Wizard of Wor

Wizard of Wor

Registry name: wizardofwor. Parity status in games_covered.md: 🥉.

Description

Maze shooter: the player fights Burwors (and later Garwors / Thorwors / Worluk / Wizard) in a shared dungeon, using side teleporters and a bottom radar to track enemies. Jaxtari currently focuses on the first dungeon layout.

Actions

Observations

Reward

Modifications

Registered via WizardOfWorEnvMod:

  • skip_startup_wait — set STARTUP_FREEZE_FRAMES=0 (skip the ~210-frame ALE intro freeze).

  • auto_spawn — set REQUIRE_SPAWN_INPUT=False (player starts already in the maze).

  • skip_intro — modpack combining both of the above.

Known issues

  • Sprite / entity flickering — ALE draws several objects on alternating frames (player, enemies, radar blips). JAX renders them solid every frame; flicker is not reproduced.

  • Radar — box and blip layout were retuned toward ALE, but blip timing, flicker, and occasional alignment vs the maze grid may still diverge.

  • Level progression (not ALE-faithful) — dungeon 1 Burwor→Garwor→Thorwor promotion is only approximate; full multi-dungeon progression is incomplete. Known gaps: - Enemy speed scales with time-in-level (SPEED_TIMER_*), not dungeon

    number as in ALE.

    • Clearing a dungeon respawns the fixed level-1 Burwor layout, not ALE later-dungeon spawns.

    • Only two maze layouts are authored; further gameboard values are empty placeholders. ALE has more / different dungeons.

    • MAX_LEVEL = 5 ends the game; ALE continues indefinitely.

    • Worluk escape does not end the dungeon; the level advances only when every enemy slot is empty.

    • Killing the Worluk never sets doubled, so next-dungeon double score does not work.

    • Worluk pathfinding toward teleporters and Wizard teleport/combat are stubs / out of original scope.

    • Extra life on level clear (lives + 1) is unverified vs ALE.

  • Dungeon layouts — only the first maze topology is fully authored; other boards are incomplete / placeholder relative to ALE.

  • Enemy AI — movement, firing, and invisibility (Garwor / Thorwor) are approximate; they will not match ALE decision-for-decision. Early-game Burwor step cadence is tuned to ALE; later speed-up tiers are scaled proportionally and not measured against ALE.

  • Visual appearance (maze & enemies) — the maze walls and enemy sprites look slightly different from ALE (authored / scaled assets vs the original playfield and TIA graphics), even when layout and colors are close. Render also uses a non-uniform upscale of half-resolution sprites plus a procedural radar; small color, thickness, or HUD mismatches can remain. Compare with scripts/gameplay_comparison.py -g WizardOfWor.

  • Teleporter duty cycle — open/closed timing uses a simple frame_counter % 360 < 180 window; may not match ALE exactly.