Submission #7723: AleMastroianni's PSX Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time "100%" in 1:40:38.06

In "Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time" (100% category), Bugs Bunny didnt take the right turn to Albuquerque, and accidentally activates a time machine right after, resulting in him getting stuck in the space-time continuum. Luckily for him Merlin of Monroe is in Nowhere to help him out understand what he needs to do to get back to the present day. The goal of the category is collecting each Clock and Golden Carrot scattered in each era and its levels. What differentiates the 100% category from the Any% one, is the complete collection of 124 clocks and 333 golden carrots (whereas any% just requires 120 clocks to escape back to the present day, not reaching 100% completion in the game statistics and not having the credits screen take place in Pismo Beach). 5 hub/eras golden carrots are rewarded to Bugs each time he's holding 99 normal carrots.

The final credits on a 100% run will take place in Pismo Beach, the destination Bugs initially intended to reach at the beginning of the game. Since an Any% run would mostly look the same, except for a few collectables skipped and some different routing, i decided to TAS the full completion category.

In order to take the best trajectories, this TAS makes use (at times) of the script Noxxa and Warepire developed for autowalking. Since this project started in 2020, it was re-adjusted a couple of times in order to make it work with nymashock from Noxxa (Thanks for making PSX tasing desync free, CPP, i mean it), and i've replaced some hacks/workarounds which were making use of static addresses to triangulate the waypoint, now using pointer offsets of the actual addresses the code was originally intended to make use of (Thanks to Lapogne36 who in 2021 has taught me how to find those in PSX games). This helped alleviate some inaccuracies in trajectories (not always) since the game makes use of passive camera, and would often drift off the optimal trajectory using the autowalk script; therefore each movement had to be manually adjusted. I also wrote a couple of scripts in order to make the whole process more straightforward, one to keep track on the emulator screen the current game collectables, and the other to input the "roll" action in TAStudio whenever it was allowed by the game, which worked great with the autowalk script, as the latter would just erase all other inputs in recording mode, and the trajectories would change and be not optimal if i were to re-add the input for the in-game rolling action in tastudio input roll afterwards. It also allowed me to avoid using the autofire feature in tastudio, which more than often has lead me to stumble some weird bugs going on in bizhawk. I've made all these 3 scripts available to download in my user files uploaded on the site.

This being the PSX version, it suffers compared to its PC counterpart from longer loading times, lag, and no sound glitch, which allows to skip each .xa audio dialogue, on top of TAS timing starting upon console boot. A PSX RTA timing of this, still suffering from the extremely long loading times and in-game speeches, would clock in 1:39:40 (still faster than PC wr). However, lag and in-level loading of speeches is something to also take into account, it doesnt make sense to do a real direct comparison to RTA PC Speedruns timing.

Since i've started this project in 2020, i spent most of my time (probably a very unhealthy amount of it) researching glitches and testing out the limits of the game. It was a wonderful journey, and i consider it to be the absolute best part of it all; coming up with the jumps and skips displayed in the final product. I would have NEVER imagined the platform zips and the infamous wall/door clipping in "What's Cooking, Doc?" and "Follow The Red Pirate Road" to even be remotely possible back when i started looking into this game.

There are a number of zips that sometimes exploit bugs with camera flips, which are way more common (and annoying!) on the PC version than its PSX counterpart. One of these is the platform zip taking place in the pirate era. Some other zips don't necessarily abuse camera flips, like the tree log in the "Nowhere" tutorial stage, which is achieved by forcing Bugs to move at a very specific angle towards an unmovable object, thanks to a small box carefully placed in the right position. All of this makes some trivial minigames even faster.

The wall/door clipping is a result of extremely precise use of the in-game objects (weights, small boxes, pearls) given to the player in different levels, by either positioning or throwing of such objects, allowing Bugs to move to the nearest XY coordinates allowed for movement, which for a few frames happens to be just the other side of these walls, compared to the temporary artificially-obstructed other sides thanks to the objects hitboxes. This exploit allows to skip 3 full levels revisits, resulting in less repetitive routing, and most importantly cutting several minutes off the final time.

