This is an Any% TAS of Tank Racer (Playstation, PAL).
- Beats all 3 Cups and reaches the credits screen
- Collides with AI to gain speed boosts
- Brushes against specific walls/corners to gain speed boosts
- Shoots AI to prevent them from collecting speed boost items
- Rerecord count: 45282
- Time spent on the TAS: about 25~30 hours
- Frame count: 145045
Tank Racer is a fairly unique and obscure racing game. It's been released in 1999 on Playstation and PC. The Playstation version only had a PAL release. It also had a playable Demo version, which promised 22 tracks (the final product only has 8 tracks).
As the name suggests, in this game you race using tanks against 7 AI opponents across 8 different tracks. You can rotate your barrel and shoot your opponents to briefly reduce their speed and throw them off-course. The enemies can shoot you too, but in this TAS we don't get hit even once. We can also collect a number of different power-ups, including speed boosters, shields, mines, missiles, and even an UFO that abducts an AI and sends him further back. Sadly, it's impossible to fully destroy your opponents.
The Cup Mode is split into 3 different Cups. Every race consists of 3 laps.
- Bronze Cup (4 races: Village -> Border -> Swamp -> Theme Park)
- Silver Cup (5 races: Eastern Bloc -> Swamp -> Riviera -> Border -> Moon Dome)
- Gold Cup (6 races: Riviera -> Eastern Bloc -> Theme Park -> Village -> Moon Dome -> Circuit)
The Bronze Cup is very slow, and all 4 tracks are repeated in the next Cups. I'd recommend skipping straight to Silver Cup for better entertainment.
The tanks get faster as you progress to the next Cups. In each Cup you can choose between 4 different tanks. I briefly tested each tank and chose the ones that gave me the shortest lap times. Getting first places in all tracks in a Cup unlocks a fifth hidden tank with superior stats, but sadly I can't show them off in this run.
Quick summary of the TAS:
- The items are not affected by RNG and their order is pre-determined by the game. In some tracks, I shoot the AI at a very long range to prevent them from collecting the speed boost items. Speed boosters are of course the most valueable items. To get the most out of them, I try to use them on long straights that aren't too bumpy. If I use them on bumpy terrain, I don't get as much speed. It's possible to stack speed boost items, but they get lost if I collect a different power-up. The blue flame stays on for a couple seconds longer than the speed boost power-up is actually active, which can lead to some confusion. In one track (Riviera), I have missed one speed boost power-up. I only noticed it after finishing the TAS, and it wasn't worth re-doing the whole TAS just to fix this mistake.
- The general idea of going fast is to preserve the speed. I take the corners wide to get higher exit speed and try to avoid driving over terrain that loses me a lot of speed. A technique that's pretty useful in 90 degrees corners is to divide the steering inputs into 2 "swings". Doing that loses less speed than trying to take the corner in one swing.
- Hitting walls will usually result in a speed loss. However, brushing against some walls or corners can give me a slight speed boost. I'm not sure why that happens, and I discovered that by accident. I might not have found all the places where this can be abused, but I try to use it whenever it makes sense.
- Letting the AI hit me from behind gives my tank a noticable speed boost, sometimes upwards of 20 mph. I use it on some AIs. I could have definitely abused this glitch more by manipulating more AIs positions by shooting them. This could save potentially around a second more on each track. But oh well, I wanted to actually finish this game so I didn't abuse collision glitches on every AI.
As with all 3D racing games, it's definitely possible to save 0.5~1.0 second in each race, if someone wanted to dedicate a lot of time. I tried to strike a good balance between time investment and quality of the TAS. I made this TAS using the classic setup: PSX controller in my hand, 50% game speed, savestate/loadstate/pause/frameadvance buttons binded to my controller, played using analog sticks for higher precision and smoother steering.
I hope you'll enjoy the TAS, and see you next time in another PSX racing game TAS.
slamo: Claiming for judging.
slamo: Removing "Any%" from the branch name, we don't use that here.
Looks like a neat game, my main concern here was the optimization. This game is so obscure that there are no speed records out there, other than some very casual gameplay videos, so there's nothing meaningful to compare it to. 3D racers are difficult to TAS, and this one looks especially horrific to frame-optimize, due to the bumpiness of the tracks and the amount of obstacles in the way. In general, you use good optimization practices, such as using racing lines, grabbing speed boosts whenever possible, and avoiding sloppy mistakes. This run can almost certainly be improved, but you might go insane trying to do so. Accepting as a first run for this game.
slamo: Uploaded movie with fixed cycle count.
