Is there any disincentivize to using the warp zones so that people don't always skip levels when they know how to?
The speed run community has a warpless division. Always good to add a different challenge. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1#Warpless
Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]
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Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]
#92For those who can't watch the video or just want a text summary: The underground 1-2 level is supposed to stop scrolling as soon as the mundane return-to-surface pipe comes onto the right edge of the screen. (Unless you're walking on the ceiling.) But because of a programming error, it keeps scrolling, revealing that the warp zone room is there. It was originally intended to be a much more hidden secret than it turne…
Do you happen to know why the minus world is the way it is? Was it a level that was designed, or is it a level where it's rendering some random program or other data? I'd love to learn more about that part too.
The Minus World is just World 7-2 with a different name and an exit that loops back to the beginning.
Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> use inputs not normally possible like left + right simultaneously. Are there NES games (or mods) that have different (useful) behavior when an emulator permits such inputs?
In SMB, you can brake more quickly by holding L+R, which is impossible with an original NES controller, and as such that input is not allowed in official speed runs. https://tasvideos.org/GameResources/NES/SuperMarioBros#Turni...
There’s controversy around this in the mario kart speed run community too. Apparently with snes controllers you can press L+R on the dpad if your dpad has been used enough to wear down the dpad’s plastic center pivot. What’s interesting is this created a schism bifurcating the community, and the one that allows L+R I hear is the more vibrant conmunity.
Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]
#94Does anyone out there remember / have more information on an effort to actually create the warp pipes in real life? I have a very distinct memory of reading about this in Nintendo Power magazine in the late 90s / early 00s but have never been able to find anything concrete on the internet about it. I'm curious if I'm having a Mandela Effect type thing going on.
You're not talking about Hyperloop are you? They sure seem like human sized pneumatic tubes to me, and are highly reminiscent of the Mario pipes.
I'm not! This would be like pre-PayPal Elon times. IIRC, they were literally shaped green and meant for an individual wearing like a motorcycle helmet. I have no idea where my brain could've gotten this memory...
Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such bugs are definitely still possible if you’re writing for modern systems in a similar style (large blocks of contiguous memory interpreted only as needed). Just yesterday I was storing my color planes in three separate adjacent buffers for reasons, and if you looped the player off the bottom of the screen it came back up in a different color on the top. Now I need to figure out what to do with that…
That's quite different from an actual, playable level appearing out of a bug.
Not really - if I had any tilemap structures for the level yet, it would've had a similar effect.
The point is this stuff arises whenever you have, like `char level_data[8][4][10][100]` rather than, like `class level { std::vector actors; std::vector background; }`. And storing stuff in large contiguous blocks that can be interesting when misinterpreted is still a pretty good way to write modern games if you don't have OO brain rot.
Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's quite different from an actual, playable level appearing out of a bug.
Not really - if I had any tilemap structures for the level yet, it would've had a similar effect. The point is this stuff arises whenever you have, like `char level_data[8][4][10][100]` rather than, like `class level { std::vector actors; std::vector background; }`. And storing stuff in large contiguous blocks that can be interesting when misinterpreted is still a pretty good way to write modern games if you don't ha…
Sorry, I missed the part where you mentioned that you were writing your game in a similar style to classic games. Of course that does open up the door to similar bugs causing similar results.
Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
The minus world is technically an out-of-bounds level. The game treats it at world 36-1 (since the digits are tile numbers 0-9, followed by the alphabet, then a space tile at $24 or 36). Since doing so reads a whole host of other data out-of-bounds as well, it ends up pointing at the level layout for 2-2, but without the data that properly sets the pipe destination, resulting in an infinitely-looping level. Other ver…
It’s pretty interesting how the game can continue to function in a level that isn’t supposed to exist. Metroid has similar areas I believe. It’s hard to imagine a modern game or any modern software handling a scenario like that without crashing.
That's because in modern software design, crashing is preferred to continuing to read invalid data, which has no upper limit on the amount of possible permanent damage it could cause. Would you rather have your game crash, or corrupt your 100-hour savegame? Crashing is the more elegant solution to this type of error, and a large percentage of language design after C++ went into turning undefined-behavior scenarios into crash scenarios.
Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]
#98I wonder if this kind of obsessive analysis of popular NES-era games will end in a couple decades, as the people who grew up in the console's heyday grow too old; or if they'll continue because interest in these particular games transcended a particular generation (and they're simple enough for people to really take them apart).
I think the NES-era (and to a lesser extent SNES-era) will continue to be heavily represented. As you stated, they are simple enough for people to really take them apart, in a large part because the games were actually written in assembly, unlike later eras of gaming.
But also, the NES-era games have aged better than earlier games. As much as I love River Raid, it's no Super Mario Bros. Something about on-screen menus (what do you mean I need to hit "reset" to start the game, Atari?), having more than one button, and enough processing power for decent physics.
Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you happen to know why the minus world is the way it is? Was it a level that was designed, or is it a level where it's rendering some random program or other data? I'd love to learn more about that part too.
The minus world is technically an out-of-bounds level. The game treats it at world 36-1 (since the digits are tile numbers 0-9, followed by the alphabet, then a space tile at $24 or 36). Since doing so reads a whole host of other data out-of-bounds as well, it ends up pointing at the level layout for 2-2, but without the data that properly sets the pipe destination, resulting in an infinitely-looping level. Other ver…
This fascinating article [1] on the history of SMB hacking in Japan gives some more details on Minus World-like worlds and how they could be manipulated by "hot swapping" Famicom cartridges.
"Players quickly figured out that it was possible to access levels beyond 8-4 by hot-swapping cartridges.
What is positively known is that in 1986 a magazine called “FC Bug Boy Special: Super Mario 256W ” was released by JICC Publishing Office in Japan.3 This magazine detailed how to access worlds beyond 8-4 with the hot-swap method.4 It also included data tables and information about these mysterious levels.5 This publication most likely helped information about “256-World” spread through the budding player/hacking community."
This ultimately led to the release of the Tonkachi Editor, sort of like a primitive Game Genie where you could laboriously modify memory to more precisely hack together your own levels.
"It was a binary editor, but far from the sophisticated software available on today’s computers, it was light and simple at best, and could only patch data displayed in hexadecimal or ASCII code, not move or copy data. Since there was no environment, of course, no printout was possible. Moreover, due to the nature of quick disks, subsequent files could easily be destroyed if they were rewritten on a different drive or other device, and recovering them required a great deal of effort. In fact, even now that I am accustomed to using a Tonkachi, a task that can be done in a few minutes on a PC can take up to an hour or two on the NES if you use a Tonkachi."
This ultimately resulted in a ROM Hack version of SMB called Tonkachi Mario released all the way back in 1987, at least a decade before I'd have assumed such hacks were being released.
[1] https://glitchcat7.com/the-complete-history-of-kaizo-mario/
Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]
#100I wonder if this kind of obsessive analysis of popular NES-era games will end in a couple decades, as the people who grew up in the console's heyday grow too old; or if they'll continue because interest in these particular games transcended a particular generation (and they're simple enough for people to really take them apart).
I suspect you'll still have academics doing it, but with less overall cultural relevance. There are still historians of early film, TV, etc. doing great work. Often it's by consulting new types of sources or using newly available technical tools.