Ok... 12 minute PB?! WR by like 2 mins?! This feels like a dream! Thank you TB & Saba
Superdavo0001
AINTNOWAY
Ok... 12 minute PB?! WR by like 2 mins?! This feels like a dream! Thank you TB & Saba
Ok... 12 minute PB?! WR by like 2 mins?! This feels like a dream! Thank you TB & Saba
updated 7 months ago
Ok... 12 minute PB?! WR by like 2 mins?! This feels like a dream! Thank you TB & Saba
Time: 59:42.93 (TAS timing)
Total Re-records: 1,405,113
Authors: FeijoadaMolhada, ChouxZi3, RSw and brqm
This TAS was also made possible with the help of multiple other TASers:
• ShadoXFM: C1 reds, C5 reds, G1-2 alternative movement after blue coins, G4-4, G4-5, Wing Cap, Jungle Falls: old GWK chain route in Slide and Jump, Cosmic Wall: Fly to the top and both stars in Cosmic Cart Joy Ride
• L3dry: C1 faster entrance to Frozen Flux Slide, C1 blue coins, C8 reds route testing and fence wall kick, G1-1, G5 blue coins, OW2 night reds and pre-1.11 routes for both stars in Airship Force
• tjk: C4-4 skeeter bounce to reach the pole, C6-1 fast penguin drop, C8 reds route testing, Cosmic Cart Joy Ride freeruns and OW2 night reds
• Crackhex: G1-2 and 4 warp entry optimization, C6-5 old route and G4-4 optimization
• galoomba: C1-4 faster ending (obsoleted by DSG), original strat for C2-3 and G1-5 BLJless route
Frame: G1-1 King Bob-omb quick release optimization, G3 reds route testing and helping optimize G5 beginning
• Madghostek: G2-4 route testing and OW2 night Metal Cap skip attempts
• PurpleJuiceBox: Original strat for C2-1, 2 and 5
• Superdavo0001: C4-2 strat and routing, C5 Metal Cap entry BLJ optimization and original idea for OW2 night Metal Cap skip
• slither: C4-4 timesave and helping with video encoding
In this run we collect all 120 stars of the game as fast as possible, using glitches and various tricks to lower the time as much as we can.
The TAS was started in 2020/08/22 and finished in 2022/01/03.
For more information about the TAS: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QORp7_lCtTCyi6TycXA8ZAsgBpzeJ9ULR9h1gigaw5Q/edit?usp=sharing
YouTube channels of everyone who contributed:
FeijoadaMolhada: youtube.com/c/FeijoadaMolhada
ChouxZi3: youtube.com/channel/UC2BRYSlctEGCRT6iKdk9kEA
RSw: youtube.com/c/RSw_Why
brqm: youtube.com/channel/UCTzULS5sXbp04fuGMpGlOpg
ShadoXFM: youtube.com/channel/UCfHeXD8sGb3rRYIM6NNueQg
L3dry: youtube.com/channel/UCwwwbw6PqCKFUzk4wiD8iCQ
tjk: youtube.com/c/SuperMario142MC
Crackhex: youtube.com/channel/UC_9O61Cu6DpvjDVMLWdUGCQ
galoomba: youtube.com/channel/UChh6RNVE2N7Ibob0wsCe_VQ
Frame: youtube.com/c/Themastercube
Madghostek: youtube.com/channel/UCqGw9_iYSGFYpXiy_lDhCpw
PurpleJuiceBox: youtube.com/channel/UCEKNrx_AxmaZ7dSHd8jnIZA
Superdavo0001: youtube.com/user/Superdavo0001
slither: youtube.com/channel/UC-IqrO42f61i8Af1VEtyZ3A
Superdavo0001 comment: What an honour it is to be able to host such an insane project! Thank you to everyone for letting me upload it! I'm sorry I took as long as I did. Excellent work and huge congrats to everyone involved, I wonder which hack is gonna be next!
My playlist of TAS runs: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qCSR9CMqyJGhMcaObah7wU
My non-TAS speedruns: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qLn2MKhSVPfIi0zidQd7up
My Twitter (where I often post minor TAS stuff): twitter.com/superdavo0001
Super Mario 64 TASing/ABC Discord server: discord.gg/ECskvyF
Super Mario 64 ROMHacks server: discord.gg/BYrpMBG
ROMHack Info:
Name: Peach's Fury
Creator: Kaze Emanuar (youtube.com/c/KazeEmanuar)
Previous WR: 7'31"23 by Keldon: youtu.be/rJQuBe8GoB8
Oh boy it's been a while!
This video shows my current personal best and current world record time in Peach's Fury, a ROMHack made by Kaze Emanuar. I believe the time saved was largely through the use of faster strats. I think my execution was better in some places but it's tough to compare overall as both me and Keldon naturally made errors in different places.
To answer a very obvious question: Many platforms were grey because I was using the wrong emulator graphics plugin. I was using LINK's GlideN and didn't bother changing to Jabo because it often freezes up, and I didn't want to risk that happening in the middle of a run.
This hack is really fun to play and its speedrun is very nice as well. The hardest part of the run for me is the Chuckyas early on, as it's very difficult to grab & throw one without being grabbed by another before you're done. My execution of at section in this attempt was pretty bad and is definitely something I'm going to try and improve in the future.
Regarding the many, many changes Kaze has made to the game engine, the vast majority of them are certainly for the better. Having the game run at 60fps is pretty crazy, and the changes made to the movement all feel really smooth, making the game a little more forgiving in casual play and giving plenty of opportunities for different movement in speedruns. I do find that I have a couple of issues sometimes though:
• The cloud powerup has a habit of activating when I really don't want it to, especially when jumping from steep slopes. I slidekick off the tower at 4:30 rather than jumping for this exact reason.
• Sometimes the camera can randomly start spinning, and require mashing the opposite direction to stop it. I think this depends on how long you hold the direction for, and it's quite annoying, though it didn't happen in this run.
• Related to this, the camera can randomly move way up high or way down low. I think this is the same phenomenon but with vertical camera movement, and as it's slow to correct I ended up just unbinding the C^ and C-down buttons to stop it happening.
• I'm not sure what this is about and it isn't an issue, but sometimes when I press B to dive I seem to end up kicking. Not a problem, I just don't understand it lol
Overall though, I really love this hack, and its combination of skill-based platforming and nicely designed treasure-hunting, and I'm hyped to see what Kaze can do with this engine in his larger projects!
