#Emulator
Name "BizHawk 2.10"
System "Sony PlayStation"
Core "Nymashock"
Firmware "SCPH-5501.bin"
Sync settings "memory card on virtual port 1 disabled"
#Game file
Game name "Looney Tunes - Sheep Raider (USA) (En,Fr,Es,Pt).cue"
Region "NTSC-U/C"
S/N "SLUS-01369"
SHA1 "89EDB7A1"
#Run timing
TAS (power on) 50:12.956
RTA (with loads) ~ 49:00
RTA (w/o loads) ~ 33:22 (most comparable to PC leaderboard times)
Levels only 24:53
#Movie details
Frame count 180254
Rerecord count 116976
Cycle count 102045199995
Fps 59,9400601
#Movie tags
Heavy glitch abuse
Uses death to save time
Introduction
Looney Tunes: Sheep Raider (Sheep, Dog, ‘n’ Wolf in Europe) is a stealth puzzle-platformer developed by Infogrames Lyon House and released for the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Windows in 2001. You play as Ralph Wolf as he tries to win “Sheep, Dog, ‘n’ Wolf” or, unofficially, “Who Wants to Be a Sheep Stealer”, a game show hosted by Daffy Duck.
The first record of Sheep Raider speedrunning is
a segmented run of All Levels by Dan 'DanE' Söderhäll in 56:59, completed in July 2013. Since then, aside from RTA runs, a number of TASes and segmented runs have worked to push this game to its limits:
It’s these same game-breaking skips that ultimately inspired us to make a TAS of the game. The goal of this TAS is to beat All Levels on the NTSC version in record time, a category that has yet to be TASed. The final time without loads is 33:22, beating the current RTA PC world record by almost 20 minutes. The project started in October 2024.
Game description
A little bit of lore: the intro cutscene tells us about a work shift that didn't go well for Ralph. Having stolen no sheep, again, he's left with no choice but to go back home and watch TV. The logo of an unfamiliar game show has just appeared on screen when Daffy Duck slams the door open and declares that Ralph is the newest contestant. (See GIF 1)
The show’s goal is to find a way to steal a sheep in each round of the game, given all kinds of ACME gizmos like elastic bands, costumes, jetpacks, time travel devices, and more.
The rules are simple:
- The sheep must be intact at the end of each level;
- Ralph must not be caught by Sam Sheepdog, who hunts down sheep stealers with a vengeance.
The game has 17 sheep to steal in 18 levels:
- Tutorial level 0;
- Main game levels 1-14;
- Planet X (the final level, 15);
- Secret levels B1 and B2
You navigate from level to level in the hub area of the show. Finishing a level brings you back to the hub, where Daffy Duck congratulates you on stealing a sheep and unlocks the next level. Because of this, all main levels must be done in their intended order. On the other hand, secret levels B1 and B2 do not have any requirements to be unlocked, you just have to find them in the hub. The tutorial and secret levels are optional in the Any% category, but not in this TAS.
Gameplay
Each level presents different environmental and Sam-based puzzles for you to solve. To beat the level, you bring the sheep to the goal, marked by a large white circle. However, if Sam sees or hears you near the sheep, he’ll run at you like a speeding locomotive in order to violently boot you back to your last checkpoint and put the sheep back in the flock. (GIF 2)
To avoid Sam, you can find mailboxes scattered around that instantly order ACME items, or you can take advantage of objects in the environment (like catapults, bees, bushes, rocks, and buttons).
Ironically, we skip most of the puzzle and stealth components of the game in favor of glitches and strats such as infinite jump, checkpoint abuse, and heavy manipulation of Sam’s movement. That being said, there are some restrictions to the use of these strats that make each level an interesting puzzle to TAS (in a much different way than the developers intended). This allows all levels to be beaten in less than an hour.
Movement and mechanics
In addition to the mechanics, exploits, and glitches described below, we made use of various memory addresses to track the movement of Ralph, Sam, the sheep, and various other things and map them using a Lua script (see the Hub level below for an example). The watch files are different for each level and can be found on
the game’s file page.
Basic movement
Ralph has three movement speeds: sneak, walk, and run. Sneak is slowest but is sometimes needed to not alert Sam. Walk is the normal movement pace. Run is the fastest, but after each run Ralph will stop to catch his breath. Run also gets several seconds of
coyote time over voids, before Ralph realizes there’s no ground beneath him and does a gag fall in true Looney Tunes coyote fashion.
(GIF 3)
An interesting fact: coyote time is dependent on Ralph’s shadow placement, so if you move or remove Ralph’s shadow, he’ll fall off the edge immediately.
Run cancel
Normally, Ralph’s run has a cooldown period while he skids to a stop. You’re unable to move or interact during it, which makes running slower than walking over short distances. However, if Ralph slides down a slope or stumbles over an edge, it will cancel his run without the cooldown period. (GIF 4)
The slope run cancel can happen even on surfaces that appear to be walls but have a slight incline. If you run into them at the correct angle, the run will cancel instead of the usual wall bonk animation (which is also slow). (GIFs 5 and 6)
The edge run cancel has to happen on edges of the right height. For an edge that’s higher than Ralph, it has to be only slightly higher, so that he stumbles over it. For an edge that Ralph is falling off, there has to be ground beneath and it has to be much lower than Ralph. This makes it so that he can’t smoothly continue the run on the lower surface and also doesn’t get coyote time since it’s not void.
