Post by adelikat

It's done! Abuses multiple sound glitches to make the game load faster and play smoother when taking turns due to decreased loading times. Sound is back on during the Level 5 races as you go fast enough during the turns that it no longer matters. Skip to 1:23:00 for the fun stuff.

Aiming for quick times
Knock out opponents when beneficial

Bugs used:

Most obvious, the no sound bug. Using this lets the game load 2 frames quicker and can only be activated on the first race. The game also runs slightly (I'm talking 1~3 frames) faster when taking sharp turns. Aside from that there isn't a benefit.
Fucked up instruments is activated on the last race. No benefit, it just kills non bass/drumlines until a song loops.
During the LEVEL 5 Great Britain I break the police sirens. This is caused by crashing the helicopter while the siren is played from the motorcycle. The game forgets what sound to end the loop of and instead of ending the siren, it ends the chopper explosion. This is frame perfect and has no effect on the gameplay other than making your ears bleed. It also causes a cool 1990's trance music effect with other sirens. Radical.
Hitting an enemy bike, whether racer or cop, on a specific pixel will make you become stuck to them while you are both pulled to the nearest wall. This is only used once in order to mess with a cop and once to take out a driver.
When going REALLY fast you may see the top left screen mess up. This is a sign that the game is having trouble loading because of how quickly I'm going through it.

Tricks:

I abuse the games wonky air physics when taking tight turns later in the run. When making sharp turns on an incline or decline, you can get hang time for split seconds. This can be used to your advantage as you do not lose speed for 80 frames after leaving the ground, allowing you to smash racers off the track or make impossibly tight turns over terrain.
Tapping right/left is preferable to most turns at lower levels as without handling upgrades you will slide off your bike. It also prevents you from losing speed.
You can bounce off cars and the chopper at high speeds, allowing you to regain some speed lost and avoid obstacles or hills, as well as opening up a few shortcuts.
I manipulate the AI of some opponents, mostly Lucky Luc. The AI falls into 4 categories: Idiots who serve only to go forward, aggressive drivers that will always stay in front of you and spam attacks, passive drivers who will attempt to strafe around you and drivers that will attempt to kick you off the road at any chance.
- Every driver below 8th place falls into the idiot category. They ALWAYS have stats identical to the worst bike in any given stable.
- Drivers between 8~1 fall into the other 3. Madame X always has a super powerful bike that exceeds your bikes stats and is passive, never attacking unless you get too close. Lucky Luc will always stay in front of your bike and spam oil spills. Ikira will always try to ram you off the road with kicks or his nunchacku. Other drivers such as Helmut and Sergio serve only as distractions and will do everything possible to make sure Luc or Madame X gets a lead on you.
You can hold the kick animation for super tight handling when exceeding 157 MP/h. This is mostly unused since most tracks are easy enough without it.
Ramps are seldom used until the end of the game. Without high amounts of speed and stabilization you will usually fall off as soon as you hit the ground or slide out turning back onto the course. They are used however to skirt around traffic and the proceduraly generated obstacles. The best example being the usage of the ramp in LEVEL 5 to skip a hill decline and get past a deer which is always unavoidable without being in the air.
An easy way to kill aggressive drivers is via a simple AI abuse trick. This is done by ramming them at max speed while also kicking. If you keep holding your ramming direction, when they wrap back over they will slam into you with such force the game knocks them off.
Missing some attacks can force enemy AI to get into more favorable positions.

Notes:

A few races are literally unwinnable without certain equipment. Notably the early Madame X races. It is better to take 2nd and save up for a far better ride then to buy a worse bike early and have less cash for necessary upgrades.
This TAS goes for good times, but also some funnier stuff. ex. the last race is one by walking over the finish line less than a second before the hardest opponent in the game.
There are also some moments of style that cost me maybe 6 seconds all together but they add seemed cool, such as pin-balling off 3 bikes and knocking off each rider.
If you are wondering why I didn't steal the Mace, Cattle Prod or Oil Slick, it's because those weapons have no effect on the computer players and would have been a waste of time to get.
I'm going to be making a TAS using the infamous WILD THING 5000 cheat. The bike is unavailable without using a specific code, and it's so fast and unstable that hitting the top nitro speed (Roughly 253 MP/h, the top speed with Nitro of the best bike in the game is only 199/200) and turning without turbo tapping the d-pad will almost certainly cause a wipeout. It probably won't get submitted since it uses a cheat code but it oughta be fun.

ars4326: Judging!

ars4326: Hello, Lars_Hendrick. Two major points here regarding this run: One, I was able to beat your first track time by almost three seconds (179 frames) due to purchasing a performance upgrade in the beginning for the starter bike. This allowed a maximum kph increase from around 120 to 127 (movie file link provided in the thread). Taking into account the extra lag spent due to entering the shop menu, around an additional 440+ frames can each be theoretically saved on your next three races in the Level 1 circuit, since you didn't purchase any upgrades until race 5.

This alone is grounds for rejection due to being sub-optimal.

Another issue lies in your choice of using the no sound bug, which suspends both the BGM and sound FX; effectively creating a silent movie for the first hour and 25 minutes. You then inconsistently turn the sound back on for the last half hour of the run. Technically speaking, we currently have no set policy on requiring a run to at least have sound effects enabled. With that said, having the sound off for the first 3/4's of a run, and then suddenly turning it back on, is unacceptable from a quality standpoint for our viewers. A run should either intentionally have the sound ON or OFF for the entire playthrough -- and not arbitrarily switched.

Finally Lars, I feel it is appropriate here to implore you to slow down and take your time on making any future TASes. Over in the Road Rash 3 thread, you admitted that you started this project on around January 6, and completed it on January 10. That's four days spent on creating a near 2 hour TAS that's supposed to be high quality enough for publication. That's simply not allowing yourself enough time to research the game's mechanics and ensure that your run is optimized to the best of your ability. Please carefully consider this constructive criticism and apply it to any future runs that you may have in mind. Otherwise, it's likely that you're only going to encounter a similar situation.

Rejecting due to being sub-optimal.

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Forum Gruefood #4964: Lars_Hendrick's Genesis Road Rash 3 in 1:53:43.79

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#4964: Lars_Hendrick's Genesis Road Rash 3 in 1:53:43.79