This run was quite a long time in the making, after StarrlightSims set an impressive 7'48"93 early on, I decided to make that time my goal, but before I could get there, Keldon came in with a huge time-cut! I set this as my new goal and incorporated their routing improvements, and after some grinding, I eventually got my time down enough to take the record!
I'm definitely going to try and improve this run in future. I can still take a good few seconds from it with the current route. I may stream some attempts at some point, and if so, I'll definitely tweet about it before I do!
Apologies for the lack of videos in recent times, I've been more than a little too distracted by Minecraft-related shenanigans and I haven't really found anything to upload. I do have a big project I've been asked to encode though... but you'll have to wait & see ;) Hopefully you won't have to wait another 8 months for another Davo upload lol
PS hate to get political but Slava Ukraini, and screw those committing atrocities against them. There's not a lot we can do atm but not falling victim to propaganda aimed at dismissing or minimising the significance of the atrocities is an important step for all of us.
Follow/join the Biweekly single star competition here! discord.gg/BYrpMBG
My playlist of TAS runs: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qCSR9CMqyJGhMcaObah7wU
My Twitter (where I often post minor TAS stuff): twitter.com/superdavo0001
Super Mario 64 TASing/ABC Discord server: discord.gg/ECskvyF
ROMHack Info:
Name: Super Mario Treasure World
Creator: Rambi_Rampage & TsucnenT
Real time run: 39"70
TAS run: 31"93
Total re-records: 5,625
Long time no see but it's great to be back! This video showcases the strategies used in both real-time and tool-assisted runs of the star 'Bought Big Board', in the Mario 64 hack Super Mario Treasure World.
This star was selected as the second challenge of the second task of 2021's Biweekly single-star competition, an informal, just-for-fun contest to complete certain Mario 64 hack stars as quickly as possible. This contest overall has been a lot of fun, but I particularly enjoyed this star as its length reduced the dependence on frame-perfect movement and made it more about finding efficient & consistent movement. In the end I ultimately managed to win this task by finding a few strategies others didn't think of, which was pretty cool!
After finding the winning strat, I decided that this would be a fun star to TAS, both to see what a satisfying, perfect run would look like and to see what extra strategies could be found which couldn't be done in real-time. In the end, although there weren't any huge run-demolishing strats, a ton of smaller tricks added up to quite a significant timesave!
Some of these strategies are probably human-viable in isolation but too hard to pull off in a full run without a lot of effort. The most notable of these is the dive at 1:04, which saves a little bit of time and can be done non-TAS but is particularly precise and too hard for me to perform in a full run. On top of that there are many movement changes which only really work with TAS-tier perfection, particularly the dive-grinds and the glitchy wallkick near the start. This is one of the things I find interesting about SM64, as its movement system has enough complexity and nuance to mean that small changes in ability have huge effects on the final movement! There's also a relatively subtle TAS-only application of a misalignment at 1:12 which allows me to reach the top platform with a triple-jump dive, which normally shouldn't be possible as this movement doesn't reach high enough.
I decided to end this video by making a few announcements I've wanted to do for a while, with the main one being the creation of my own Discord server. It's something I've wanted to do for a while, since I've made a lot of friends in a few different communities and a decent following here and just wanted to have my own space to chill with everyone. Since a certain virus and finishing university have left me more isolated IRL I've found myself putting more focus into my online friendships, and a personal server seems like a logical next step for that :) If you're watching this video feel free to join, you don't need to already know me well or anything :P
Since I mentioned my own mental-health issues I will mention that my server has a vent channel for if you feel you need to talk about any significant personal issues. It may not fix the problem at the source but hopefully it will make you feel a little less isolated with your issues! My DMs are always open as well (though I can only respond when I have time) if you want to speak with more privacy.
#SM64 #TAS #Speedrun
My playlist of TAS runs: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qCSR9CMqyJGhMcaObah7wU
My Twitter (where I often post minor TAS stuff): twitter.com/superdavo0001
Super Mario 64 TASing/ABC Discord server: discord.gg/ECskvyF
ROMHack Info:
Name: Katze Stuck In The Toilet 64
Creator: Tomatobird8 (youtube.com/user/fincraft0eng)
Total re-records: 6,188
In this TAS, created by me & TheCopperhead, 'Katze Stuck In The Toilet 64', a ROMHack of Super Mario 64 made by Tomatobird8, is completed as quickly as possible, using any glitches & tricks at our disposal.
This hack is pretty fun, both for casual play and for TAS. It's mainly based on a bunch of ROMHack community jokes, but in spite of basically being a meme-hack has impressively high-quality levels, and should be a fun playthrough even if you don't know all of the jokes!
I'll write the rest of the description after the premiere. For now, enjoy!
My Twitter (where I often post minor TAS stuff): twitter.com/superdavo0001
Super Mario 64 TASing/ABC Discord server: discord.gg/ECskvyF
ROMHack Info:
Name: Another Mario Adventure
Creator: Aglab2 (youtube.com/channel/UC77uQeQh3PVdbI4usjFg1rA)
In this video, I complete the first Bowser stage (not including the fight) as quickly as possible. This is a pretty short TAS but it's a nice little preview of things to come :) I think I've made it pretty clean as well, though I'm sure someone will prove me wrong :P
While I would have preferred to show this with the full Bowser fight, I decided against TASing that for now because it includes some RNG-dependent parts, which will have to be done from the start. Oh well, that just means more new stuff in the final run!
Timing is from the usual starting point to the first fully black frame.
Total re-records: 823
#SuperMario64 #AnotherMarioAdventure #TAS
My Twitter (where I often post minor TAS stuff): twitter.com/superdavo0001
Super Mario 64 TASing/ABC Discord server: discord.gg/ECskvyF
ROMHack Info:
Name: Another Mario Adventure
Creator: Aglab2 (youtube.com/channel/UC77uQeQh3PVdbI4usjFg1rA)
I'm back!
Apologies for the lack of videos recently, a lot of other projects have been taking up much of my time. Hopefully I should have a bit more time for a while now!
I've been wanting to return to doing singlestars for a while, but my inspiration in Ztar Attack Rebooted was beginning to run low and I fancied working on something else. Fortunately, aglab2 (the creator of Ztar Attack Rebooted) recently released this new hack, and after playing it through, I was not only impressed, but also ready to TAS some stars :)
The hack itself is very well made, with a variety of level designs & many custom-coded features, all polished to near-perfection. The variety is further increased by the 10 guest-levels made by prominent members of the ROMHacking community (BroDute, Tomatobird8, UsernamesAreSpiders, scuttlebug_raiser, sm64pie, Cheezepin, Crash, MrComit, ToasterKetchup & Kaze Emanuar to be exact). With so much variety & so many new things to try out, I was spoilt for choice, with plenty of stars to TAS!