Noone of this would have been possible without DHA SPEEDRUNS, the current main runner and WR holder of the 100% category, which closely followed the developing of this project back from 2020, along with Noxxa and Yuuki, who also took some of their time to often review some levels TAS testruns, helping me figuring out when something might not have been optimal and had to be redone. The whole speedrun community of this game, in all honesty, is the best i've ever come across with. This TAS was (un)fortunately restarted at least 4 times, initially being developed on Octoshock, therefore overloaded from desyncs, and later on from mistakes in routing and/or findings of small new skips and glitches, which would prove it was better to redo big chunks of the TAS, at the cost of the project taking an even longer time.

DHA SPEEDRUNS also wrote down the route in a much more easily to grasp way than what i was intending to, having not one, but most of the routes in comparison in a spreadsheet. The 100% category requires the player to also collect all the 5 golden carrots in each hub/era, and each one of these is avaliable to be collected when Bugs is holding 99 normal carrots on each of the respective platforms featured in the 5 eras. This obviously makes the whole routing process VERY intensive, as everything had to be planned from the very first frame till the last one, before any serious TASing could even take place. Adding that to the awful amount of RNG in the whole game, and this gets complex real easy, real fast. This eventually lead to redoing big chunks of the TAS Testruns in different ways, a few times forcing to wait a couple frames upon joining level-warps, with the purpose of manipulating RNG the optimally.

All the Routes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Choe-vc5tfCbonYoiNBMQaTZ_9cKQhseIk-oWtvG6Zo/edit?usp=sharing

In the past year or so, i've also started to add resources and notes on the whole game about individual routes, skips and glitches, even the ones who didnt make it into the TAS, right here on the site, you can check them out here: https://tasvideos.org/GameResources/PSX/BugsBunnyLostInTime

Kick Drop: Use a running kick to jump off ledges instead of auto-jumping, in order to cross platforms faster.

Clock Grab Animation Skip: The clock animation skip is mostly used at the end of levels, as Bugs still moves for a few frames (if movement has already started before pausing the game) after manually quitting stages from the pause menu. This removes the need for both the cutscene and eventually the exit-level warp, hence is heavily used whenever it is possible in the TAS.

Cancelled Jump: When rolling and walking, whenever the Bugs reaches the edges of platforms, he will automatically attempt to jump. This is slower and in a few instances can lost time; depending on the amount of movement left to perform, it can be worth to completely stop momentum for 1 frame during a roll with the help of the first person view input, in order to then perform a kick drop to cross platforms faster. This is achieved by rolling first, jumping next (arbitrary amount of frames as long as Bugs is still in the rolling state), followed by a first person camera input the very next frame. This technique has drawbacks in overall speed and is used just in some niche scenarios; it also just cannot be done in some levels (because it's just hardcoded to not be allowed to use first camera in certain sections). Credits to Yuuki on finding this tech!

Extra Kick Height: It is possible to increase Z Axis height of a kick action while in movement: it's done by pressing the Jump button first, then holding it the very next frame for a maximum of 28 frames. It's a VERY minor optimization to spot visually, and useless in RTA Speedruns, but it surprisingly allowed this TAS to perform a big number of kick-jumps off some platforms to the other, which would not have been possible otherwise.

Hover/Helic Action Spam: It allows to increase the distance covered on the XY axis, while falling down from a previous jump. The repeated inputs combination that allows the most amount of distance to be covered is: 3 inputs on, 2 off. Some jumps are exclusive to this exact timing for inputs, like the SeaShell Jump over the bridge near the beginning of the "What's Up, Dock?" stage.

Roll Action: Probably the most used in the whole run, is the timed spam of the roll input, as it almost doubles moving speed compared to normal walking. It has the drawback of not being able to perform the kick action while doing it, therefore the niche use of the cancelled jump tech (mentioned before) in some scenarios. Each platform has to be timed, because there are instances where even an autojump off a platform reached with a previous roll, will still be the fastest outcome overall.

First Person View: Not really a glitch, but at the cost of all Bugs movement, this action allows to increase the draw distance and render earlier on screen some Golden Carrots (these have to be on screen for several frames before they can be collected) or to activate some platform cycles earlier than usual, saving several seconds when correctly used.