Sam’s movement manipulation
Sam is normally standing still and guarding sheep. When you’re near Sam, the game gives you a Sam indicator with three modes:
- Green: All good. You’re not in Sam’s range, just close to it. Sam can’t see or hear Ralph.
- Orange: Caution! Sam will see you if he turns your way or if you move without sneaking, so be quiet and everything will be okay.
- Red: Run! Sam has seen you and will catch you if you don’t leave his zone fast.
(Image 1)
There are TAS-only ways to avoid and manipulate Sam. First, there’s Sam’s “ears”. He has a value attached to him that cycles from 0 to 7, changing every frame. If you’re in the orange zone, he only checks if you’re moving when the value is 7. That means the TAS can input sneak only on the frames where Sam can “hear” you, resulting in faster movement.
Second, Sam’s movement in many levels is determined by a map of nodes. He will use a simplified Dijkstra’s algorithm to find the quickest path to Ralph among the nodes, and he also takes into account Ralph’s direction and speed to try to predict Ralph’s next location and arrive there first. However, Sam can’t change directions between nodes, only when he has arrived at one and chooses the next one. (GIF 7)
This means that we can get Sam stuck by carefully moving Ralph to manipulate Sam’s next direction. This gets Sam stuck on environmental obstacles, makes him take unnecessarily long paths through the nodes, or causes him to run back and forth between the same nodes. However, these methods aren’t always applicable and they don’t last forever—Sam has some ways of getting himself unstuck, so we still need to minimize time spent in Sam zones.
Glitched mechanics
This is the major motivating factor for this TAS: the discovery of game-breaking glitches in early 2024. This TAS was made possible thanks to discoveries by Number84, Sam41, Lu9, BetoKos, and others in the community.
Glitch jump
Ralph’s intended movement contains a double jump. If Ralph is holding an item prior to jumping, unequipping that item at the right point in the jump will allow him to jump as if starting from the ground. This allows us to double jump, unequip item, then double jump again, for four jumps total. It can be used either with the aim of gaining maximum height or with the aim of covering maximum distance. (GIF 8)
Infinite jump
Like glitch jump, but theoretically infinite! After performing a glitch jump, you can open the inventory menu and select an item for Ralph to hold. This resets the jump state similar to unequipping an item. Now that Ralph has an item in his hands again, he can also unequip it to gain more jumps. Starting from the ground with Ralph holding an item, you can double jump, unequip item, double jump, inventory equip, and repeat that sequence forever. However, opening the inventory takes a whole second, so this version is used sparingly. (GIF 9)
Void run
This uses the same setup as glitch jumping. Instead of doing another jump after unequipping an item mid-air, you can input run. It’s normally not possible to start a run while in the air, so if Ralph is over ground, nothing much happens. However, if Ralph is in the void, he can start running, which allows us to cross large distances OoB. (GIF 10)
Wall climb
Inclined wall surfaces make Ralph slide off them. However, if you jump toward the wall and equip an item from your inventory, that will cancel the sliding animation and, if you don't move, Ralph will be able to stay on the wall. Repeating the process allows you to climb high and go out of bounds. Most walls have complex geometry that doesn’t allow this, but it’s useful on stages like Level 0. (GIF 11)
Game version differences
Unsurprisingly, PC is the fastest version of the game and a better experience overall. There are no PS1 runs on the leaderboard, because PC has:
- No loading screens or lag;
- Larger rendering distance;
- PC exclusive tricks that save time;
- Less precise glitch jumping;
- A greater variety of tools available.
However, due to the ease of PS1 TAS tools, we’re using the PS1 version of the game, which was released in PAL and NTSC regions. The most significant and TAS-relevant change between regions is in level 5 (see more details in stage by stage section).
Hub
Before every level, Ralph is brought to the hub (the game show staging area), where he selects the next level by navigating to its door. Unfortunately, you can’t run in the hub. And unfortunately, each hub segment gets progressively longer as the doors are further and further from the starting point. Hub segments are more complicated than they appear and consist mostly of fighting the camera to keep Ralph walking in a straight line. To make sure lines were straight when the camera blocked our view, we used a Lua script to map Ralph's movement. (Image 2)
Level 1
The run begins with one of the coolest glitches in the game, which was found in August 2024—the bridge glitch (credits to Number84 and Sam41). First, we talk to Daffy as Robin Hood as he explains how Sam works, and then we take a shortcut (with run cancel) to the mailbox to get the first item—dynamite. The intended use of the dynamite is to explode the boulder blocking the goal, but we can also use it to infinite jump across the large gap in the middle of the level and get to Sam and the sheep flock without using the bridge. Once on the other side, instead of grabbing a sheep right away, we move precisely so that Sam jumps after us and gets stuck in a tree. This is
an old trick from at least 2013 that lets us do two things: keep Sam from chasing us, and set up for the first part of the bridge glitch.