I decided to start with this star, mainly because it was one of the first interesting gimmick stars I came across. The idea here is that you are restricted to moving in 2d (within the section of the room with green tiles), but if you press L you can traverse the level in 3d, but your health quickly depletes, so if you spend too long doing this you die, like in Super Paper Mario). This level is fairly easy to beat in casual play, but still manages to make you think differently to a standard SM64 level. Unfortunately the camera always changes to very specific angles when switching between 2d & 3d, which can be pretty annoying since you might want a different angle, so you'd have to change it back.
Unsurprisingly, this sort of feature in the hands of a TASer can lead to some fun stuff! :D The route for collecting the secrets seems pretty intuitive, and I couldn't think of any other viable options. The BLJ was pretty awkward since I had to kick near the end of the high platform to reach the secret & spend a long time falling, but I couldn't find any way around it. Being able to dive+recover in the gap would solve this but the speed required to do this doesn't allow enough time to turn to the correct angle to hit the secret (since Mario's speed affects his 3d position even in 2d mode).
This TAS is probably improvable, perhaps even by a significant amount. I'm still happy with the result though! I've found a fair few more stars I want to TAS as well, so make sure you subscribe so you don't miss them :)
Total re-records: 2,260
My Twitter (where I often post minor TAS stuff): twitter.com/superdavo0001
Super Mario 64 TASing/ABC Discord server: discord.gg/ECskvyF
ROMHack Info:
Name: SM64 Ztar Attack 2 - A Blast To The Past
Creator: TheGael95 (channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/TheGael95)
Previous record: 1'03"43 by RSw youtu.be/ykCKV_DNzIM
In this video, I complete world 1-2 ("Mushroom Cavern") of Super Mario 64 Ztar Attack 2: A Blast To The Past, as quickly as possible, while collecting both available stars.
The strategy for the first star mostly involves simple forward movement, aside from a BLJ at the end, while the second star is... quite the opposite.
The core glitch behind the hyperspeed route to the second star is known as forward speed conversion, and is performed by holding neutral while on a specific type of slippery floor with backwards hyperspeed. This causes Mario to reflect off the wall, and face forwards. With this forward hyperspeed, Mario can jump extremely high (since his vertical speed increases with horizontal speed) and can wallkick, allowing him to ascend very quickly. The downside of using forward hyperspeed is that it is much more difficult to maintain and allows much less control over Mario's angle, since his speed will be capped if he walks on the ground (since it's only conserved in sliding movements or while airborne). The only viable way to changing Mario's angle is wallkicking, and there are only so many walls available, so finding a route which navigates through the level can be very difficult. Fortunately, after a lot of testing, I was able to find a workable route which gets almost all the way to the end, and terminates right next to a BLJ spot which could take me to the star!
Because of these routing challenges, this proved to be one of the most difficult & time-consuming TASes I've made for its length. However, I was determined to push through since I knew the strat would be something pretty special!
This hack more than most seems to make for some really cool TASes, so I'll definitely have to do more in the future! I might turn this into a regular series at some point, working on new levels when I get the chance.
I actually made a small mistake in this run, in that my movement at the start is slightly slower than RSw's old TAS. I had assumed based on intuition that my movement should certainly be faster since it more quickly gets Mario to full speed, but I failed to take into account the advantage of getting a better angle at the cost of speed, and the fact that RSw's movement allows him to maintain the fast slidekick chain for longer rather than having to break it to turn, and I only realised this error after I'd progressed pretty far into the TAS. This TAS was mainly made for entertainment & not for being 100% maxed, and there are other areas where it can be improved slightly anyway, so it didn't seem worth going back for a few frames.
Shoutouts to RSw for coming up with the BLJ before the first star - a strat I hadn't thought of before I saw it in his run!
Total re-records: 9,670 (bringing the full Ztar Attack 2 file to 20213 & making it my largest single-file TAS project ever!)
My Twitter (where I often post minor TAS stuff): twitter.com/superdavo0001
Super Mario 64 TASing/ABC Discord server: discord.gg/ECskvyF
Strat idea by Isaac A: youtube.com/channel/UC0xWE0e79jiWmZucFc_w7sw
Time stop strategy discovery video: youtu.be/aZfnNBhIJMA
This was listed as one of the unsolved single-goal challenges on Ukikipedia. You can find the full list here: ukikipedia.net/wiki/Unsolved_Single-Goal_Challenges
In this video, I demonstrate a new method of collecting the star 'Blast Away The Wall', without using the cannon, ledgegrabbing (as required for the well-known 'cannonless' strategy), or using the Japanese-exclusive time stop glitch. This was achieved by storing speed obtained from a BLJ by grabbing the owl, letting it descend to a suitable height, then restoring the speed by letting go at a convenient location & angle, and using the speed to clip through the wall & collect the star.
Unfortunately, this method is much too slow to have any practical uses, but it's still a pretty fun alternate way to collect the star!
Total re-records: 634
My Twitter (where I often post minor TAS stuff): twitter.com/superdavo0001
Super Mario 64 TASing/ABC Discord server: discord.gg/ECskvyF
18"30 by me: youtu.be/9lbPa07tyJc
↓
17"76 by AruaErueru (previous WR): youtu.be/gGlQ0NzgHQA
↓
17"63 by me
If you're curious about the full history of this star and its many TAS iterations, I'd highly recommend checking out Ukikipedia's page on the subject: ukikipedia.net/wiki/Treasure_of_the_Ocean_Cave
In this video, I collect the star "Treasure Of The Ocean Cave" in Jolly Roger Bay in 17.63 seconds, 4 frames faster than the previous record by AruaErueru. This was achieved by:
• Entering the water a frame later, in order to travel further before losing 75% of Mario's speed to the water entry, saving 2 frames (I had already saved these frames in my former WR but Eru unfortunately missed this save)
• Improving the movement while collecting the chests, saving an additional 2 frames.
I wasn't expecting to be back here & uploading so soon (I've been very busy with exams & stuff), but after Eru demolished my oldest TAS WR with this new & awesome strategy for activating the chests, I couldn't resist trying to claim it back :P
In all seriousness, I only wanted to improve the run because I noticed Eru had not used the 2-frame timesave from entering the water late that I found in 2017, so I figured it was worth correcting this mistake. When I reached the chests though, I realised I was able to save another 2 frames!
