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#supermario64#tas#paralleluniverses

SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated) [OUTDATED]

pannenkoek2012

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  • Recommended by 14 people: 13 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2016 to 2024.
  • Presented by pannenkoek2012
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 10 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Advanced. Deep dive for people who know the field.

5.4M views10 years ago14 recommendations

Game developmentComputer scienceRetro games and consolesGame programmingAlgorithms

pannenkoek2012 explains the complex game mechanics, parallel universes, and floating-point math used to complete a Super Mario 64 level with half an A press.

THIS VIDEO IS OUTDATED - SEE A BETTER VERSION OF THIS VIDEO HERE: youtu.be/aFx7woWkZbc I collect the star Watch for Rolling Rocks in Hazy Maze Cave using 0.5 A presses. The A press is to perform AB kicks on the rising elevators. Without doing these kicks, Mario would go through the elevator, and so there'd be no way to navigate out of the lake area with QPU speed. For the record, this is TAS. This video is an improvement from my previous video in which I collected this star in 1 A press. You can find that video here: youtu.be/yGic8wwhm6g. Since then, we discovered PU movement and scuttlebug raising, which made this strat possible. For convenience, here are the informative parts of the video: for half A presses for scuttlebug transportation for scuttlebug raising for hyper speed walking (HSWing) for parallel universes (PUs) Here is a play by play of what I do. First, I use scuttlebug transportation to move a scuttlebug to the corner of the Watch for Rolling Rocks platform. Then, I use scuttlebug raising to raise him to about the height of the platform. Next, I use hyper speed walking to generate massive speed. Finally, I use PU movement to navigate to the top of the course, launch to the scuttlebug to bounce on him, and ground pound in the misalignment of the platform to get onto it. And from there, I collect the star. If you want to see my workspace/calculations and read about the process of TASing this, I've chronicled it here: imgur.com/gallery/rK24p .m64 stats: Length: 13 hours and 49.5 minutes Re-records: 6824 Frames: 2986271 (1493100 input) This video is without a doubt the one that I've put the most time into out of all my videos. I knew this going in, and so I decided to keep a log of how much time I spent on each aspect of it (note: if my computer was doing work like compiling/recording and I could let it be, I didn't count that time). Here are the stats: Time to TAS: 12 hours Time to record/manage raw avis: 9 hours Time to create uncommentated version: 31 hours Time to add visuals/commentary: 75 hours Update: The PU route used in this video actually crashes on console, as it turns out PU crashes can still occur even when locking the camera in the main map. Nevertheless, an alternate route has been found that avoids these PU crashes and has been console verified: youtu.be/T-G4ymVwajw Commentated video playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmvvhlevqC2ftzAeEpTaI7eS6b4nPN3ji Uncommentated Version: youtu.be/X-zAWbM50JM ABC Playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmvvhlevqC2d6vis077yFHuLJHYtTtqe_ ABC Routes: docs.google.com/document/d/1ypRVVRyf4x-v8GqCSmKYnicrfKSIjao3…

Why it's here

14 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as a legendary, mind-bending deep dive into game engine internals, floating-point arithmetic, and coordinate space glitches.

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Abusing Floating Point Casts To Beat A SM64 Level In Half An "A" Press Summary: - Mario moves a NPC to a specific spot to build extra elevation at end of level - Open door to create special position where Mario won't slide into water - Mario slides backwards into barrier for 12 hours to build (uncapped) speed - Speed is then utilized to move out of bounds - When Mario collides, collision is calculated with modulus cast from float to integer - Out of bounds checks happen at quarter distances through single movement - Mario then collides with what the author…

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This1 was mentioned in its other thread. Not related to programming but the amount of thought process went into it is just amazing. 1 "SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)" : link to this video

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Pannenkoek2012 is both genius and crazy awesome at the same time. Its video "0.5x A Key Presses" provoked a riot in video game circles some times ago: link to this video

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On “'Super Mario Bros.' speedrunner hits nearly inhuman 4:55 world record”

Did you ever see this one? link to this video This guy literally has a PhD in SM64. It's insanely complicated, and surprisingly lucid.

