is very simplistic. Movement speed in the x-direction is 1 pixel/frame, with no acceleration. The y-speed is slightly more sophisticated (0-3 pixels/frame) to give an impression of jumping in an arc. There are also some sections in the game that have more involved physics:
Stair mechanics
The first step on a stair can take anywhere from 1 to 10 frames and appears to be based on a global (or cyclic) timer. It does not appear to be manipulable, but the exact mechanics behind have not been investigated. The downtime can be used for x-movements in TAS-conditions, but it's difficult with the current knowledge to imagine any way to minimize stair downtime in real-time.
Swimming
Ice physics
Riding the boat on the secret river
The boat shares fundamentally the same physics as ice and swimming, but with other parameters. Pressing the direction of movement and B at the same time increases the value of $31 by 4, up to a max of #27. The x-movement of a frame is again calculated by looking at $30-$31. Since the max value of $31 in this case is higher than on ice or when swimming, frames with 2 pixel movements are more common.
$45A cycles through the values 0-3 and decreases $31 by 1 every time it goes from 0 to 1 (so every 4th frame). However, this is not in effect while in the air.
Since the x-movement isn't decreased during jumping, a good strategy in real-time is to mash B a few times when starting to row the boat and then primarily rely on buffered jumps to avoid any slowdowns.