The new chest strategy involves approaching at a different angle (facing more anticlockwise to be able to turn quicker), and rapidly jumping after clipping under the wall to lose speed. After several jumps, Mario's speed drops low enough that he can double-jump with positive vertical speed, and kick high enough to reach the chest platform. With about 95 speed remaining, he can then use this momentum to reach & activate the chests significantly faster than he could with the old forward movement.
I'm not entirely sure that this run is fully optimal, as there may be things I didn't fully test. If nobody's improved this star by the time I'm free from exams, I'll take some time to thoroughly test everything I can think of.
This run was done using Mario cam rather than fixed-cam because I branched off my old run which does the same. I will need to redo it sometime using fixed-cam so it can be incorporated into the 120-star TAS, but for the moment I'm unfortunately too busy.
This video was made using the SM64 Ghost Race (v1.1) hack made by Kaze Emanuar. The 'ghost' shown is the run made by Mickey/VIS which is used in the 2012 120-star TAS, with a time of 18"43 (24 frames slower than this run). Using the ghost makes it pretty clear where & how the new strat saves time, as well as showing the 2-frame save at the start. More information about this hack can be found here: youtu.be/pNBdr9kZlAE
Total re-records: 5,951 (of which 1,704 were used for this improvement)
Also, this is my 100th published video :O Thank you everyone for supporting my channel for all this time!
My Twitter (where I often post minor TAS stuff): twitter.com/superdavo0001
Super Mario 64 TASing/ABC Discord server: discord.gg/ECskvyF (if you have any questions feel free to bring them here!)
Pannenkoek2012's video on sliding speed conservation: youtu.be/LhXONwmKZDI
The current best Any% BLJLess TAS (by Snark122): youtu.be/jHezbMNjT6g
CREDITS:
• Tyler Kehne (devised a 0xA variant of this route and suggested trying it for Any% BLJLess): youtube.com/c/TylerKehne
• 70-star TAS team (responsible for the movement up to the top of the white slope): youtu.be/ZV7nJwt2zhc
This video showcases a new and faster route for bypassing the 8-star door in Super Mario 64, without the use of the Backwards Long Jump glitch. Until now, the only suitable method for gaining enough speed to bypass doors was to use a glitch known as Hyperspeed Wallkicks (HSWKs). This technique works because Mario's speed is unbounded while airborne, and by always wallkicking on the first frame possible (which conserves Mario's speed), Mario can remain in the air indefinitely, allowing his speed to gradually build until he has enough to bypass the door.
This new technique... Well, you'll just have to wait & see! :) I'll update this part of the description after the video is done. (If I don't forget :P)
With this new discovery (and other potential ideas) potentially leading to significant changes to the run, it is definitely very likely that a new Any% BLJLess TAS will get completed sometime in the near future. I'll be sure to keep you updated about that when any new information is available :)
Total re-records used: 2222 (nice number)
My playlist of non-TAS speedruns (in various games): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qLn2MKhSVPfIi0zidQd7up
Game: Day In The Life Of A Harpy 2
Made by: Xysspon (channel: youtube.com/channel/UCkOHYPwiyhPn-PJyyZ339FQ)
Download the game at: xysspon.itch.io/harpy2
• 7'23"28: youtu.be/iwjGG8HJZKw
↓ 6'48"82: youtu.be/0_4yT0YKmnA
↓ 6'10"27: youtu.be/Y-1fI4nWvVE
↓ 6'06"25: youtu.be/eohfUpgjui4
↓ 5'59"67 (No video uploaded)
• 5'53"17: (This run)
After a long hiatus, I decided to come back to this game once more & see if I could achieve a goal I set for myself a while ago - getting a complete Any% run in under 6 minutes, and sure enough, after a bit of practice & derusting, I managed it, and by quite a margin!
This actually wasn't my first sub-6 run - I managed to get a 5'59"67 a week ago, but unfortunately I unintentionally recorded it with my mic enabled and I didn't really want to upload it muted (or with unplanned mic input) so I figured I'd just keep going until I got a faster run & upload that.
And I'm very glad I did! One week later, I got this amazing run, with an even bigger timecut than I expected to be able to get with current strats!
Compared to previous runs, I think this one gains most of its time from a combination of general execution and a couple of minor movement changes, as well as one of the best final bossfights I've ever had. This fight is one of the least predictable parts of the run, as the boss's movement patterns seem to be governed by RNG. She can be very hard to hit reliably as she jumps pretty high and often hides off-screen (making it impossible to see which side she's on). With lucky RNG, she can also take multiple hits from a single attack, as she only has a very limited hitstun invulnerability period. I think she is defeated after taking 16 damage, and in this run I managed that in 10 successful hits (plus one miss), which is pretty awesome. I also managed to take very little unintentional damage, which allowed me to use multiple intentional-damage strats to skip slow enemy cycles, saving even more time!
I think for now I'm probably done with speedrunning this game, unless someone else comes along & beats my run. There's definitely still room for it to be improved, probably by a good few seconds with better movements I likely missed. You never know though, I may just get motivated again :)
General Run Background
----------------------------------------
Day In The Life Of A Harpy 2 is a tricky platformer made by Xysspon in 2017. The story follows a harpy called Duri as she tries to find the cause of strong winds in her town. The gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Kirby games, with the protagonist being able to flap her wings to fly, but only for a limited amount of time. She can attack by grabbing a bag & throwing its contents at enemies.
I started running this game after some of my friends found its empty leaderboard & decided we should try to fill it. I got involved with this, and ended up finding the game fun to run, so I kept practising & optimising until I had the run you see here :)
This game has a few tricks, glitches & shortcuts which are abused in the run, and unfortunately a few glitches which make it harder to be consistent. These include:
+ Level 1 secret shortcut - which takes you straight to level 4
+ Mushroom boss skip - for some reason you can just fly over it & get to the exit, saving a bunch of time & avoiding a difficult boss fight
+ Bag animation cancel - flapping while grabbing a bag breaks the animation, and makes grabbing the bag slightly faster. You can also regain vertical control (and sometimes lateral with the correct timing, though it's not consistent) by doing this. This technique reduces the time-loss for grabbing a bag to pretty much zero when flying upwards.
+ Fast bag-grab via enemy: Grabbing a bag while facing & standing close to an enemy will cancel the grab animation & make the grab even faster than the previous method. This was used at 1:09 to save time when grabbing a bag to kill an enemy there
- The flap counter doesn't reset immediately when you touch the ground. This is why I sometimes pause for a moment before flying again. There's often a delay after landing where you can't take off again as well
- Sometimes you get stuck in a corner when you fly downwards. This didn't happen this run.
