📅 Date : 11 January 2021
🎮 Platform / Context : Trials Fusion / Creation of the first Tool Assisted Speedruns (TAS) for the game
Origins and Technical Details of Trials Fusion TAS
The pioneer behind Trials Fusion TAS is AurisTFG, a player who originally began his Trials journey on Trials Frontier before transitioning to Fusion, where he quickly established himself as a high-level player within the community. His interest in TAS (Tool-Assisted Speedruns) began after discovering TAS videos of Mario games, which sparked his curiosity about applying similar concepts to Trials.
Tool Development
At first, AurisTFG experimented with AutoHotkey, a macro scripting tool. However, this method proved highly unreliable due to input desynchronization, which often caused runs to break mid-way. Determined to find a better solution, he created his own TAS tool from scratch, evolving through two main stages:
First version: A standalone external program that read the game’s memory (e.g., the in-game timer) and simulated keyboard inputs. This setup suffered from slow execution and instability due to latency between the tool and the game.
Improved version: An internal tool embedded alongside the game process, drastically improving input timing and reducing lag. This version read text files containing input sequences, executing them frame-by-frame inside the game. Input emulation still relied on external keyboard/controller simulation, though a fully internal system was envisioned for the future.
Auris also planned to integrate brute-force optimization algorithms into the tool — allowing the program to automatically test and refine randomized input paths to discover more efficient completions. This concept leaned toward a semi-automated TAS generator, pushing even further the boundaries of precision optimization.
His TAS runs were made using a PC account under a name similar to “easy614”, which may still appear on some Trials Fusion leaderboards.
Auris never publicly released his program, in order to protect the game’s leaderboards from potential abuse.
Time Investment and Technical Constraints
Creating a single TAS could take anywhere from 2 to 18 hours, largely depending on the length and complexity of the track. Two examples include:
RedLynx Derby: ~18 hours
Way of the Machine: ~14 hours
At the time, save states were not possible — an enormous technical challenge in Trials, since every moving platform or dynamic object has an independent state, making state saving and restoration extremely difficult.
Because of this limitation, Auris had to replay the full sequence from the beginning each time a change was made. For many months, he worked without any fast-forwarding functionality, meaning each run-through had to be watched at full speed.
Only later in development did he implement a fast-forwarding feature, which significantly reduced iteration time. For his more recent Trials Evolution TAS, for example, this allowed him to finish a full track in just 2–3 hours, a sharp improvement over earlier efforts.
Through sheer technical effort and experimentation, AurisTFG laid the foundation for TAS in Trials Fusion. His work showcases how creativity, engineering, and gameplay mastery can combine to expand what’s possible in a genre built on precision and control. He also did a TAS on a Trials Evolution’s track, called « Falling Down », but never did on Rising since physic on this one is pretty inconsistent.