Now that Sam is permanently stuck, the camera gets confused and stays way further from Ralph than normal. While this is happening, we grab the closest sheep and start heading back to the beginning of the level, where the goal is. The problem is that the bridge is dangerously unstable, and the weight of Ralph and the sheep at the same time will cause it to collapse. Normally, you would talk to Porky Pig and get some lettuce to lure the sheep across the bridge, but we skip that. Instead, we set the sheep down before the bridge and walk across the bridge alone to set up the next part of the bridge glitch.
After placing the dynamite to clear the way to the goal, we move Ralph to the entrance to the cave (which we were supposed to use for a puzzle but didn’t). The camera swings around to try to track Ralph, but it gets stuck due to being so far from Ralph. The bridge’s collapse trigger isn’t loaded while the camera is this far away, which allows us to cross the bridge while holding the sheep. (Although, interestingly, the second half of the bridge plays its collapse animation, so we partly walk on air.) All that’s left is to put the sheep in the goal.
Level 2
This is one of 4 levels that don't require any collectible items to be finished. You steal a sheep with nothing but your bare hands.
The old strat was to run across the sheep field in the hope that Sam wouldn’t catch you, which didn't always end well. Then, you would use sheep perfume and a fan to (slowly) lure a sheep. (GIF 12) The next step would be lifting the sheep to the goal using a button, a platform, lettuce, a seesaw, and a boulder—very close to the intended route.
The level went through a series of changes and optimizations in 2024 thanks to Number84 and Sam41. A better understanding of Sam’s movement and use of nodes (and quite a bit of testing) led to a way to get Sam stuck, which skips the perfume entirely. (GIF 13)
Because Sam can also get stuck near the edges, it’s possible to run almost directly to the sheep as in the TAS. Precise movement locks Sam in place off screen until we get to the button with the sheep. (GIF 14)
He then kindly helps us lift it to the seesaw (totally intended and not the product of hours of painstaking movement manipulation). The last step is to push the boulder, and by inputting run on the correct frame, we can run to the goal while the seesaw cutscene is still playing.
Level 3
This level assumes you need a stealth class from Daffy to successfully steal a sheep, but Ralph is a natural born sheep raider, so we skip that lesson. We need two items in this level: a rocket, to get to the other side, and an elastic band, to get back. The intended way to steal the sheep is to hide behind the rocks until you lure one out of Sam's zone. The faster way to do it is to use the elastic and land in a small region near the sheep where Sam doesn't see Ralph. (Image 3)
You have just enough time to get away from Sam on the way back to the elastic. You're meant to send the sheep to the goal over the gap first, and then use it yourself, but it's faster to do that while holding the sheep.
Level 4
One of the most beautiful and memorable levels of the game. The colors, the aesthetic, the music, the napping bull among the piles of fallen leaves, the hungry sharks swimming in the water—everything feels like autumn. At the very start of the level, Daffy the enchanted forest elf tells you about the magic flute that you can use to hypnotize Sam and lure him to the button that temporarily disables him. We don't want to harm anyone, so we'll use a better strat instead.
It’s been known for many many years that this level has a PS1 exclusive shortcut that allows you to get to Sam and the sheep without risking your life and swimming with the sharks. All you need to do is jump on top of the tree and then use the level's geometry to parkour to the other side of it, which is blocked on PC by an invisible wall.
Conveniently, when we’re on the other side of the wall, there's an important mailbox right in our path. We use it to summon the fan and collect it by dropping into Sam’s range when he’s looking away. We then use single-frame sneak inputs to keep Sam from noticing us while we grab the sheep from right under his nose.
Once we’re holding the sheep directly in Sam’s view, however, he definitely sees us. Using movement manipulation to get him stuck on rocks and sheep, we reach the raft just barely before he catches Ralph. We take a raft ride and then run directly to the goal, skipping sneaking by the bull. Ralph is hurt a little (or a lot) that way, but what really matters is that the sheep is safe and intact, so the level is done.
Level 5
The second level of the game that needs no items to complete. It introduces the winter environment and ice physics (as every cool game of that era had to have). This is one of the levels where the hardest and most time consuming part is to bring the sheep to the goal, not to steal it.
Normally, just like in the previous level, you need to use the magic flute to distract Sam, but he's wearing earplugs this time so the plan is doomed to fail. He sends you back to the start of the level as soon as you try to use the flute and sets mines to make it harder for you to get to the sheep again. You have to figure out how to go around the mines and Sam, who's now guarding the narrow corridor that leads to the sheep.
To skip that part, we hit a checkpoint by running over the void and dying, causing us to respawn on the other side of Sam and the flock. We then skip most of the puzzles by avoiding the mines rather than deactivating them.
This level is even shorter on the PAL version of the game, where it's possible to skip the entire mine puzzle and go directly to the goal since there's a little bridge that connects the two halves of the level together. For some reason, the bridge is removed in the NTSC version, so we need to find a different way to break the level and skip this part (and we did). (Images 4-5)
Every sheep, just like Ralph, has its own checkpoint addresses in the game's memory. Ralph's and the sheep’s checkpoints don't always update simultaneously, so here's what happens next: we jump into a very specific spot in the water to hit the sheep checkpoint located in the upper part of that area, so that when Ralph respawns, the sheep is already above. This skips using the boulder and the seesaw to raise the sheep. The slippery ice slide turns out to be optional too since there's a safer shortcut out of bounds. We then set the catapult and send ourselves and the sheep to the goal.
