Tutorials

Tool-Assisted Speedrunning

A TAS is a speedrun created or aided by tools that aims to achieve the fastest time possible.
This works by recording or manually entering inputs that get sent to the emulated game on playback.

This is similar to playing a piano, you can play it by yourself and may make mistakes, while a player piano can play perfectly every time. Note that TASes are not created to compete against real-time runners and thus are not accepted on real-time speedrun leaderboards.

The main hub for TASes is TASVideos.org where you can also find more tools for other games.
The tools range from slowdown/frame advance to savestates and RAM-watch. For more info on TASes, you may check out this video by Bismuth.

Minecraft Tool-Assisted Speedrunning

Minecraft Java Edition is different to the usual games that are TASed, since it is not running on a console. TASes are usually created using an emulator and later will then be verified on a real console.

Minecraft doesn’t have an emulator, but we can modify the game to get a similar result to emulators.

What about cheat engine?

Cheat engine is an external tool that allows you to slow down any game. This was a big issue for the Trackmania Community a while back, as numerous cheated replays were found.
It also has a built in RAM watch tool that allows you to manipulate RAM addresses.

Yes, you can use this to make TASes. However, since we can create mods, we can program slowdown tools ourselves.
This gives us a lot more control, e.g. activating the tools from inside the game, making TASing a whole lot faster.

However, if you are looking to create Minecraft Bedrock Edition TASes, cheat engine is your best friend. You can find a link to the MCBE TAS Server in Discord

Type

Over the years 2 types of Minecraft TAS types emerged.

Playback TASing is the act of recording keyboard and mouse inputs, and playing them back. This is the type that is usually associated with TASing in other games, played with an emulator.

Non-Playback TASing emerged as an easier to learn alternative, that is less optimized than Playback TASing.
Additionally there is still a lack of tools regarding Playback TASing, so long story short:

Start with Non-Playback. ⏬