Desert Speedtrap Starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote is a platformer game released for the Master System in 1993. This TAS finishes the game as fast as possible without restrictions. The NTSC setting was used, as this game had an official NTSC release (Brazil).

Controls

Use 1 to jump and 2 to peck things. Road runner will stop when he comes across seed piles, which can be quite frustrating in casual play. Luckily you can avoid him stopping by just holding down the 2 button the whole time.

Level Goals

The goal of each level is to get to the exit sign. Wile E. Coyote will be chasing you with a contraption and you can not damage him. When you hit the exit sign he will crash his contraption and the level will finish. There seems to be a frame rule like system with him crashing. This will depend on his exact cycle through the level but is usually roughly 1-2 seconds.

Pickup Items

Enemies can drop: Extra time, speed up, invincibility, points multiplier. Out of these it seems that speed up would be useful, but it only increases acceleration, not top speed. Since you remain at top speed almost all the time, the speed up pickup is not worth it at any point in the run. It could be worth it in theory if you had a level with lots of turning around.

Movement

You cannot speed up past a velocity of “34” in the air, but you can get up to “56” on the ground. If you jump when you’re going at top speed (56), then you keep 56 through the jump unless you slow down. Slopes don’t seem to impact on speed too much apart from making your acceleration up to top speed slightly slower. Acceleration up to 34 is quicker when jumping, but it’s usually not worth starting your movement with a jump because you can’t exceed a speed of 34 until you hit the ground again. When chaining multiple jumps together at speeds under 56, you can usually increment your speed up by 7 every time you land. Then every 6 or so frames you’ll increment it by another 7. When chaining jumps it’s often best to squeeze out one or two speed increments where possible.

RAM Addresses

DescriptionAddress
X Position0x0B1C & 0x0B1B
X Speed0x0B18
Y Position0x0B1E & 0x0B1D
Y Speed0x0B17

Memory: Claiming for judging.
Memory: This TAS seems really clean. I got a satisfying answer for the one thing I had questions about as well. Accepting.
Meep Meep.

EZGames69: Processing...

Memory: Updating file with 6 frame improvement by aiqiyou. Talked to 8bitbeast and they're cool with it.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15628
Location: 127.0.0.1
Former player
Joined: 6/30/2010
Posts: 1107
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
So this is how the Road Runner always gets away, he's using TAS tools! Well this was a pretty good TAS, it was fast paced and the levels were not too simple, but also not too complex to slow down the pace too much. And of course, there are the obligatory moments of Wile E. Coyote's contraptions backfiring on him, just like the cartoon physics demand! "Yes" vote from me!
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Memory
She/Her
Site Admin, Skilled player (1558)
Joined: 3/20/2014
Posts: 1767
Location: Dumpster
Is Wille Coyote's position universally tracked throughout the level or can one despawn him by having him go off screen? If the latter, could you intentionally despawn him (by stopping or otherwise) to reduce end of level delays by having him spawn sooner after you reach the exit?
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
The8bitbeast
He/Him
Expert player (2644)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
Memory wrote:
Is Wille Coyote's position universally tracked throughout the level or can one despawn him by having him go off screen? If the latter, could you intentionally despawn him (by stopping or otherwise) to reduce end of level delays by having him spawn sooner after you reach the exit?
So I've had a look at this possbility. 0x0BDB holds the timer that tracks his cycle. Freezing it stops the level from finishing and poking it can increase or decrease the time of completion. This byte is used by other enemies to track their cycles and can be manipulated by killing enemies for example, but it always seems to reset to the same number when Wile E is loaded (even if I poke it to something completely different beforehand). Once Wile E is loaded, thje byte increments by 9 each frame. Wile E will only come on screen each time when it wraps around to 0, so there doesn't seem to be a way to get it to 0 any sooner (e.g. having him off screen earlier). This means that rather than a global frame rule, this acts more like a local cycle that starts when Wile E is loaded. I checked by delaying my movement by 6 frames before loading Wile E and the level took 6 frames longer to complete. While this seems pretty conclusive, this would be worth looking into for any future TASes of this game in case I've missed any ways to manipulate it. I can't get Wile E to load any sooner as it appears to be based on your x position, but I have noticed that having a drastically different y-value can cause him to load in at a slightly different point in the cycle/framerule. This is probably the biggest potential for timesave, but might not be useful as routing through the level requires you being on specific platforms with specific y-values. To get him to do anything different I had to move essentially a whole screen up or down from my previous position.
Memory
She/Her
Site Admin, Skilled player (1558)
Joined: 3/20/2014
Posts: 1767
Location: Dumpster
Thanks for the info!
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
aiqiyou
He/Him
Skilled player (1829)
Joined: 8/4/2018
Posts: 95
Location: China
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/637939608871289782 I improved it with 6 frames at the at the end of the last level.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15628
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4777] SMS Desert Speedtrap Starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote by The8bitbeast & aiqiyou in 09:06.25