Level 6
This route is a huge achievement because it’s the first time the level has been completed without the sheep costume. As soon as the level begins, you’ll see that a huge portion of it is skipped, as we get the metal detector item and then glitch jump out of the pit instead of going through the underground cave maze. We’re supposed to use the metal detector to avoid mines in the minefield, but instead we run right through the field because the path is always the same.
The metal detector becomes useful after we cross the minefield. Normally, you would use the sheep costume to lure a sheep away from the flock. Instead, we use the metal detector to gain enough height that we can drop down next to the sheep without Sam seeing us. After that, we walk away directly in Sam’s view, and this time he definitely sees us—but he doesn't catch us. Instead, we cause Sam to zigzag around and into corners and fences, giving us enough time to escape into the minefield.
We have to do a little bit of puzzle at the beginning of the final cave. Unfortunately, there’s a PC-only trick here that would let us skip pushing the sheep on the ice blocks, but the jump was made impossible on PS1. Instead, we do some TAS-only strats to run over the chasm and run cancel on the ice block without sliding off into the chasm.
Because we don’t have the sheep costume, we had to figure out another way to complete the next puzzle, which requires luring the sheep through a gate while standing on a button to keep it open. The cave has no ceiling, so we infinite jump over the top of it using the metal detector and land on the out of bounds side of the wall. The game doesn't check whether Ralph is in the wall or not, so we can pick up the sheep and drag it through the wall. That allows us to skip the sheep costume puzzle, and doing it again skips another ice block puzzle, beating the level in record time.
Level 7
This level’s gimmick is a bunch of geysers that suck you in and spit you out in other places (very loudly and on a fixed cycle). You’re also supposed to have a hair dryer, for melting ice, and an umbrella that lets you float in the air between geysers, for avoiding Sam. Instead, we do the entire level with only a single lettuce. (GIF 15)
After grabbing the lettuce, we infinite jump to the other side of the level and use a void run for the first time in the TAS. This lets us skip the geyser cycle, which we would normally have to rely on to reach the sheep area. Instead, we get to the sheep sooner and then use the geysers to escape with it. Then, we immediately drop it into the water to turn it into a block of ice.
This is an intended mechanic to transport the sheep to the other side of the level, but we de-ice the sheep in a very unintended way. You’re supposed to wait for Daffy to pick the sheep out of the water with his crane. (Don’t ask why Daffy is operating a crane and picking ice blocks out of the water. We don’t know either.) (Image 6)
Instead, we jump into the lava at a very precise time to interrupt the process of Daffy picking the sheep out of the water. Dying too early or too late will keep the sheep from respawning in the right way. The goal is to get the sheep to respawn on the correct side of the level while being free of ice, which means we don’t need the hair dryer item to thaw it.
Once we have an ice-less sheep, we just need to get it to the end. The fact that we can do that with only one lettuce is a huge accomplishment, as three lettuce are used for RTA runs and two for previous TASes. The intended strategy is to lure the sheep along by placing a piece of lettuce after each geyser, then push the boulder to block each geyser one-at-a-time so that the sheep isn’t pushed into the lava. To do it with only one lettuce, we place the lettuce as close to the third geyser as possible on its far side. We also don’t let the sheep see the lettuce before we place it, because it takes the sheep a little bit longer to start moving when it notices the lettuce for the first time. This setup minimizes the distance for Ralph to get back to the boulder while maximizing the time it takes for the sheep to get to the lettuce, allowing us just barely enough time to reach the boulder and push it to block the geyser before the sheep gets flung into the lava. In fact, it wouldn’t be possible except for the fact that we can use the geyser itself to give Ralph some extra speed to reach the boulder faster—even a single frame slower, and the sheep is in the lava.
After that nerve-wracking experience, walking the sheep to the goal is easy.
Level 8
A very cool level, especially when done normally. The player is supposed to go back and forth between past and present via the magical chronometer to solve various puzzles: from planting tree seeds to moving rocks to dealing with the bull using the friendly monster Gossamer who just wants to pet Ralph. You know the game is unironically cool when there's a flying, fire-breathing dragon involved. (GIF 16)
The mighty glitch jumps let us not only skip the puzzles, but also the entire back-in-time portion of the level. We pick up a single lettuce, do a wall climb, and void run to Sam. He doesn't expect us to come from his back, so he never sees Ralph. We escape Sam's area with frame perfect sneaking and put the sheep on the seesaw via a minor trick called the claw grip.
The only way to send the sheep over the water now is to push the boulder, but there's a nervous bull there who won't let anyone come near him or the goal. Normally, you need to time travel to the past where the innocent bright-red Gossamer resides, and you lure him through the portal to the present-day bull, who hates red with a passion. Gossamer then runs around the goal nonstop, permanently distracting the bull. (GIF 17)
The alternative and faster way to do this part is to lure the bull to a specific edge of the land and manipulate him into falling into the water (he can definitely breathe down there, no worries). Now that the area is clear, all we have to do is push the boulder and do a tight jump over the water to get into the goal with the sheep.
Fun fact: the past and present versions of the level are located next to each other in the void.