- You can kill enemies by grabbing a bag close to them, but it's extremely inconsistent. I manage to pull this off at 5:06 in this run, saving health which would ultimately prove vital.
- Pressing X (grab bag) while already grabbing a bag will reset the animation
Overall, in spite of some jankiness & the high difficulty level (not helped by the fact that you don't regain health when you die), I found this game fun, both casually and as a speedgame, and would recommend checking it out!
My Twitter (where I often post minor TAS stuff): twitter.com/superdavo0001
Super Mario 64 TASing/ABC Discord server: discord.gg/ECskvyF
ROMHack Info:
Name: SM64 Ztar Attack 2 - A Blast To The Past
Creator: TheGael95 (channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/TheGael95)
In this video, world 1-1 ("Sunrise Shrooms") of SM64: Ztar Attack 2 - A Blast To The Past (made by TheGael95) is completed as quickly as possible, while collecting both available stars. This is done using a variety of tricks & techniques, including two significant hyperspeed-based skips.
I started this project just over a year ago, with the idea of seeing how quickly I could progress through a large TAS, and to determine whether making a full-game 100% TAS like this might be viable one day. Unfortunately, it didn't seem promising as I quickly lost motivation after the first BLJ (Backwards Long Jump), as the strategy I had then involved some movement which was tedious to perform.
Recently however, I became interested in this hack once more. I initially tried to go for a non-TAS world record in the Any% Warpless category, but at around the same time Phanton started running and completely destroyed the record, putting it well out of my reach. I then turned my interest back to the TAS, and was able to figure out a way to use my BLJ speed to skip a large section of platforming with a superjump. This was then followed by a huge surge of motivation, which allowed me to finish the entire TAS within about a day!
This TAS contains a couple of major timesaves, both of which are well out of reach of human speedrunners. The first and most complex of these is a superjump, which uses redirected BLJ speed and the resulting extra jump height to quickly triplejump from a mushroom house with enough speed to reach the blue mushroom before the first star, skipping a large section of platforming. This kind of redirection seemed impossible at first glance, with the only methods available being the water (which is surrounded by a raised edge so you have to jump out), and the Toad (which isn't generally useful with hyperspeed since he needs to undergo a long fade-in animation when Mario is nearby, putting Mario way out of his range). During the project's hiatus period, sm64expert discovered a way of conserving speed out of water-jumps, which unfortunately after some testing seemed too slow in this case to be helpful (requiring a lot of swimming to get to somewhere suitable for setting up a doublejump). After ruling that strat out, I investigated the Toad once more, and discovered that the fading animation actually continued while Mario was far away! This means that if you pass by Toad, move away, turn around & get back to him before the animation is complete (if you're too late he'll just fade out again), he'll be fully visible & able to talk once you return, allowing speed-redirection! Getting around to him on time while facing the correct direction proved to be pretty hard, but in the end I managed to pull it off without a frame to spare.
The other skip in this run involves using a long BLJ across multiple slopes to reach a small ledge. This ended up being awkwardly precise as well, requiring several fairly specific speeds to be reached along the way. The BLJ from the first mushroom to the second was performed with as little speed as possible so I could BLJ more times on the second without ending up with too much speed, which would kill my speed when I brushed up against the wall near the end. I then had to reduce my speed as much as possible before landing so I wouldn't lose my speed when I hit the wall behind the ledge, and to allow me to stop close enough to the star to just barely get under it with a backflip. This whole sequence of events is very precise, and it's surprising that it worked at all. The BLJ from the first mushroom to the second actually is speedrun-viable, but it's hard to do consistently & saves little time.
Total re-records: 10,543
• Ascending to a higher platform shortly after the start of the stage using first-frame wallkicks (firsties) to keep enough speed to reach the wall without losing height
• Superjumping across to a later platform near Yoshi using the speed obtained during the firsties
• Jumping straight to the end by abusing Yoshi's physics to gain speed exponentially before jumping off him to hit the star (this forward Yoshi hyperspeed glitch is completely new afaik)
I've been looking for cool stuff to TAS in this hack for a while, and eventually settled on this star after discovering the superjump skip. I had planned on using another form of Yoshi hyperspeed I already knew of (Backwards Yoshi Hyperspeed, which I discovered years ago in Last Impact, and which was first brought to people's attention by Super Watermelon 64) for the ending. That form of hyperspeed works because riding Yoshi with a sufficiently large negative speed causes Mario/Yoshi to gain speed exponentially & without bounds. However, as I was TASing that method I noticed that Yoshi was behaving weirdly when I held the B button, as when he hit a wall, he would rebound off it with a ton of speed. I initially saw this as a faster way of setting up Backwards Yoshi Hyperspeed, but after messing about for a while I realised this strange state had the same unbounded acceleration! Knowing that, I was able to save a ton of time setting up the backwards hyperspeed glitch, and could just head straight for the star!
From what I can gather, this glitch seems to be triggered by either holding B when mounting Yoshi or holding it from the first frame of a jump. I have no idea why exactly it works, but I suppose it's probably due to Mario/Yoshi being put in an unintended state which Kaze didn't cap the speed for, allowing the exponential speed-gain to take hold.
For this video, I've also changed up my encoding quality somewhat, switching to a widescreen view, using a better graphics plugin, and increasing the resolution to 4k! Shoutouts to Tomatobird8 for giving me advice ages ago which ultimately made the 4k encode possible! Check out his channel here: youtube.com/user/fincraft0eng
As already mentioned, this hack was made by the legendary Kaze Emanuar. His channel can be found here: youtube.com/user/KazeBG0
My playlist of TAS runs: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qCSR9CMqyJGhMcaObah7wU
My Twitter: twitter.com/superdavo0001
Total re-records: 2,167
I decided to make this video since it allowed a convenient way of showing off both a real-time run & a TAS run which individually aren't significant/long enough to make a full video about, yet are cool enough to be interesting when shown together. Long-time subscribers might know that I made a similar video once before, but immediately pulled it down after both runs were annihilated by a speedrunner using a far better strat (thanks MXF :P). Let's just hope that doesn't happen again!
The real-time run is probably the most optimised singlestar speedrun I've managed to pull off so far, and it took quite a while for me to get the time down as low as I did, as there are a lot of places to go wrong and lose precious frames. Indeed, this run is still very much improvable & I wouldn't be surprised if a better speedrunner took it a few frames lower, but I'm happy with the benchmark I was able to set.
The TAS run is also pretty optimised ended up being quite time-consuming to create, as not only is the edge-grinding particularly time-intensive to optimise, but figuring out the best possible route up the crates required testing several possible routes (in terms of which crates to land & jump from etc), all with optimal grinding.