DHA SPEEDRUNS - for being so passionate about the game, helping so much with the routing and reviews

Noxxa - for the IL's TasTests he made, this TAS reviewing development, and allowing me to grow as a TASer in multiple ways - also for creating, sharing and adjusting the waypoint autowalk script made with Warepire

Warepire - for the waypoint autowalk script made with Noxxa and being a pioneer too of this game TASing, with the feedbacks and tests shared on the tasvideos forum thread of this game

Yuuki - for the development reviews and the initial interest back in 2015, sharing some insights and a few interesting movement techs on the tasvideos forum thread

Piston - for sharing back in the days informations about potential exploits and glitches ideas

Symplektomorph and Palysuper - for occasionally reviewing some levels TasTests and sharing ideas

CasualPokePlayer and also the other bizhawk devs - for making Nymashock a reality and increasing the stability of the emulator, allowing this TAS to come to life

The developers of this awesome game

The whole speedrun community of this game

Lastly, to also quote the developers in the credits: "No Special Thanks to the chicken place up the street for not delivering free of charge."

Unronically fun to route and tas, even if the plan for this one changed many times. The hammer-tutorial skip to get the golden carrot almost immediately is possible with a box or an apple throw, saving around 5 seconds compared to the intended strat (this is ONLY possible in the PSX NTSC-U version of the game). RNG manipulation hits his limit on the last wizard apprentice, as he follows a global timer; however it still ended up being faster with the overall routing of the stage over all previous WIPs.

This level also shows the first non-camera flip platform zip: simply place a box adjacent to a wall and run or kick into it. Sometimes, you zip up the wall. Seems to be caused by landing on the block inside the wall. The rabbit-hole dive near the end is completely avoided, as i've found a way to barely make it to the other side of the gate by jumping from a spot with increased height of terrain, then performing the dive action at the peak of the jump over the fence.

This level features the first clock grab animation skip, by not touching the ground for more than 1 frame after collecting such clock. There are a few clocks that are hardcoded to not immediately freeze the animation state, forcing the cutscene; the one near the start of this level, under the trampoline, is one of these. This allows a death abuse, triggering the clock animation while falling. It saves around 110 frames compared to not skipping the animation. It's worth noting that its also possible to delay the clock animation by using the sneak action after grabbing these clocks, however for TAS purposes it's obviously slower, so it isnt used. The rest of the first half of this level is focused on tight jumps w/hover, skipping a rabbit-hole dive, and manipulating the dinosaurs cycles. In the second half, the TAS has to wait a few frames of top of a dinosaur for a Golden Carrot to fully spawn, to then collect it the first possible frame (there is no other way to make this faster). Later on, the pterodactyl grab allows the TAS to skip a clock animation, and immediately after that, a zip on the wall is performed to not alarm the caveman below and still follow an optimal line, flattening him immediately after in order to collect the Golden Carrot he's holding.

It's possible to jump out of a rabbit hole just when Elmer Fudd is about to peek into one. The time window is quite small, just 2 frames. The direction he slides off after the third kick to damage him cannot be the same as the first two, it's hardcoded the behave this way.

This is a very, very inconsistent behaviour in this game that i couldnt manage to reverse engeneer, but seems to apply only on specific platforms, with specific angles and camera orientations. In this instance, it allows an early visit of "Follow The Red Pirate Road" stage and it also skips the cutscene activation of the "SuperJump" magic spell, unlocked later during our visit to Merlin in the "What's Cooking, Doc?" stage.

A long and complex stage, mostly about optimal lines and trajectories, but also including some interesting glitches. The seashell-jump near the start of the stage features a frame perfect trick, BARELY allowing the bullseye minigame to be skipped. There is also a weird glitch in this level, used only once in the TAS (where the second seashell is located), in which its possible to stand for 1 single frame on the semi-opened seashell, during its closing animation. This allows sort of temporary movement in the air, the TAS uses the glitch to perform a double jump without the need to move and use the small box to reach the Acme near the last seashell. I tried to look more deeply into this, as it looked like it would have opened a lot more possibilities for the TAS if only it was possible to replicate this "state" in other sections of the game.. unfortunately the glitch seem to only happen with seashells. A clock animation grab is also skipped thanks to the anchor despawn (near the first checkpoint), it forces Bugs "state" out of its freeze as the clock grab animation begins, allowing the TAS to resume movement a few seconds earlier.