Level 9
It's duck hunting season! Or is it wabbit cosplay season? It would have been an important thing to know if it wasn't totally useless in the TAS. (GIF 18)
The dressing up part of the level can be skipped even in a normal playthrough, if you’re creative. All we need to get the sheep is elastic and our clanky little robot friend to distract Sam. For the TAS, we don’t even need the robot’s remote, so we don't have to risk our lives to get it while being chased by a hungry crocodile.
The key is that Sam set a trap that looks like a small garden plot with lettuce growing, conveniently placed near the sheep. If you try to pick the lettuce, you’re immediately trapped, and the bell rings to tell Sam to come punch the intruder.
The strategy here is to trick Sam into thinking that someone got caught in the trap. We put the robot near the trap, run toward Sam so he can see us, and then run past the robot so he switches his focus to the robot.
(No robots were harmed in the making of this TAS.)
Sam will stare at the robot and scratch his head for a while trying to understand what's going on. In the meantime, we can use that time to do what we must—steal a sheep. Once we have the sheep, we infinite jump to the upper platform to place the elastic, then bring the sheep up and head to the goal.
Level 10
This level has moving cannons that shoot at you if they see you, but they can’t see you in the shadows. Fortunately for us, the programmers, artists, and designers don’t seem to have been talking. The places where the game thinks you’re in shadow don't match up to where the shadows fall visually, and the shadows go whichever nonsensical direction the designers decided they needed at that moment. Lucky for us, that means we can go even faster. We only care about where the programmers thought the shadows were, and they thought they were bigger than the artists did.
We first use the “shadows” to precisely avoid a cannon and pick up the honey. The next part is supposed to be a puzzle that involves moving multiple pieces of pipe to direct the cannonballs and move some problematic bees. Instead, we only move one of the pipes and use a very precise cannon shot to hit the very edge of the second pipe. This was previously demonstrated by Number84 in July 2024, but no fast and consistent setup has been found for its use in RTA runs.
With the bees moved, we now have to deal with Sam. Using a strategy called Sam displacement, we first aggro and then de-aggro Sam. This causes his resting location to be slightly different [from (-3084, -1, -7322) to (-2996, -1, -7268)], which changes his field of vision just enough that we can walk right next to him using the single-frame sneaking method. We can then grab a sheep, and Sam realizes too late to catch us. In any other level, we would be ready to go to the goal, but this level has a complication: Gossamer. He remembers us from Level 8, and he’s very mad we used him as bait for the bull. TAS Level 8 is violence-free, but Level 10 Gossamer didn’t get the memo.
We can put the sheep in the goal immediately by using a very precise jump, but it doesn’t end the level. In fact, the boss arena you see at first isn’t the same one where the level ends. The game seamlessly teleports you to a new arena for each phase of the Gossamer fight, and it’s only when we reach the last one that we can end the level. (GIF 19)
Gossamer hates the light. You’re supposed to use the sheep to press buttons so that Ralph can spin the wheels and shine light on Gossamer. Instead, we have Gossamer himself stand on the buttons through some movement manipulation.
Previous strategies to do this, first demonstrated by Murtag in January 2017, involved getting Gossamer to smash Ralph flat and then luring Gossamer to the button. Instead, we’re using a new strat with the honey item, discovered by Sam41 in late 2024. Putting the honey away at a precise moment in Gossamer’s attack move will cancel the smash effect, allowing us to get Gossamer on the button faster and start spinning the wheel faster.
Once we’ve done this three times, Gossamer is defeated and we’re finally in the correct version of the arena. All we have to do is get to the goal, since the sheep is already there.
Level 11
This level has a magnet you can use to drag cannonballs and mines around. Instead, we’re going to use it for glitches. The run at the very beginning is canceled when the magnet drags Ralph out of the run, and immediately after that we glitch jump to skip the first gate.
The intended way to complete this level is to go fishing for sheep using a fishing rod and some lettuce. Instead, we infinite jump over the flock in order to reach a specific sheep (and not the one we plan to steal). We move this sheep just enough that it notices the button and hops over to step on it. We then glitch jump out of Sam’s range before he can catch us, picking up the sheep we’re stealing from right behind Sam’s back. Our sheep accomplice opens the gate at this point, allowing us to steal their sheep friend.
In the next room, we can cross the crumbling bridge without it collapsing by jumping on the very edge and jumping off immediately. This allows us to get to the last part of the level with no lettuce involved (although we’ll need it soon).
What you’re supposed to do here is use a robot to move the platforms while Ralph carries the sheep from platform to platform. Instead, we use the sheep’s behavior around lettuce, and some odd collision with the platforms, to clip the sheep from one platform to another.
An important mechanic for this level is that a sheep will always stand in the center of whatever interesting thing it sees—here, buttons and platforms. However, if it sees lettuce, it won’t realign itself in the center. Instead, it will take a second to notice the lettuce, then chase it.
If we place the sheep on the outside edge of the platform where it can see some lettuce, it will stay there while Ralph moves the platforms and clips it onto the upper platform, skipping the need for the robot. This method was first pioneered by Number84 in September 2023, and with the discovery of glitch jumps, we can also skip the robot when moving the platform in the final room, making the level completely robotless.
