Submission #8263: The8bitbeast's SMS Astérix in 24:02.96

Version without commentary: https://youtu.be/Ab4XWQ9wjNc

Asterix is a platformer released for the Sega Master System in 1991. You choose between using Asterix and Obelix for each level and most of the time they have different routes through the levels, leading to replayability and interesting routing.

This is a 8897 frame improvement over the published TAS thanks to more optimization and new techniques found by RTA runners.

While working on the TAS I was mainly comparing to the currently published TAS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT6U0tCKrw8 and also the RTA WR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKKgYZc10uo There are some small differences such as time bonuses taking longer to tick down if you finish a level quicker.

This table summarises the time saved both over RTA and the old TAS in each segment. Overall I saved 8897 frames (148 sec) over the TAS and 6911 frames (115 sec) over the current RTA WR.

At the start of each level you can choose between Asterix and Obelix. Quite often they have different paths through the levels, meaning one is faster than the other. The main difference between the character mechanics is that Obelix is bigger and can break the silver blocks by punching, ground pounding or headbutting them, whereas Asterix needs to pick up potions and use those potions to destroy blocks.

On it’s own this would suggest that most levels are faster with Obelix, however with Obelix’s extra size comes more lag. This makes Obelix generally a bit slower, especially with RTA where lag reduction can’t be done as precisely. That being said, the difference is small enough that it’s about 50/50 whether Asterix or Obelix is faster on a level and it usually comes down to whatever route you end up taking through the level.

When jumping into a corner like this shape _| you can get slightly clipped in and ejected out. This usually doubles your speed for 1-3 frames, essentially saving 1-3 frames. You also get a small height boost, which means this can be used to make otherwise tricky jumps. Interestingly, this technique is the exact same in the Mickey Mouse Land of Illusion TAS.

Most rooms have transition zones, where if you jump up through the top of the screen it will scroll up. If these transition zones aren’t there or only extend a certain amount, you can get over the top of the screen without scrolling the screen up to the next one. This allows you to jump up on the top of walls and skip large portions of levels. It’s the source of most of the timesaves in the run.

As mentioned before, you generally want to play as Asterix if possible. This is because Asterix has a smaller sprite, meaning less lag. You can reduce a bit of lag by ducking and jumping at the same time, especially with Obelix. This is because he is made up of less individual sprites when in the ducking position. Usually you can duck for a frame on the ground without losing any speed, so jumping out of this extends the visual of ducking and costs literally no time at all, making it an effective general movement strategy for Obelix. This also changes your hitbox a bit, allowing you to squeeze under roofs you would normally not be able to.

Breaking blocks can cause a lot of lag, so these are usually broken closer to the edge of a screen so that the debris leaves the screen sooner. I also make sure to minimize breaking unnecessary blocks to reduce more lag.

Enemies will drop items randomly, so I often manipulate the RNG to make sure they drop nothing. This is because the dropped item will usually cause extra lag.

I searched for a long time for the optimal way to reach 0 speed so that you can enter the door quickly. I found that turning around then punching the frame after was the fastest, and allowed me to save some pretty significant time.

Not much here aside from easy lag reduction. I have one small timesave where I jump under the silver blocks and get an ejection boost. I found that punching the key jar from the side was faster than ground pounding it. This is a timesave applicable to all jars and also the hog boss of this level.

This level plays as Obelix which is more laggy. This is where duck jumps can shine to reduce the lag. I was able to save a lot of time by making a platform cycle that the previous TAS and RTA both don’t make. This was done by jumping off and re-landing on the platform.

Breaking the blocks as Obelix was difficult to optimize but essentially can be brute forced. I get an ejection boost after breaking the blocks.

I save a lot of time by doing a strat from RTA runs where I jump up and partially clip into a block at the end of the level making me jump higher.

The boss has RNG but I can always know the right one to hit. It’s more likely that the one on the left is correct. I also lost some time in this boss on by original run through because I hit the wrong ones for playaround. This loses time because the next cycle doesn’t start until they are all off screen and hitting the wrong ones for fun makes them bounce up and take longer to leave the screen.