The challenge of grinding optimally is that you need to land or leave the floor on the last substep (quarter-frame) of a given frame, as leaving any earlier will cancel Mario's movement for the rest of the frame. In this case it wasn't too difficult since you need not chain too many consecutive grinds together (each grind is more precise than the last as you always end up closer to the edge until you're so close that float-imprecision literally makes perfect grinds impossible), but performing them all correctly still took quite a while. With that said, I think it was worth the effort, as that grind ended up being pretty cool :-)
Aglab2's channel: youtube.com/channel/UC77uQeQh3PVdbI4usjFg1rA
My playlist of TAS runs: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qCSR9CMqyJGhMcaObah7wU
My Twitter: twitter.com/superdavo0001
Total TAS rerecords: 5,801 (mostly from the grinds in the crate ascent)
I've been wanting to TAS something in this hack since it was released on August 21. I had initially hoped to be able to make a full Any% run like I did for Cursed Castles, but unfortunately this hack has a hardcoded star requirement of 26 stars to reach the final boss. This would make a full Any% run far longer than any project I have ever completed solo before (and larger than most collab projects), and would require a prohibitive amount of time & effort to complete.
With a full-game run ruled out, I then turned to individual stars, and started looking for any which may have interesting strats. The answer came while I was watching Tomatobird8 playing the hack live, as he attempted a non-TAS variant of the strat executed here, which was first demonstrated by JARP. It involves grabbing the bob-omb while it's bloated (i.e. about to explode), and using handsfree holding (initiated here by falling off a ledge, diving back on, and regrabbing the bob-omb in the diving state before being pushed off once more) to carry it across to the gate via a triple-jump + ground-pound.
You can see JARP's real-time run of this strat here: youtu.be/dcGLt_S0_Fo
For this video, I decided to show an input display next to the TAS itself. I figured that this would make for an interesting side-feature to show what exactly is going on while Mario is doing crazy stuff, and it fills the empty space on the screen quite nicely :)
You may notice that the joystick input often jitters around somewhat when following Mario. This is because I used a special LUA script (developed by MKDasher, Eddio0141 & Tomatobird8) during the creation of the run which automatically calculates the best possible joystick inputs to make Mario move in a certain direction (independently of the camera position). Often, the best input for getting this angle does not tilt the joystick fully (though it still tilts enough for max speed), leading to the jitters.
Most of this TAS is pretty self-explanatory, but during the long jump with the bob-omb I did an interesting little optimisation to save a little time. Basically, while moving backwards, Mario's speed is capped at -16, so you should always keep as close to that number as possible, which is achieved by using inputs which give a low acceleration. One way of doing this is to simply maintain the same direction with a reduced input magnitude (i.e. keep the joystick close to the centre), but you can also do it by maintaining a max joystick input but angling it far from Mario's moving direction. This allows Mario to strain quite a long way with zero loss of speed.
With the bloated bob-omb, Mario can move backwards at most ~66 units (16 for his speed + 60 from the bob-omb push), but by straining he can move to the side by just under 10 units. This means his total displacement in a single frame, i.e. the hypotenuse of the triangle made from his backwards & sidewards movement, can be as high as 66.75 units per frame, an extra 0.75 on top of his speed, by just straining to the side. Thus, by using an angle which allows me to move to my intended goal (i.e. the star) while continually straining, I can arrive slightly earlier than I would just travelling straight to it without straining. This may not seem like a lot, but it saves a frame on average every 3 seconds or so, which is worth going for. You can see this happening via the input-display where I strain hard to the left during the triplejump.
This logic opens the door to a timesave in another, longer TAS of mine, namely my 6.5 hour Desert Mario 64 meme run. After all, it has a speed limit (+58 units) which can be maintained while straining hard! In this case, because of the sheer length of the TAS, the small amount of extra distance per frame adds up a lot further, and could potentially save up to a minute off my run. I might make a video on this in future with a clearer visual explanation if anyone would be interested in that :)
Shoutouts to:
• Daniel EDC (creator of the hack): youtube.com/channel/UC2GwFhJe3VOSnbp1heUW--w
• JARP (found the bomb-clip strat): youtube.com/channel/UClV3w8MVjmd561Rwb6h6QRw
My playlist of TAS runs: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qCSR9CMqyJGhMcaObah7wU
My Twitter: twitter.com/superdavo0001
Total re-records: 3,087
This TAS is the most ambitious single project I've completed solo, with over 18,000 rerecords and many hours of work. I tried pretty hard to make it as clean as possible, though as is inevitable for a TAS this long, there are definitely still frames out there to be saved.
For the purposes of this run, the end-time was chosen to be the frame Mario enters the crouching animation before entering the warp at the end. The ending beyond that point is not shown in this run as Foxen requested (via a sign in the hack) that it not be shown in streams or videos.
I'll update the description with the usual verbose detail about all of the strats & optimisations after the premiere is done, but for now I'd rather just let you enjoy the run without spoilers :-)
Nathan10nathan's run: youtu.be/mDYSEVjCm5E
Foxen's channel: youtube.com/channel/UCujhsrnMLVE4GAIaGlmTClQ
My playlist of TAS runs: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qCSR9CMqyJGhMcaObah7wU
My Twitter: twitter.com/superdavo0001
Total re-records: 18,626 (the most I've ever done!)
• Another Mountain Top: 10"18
In this video, two stars in SM64: Ztar Attack Rebooted (an amazing Super Mario 64 hack by aglab2) are completed as fast as possible.
I was looking for something to TAS while my Desert Mario 64 TAS was playing, and I chose these stars because they are part of the first level in the route of a full-game, 170-star TAS, and as such for such a TAS to be made, are a priority. Fortunately the stars were pretty cool as well in their own right :-)
Something I hope can be achieved with this strat is ruling out a much more complex strat involving cloning & then cancelling a star before collecting another. The setup for performing that in this stage (taking a penguin to the loading-zone at the exit of the cave) is pretty slow, so it's likely that it will not save enough time. This should make things a lot easier for the 170-star TAS, as such a cloning setup would be insanely RNG-dependent and be very difficult to optimise. It would look pretty cool if done though :P
My playlist of TAS runs: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qCSR9CMqyJGhMcaObah7wU
My Twitter: twitter.com/superdavo0001
Aglab's channel: youtube.com/channel/UC77uQeQh3PVdbI4usjFg1rA
Total re-records: 1185 (between both stars)
In this video, Desert Mario 64, a ROMHack inspired by the infamous game Desert Bus, is completed as fast as possible, which, it turns out, is not very fast at all.