Level 12
The more complicated things are, the more vulnerable and broken they become. This stage is packed with puzzles in a normal playthrough, and the game’s lack of a way to save your progress mid-level makes it even harder to beat.
Ralph appears in a haunted midnight forest, and he soon realizes he's not the only one hunting for sheep—he has to stay away not only from Sam, but also the ghosts who zap wolves when they spot them. Similar to Ghostbusters, the only way to deal with them is to use the ghost vacuum that we order at the very start of the level, but for a different purpose.
The option we take is to skip most of the puzzles and the ghosts entirely, but before we get into that, here's a brief description of the way the devs wanted you to play this level.
The level opens up with Ralph entering the hedge maze, where you need to dodge ghosts and collect two items—the inflatable sheep to solve the very last puzzle, and the ghost costume to avoid being zapped. Once you find the way out of the maze, the rite of passage ceremony begins, where you have to go through a series of rhythm-based dancing rounds to become a member of the ghost community. (GIF 20)
After that, Ralph is allowed to walk around the level freely. You head to Sam's area where you steal the sheep and then have to solve a puzzle with gates and buttons. Once done, you have no choice but to leave the area without the costume because Ralph cannot hold anything in his hands wearing it. Ralph is then spotted by the ghosts and locked away in a cage. The only way to escape is to ask for help from your robot friend, who kindly brings the key. The ghosts needed the sheep you stole for worsheeping purposes, and now you need to get it back. The inflatable one is still in your inventory, so you can replace the original sheep with it. Going back to the goal requires sneaking around the ghosts and using the platform to elevate the sheep. You’ve now beaten the level in the intended way (super slow).
Now, back to the TAS. We actually don't need any of the items in the maze, so we skip it by jumping over it with glitch jumps. Because we never enter the ghosts’ area, we skip the dancing, the cage, and the sheep-swapping parts of the level too. The ghost's dancing ceremony trigger extends far out of bounds, but luckily for us, there are some safe spots that we can land on and then do a series of void runs to get to Sam. We lure the sheep through the fence, and then we're met with a problem—the fastest way to get back turns out to be a PC-only strat. The sheep simply doesn't get on the platform on its own in the PS1 version of the game, so we would have to put it there. We can only put it there when the ghosts are busy worshipping, and that would require collecting the inflatable sheep and getting captured.
Instead, we drag the sheep all the way through the maze with the robot. Our metal friend is able to move faster than the sheep in the straight sections of the maze, so we can switch back and forth between Ralph and the robot to bring ourselves closer to the goal while the sheep is catching up. (It never stops, even while you can’t see it—verified with the sheep coordinates in memory). Funnily enough, Ralph goes right past the ghosts on the way back to the goal. They see him going by, but they can't do anything since there's a safe triggerless corridor that lets us get on top of the hedge and then head to the end.
Level 13
The first step is to use the fake-sheep rock and the catapult to kill the alligator (or crocodile?). Once it’s dead, we can use its corpse to trampoline to the upper platform to get the fan. And once we have the fan, we can glitch jump over to Sam and the sheep.
After grabbing some lettuce, we go back so that Sam sees us and brings his last two sheep out, right into our clutches. One of the sheep starts to follow our lettuce trail while we do some careful movement to manipulate Sam to get stuck behind the fence. With Sam taken care of, we can stand on the button long enough for the sheep to get on the platform.
At that point, Sam gets unstuck and tries to catch us, but all he can do is jitter back and forth beneath the platform. We put the sheep on the raft and head toward the giant boat in the distance.
We now encounter Sam #2: Yosemite Sam. He’s guarding his boat, and he’ll shoot Ralph if he catches Ralph on it. Unfortunately, that’s where we need to go, but fortunately, we can use that to our advantage.
This level contains the only RNG manipulation in the run! Yosemite Sam has a gun-spinning animation that he does when you try to enter the boat, and every time you talk to him, RNG selects how many times he’ll do the spin. After the spin, he walks around the boat three times. We manipulate our approach so that he selects 0 spins and immediately starts walking, allowing us to sneak the sheep onto the boat.
It turns out the goal is on the boat’s sail, so the next step is to load the sheep into a cannon and shoot it at the sail. We do this at the exact moment Sam notices us and shoots. This results in Ralph dying, which causes the game to freeze for a few seconds but skips the final cutscene where the sheep is launched into space. (GIF 21)
(Even though our sheep was technically never launched into space, Space Sheep is relevant later.)
Level 0
Welcome to Looney Tunes: Sheep Raider (Sheep, Dog, ‘n’ Wolf in Europe)—a stealth puzzle-platformer developed by Infogrames Lyon House and released for.. wait, the tutorial level is nearly at the end of the TAS? That's right! This was originally meant to be an Any% TAS, but since there hasn't been an All Levels TAS before, and the All Levels RTA WR lacks the newest tricks, we decided partway through that we should prove how fast All Levels can be.
The level starts slow, as we have to watch the cutscene and follow Daffy's commands to learn the way the game works (too late). All we can do during that is mess with the camera a bit. Once Ralph is able to jump, we go along the right edge of the platform and do the first major trick of the level—a dialog trigger skip that skips the rest of the lines that Daffy is supposed to say. Hopefully it wasn't important.
