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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.


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Flygon wrote:
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.
Seeing as he would never pay, do it.
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adelikat
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So the rules of the Vault tier allow for "full game completion". Doesn't get much more full than this...
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
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Why not publish it? Desert Bus is somewhat popular. This should help draw people to the site. Yes vote for publication (I suppose the judge decides where it goes). The only question is how anyone would ever encode this, especially in an acceptable quality and fitting within video site time and file size limits.
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CoolKirby wrote:
Why not publish it? Desert Bus is somewhat popular. This should help draw people to the site. Yes vote for publication (I suppose the judge decides where it goes). The only question is how anyone would ever encode this, especially in an acceptable quality and fitting within video site time and file size limits.
Why 1000 hours? Infact, shouldn't the run end as soon as you get max score of 99?
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Just encode the first hour, then have keyframes spaced several hours apart and encode a minute or so after each, with the rest of the video as whatever compresses best. Sure, it won't be a complete encode of the whole run, but nobody will ever find out.
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adelikat wrote:
So the rules of the Vault tier allow for "full game completion". Doesn't get much more full than this...
Actually, I think it could get even fuller - maxing out the clock to 9999:59 or however long it lasts. The current "1000 hours" is actually a completely arbitrary end goal.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Mothrayas wrote:
adelikat wrote:
So the rules of the Vault tier allow for "full game completion". Doesn't get much more full than this...
Actually, I think it could get even fuller - maxing out the clock to 9999:59 or however long it lasts. The current "1000 hours" is actually a completely arbitrary end goal.
exactly my tought
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I'd be in favor of a max score publication. Why bother going beyond that?
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
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Dacicus wrote:
I'd be in favor of a max score publication. Why bother going beyond that?
That'll still be a 495 hour run, making it the most boring longest run in the site.
Noxxa
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Dacicus wrote:
I'd be in favor of a max score publication. Why bother going beyond that?
Because why settle with 'only' a couple hundred hours when you can also go way beyond? Longer is only better in this case.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Because the scoring mechanism of the game doesn't go longer.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Noxxa
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Dacicus wrote:
Because the scoring mechanism of the game doesn't go longer.
But the timing mechanism does, and in this game, it's not that much different from score.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Mothrayas wrote:
But the timing mechanism does, and in this game, it's not that much different from score.
That means this run would be of fixed length with no way to improve it.
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I don't really see a "max time" as criteria for this game. Or any game, I guess. And, even then, it would only be the Lua bot repeating the same stuff until eternity
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Like mentioned in the IRC, there's no more new content after one lap. It would make more sense if the run would end there? Also, if it's possible, it might be a slightly cool thing if the player ended input early, letting the bus drive automatically to the end and barely make it.
adelikat
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So what vault criteria was met by this movie? I think the argument against "full completion" was quite definitive, and is not addressed in the acceptance message.
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Whilst I fully agree with the idea behind the vault; 'every game has a place here for a TAS of it'... You do realize you seem to be having a serious discussion about Desert Bus right? No one here wants to to take a step back and just think about that for a second?
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Paused wrote:
Whilst I fully agree with the idea behind the vault; 'every game has a place here for a TAS of it'... You do realize you seem to be having a serious discussion about Desert Bus right? No one here wants to to take a step back and just think about that for a second?
Hey, Desert Bus is the best game ever. You know games like Super Mario 64, Legend of Zelda, etc? Well, those games are shit compare to Desert Bus. ;)
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We need 1080p HD encodes, NOW!
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mklip2001 wrote:
Oh god, that means Desert Bus probably has to end up in the Vault! And many many April Fool's runs, which technically are records! (Barney's Hide and Seek, for instance...)
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=330054#330054 ------- So, we have 3 options: 1- rerecord with one travel only 2- publish as it is 3- extend the playtime until the end of time
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Does this TAS differ from a real-time play, taking any noticeable advantages from tools? I guess not. Reject.
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I guess the only superhuman thing the movie does is play the most boring game in existence for 41 days straight...
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Godammit 41 days whats wrong with you XD
ロックマンX7は? 私はそのクソゲームを憎む
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kusoman wrote:
Godammit 41 days whats wrong with you XD
Or you know you could turn into dust: #3912: adelikat's FDS Super Mario Bros. 2 in 115:17:46:40.00
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+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
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I tried to watch the film, but it was out of sync