This is because the hack is just one near-endless flat plane with no other interesting geometry to exploit, as per the source material. The hack also adds a couple more features, in order to make the game more challenging:
• Mario has a heat-meter, which builds when he's on the hot ground. When it gets too high, Mario overheats & the floor is momentarily treated as lava, costing health
• The road Mario is on has a speed limit of 55 (units/frame). If he goes too far above that limit (i.e. over 58 units/frame), he rapidly loses health. This is actually pretty unlikely to present a challenge to anyone completing it in real-time, as reaching that speed requires several slidekicks to be chained together after a jumpdive, but for TAS this is a significant limit.
* Mario's HP is slowly restored, so if you make any mistakes they won't last forever
Under these conditions, the optimal movement for long periods of time is to repeatedly slidekick, and use joystick inputs to stay as close to 58 speed as possible without actually exceeding it. This is because slidekicking is one of only a handful of movements which conserve Mario's speed when it's above 48 (because the game caps the speed for non-sliding ground movement at 48), and the only one which does not lose speed when performed (below ~95 speed, when the speed lost in the crouch-frame increases to match the speed gained while in the air). A small amount of time can additionally be saved by breaking the 58 speed limit for short bursts every time Mario's HP is fully restored. During these bursts, the fastest movement is to continue slidekick chains while actually building speed, then perform a speedkick at the end of the chain when there is no longer time for another slidekick.
So how did I manage to TAS 6.5 hours of slidekicks optimally without losing my mind? The answer lies in their repeatability, as if I can efficiently perform a single slidekick I can just copy/paste those inputs many times to produce a full TAS.
That is actually more difficult than it sounds in this hack, and it's all because of the 58 speed limit. Without it, I could just hold the joystick straight forwards & repeat the slide over & over & over again, but with it, I need to maintain a speed as close to 58 as possible without crossing it, requiring different joystick angles. The trouble with this is that the slidekick *must* end with the exact same speed, to a very high precision, otherwise over the course of the countless slidekicks in this run, Mario's speed will begin to drift. Were it to increase, it would eventually cross the 58-speed limit at the wrong time, ultimately killing Mario. If it decreased, I would begin to lose time. Furthermore, maintaining the closest possible speed to 58 (and matching the speed exactly, as explained before) nearly always required greater input precision than could be achieved using forward-only joystick inputs. Thus, some lateral movement is needed, which also needs to be cancelled out, otherwise Mario will drift to the side until he hits the edge & bonks! Left/right joystick inputs also don't behave completely symmetrically, so no help there.
Achieving sufficiently precise speed/position matches proved to be very difficult, and even with the best circumstances I could manage I needed an additional correcting step, performed after each speed-limit abuse, to counter the slow leftward drift. Even with all this, by the end of the run, Mario still drifts noticeably to the left, which I correct at the very end for aesthetic reasons.
Because of the length of this TAS and the ability of small differences to accumulate through the many hours of the run, fully optimising this TAS down to the last frame is practically impossible. In fact, I believe around a second is savable just by getting even closer to 57.999... speed. However, I am happy with the level of optimisation of this run, and I see no need to push it further.
Now we know how this TAS was optimised, the next question is why I bothered at all. I have two answers for that:
• Because the idea of a 6.5-hour TAS of desert-bus straight-line movement is funny in an absurd kind of way
• Because optimising & efficiently TASing such a long straight-line is an interesting & unusual problem to solve (at least for a nerd like myself)
My playlist of TAS runs: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qCSR9CMqyJGhMcaObah7wU
My Twitter: twitter.com/superdavo0001
Kaze's channel: youtube.com/user/KazeBG0
Total re-records: 4,099
Now get comfortable, this is gonna be a long journey...
This TAS collects the star "A Crezzie Fight" (typo is in-game), as well as the 100-coin star in Creezie Mountain.
I came up with the route for this while messing about with a couple of singlestars for real-time speedrunning. I quickly realised that the placement of a couple of coins near the bully were ideally set up for a star-collection cancel via the springs. As this would likely make a pretty cool TAS, I decided to route it fully, and this is the result!
Although I aimed to make a smooth run, this TAS is likely far from as optimised as most of my other uploads. This is just because fully testing all options takes up a lot of my time, and for such a long run which will have to be redone for any full-game TAS anyway (because of RNG), it didn't seem worth it.
Star-cancel is a glitch which can be caused by interacting with certain objects in ROMHacks after collecting a star. In many cases, these objects change Mario's action without checking which action he's in first. This cancels the action (in this case, freefalling after star-collection), allowing Mario to resume normal movement. The objects known to be able to cause this glitch are springs (as in this run), noteblocks, and Fire Freezies (enemies in SM64: Last Impact which can set Mario on fire regardless of state).
One interesting thing about this TAS is that after collecting the star, I have to be pretty careful with the camera (and Mario's own position), as moving Mario and/or the camera to the edge of the bully area can make the game very unstable & prone to crashing. I think this is because the music is supposed to change when you leave this area, but this is somehow interrupted by the star-spawn music. In some cases I could trigger a crash after collecting the star, and just before the level faded out!
Total re-records: 2,989
• The Big House In The Sky: 21"63 (by myself, Luigihaxd, Timestoppa, Plush & snark122)
• Somewhere Over The Rainbow: 24"80 (by myself, Luigihaxd, TimeTravelPenguin, Plush & snark122)
Authors' channels:
• Luigihaxd: youtube.com/user/4212luigi
• Timestoppa: youtube.com/c/Timestoppa
• TimeTravelPenguin: youtube.com/c/TimeTravelPenguin
• Plush: youtube.com/user/YouveBeenPlushed
• snark122: youtube.com/user/snark122
This video shows a 2-frame timesave in Rainbow Ride near the red-coins, which is applicable to two stars. The time was saved by using different movement after the ledgegrab in order to reach the elevator faster. Specifically, where the old run grinds to gain speed and then recovers before landing on the elevator, I instead perform an extra grind to reach the maximum possible speed (the old run went for a slightly lower speed because they had to wait for the dive-recover to land regardless, and an extra grind would delay the recover by 2 frames), and simply continue to chain successive grinds until I reach the elevator. Doing this allows me to move towards the elevator with much more speed without having to wait for a dive-recover.
For anyone who's been following my channel for a while, this will sound familiar, as me & dar gos together saved 2 frames in a different Rainbow Ride star (Swingin' In The Breeze) using the same technique (video link: youtu.be/f8xM5fbwUsU). In fact, I've used it in a number of other TASes in recent times.