The next section of the level is the running course, where a timer counts down from 49 while you try to beat it. We end with 20s left on the timer, only a frame away from turning to 19s. This makes it likely the first time this has ever been accomplished—a typical RTA run and the previous TASes end on 19s.
The second and last major trick of the level skips the canyon course, where you're supposed to learn how to use the rocket that's only in level 3. Instead, we first do a series of glitch and wall jumps to climb the wall and bypass the height barrier that prevents the rocket from going out of bounds. We then fall into the void from the top of the wall and activate the rocket to go straight to the sheep. This might explain why they decided against putting the rocket in more levels.
Level B1
Level B1 might be the one that is as optimized as it can possibly be.
We finally let the bull nap, as this time we don’t even enter his territory. The level is so broken now that we no longer need
the iconic raft glitch that lets you float in air. We don’t need any items, either—we go straight to the goal area, grab the sheep, and leave.
As easy as it sounds, heavy manipulation of Sam’s movement is required. We first lure Sam between two platforms so that he gets stuck and we can pick up the sheep. Then, we head to the fence that surrounds the goal and precisely put Ralph in a safe spot where Sam can't catch him. He gets within a frame of catching Ralph, and then—he just turns around and walks away. Just like in level 6 or 12, we can make the sheep go through the fence by picking it up from the other side of it, and, voila! The shortest level of the game is done.
Level B2
This is another level that assumes that the player will use time travel to solve the puzzles, similar to the ones in level 8, but glitch jumps make it broken and easy to beat. The only problem with this level is that the goal is located on the platform above the sheep, so we have to get the elastic band first.
Instead of using the time travel device to travel through time, we use it to glitch jump to places we shouldn’t be. The level's geometry gives some helpful landing spots so that we can reach the flock faster than intended. Sam doesn't cause too much trouble this time (maybe he needs a break), so there's nothing preventing us from running past Sam and then infinite jumping to the tree to attach the elastic. From there, we can bring the sheep to the upper level and head to the goal.
Level 14
Due to groundbreaking Sam manips, this route beats the level almost 20 seconds faster than previously thought possible. This is also the last level that we complete without any items. The first step is to press the button to move the train, run canceling on the rock pillar. From there, we use the catapult to reach the goal area, pressing another button so the train stops where we need it. Now we just need to steal a sheep.
Sam’s flock has been reduced to only one sheep, but he still won’t be able to protect it from us. We first get him to chase us across the train tracks, then get him stuck on a ledge (and also a pillar out of view) while we run back to steal the sheep. This part is perfectly timed so that the train arrives to block Sam before he can cross back over the tracks. Importantly, this provides a TAS-only strat that’s even faster than the PC-only strat used in RTA runs, which gets Sam stuck on the other side of the train.
The problem now is that Sam is on the goal side and we’re on the sheep side, so we need to switch places. The PC NTSC version has a wall that prevents you from going into the tunnel behind the train, but it turns out the PS1 NTSC version doesn’t have this problem. We squeeze between the train and the tunnel void and then place the sheep between Ralph and Sam, which conveniently prevents Sam from catching us. Jumping over the sheep to the other side allows us to manipulate Sam to run further down the opposite side of the train, giving us barely enough time to pick up the sheep and run to the goal.
The result is that it looks effortless, but in reality if Ralph is a few pixels closer to the tunnel when picking up the sheep, the whole thing falls apart.
There's normally a 3 minute long cutscene after this level, but recent discoveries made by Number84 allow us to skip it. Step 1 is to ensure that the game doesn't autosave, otherwise it will run the cutscene automatically. Step 2 is to do a single run input at the very beginning of the save menu screen. What happens behind the scenes is that the moment we see the menu, Ralph is physically in a special version of the hub room where the cutscene happens. When we press the run button, we can hear the corresponding sound, which means we can actually control Ralph for a moment during the save menu screen. That moves Ralph out of the cutscene start trigger and lets us walk around the hub freely until we quit it through the pause menu (which we do immediately).
Level 15 (Planet X)
“What's this? What's Marvin the Martian doing here? This wasn't in the script!” - Daffy Duck (GIF 22)
Planet X is the level where we deal with the consequences of the extraterrestrial blunder that we accidentally made in level 13. Long story short, the insignificant little Earthling (Space Sheep) that we sent into space reached Planet X and smashed Marvin's very practical PR-200 tool at full speed, causing his army of Instant Martians to scatter all over the place. Marvin doesn't want to take any unnecessary risks by collecting the Instant Martians on his own, so he arrives at the studio, claims that Ralph is the one who has to fix the sticky situation, and steals the sheep stealer. (GIF 23)
Once on Planet X, we find out that there's 10 Instant Martians that we have to find and catch via the space vacuum. The Martians look like green chickens and are easily scared, so they run in the opposite direction from Ralph whenever he gets close to them. This is opposite how Sam behaves, so, in effect, there are 10 reverse Sam manips in this level. There are also puzzles that we’re supposed to solve before we get to one or another Martian, but we get creative and skip all that.
