Submission #2617: Aqfaq's GBC Super Breakout! "HUMAN-ASSISTED" in 1:38:06.37

Behold! This is Super Breakout 9999-score run!

This is also a revolutionary demonstration of a new concept: The Human-Assisted Tool-Assisted Speedrun! Also known as...

The idea is to use human intervention to aid the tools in finding better input! I tested it with this GBC game called Super Breakout, which is THE best "ball & paddle" type of game there is. My goal was to human-assist the tools in achieving the highest score possible: 9999 points! Can you imagine? 9999 freakin' points! It is the ultimate highest score in this game and no more is possible, so I human-assisted the movie to stop after getting that score. First, I was sceptical in achieving the goal, but when I saw the human-assisted results myself, it was amazing!

In the beginning, I made a simple Lua script bot that plays the game:

while true do
if memory.readbyte(0xc129) > memory.readbyte(0xc005) then
joypad.set (1, {right=true})
end
if memory.readbyte(0xc129) < memory.readbyte(0xc005) then
joypad.set (1, {left=true})
end
vba.frameadvance()
end

This script automatically follows the ball, but it sometimes makes a mistake, if the ball has too high horizontal velocity. Also, sometimes the bot gets into an infinite loop, bouncing the ball repeatedly into a corner, because the game has no bounce randomness at all. It seemed hopeless, but guess what? This is where the human aspect comes into play! I occasionally stopped the script and adjusted the position of the paddle myself, so that the bot would not fail.

Technically, it was pretty challenging, because I had to configure the controller input from the emulator options:

Options --> Input --> Configure Controllers --> Contoller 1... (It is amazing! Basically, any keyboard key can be assigned for one of the controller buttons!)

I worked a few months on this, but when I finally got the controller configured, I had everything I needed for generating input manually! Whew! Then, if the bot made a mistake, I actually stopped the bot, LOL! (There are segments in this TAS where no bot was running at all!) Then I loaded a savestate and pressed left or right, while the bot was waiting to get started again.

This is only a little demonstration, but I think it already shows that human-generated input has huge potential in TAS movies.

Anyone interested in seeing more HATAS movies? I already have a few games on my mind, which I could human-assist, they are all breakout clones...

Enjoy the future! It is here now in the form of HATAS!

This kind of new content will save the site! After this is published, I suggest replacing the "When human skills are just not enough!" with "When tools fail, humans prevail!" or "Don't hate us, do HATAS!"

YAY!

FractalFusion You displayed to us the skill of making a long TAS with as little effort as possible. Too bad the product wasn't so entertaining. The most interesting part of the TAS was the bot hitting into the corner over and over. Anyway, thanks for playing.