Near the second half of the stage, just before the Sam bossfight, heavy rng manipulation is performed in order to double hit each one of the 3 pirates, while also forcing them to throw not-near explosion bombs. This may seem a straightforward concept at first (just go in the spot duh), but almost nothing makes sense about this to me, no matter how much i tried to fully understand it, except maybe some correlations about the distance from their triggers, which are only one piece of the whole picture.

Finally, the bossfight uses a simple, but effective strategy with a death abuse whenever the red romb is being thrown by Sam, making a double hit possible and saving almost 14 seconds on this bossfight alone, which would also have been kind of boring if not for this.

This is one of the biggest timesaves and the result of a lot of time spent on testing the game physics. It mainly consists in blocking every direction Bugs would be theoretically pushed to when normally colliding against a wall. For a couple of frames, the hitbox of the spinning wheel object is bigger than the width of the magic door itself, so Bugs gets pushed past the invisible wall, forcing his way in without the need to revisit the level when later on he will acquire the "OpenSesami" magic spell. Besides this, this level is INCREDIBLY unstable and is prone to crashing the whole game, one frame or the other (no really, it's nuts). It's not clear what causes this, i've encountered this behaviour both on original hardware and mednafen too, but it seems it's far from being a simple cause due to a maximum number of object in a set space, sound effects glitches or moving too fast between sections, at least as far as i can tell. On the first 2 tases i made from scratch a year or so ago, i was forced to do a whole lot more of weird workarounds, that would cost around 25 seconds - however by some miracle here, everything just worked out (while still crashing on most scenarios near the end of the stage, i managed to change some trajectories, jumps, and camera movement, still being able to perform optimal movement).

This level features a lot of rng manipulation with the patterns at the start (hence the weird movement just before the level warp), the following mini-bossfight bomb throws, the spot where the key drops in the second part of the level (Inside The Bank), and the path Mugsy takes in order to make the bank-safe fall on himself to knock him out, without wasting time doing that ourselves. The rest is optimal trajectories, normal carrots routing and not making the ending bossfight terribly boring. Fun fact: the sneak-action tech used to steal the key from the first guard (without the need to hit him 3 times) in the second half of the stage, is a result of misunderstanding a tip from Yuuki, in which he was hinting at the fact it was just possible to get closer to the guard before waking him up to hit him 3 times before dropping the key, as it was always done till that moment. Weird time-saving discovery. Happy little accidents.

Long and complex stage, with heavy normal carrots routing required. In this level we acquire the "SuperJump" Magic Spell. It features the second and biggest skip in the whole game, which is unfortunately possible only on PSX (both PAL and NTSC-U versions of the game), due to different physics for thrown/placed objects (they dont get pushed away when colliding with Bugs or other objects in the PSX version). By clipping inside the gates in the Bird section of this level, Royal Square (using the same concept previously saw on the magic door in the "Follow The Read Pirate Road" stage), this gate clipping allows to skip a full revisit of the level, making it possible for the TAS to obtain some clocks earlier than intended, and as a snowball effect this then makes the whole route access other levels sooner, skipping revisits and warping less with the time machine from one era to the other. The Golden Carrot obtained with the dive in Royal Square is crucial to later on reach exactly an amount of 150 Golden Carrots, just as Bugs will exit the "Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear" stage, making it possible to immediately after enter "La Corrida" stage, not having to move to the "The Greatest Escape" level first. This effectively cuts travel time between the two levels and results in optimal movement by about 2.2 seconds, considered every implication of this decision (the extra dive time for the Golden Carrot + the Golden Carrot obtained by death abusing in the water/lake (where one Acme box is) near the start of the stage, as it also implies that the 2nd visit of this stage, "What's Cooking Doc?", won't have to death abuse near the acme box, going instead straight for the small dungeon with the guard inside. Thanks to DHA SPEEDRUNS for coming up with this idea!

