Race Ace (Compute's Gazette)

Put on your crash helmet, pull on your driving gloves, and strap yourself in—you're about to compete against the clock in grueling, cross-country road race. To win, you must weave your red racecar through traffic in all kinds of road conditions. The sooner you finish, the more points you're awarded.
In Race Ace, the course begins on a winding, tree-bordered country road. From there, you move to hot, arid desert where many a car has met its fate among the cactuses. Following another jaunt through the countryside, you enter a long, dark mountain tunnel. Once inside, your headlights turn on automatically, but it's still difficult to see. As you exit the tunnel, the bright sunshine and green grass are a welcome sight, but watch out because the course soon takes you through the frozen north.
The article for this game can be found on page 45 of Issue 83 (May 1990): https://archive.org/details/1990-05-computegazette/page/n45/mode/2up

Why TAS This Game?

The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 13th TAS from this series.
I don't think I ever had this magazine, until years later...when I finally found someone on the internet that was selling their collection. I wish I had though...the game was labeled with "Editor's Choice".
Previous Compute's Gazette submissions include (In order of submission):

Tools Used

  • BizHawk 2.9
  • Lua: Used for BOTing
    • BOT: Splotch (A unique concept that I use only on the C64)
    • Game Related Calculations
      • Scanning for the sprite collision detection address of $D01E for when sprite 1 collides with anything.
      • Scanning for the end of the race.

Game Ending

This game has a racecourse that is seven "legs" long. Upon finishing the last leg, the game pauses to tally the score against any remaining time left over. Afterwards, it starts back over again.
To understand the ending better, we must first realize the differences and similarities of the first and second loops. During the first loop, you start off slow and have to accelerate up to the max speed of 120 mph. On the second loop, the speed is already maxed out...meaning that it will be faster. No game speed increases occur, nor difficulty. The only thing that changes, is that time is a bit less, as outlined in the article. Since this is a TAS, we can drive perfectly around all obstacles and still make in before the clock expires. So this means each race is the same length.
Because of these details, all unique content is demonstrated during the first 7 legs of the race.

Effort In TASing

On the surface, this game looks trivial...and it mostly is. After determining the ending point, I realized that the possibility of ending input early was going to be fruitful for a better TAS time.
The car's speed is controlled by pressing "Up" on the joystick. Once speed has been maxed out, it is no longer necessary to hold it...as it will continue until something impedes forward progress. This was a perfect situation to have, and led me to writing a derivative of my BOT, that I call Splotch. After determining a few specifics, my BOT ran for a while and the results were shocking! Roughly 12 seconds were chopped off, before the crossing of the finish line! So this makes the ending far from trivial, as RNG was manipulated as such to surpass any expectation of early inputs that I could have hoped for.

Human Comparison

This player produced a decent video that demonstrates the game very well, showing the difficulty of human reactions.

ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.
ThunderAxe31: I love when a TASing challenge is actually harder than playing the same game casually. Great job optimizing so much the early input end! Accepting.

despoa: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8361: nymx's C64 Race Ace in 01:34.93
Dimon12321
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Looks OK. My favourite section is the night. I found this game a precursor of Zippy Race on NES, but you play as a motorcycle there. Yes
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
Patashu
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+1 for 'ends input early'
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
nymx
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Dimon12321 wrote:
Looks OK. My favourite section is the night.
There is one spot in this area that I saw a car spinning out. Its barely visible and I was thinking...why here in the dark?
Dimon12321 wrote:
I found this game a precursor of Zippy Race on NES, but you play as a motorcycle there.
My first thoughts was "Spy Hunter". Wow...that was a game that I spent tons of time on. Maybe I should do that version as well.
Patashu wrote:
+1 for 'ends input early'
I had been hoping for a game that had extended cuts like this, but I never expected it from a simple "Type-In" game from Compute's Gazette. :D
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
LoganTheTASer
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crafty luck manipulation here. liking the early input end as well. yes vote.
YouTube: @LoganL2008 Discord: sneakers_o_toole Watch my TASes here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmcAd4CTuEymf4qWKIE0Pv_NlA031cYR1&si=m1hP9qz9c8Ip35Ur
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [5376] C64 Race Ace by nymx in 01:34.93