Submission Text Full Submission Page

Introduction

I like TASing racing games.

Category Choice

This game contains 9 different tracks. After beating all of them, the game loops back to the first one. This movie completes one cycle.

Software + Hardware

Rom Information

  • Name: Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat (U)
  • ROM: Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat (U) [!].nes
  • SHA1: 238A5A46DB79AC6E5252DC902F5BBDA669FA4DD7
  • MD5: F1781F33DC3E5A9FEA34B7E3B890A5AC

Emulator

  • EmuHawk 2.10 (Core: QuickerNES)

Routing Bot

  • Bot: JaffarPlus
  • Routing Core: QuickerNES
  • Platform:
    • 2 x AMD Epyc 7742 (128 cores, 256 threads) + 384Gb RAM
    • Exploration Rate: 1.20 Mstates/s

Strategy

My work in this game was pretty similar to that in [5294] NES Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road by eien86 in 50:31.34.
There is a money/shop component that requires some planning ahead. I decided to pursue engine performance first, as I reckon that would have the largest effect if bought early on. For the races themselves I tried to cheese collision with others as much as possible. I also try to reduce the amount and duration of pit stops. I'm pretty sure some deeper strategic planning might result in a faster movie, but I will until somebody wants to take that challenge.

Darkman425: Claiming for judging.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15714
Location: 127.0.0.1
Former player
Joined: 6/30/2010
Posts: 1109
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
This was more fun than I expected. I liked both the high speed portions and the ones where you have the CPUs push you forward. So this gets my "yes" vote!
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Darkman425
He/They
Editor, Judge, Skilled player (1304)
Joined: 9/19/2021
Posts: 283
Location: Texas
I know the arcade version ends the game no matter what after 15 races, though tracks get repeated. Looking at the high score table on the NES version, the high score is 500 and the maximum points possible in a race is 20 points. Does this mean that there's no cutoff by the game on the number of races the player gets to play in the NES version?
Switch friend code: SW-2632-3851-3712
GJTASer2018
He/Him
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 311
Location: Stafford, NY
Darkman425 wrote:
Does this mean that there's no cutoff by the game on the number of races the player gets to play in the NES version?
This video shows two loops of the tracks, so you can at least get that far: Link to video As you can see, the scoreboard at the end of that video has room for 5 digits so 99,999 could be the maximum possible score to earn in this game! At only 20 points maximum per race, it would take an extremely long time to reach that number though (assuming a killscreen or something similar doesn't get in the way). Additionally, the single Twin Galaxies record for the NES game is higher than any of the arcade or MAME records, so there's every reason to believe that you can go as far as you want in the NES version. That said, pursuing any kind of hypothetical maximum point value would be in a different branch entirely. This submission would still count as a baseline because it covers all unique content in the game, regardless of whatever score targets it might be possible to reach.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 6/4/2004
Posts: 285
And the winner is...EIE(N)! Very clever use of the NPC cars to boost you along, along with skillful use of the boost when you needed it. Yes vote.
Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4046
Technically additional loops would be additional content up until you've played every track with max upgrades once, right? Though I wouldn't expect you to do it unless you were interested
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

1736535604