Near the end of the level there is a cool clip inside the last gate using the moving hitbox of the guards/bosses as a push, skipping the whole bossfight! Big timesave. Thanks and congrats to S10Px on finding this one!

Lots of cycles manipulation, this is where the first TasTest never came to be in 2021. There's a neat clock grab animation skip with a frame perfect trick, consisting in intentionally taking damage from a robot gun-shot, exactly when Bugs is about to enter the clock grab animation. The TAS skips the Golden Carrot near the start, as it is impossible to grab it AND also manipulate the moving platform cycles to be optimal; therefore the death abuse w/hover spam performed a bit after the first robot. Trajectories, tight hitboxes jumps over electric gates and.. a very long bossfight.

Simple driving level, hitboxes of the invisible walls are not-so-well placed starting from the second half of the stage, forcing Bugs to stay at what SEEMS to be too far away (for a TAS) from the sides of the walls. Trajectories and normal carrots routing are the biggest focus in the stage.

Like most levels in the game, it references something or full bits off the shows featuring Bugs Bunny. It's a nice touch from the developers and fits very well most of the time. This level has no specific tricks nor movements out of the ordinary compared to the rest of the TAS, though. There will also be a whole LOT of lag whenever a barrel is broken to spawn carrots, so ultimately it's best to avoid doing that in the grand scheme of things for normal carrots routing.

Another level revisit completely skipped, thanks to the 2 previous walls clipping skips we saw in "Follow The Red Pirate Road" and "What's Cooking, Doc?". Trajectories, lots of PSX loading times (sigh), and cool jumps. The ending bossfight makes use of RNG manipulation in order to get the fastest hit animations on Mugsy (usually he takes a couple seconds to recover each time he gets damaged) and getting bomb throws in the least amount of time.

Heavy RNG manipulation for constant green-hockey discs throws (lol) in the least amount of time. A very unfair and unforgiving level in RTA runs. The fact it does not follow a reward system for the player in order to obtain the green discs meant to be thrown back to Marvin to complete the bossfight, in my opinion, isnt a great decision. But anyway... Skipping the last clock grab animation is crucial, not doing that forces a VERY long cutscene to take place.

A fun level to TAS and also play; not particularly hard to tas optimal movement here, since there is little 3D movement and RNG manipulation is not required. The floating clock we see at the end of the stage, (like the 4 floating clocks seen during the bossifight in "The Planet X File!" level) cannot be obtained, even reaching the respective XYZ coordinates, and the last cutscene also cannot be skipped.

A run against time / Witch Hazel needs to make rabbit stew. Reaching the Acme and immediately going back to the floating log in the middle of the stage, is just not possible, unfortunately. At the end of the stage Bugs finally acquires the Music Magic Spell upon talking to Merlin.

Ice physics are VERY annoying. After lots of testing on my own and analysis of Noxxa's TAS Testrun of this stage, i finally managed to find a combination of frame perfect inputs, moving Bugs faster than the alternatives, as long as he's on Ice (sections where there is little movement to build up sliding speed from point A to B), allowing Bugs to cover certain distances slightly faster compared to simply jumping, rolling or sliding.

It's performed first by leaving 2 frames without any input, then 4 frames of just directional inputs, and lastly 2 frames with JUST the kick action input by itself. Every other possible way of kicking on ice, results in all the momentum dropping immediately to 0, stopping movement. This level suffers from some lag on PSX, whenever 2 or more golden carrots are shown on screen, therefore i had to change movement a few times near the start of the stage to avoid slowing down too much. Merlin teaches Bugs both the "Fan" and the "Open Sesami" magic spells in this level. Loading screens are painful.

I'll admit it's not the most innovating and creative way to recycle a level into a game, however the music being adapted to the night theme and the final part of the stage featuring an extra section do fit. At this point in the TAS it's crucial to collect normal carrots without losing time in the process, it's of the utmost importance to keep optimal movement trajectories and route along this. The TAS here also makes use of moving platforms cycles and rng manipulation to some degrees.