Martian 1
The first Martian is there for us to learn how to catch it—it can't go far and the tools are right there at the start of the level. The steps to catch an Instant Martian are: 1) place the vacuum in its pre-designated spot on the ground, 2) chase the Martian near the vacuum, 3) activate the vacuum, 4) pick up the vacuum for use on the next Martian. Notice that the steps don’t include waiting for the Martian to be captured before picking the vacuum up—as long as the vacuum was recently activated in that spot, the Martian will be captured whether the vacuum is still there or not.
Martians 2-5
After capturing the first Martian, we run over to the area with the next 3 Martians, being careful to hit a checkpoint that we’ll need for a deathwarp later. The next 3 Martians are in a low gravity zone, where we can’t jump or Ralph will slowly drift to his death in the void of space. However, if you do happen to jump, Ralph can fly around in any direction in an attempt to reach a normal gravity zone before he gets too far from the planet. We can use that to our advantage to skip pushing two boulders to complete the path for the 3rd Martian—the laws of physics simply don't apply to it as it floats over the gaps. In order to chase it over those gaps, we use a particular location along the platform, where the boulder would normally be, that allows us to jump up to (and down from) the upper level without floating away.
A chain of black holes is normally used to lead Ralph to the 4th Martian, but swimming through space and going around the mountain to land on the platform behind it is a more optimal path. We then fall off the map in a very specific spot to respawn closer to the start of the low gravity zone, at the checkpoint set earlier.
This places us right in front of the 5th Martian, which is in an area with small zero-gravity zones marked in white on the floor. Luckily, it’s easy for us to avoid those and chase the Martian directly into the vacuum area.
Martians 6-10
The next 5 Martians are in a maze of passages that would normally require you to solve various puzzles with lasers and shrinking machines, but we can use glitch jumps to skip most of that by jumping over walls and lasers. The first step is to use a void run to reach the first Martian in this area.
Once there, we manipulate the 6th Martian into running directly to the vacuum area and capture it. For the next Martian, we actually have to use one of the shrinking machines, but aside from that it’s similar in that we manipulate the mini-Martian into running directly into the vacuum.
From there, we can do another void run to reach the 8th Martian, which is right next door in a room that would normally be totally inaccessible from our current location. This Martian requires some button presses to deactivate the lasers that are in the way, but we use a manipulation to keep it directly in front of us as we go. It’s the same for the 9th Martian—more buttons, more lasers, more manipulation to make it run directly in front of us to the buttons and vacuum.
The final Martian is once again reached by a void run to take us somewhere we shouldn’t be able to reach from the previous Martian’s room. Here, we place the vacuum first and then take the Martian on a nice run through the hallways. The Martian is even kind enough to press the buttons for us to deactivate the lasers as we go.
The last step is to glitch jump over the maze walls and die in the void so that we spawn back near Marvin. Getting near him will activate the end of the level, so it doesn’t matter if Ralph falls into the void during the conversation.
Lucky Goal
We completed all levels! But we’re not quite done. The final cutscene shows Ralph getting home with Space Sheep, and when he does, he sees one more circle—on the floor of his house. We have to place Space Sheep in the goal for the game to end. This is the final input in the TAS.
After Space Sheep is in the Lucky Goal, Sam reveals himself as having been Space Sheep all along and starts to bonk Ralph on the head. At that moment, Ralph wakes up and realizes it was all just a dream.
Summary
XXXXXXX 2025 2024 2024 2023
XXXXXXX TAS TAS Any% WR All Levels WR
Level 0 02:15.697 - 02:24.4 02:40.1
Level 1 00:59.359 01:20.8 01:19.2 01:20.6
Level 2 00:39.418 00:56.7 00:47.8 01:10.1
Level 3 00:55.649 01:12.7 01:03.3 01:11.0
Level 4 00:58.173 01:05.9 01:13.3 01:52.9
Level 5 01:12.414 01:18.9 01:19.4 01:37.5
Level 6 01:40.261 02:18.2 02:16.0 02:20.4
Level 7 01:43.537 02:03.3 01:52.3 01:58.4
Level 8 00:41.223 00:54.7 00:57.4 01:06.3
Level 9 00:56.317 01:05.1 01:02.3 01:41.9
Level 10 02:29.654 03:04.8 02:51.2 03:18.6
Level 11 01:49.137 02:24.1 02:14.0 04:27.1
Level 12 02:36.792 03:36.3 02:03.9 03:32.6
Level 13 01:39.944 02:17.5 01:54.3 03:27.5
Level 14 00:36.978 01:04.3 00:55.4 00:56.5
Level 15 02:34.803 03:51.0 03:10.8 08:41.8
Level B1 00:21.399 - - 00:46.4
Level B2 00:42.594 - - 02:54.9
Total 24:53.349 28:34.3 27:25.5 45:05.7
TIme save - 03:40.9 02:32.1 20:12.3
compared
to TAS
Conclusion
People who made the TAS possible (no particular order):
AsterㅤSam41ㅤTurbofaㅤMurtagㅤKZ_FREW
Lu9ㅤ47mvpㅤBetoKosㅤZeddikㅤNumber84
A special thanks to all the members of Sheep Raider speedrunning community!
Suggested screenshot frame is 112575
Darkman425: From watching the inputs and reading the submission text, I can tell this is a highly technical game in terms of speeding through it. Everything looks well optimized to go alongside all of the work that went into researching this game's mechanics. Nice work!
Accepting to Standard.