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At 5:450 in that video, he makes a reference to one of the greatest weird explanations of video game things ever: the explanation1 of how to beat the Watch for Rolling Rocks level in Super Mario 64 with only half an A-press, which is highly worth a watch if you like this stuff about geometry. And if that was interesting, I also recommend the history of any percent speed runs for Super Mario Sunshine.2 0: link 1: link to this video 2: link

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

I kind of lost it at the point where he "builds up speed for 12 hours". AHAHA link to this video His mind is so clear. I love how there's so many super super smart people on the internet! :)

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On “Super Mario 64's unopenable door has been opened [video]”

I recommend this channel in general. He has extremely deep knowledge of the inner workings of the game, and presents it in an approachable way. Other classics: A 3 hour 45 minute deep dive into the game's infamous invisible wall bug (useful for understanding the linked video): link His most famous video, a summary of the extremely involved and complex methods required to beat a particular level using the lowest number of A button presses - in this case, 0.5 : link to this video

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…ngs to less of a degree. And in gaming... well, the 'professional' journalism is terrible quality to begin with. The only sites that cover anything remotely interesting are fan or volunteer run, and the most interesting sources for gaming related media are indeed social media sites. You're not gonna find anything as in depth at this on most sites: link to this video Even for more normal 'news' stuff, there are usually tons of free and fan run alternatives. For example, no one tries to get news about Pokemon from a mainstream source, because they've got other things to focus on and don't know a lot about gaming in general. Instead, they go to one of the many fan run sites, like Bulbanews or Serebii.net.…

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Pannenkoek2012 does great breakdowns of SM64: link to this video If you like this sort of stuff, reddit.com/r/speedrun can be fun to visit.

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There are Let’s Plays that I think are better than others, but I don’t think any of them, even the best of them, are popular enough to be part of gamer culture. However, the gameplay video that I think comes closest to leaving “a mark in history” is this single video by pannenkoek2012: link to this video “SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)”. That’s the only video I’ve seen referenced in comments on videos of completely different games. The references are to “parallel universes” and “0.5 A-presses”, terms that are explained in this video. I don’t know if you could call this video a Let’s Play, though, since the commentary is recorded after the gameplay, it’s not part of a larg…

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For anyone else interested in similar tricks, here is an in-depth video where someone talks about getting a star with half a button press. It starts out straightforward enough, but eventually gets really interesting when they start talking about parallell worlds that you can only access by abusing bugs to reach unrealistic speeds. link to this video

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This was interesting. I used to whine about doing this kind of glitched run, but it's just a different category of speedrun. Amazing to have that level of precision, though of course he must have done this hundreds, maybe thousands of times to get it right. If you like this kind of explanation be sure to watch the "0.5 A presses" Mario 64 speedrun video, which is equally interesting as far as getting into the hidden guts of the game: link to this video

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On “Floating point visually explained (2017)”

I highly recommend watching this video, which explains floats in the context of Mario 64: link Games are a great way to explain floats because they're so visual. Specifically, check out 3:31, where the game has been hacked so that the possible float values in one of the movement directions is quite coarse. (If you're curious what a PU is, and would like some completely useless knowledge, this video is also an absolute classic and very entertaining: link to this video )

chrsstrmon Hacker News • Mentions

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This video 0 has definitely made the rounds here before, discussing how to complete a level in Super Mario 64 with less than 1 full A press and in the process discovering parallel universes in the map. 0 link to this video

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For a specific example of something like this being important, remember the (very impressive) Watch for Rolling Rocks in 0.5 A presses video from a couple years ago? link to this video (For the uninitiated, this video presents a TAS of Super Mario 64 which beats the level Watch for Rolling Rocks without pressing the A button outside of keeping it held from entering the level.) It turns out that the route presented in the video actually fails console verification, since the crazy things he does trigger some annoying FPU crashes on console, but not on emulator. There is a happy end, though: a fixed route was published after this was discovered, and it passes console verification just fine (assuming the i…