Submission Text Full Submission Page

Desert Bus High Score Attack

Ah, Desert Bus. And yes, that's 41 days, 17 hours, 15 minutes and 6 seconds. From the ever-useful Wikipedia:
Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors is an unreleased video game planned for release initially on the Sega CD in April 1995 and to be followed by PC, 3DO versions later that year.... Desert Bus is the best known minigame in the package, and was a featured part of Electronic Gaming Monthly's preview. The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused. The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other traffic on the road. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it is impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, they will score exactly one point. The player then gets the option to make the return trip to Tucson—for another point (a decision they must make in a few seconds or the game ends). Players may continue to make trips and score points as long as their endurance holds out. Some players who have completed the trip have also noted that, although the scenery never changes, a bug splats on the windscreen about five hours through the first trip, and on the return trip the light does fade, with differences at dusk, and later a pitch black road where the player is guided only with headlights. Penn says, "The best part of that I think was an idea that was not mine, not Teller’s, and not Barry Marx, who designed the game with us. It was an idea by Eddie Gorodetsky, one of the producers on Two and a Half Men, really funny guy. I think that Eddie G. is one of the funniest guys in the world." Penn Jillette commented in his radio show that the overly realistic nature of the game was in response to Janet Reno and the controversy surrounding violent video games at the time.

A Bit of Context

In 2007 I made a long-run movie of Rampage that completed the game with only the A button. It was over 6 hours long. One of the replies, from Blublu, was "How delightful. What next, Desert Bus?" Oh, I suppose you regret those words now...
At the time, such a run was unthinkable. Mostly because there was no reliable Sega CD recording. Also, there were no simple bots for Gens, and I'm certainly not cool enough to hack into the C/C++/whatever code. So the idea lay dormant over the years, until the coming of Gens 10. Sega CD support! I was instantly brought back to this grand idea. For the Rampage run I had used "Sticky Keys" to hold down the turbo A button, however this run required a bit more. I tried in vain to make various hotkey programs sync up to a movie. No luck. Eventually my wish for Lua support came true though, with Gens 11, and I quickly began this quest.

The Surprising Result

The most interesting result was that contrary to the Wikipedia entry above, one cannot go on forever scoring points. While one may continue playing for who-knows-how-long, the maximum number of points you can get is 99.
I had initially tried to get 100 points as the highest score I had seen was 6, so that seemed reasonably high, but oh my surprise when it stopped at 99. I re-set my goal to 1000 in-game hours to see if that maxes out too, but it does not do so (at least at 1000). Here's a screenshot of my final score:

adelikat: Encoding. ...Yeah right! Great April fools submission, and a neat concept, but its time to reject this.

Unrejecting this submission for consideration into the Vault tier

Nach: This run got a decent response despite the ridiculousness. It also shows off great TASing potential in its own unique way. Accepting for the vault.

Nach: Apparently I missed the rule regarding vault must be distinguishable from standard plays. Based on that criteria I am correcting my mistake and rejecting this.
In regards to the constant repeating, if this was going to be published, I figured we'd work out where to cut the movie before then, as it does run out of new content fairly quickly.