Referencing one of the most (if not "the most") famous bits of shows from Bugs and Daffy, the level keeps it simple by rewarding a single clock at its completion. In this TAS, Daffy Duck becomes a moving normal carrots farm (there is a timer before each new hit on him can happen).

Quoting Noxxa TAS Testrun of the stage: "One of the most difficult, frustrating and confusing levels of the game." This level features a lot of frame perfect jumps that save time, and a somewhat deep level of routing in order to be able to implement them all, while also making sure to grab the optimal amount of normal carrots. Cycles for moving platforms at the start cannot be manipulated, and the jumps near the carrot-juice warehouses warps are done with those specific trajectories in order to skip a cutscene, in which a mouse steals the key under Bugs Bunny's nose. (The first warehouse warp animation skip takes a detour on its way back after breaking the acme box, but the outcome is still faster compared to triggering the cutscene without the detour. It's a 44 frames timesave.) RNG manipulation affects the paths the mouse will take in each of the two warehouses, therefore the reason a dive is perfermed when joining warehouse 2. Reaching the end of the stage with a bossfight, Bugs faces off Rocky and Mugsy, for one last time.

A simple stage, yet extremely painful to TAS, since it did not care about any RNG addresses i had found and used till this point. I lost the count of how many times i redid this level in tas, but the fact that this is not a 3D stage, made it at least easier to find the optimal RNG with a few frames of delay upon joining the warp, and taking an intentional hit during phase 2.

Showing off right away a possibly a hidden easter egg (how was this not found before?) by using the flaming torch on the tired pirate, was suprising to say the list when i stumbled upon it about one year ago. Really glad it's also optimal movement, as i truly wanted this to be shown in the TAS. The minecart section has a set rng, which is choosen at the last frame as Bugs enters the cave/mine warp; to my surprise this was still on sync after some changes i had to go through (the death abuse on the last bossfight with Sam, features a very inconsistent placement of his red barrel/bomb, which was a pain to manipulate, but thankfully it all worked out in the end).

Extremely fun to TAS, it felt really fast and funny to go through the very small gaps between all the trees and rocks. Holding square makes Bugs keep top speed, and i made sure to avoid as much as possible autojumps off slopes (they trigger an animation during movement, cutting movement speed in half), by taking proper trajectories.

This last stage features the most annoying and "costly" RNG, right at the very start, with the "Simon says" colors minigame. Forcing the martian to jump to the nearest color box reaches a limit in the TAS, since its rng is decided once the stage warp is activated upon joining it. After going through more than 9 different RNG's, just one of them featured a jump from side to side with the first 2 colors, being the biggest timesave as otherwise it would eventually end up snowballing to an even bigger timeloss (the martian is slow in each animation). The best pattern i could find without waiting more than half a second outside the warp, ended up being the one shown in this TAS.

The "Mastermind" minigame has a set color pattern, which is fixed upon game start, even saving and rebooting the console, rejoining the level afterwards, still results in the same minigame pattern. Very convenient for Vortex% RTA runs, but in TAS, not so much. Thankfully switching between each color takes 4 frames at a time. After collecting the most convenient normal carrots in the way during the final race, the TAS keeps a straight line, going for a few frames of timesave between the gaps at the edges of the track turning points. The last, painful cutscene, cannot be skipped.

But Bugs won the race!

The TAS skips the last clock grab animation when exiting the level, and finally Bugs will be going back to the Present Day using the time machine one last time (just after collecting the last golden carrot in the Dimension X era) with a 100% completion, being rewarded by actually reaching Pismo Beach, where he was planning to go when his adventure and little detour in the space-time continuum started.

ThunderAxe31: Judging.

ThunderAxe31: Fixing the CycleCount value.

ThunderAxe31: All right, I compared this TAS with the PC RTA WR side-by-side, and I can confirm that indeed it doesn't make sense to compare them. Even after disregarding the difference due to loading times and cutscenes, there is still a huge difference in routing, due to the available TAS-only techniques. So I had to look at this movie for its own merits, and oh boy, it is really optimized. Great job dealing with such a huge project so brilliantly.

Accepting for Standard as full completion.

despoa: Processing...

Spikestuff: Processing...