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Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]

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Re: Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]

#41

Post by bitwize »

pests wrote: post #18
mmebane wrote: post #8

If you enjoy talking about parallel universes, I highly, highly recommend watching the SM64 1-Key speedrun [1] and then Bismuth's explainer [2]. It's a truly amazing technical achievement based in large part in pannenkoek2012's research. [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iUt840BUOYA [2]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wjge1bVobN0

I do find it funny the terms gamers have came up with to describe what boils down to bugs in a game. Parallel universes and all the lore around them are all caused by just a 16-bit integer wrapping inside the floor check code. Mario64 usually stores positions as floats but for collision checks it gets converted to a 16 bit int.

Even so, the effects of these bugs are interesting enough to give names to. I remember some glitches in Sonic the Hedgehog 1 through 3 I called "The Valley of the Shadow of No Background" and "The Valley of the Shadow of No Sprites". The latter of which was caused by an integer coordinate wraparound that caused the game to draw the tile map scenery from your location modulo N, but not populate it with game objects because the coordinates didn't match. As a result, things like loops only half-worked, and the corkscrew things from Emerald Hill Zone didn't work at all -- because invisible objects triggered the movement mechanics specific to those scenery bits.

Re: Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]

#42

Post by tiltowait »

fullshark wrote: post #32
macromaniac wrote: post #28

Can anyone recommend other rabbit hole videos like the parents? It can be in any topic. I love these types of videos that show just how deep things are. https://youtu.be/_hjRvZYkAgA is my current favorite.

Karl Jobst speed running videos

I don't care about speedrunning at all, but even I find his videos (particularly the Doom ones) immensely enjoyable.

Re: Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]

#43

Post by mrob »

fullshark wrote: post #32
macromaniac wrote: post #28

Can anyone recommend other rabbit hole videos like the parents? It can be in any topic. I love these types of videos that show just how deep things are. https://youtu.be/_hjRvZYkAgA is my current favorite.

Karl Jobst speed running videos

I recommend his video on speedrunning the first level of Quake, including an overview of the importance of Quake to speedrunning as a whole, and an explanation of Quake's movement mechanics that make getting a good time so complex:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43d8fICz6gM

Re: Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]

#44

Post by jwilkin »

macromaniac wrote: post #28

Can anyone recommend other rabbit hole videos like the parents? It can be in any topic. I love these types of videos that show just how deep things are. https://youtu.be/_hjRvZYkAgA is my current favorite.

Here’s another great one on always beating Pokémon with the same set of inputs: https://youtu.be/6gjsAA_5Agk

Re: Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]

#45

Post by Orangeair »

pests wrote: post #6

Complete History of the A Button Challenge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXbJe-rUNP8 It's over five hours long. I put it on in the background or to pass the time. The amount of knowledge and abuse of bugs these guys are performing is insane.

I also watched through this recently and would highly recommend it to anyone with a passing interest. Some of the discoveries made were just insane, and the number of things that only barely work is kind of mind blowing.

Bismuth is also just a generally high quality YouTuber.

Re: Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]

#46

Post by padangitik »

I am so amazed by this. I am always impressed when people are so moved by some passion that they can put this extreme level of dedicated work into something. I have only rarely felt passions that move me to work as hard as this creator did. Sometimes I wish that people like this would use their talent and energy to work on truly important things like curing diseases or making scientific breakthroughs - if only for their own sakes to feel like their great potential didn't go to waste. Certainly the effort that went into this video could have produced a decent research paper, for example. I also wish I could have this level of motivation for my own work. But overall I am just amazed.

Re: Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]

#48

Post by charcircuit »

tialaramex wrote: post #3

This video also explains what a 0.5 A press ("Half A-press") is and why they care. Because Mario64 doesn't care about releases, the runners don't distinguish releases, you can always choose not to release A and so if you're doing this run (fewest A presses) you would only ever release in order to press A again. In a live setting commentators might briefly explain what a 0.5 A "means" but without this explanation to h…

It does care about releases. In order to jump for a second time you need to release it first.

0.5 is really about the idea of having an A press span multiple levels.

Re: Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]

#49

Post by johnday »

rvnx wrote: post #39
sgarman wrote: post #25

Is this the perfect youtube video? Amazing Mario soundtrack in the background and gameplay visuals. Home made charts that VISUALLY show what's going on. AUDIO voice commentary explaining what you see. References to other youtube videos and commenters. Detailed, insanely knowledgeable, not selling me anything, created for love not for viewers. IDK this is peak youtube for me.

"Starting the level while holding the A button and not pressing the A button again" could be easier to understand

It's a term of art from the community, that also draws in the intellectually curious with a "wtf is half an A press?" - it's an excellent title.

Re: Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]

#50

Post by spondylosaurus »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #16

I remember seeing one of his videos years ago about half-A presses. Did it ever catch on as something other people in the speedrunning (or whatever this is) community care about? I kinda assume not…

Most speedrun categories focus on sheer speed, for obvious reasons, but there are some less-popular offshoots that create unique challenges just to push the boundaries of the games (and the people running them).

I think the A button challenge focuses on reducing the number of A-presses above all else, so it's not a speedrun proper. There is a really fun type of speedrun called low% where the goal is to complete the game with as low a "completion percent" as possible (e.g., minimum items collected, quests and bosses completed, etc.) and do it as quickly as possible. But a run that's technically slower with a lower% will "beat" a run that's faster with a higher%.

That's where you get Twilight Princess speedruns that can take more than 24 hours to complete. Although I believe the current record is actually just under 16:

https://youtu.be/v2nRW3wKnVY

(For those who don't want to watch an entire video: the secret sauce here is a glitch with Link's "item get!" animation that verrrryyyy slooooowlyyyy pushes him backwards in space every time it loops. So if you open a chest and leave the animation running for hours on end, you can phase backwards through walls and bypass the need for keys/progress checks/etc. Which is perfect for a low% run where the goal is to bypass as many things as possible.)

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