Player (121)
Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522
Did you like the surprise ending?
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
Player (210)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US
Never saw it coming. Truly genius.
Joined: 5/2/2009
Posts: 656
So, since you actually saw it, can you provide us a encode?
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ノಥ益ಥ)ノ
Player (210)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US
I'm starting the second pass.
Joined: 1/26/2009
Posts: 558
Location: Canada - Québec
Still trying to configure gens with all file and other stuff... and keep getting bios instead of game. Go for encode
Joined: 2/7/2008
Posts: 185
alden wrote:
Well, if taken literally, ONE person cannot physiologically complete this run. You cannot pause the game (even between "levels"), and you have to sleep at some point. That said, 2 or more people could definitely do it -- I hope the folks at desertbus.org step up to the plate and get 99 points someday :D
If you move the bus as far as permitted, away from the 'drift', what's the maximum amount of time you could take a break? I'm imagining that toilet breaks wouldn't be an issue if you had some containers and if you are able to grab a minute of sleep regularly, it may be possible to survive 40 days without 'proper' sleep...
I'm just some random guy. Don't let my words get you riled - I have my opinions but they're only mine.
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3574)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
I'm still waiting on an encode so I can watch it >:|
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Bezman: skip to a few minutes into this video. The sideways drift is fast enough that you can't get more than maybe 30s of no input. As for how long you can survive without sleep? Not that long. And past more than a few days of no sleep, you start permanently damaging your health...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Experienced player (829)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Bezman wrote:
and if you are able to grab a minute of sleep regularly, it may be possible to survive 40 days without 'proper' sleep...
Proper sleep involves REM activation, not just alpha or beta patterns to develop (which after 10 days you'd have all the time, I believe). REM sleep will kick in with decreased time of alpha/beta patterns as fatigue increases, but there needs to be a lot more than just one or two minutes to actually "rest" you. There is an interesting 'life hack' floating around that promotes 6 regular, 30 minute naps during the day, which supposedly allows for total elimination of normal sleep, however I've never tried it, nor do I know of any studies to back it up. In short, one person is not physiologically able to complete this game, no matter how many piss bottles they have or minute-naps they take.
Living Well Is The Best Revenge My Personal Page
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Have you people factored in that with enough correctly timed arm spasmed mid-sleep pressing the buttons on the controller, that it might be possible to complete Desert Bus while being in a state of sleep?
Joined: 6/4/2009
Posts: 570
Location: 33°07'41"S, 160°42'04"W
I made an encode! Yes, this is a joke
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Noob Irdoh wrote:
I made an encode!
I am very disappointed, I demand a 1080p encode! Not a dinky useless 480p madness of blurriness!
MarbleousDave
He/Him
Player (13)
Joined: 9/12/2009
Posts: 1560
I get a message that says: This video contains content from Sony Music Entertainment, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. You should probably use Windows Live Movie Maker to save a 1080p movie. Unless you're using a Mac, use whatever that makes 1080p movies.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
I'm still waiting for the $10,000.
Skilled player (1652)
Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy
arflech wrote:
As far as I can tell, if you convert that decimal number of seconds into frames you get 41, so the frame count is 1001*3600*60+15*60*60+5*60+41=216270341, still less than one frame per American
As of 08/15/2010, there are
[10:08] <Grunt> 65,996,469 frames in total. [10:09] <Grunt> (that's for currently published non-obsolete movies) or [10:10] <Grunt> 129,041,206 frames for all movies (including obsolete movies).
We are still, at best, only half way to Desert Bus. At worst? 1/3rd of the way.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Joined: 5/2/2009
Posts: 656
I believe it's now theoretically possible to actually upload an encode of this video on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=865S1zMcWMo this video have half the number of hours of this movie. And, hey, if anyone actually makes this video, you can win 500 bucks from the author of this video.
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ノಥ益ಥ)ノ
Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4045
OmegaWatcher wrote:
I believe it's now theoretically possible to actually upload an encode of this video on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=865S1zMcWMo this video have half the number of hours of this movie. And, hey, if anyone actually makes this video, you can win 500 bucks from the author of this video.
He could only upload so much because it was super compressed. A desert bus TAS would need to be similarly grainy.
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
Joined: 6/4/2009
Posts: 570
Location: 33°07'41"S, 160°42'04"W
Besides, that video runs at ~1fps, while it would be nice to use at least 30 for Desert Bus.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Patashu wrote:
OmegaWatcher wrote:
I believe it's now theoretically possible to actually upload an encode of this video on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=865S1zMcWMo this video have half the number of hours of this movie. And, hey, if anyone actually makes this video, you can win 500 bucks from the author of this video.
He could only upload so much because it was super compressed. A desert bus TAS would need to be similarly grainy.
Should I 1-up him? It shouldn't be too difficult to do, assuming the whole 27 hour video being rejected thing doesn't happen again.
Sir_VG
He/Him
Player (40)
Joined: 10/9/2004
Posts: 1913
Location: Floating Tower
Trump him, then split the money towards TASVideos server costs and SDA's AGDQ2 Charity.
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing
Skilled player (1652)
Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy
Couldn't you do this with insane amounts of RAM, by making a key frame every 100000000000000 (very large number) frames?
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Player (121)
Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522
guys this is insane good job
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
direct264 + Deldup + 1fps video + AviSynth + 32*24 PNG = Piece of cake. If you wanted to spend the money towards TASVideos, don't encourage me to do it.
Joined: 5/2/2009
Posts: 656
I'm encouraging you towards SCIENCE
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ノಥ益ಥ)ノ
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4037
I want to see you do it. I'm looking forward to seeing how long will be.