Pretty similar strats to RTA but unfortunately the water enemies cause a lot of lag.

This is unfortunately an autoscroller. I play as Obelix because you can get to the door quicker after the key spawn in this level with Obelix. The RTA WR holder suggests that Obelix is worse due to lag, but I’m able to reduce lag a lot here. By doing duck jumps I reduce a lot, but I also reduce it by minimizing the number of blocks I actually break, breaking one block at a time where possible, and breaking blocks close to the edge of the screen so that the fragments leave the screen sooner.

This level has a cool timesave that is not in the TAS or the RTA WR. I use a bat on the inside room to get a bounce over the wall. This skips the section where you go up to the top of the level and it saves a lot of time. The bat’s movement is very much based on RNG so I had to trial and error to get it at the right height. This was one of the more difficult parts to optimize due to the speed coming out of the bat bounce.

I had to somewhat manage health here and I was able to avoid some fireball damage by jumping over it.

At the end of the level I use two red potions rather than one. This allows me to break the top one of the three blocks, letting me do a slightly smaller jump and reach the exit sooner.

The RTA run uses Obelix here, but says that it’s probably worse. This would have been the case if not for the extra timesave I found with Obelix. You can get a duck jump under the blocks near the start of the level and save a bunch of time. Not to mention, the extra TAS lag reduction helps a lot too. I tried to avoid getting snowballs on my head if possible, since the extra sprite can cause some lag with Obelix.

There’s a water current at the end of the level which you have to ride to the end. While you can let it suck you away, it’s much more optimal to jump on top of it. This water current can get pretty glitchy, but it didn’t in this TAS.

Another Obelix level. Not much to say apart from careful optimization and lag reduction.

Asterix was mainly used here for lag reduction. The first bit of the level is essentially an autoscroller. Then there’s a skip where you can jump over the wall.

At the end of the level I manipulate the boss to be jumping to the left. This allows me to get the first hit in much faster than usual where you have to move all the way to the right.

Obelix is used here since he has a cool bat jump skip. In the first sub area I got pretty unlucky with the platform cycle and had to wait for it to be high enough to let me jump over the wall. This was slightly faster than breaking the blocks.

For the bat jump itself, it’s an easier version of the 2-3 bat jump. I manipulate the RNG to control the height of the bat and then try to bounce off the bat as early as possible and with the most rightward velocity as possible.

First part of the level is waiting for the enemy. He’s supposed to break the blocks for you but you can just bounce on him over the wall. I use the red potions to enter the cannons and I want to throw them as early as possible. That is a general thing with potions, because you want to get them out early so that they blow up sooner.

This level had 3 possible routes:

- Asterix

- Obelix

- Obelix with death warp (like in RTA)

I tried TASing all 3 but it turned out that obelix without a death warp was the fastest by about a second.

All 3 routes have a cool bit of tech where you jump over the wall by jumping out of a screen transition down. This is useful throughout the run. I also got into an out of bounds /unused area by letting boulders fall on me and getting over the wall near where I came up through the jar in the run. This unfortunately wasn’t useful in going faster.

Pretty straightforward level. Get on the roof and get the key. Since the swooping bird moves faster than Asterix, I opted to kill it as far to the right as possible, that means I would utilize most of it’s speed.

Lots of damage boosting through the underground section to get the key. Although you can damage boost pretty quickly, you do lose about a frame to each one, so on the way back I take the top path to avoid one of the damages.

I bounce off the trampoline thing but it was really difficult to not get shot up two screens. I think the key to this is getting far to the right after the bounce, since the extra screen transition up seems to only extend so far to the right. This bounce was one of the hardest parts to optimize.

The crushers have an annoying property where they bounce you as long as they’re touching the ground. The main reason why this is annoying is because it means you can’t duck jump to reduce lag.

I spent a lot of time manipulating the spiders to help me get bounces that would skip some cycles. I was super happy with some of the cycles I was able to skip. In some areas where it was too laggy, I would manipulate them to not drop anything, since the pickup they drop can cause some lag.

A good way to manipulate RNG is by ducking on the previous screen. A one frame duck doesn’t lose you any time so you can keep ducking over and over to get different RNG outcomes.

As I’ll mention in the notes for 6-2, I had to kill an extra bat here which cost me 2 frames.

Swimming is pretty easy to optimize since you mostly move at walking speed. Inside the octopus I try to get as many ejection boosts as possible, but the green slime dropping hindered this a bit.

This level has a massive skip. After you get up onto the boat, the game unlocks screen scrolling to allow you to go further to the right. We can utilize this by jumping up onto the boat, but doing a jump too small to make it up on the boat, causing us to fall back down. This lets us get in the starting area but with the screen unlocked, this lets us jump up on the boat and go straight to the end of the level with the key.

The jar RNG is related to your score. I needed the key to be in the left jar, not the right jar since that would be a shorter walk. The jar RNG seems to be related to your current score. I originally had bad Jar RNG so I had to go back to 5-3 and kill an extra bat to change my score and get different RNG. This was a little bit slower in 5-3 itself and lost 2 frames, but it’s definitely worth it for the timesave in 6-2.

A pretty straightforward level with a lot of autoscrolling. It’s a bit quicker to jump straight up through the screen transitions rather than taking the springs.

In the section with the moving platform, I try to hold right as much as possible. Even if you’re off the moving platform, letting go of right or pressing left tends to slow it down. So there are lots of time where my Asterix movement is suboptimal because I instead need to optimize for the moving platform.

This level has a lot of back and forth. You’re forces into the underground by the tornado. The underground has oil slicks which you use to duck under spikes. I take a lot of damage boosts to get through the enemies quickly, since bouncing on them usually makes you take damage anyway.

Near the key, the game is very laggy, so I try to reduce that as much as possible. I manipulate most enemies to drop nothing except for the one near the key since I can get it to drop some health and pick up that health while losing no time apart from the 2 lag frames that the health caused. This health saves a lot more time later by allowing me to do another damage boost.

This level is mainly optimized through lag reduction. The key could be in one of two jars, but the one I got was optimal. Thankfully I didn’t have to go back to an earlier section to manipulate the key by having a different score.

I opted for Asterix in this level rather than Obelix like RTA uses. I’m not sure why RTA uses Obelix, but Asterix should be faster due to significantly less lag.

I was able to pull off some fun playaround in the autoscroller section, showing a slip through the wall and a screen wrap.

The last bit of the level saves a huge amount of time over the TAS by skipping the falling block section. This is in the RTA record too and is one of the biggest timesaves in the run.

This is the last level and is essentially an autoscroller rather than a traditional final boss. You normally move at 0x200 speed if you’re in the middle of the screen and holding right. If you let go of right you’ll swap to moving at 0x100 speed and if you’re not in the middle of the screen you’ll travel at 0x300 when holding right until you reach the middle and hit the speed cap.

Since it autoscrolls the only timesave I had was some slight lag reduction with jumping, but jumping only reduces lag in very rare circumstances.

I found a cool thing where you can get past the right edge of the screen. This is because jumping locks in your speed, so if you jump just as you’re about to hit the middle of the screen, you’ll shoot past it and keep going at 0x300 speed until you land.

Timing for the RTA run ends when Asterix is booted off the horse but the timing for the TAS ends after the credits when the button is pressed to finish up the final score screen. This is why the TAS seems so much longer than RTA.

Darkman425: Claiming for judging.

Darkman425: The video commentary was incredibly helpful for understanding the techniques used in the run. Nice work on improving a decade old TAS with modern tricks and techniques found in that time!

Accepting to Standard as an improvement to [2271] SMS Astérix by Johnnypoiro in 26:20.57.

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