This technique is responsible for many recent improvements, as it wasn't particularly well-known to be capable of being faster until fairly recently (and certainly not in 2012). This is likely because much of any potential timesave can be lost very quickly if Mario transitions between being on the ground & in the air before the last quarter-step of a given frame. This is required as for some reason once Mario transitions from ground-to-air or vice-versa, he will not move for the rest of the frame. So if for example he lands on the platform during the first of 4 quarter-steps, he will not move during the other 3, losing 3/4 of the potential movement for that frame. As such transitions happen twice in every 5-frame cycle of a continual grind (or once per frame during the initial speed gain), Mario can lose the equivalent of 3 frames of movement for every 10 frames of grinding! Applying that rate of time-loss to this case, we find that with bad quarter-frame optimisation, continually grinding like this will actually lose time.
To try to make things easier to understand, I used a number of visual aids in this video, including a timer, variable-display, and at the end, a ghost comparison made using the ghost-race hack created by Kaze Emanuar. Unfortunately I couldn't use the camera hack for a relative view as the visible-PUs code doesn't seem to work in Rainbow Ride. Thanks to Tomatobird8 for giving me the MHS file for the timer & Pannenkoek2012 for helping me with the camera-hack.
Important note: As of right now, these runs have not been console-verified. No change was made to the PU movement in either case, so both runs *should* work fine, but this still needs to be confirmed.
When played back on an N64 console it completes the game in a time of 4:20.77, 0.17 seconds (5 frames or 10 VIs) faster than the previous record of 4:20.93. This improvement was achieved by changing the camera in both Bowser fights to prevent the game from lagging by keeping particularly complex & CPU-intensive visuals off-screen or far away from the camera. Such complex visuals include:
• Exploding mines
• Bowser bouncing after being hit by a mine
• Bowser exploding & the key spawning in Bowser In The Fire Sea
• The Bowser In The Fire Sea key & associated particles (lags when too close to the camera)
• Falling platforms in Bowser In The Sky
• Bowser (lags when too close to the camera)
While this run is optimised for console playback, it is in fact 5 frames slower when played back on an emulator than the current best time of 4:21.13. These 5 frames are used to change the camera mode back to Mario-cam during the first Bowser fight. This change is required to achieve many of the console-lag saves in this run, but as the emulator does not lag in those areas, changing the camera results in a net time-loss. The current emulator record can be found here:
youtu.be/pA6TBsIsraI
The channels of all the authors who created this run can be found here:
• http://www.youtube.com/c/TylerKehne
• http://www.youtube.com/user/MKDasher
• http://www.youtube.com/user/sonicpacker
• http://www.youtube.com/user/snark122
• http://www.youtube.com/user/SilentSla...
• http://www.youtube.com/c/GaehneD
• http://www.youtube.com/user/AruaErueru
• youtube.com/user/Superdavo0001
• youtube.com/c/dargos
• youtube.com/channel/UC0xWE0e79jiWmZucFc_w7sw (IsaacA)
(ToT's channel unfortunately no longer exists)
This is a tool-assisted speedrun, created using slowdown, savestates, memory-watch and various other tools in order to make a sequence of inputs which completes the game as fast as possible with all known techniques. It is *not* a real-time speedrun performed by a human in one shot, and so for obvious reasons will not be counted on any speedrunning leaderboards. For more information on tool-assisted speedruns, what they are & why they exist, check out Bismuth's video on the subject: youtu.be/Ietk1-Wb7oY
The "1 Key" category requires only that the game be completed as fast as possible, with no restrictions. This is optimally achieved by accessing Bowser In The Fire Sea immediately & defeating Bowser there to collect the key to the upstairs area of the castle, before heading to Bowser In The Sky & defeating Bowser once more.
This strategy does not collect any power stars, and abuses multiple glitches to skip through massive chunks of the game. The current best TAS which collects every power star (the 120-star or 100% category) can be found here: youtu.be/xL6VE_5PddM
This run is much more intricate & complex than it may look to the untrained eye, and is a product of many years of glitch discoveries & optimisations. If you want to learn more about what is actually going on & how any of this is possible, here are a few places to look:
• Bismuth's explanation video about the 1key TAS: youtu.be/wjge1bVobN0
• The original TASVideos submission text: http://tasvideos.org/5237S.html
• Tyler Kehne's initial explanation of moat-door skip: pastebin.com/uH5GhHbp
Additionally, I'm planning to make an alternate version of this TAS with visual-aids to make it easier to see what's going on, so stay tuned for that!
The timesaves in this run were found by Isaac and executed by me. Finding good camera angles & downtime movements to keep the run smooth & entertaining while also avoiding every possible source of console-lag proved to be an interesting challenge, but I hope the result was worth the effort.
Although not a direct author of the run, rcombs deserves a large amount of credit for the latest saves. By using her TASbot to play back the run on an actual console, she was not only able to time the run, but could also determine where exactly in the run any lag occurred, allowing us to fix it more precisely. Her Twitch channel (where she often streams console-verifications) can be found at: twitch.tv/rcombs
If you're interested in seeing the real-time speedrun world records in Super Mario 64, they can be found here: speedrun.com/sm64
Finally, if you want to learn more about tool-assisted speedrunning in Mario 64 overall & the many glitches that go into it, I'd recommend checking out Ukikipedia - the community's wiki, at ukikipedia.net/wiki/Main_Page.
This is a little different to my usual uploads, but I've been speedrunning singlestars occasionally recently, and thought this one was interesting enough to be worth sharing!
It was pretty tricky to put together a clean run with this strat, and it took me quite a while to finally get this time. The LJ+ledgegrab in particular was difficult because you had to LJ at just the right time; too early & you don't make the next platform, too late and you bonk on the ceiling above. I don't think it's possible to completely skip the ledgegrab, at least not in any RTA-viable way.
This run is obviously very improvable, and sub-40 is probably achievable. My movement after bypassing the first plank & up to the final room was unnecessarily slow, and it's possible to get up onto the high platforms there with a single WK from a sideflip (though it's extremely precise). Other than that though, the attempt was pretty clean & I'm happy with it for now!
Apologies for the recent lack of TAS content btw, I've just been very busy with university stuff recently, so I've not had so much time for SM64. I'll hopefully be back properly in the summer though! Hopefully at some point I'll TAS this star as well, it'll be interesting to be able to compare strats between the two!
Finally, since my last upload I crossed 500 subscribers, so a massive thank you to everyone who subscribed! I have some ideas for a special video to celebrate, which I'll hopefully be able to make once my exams are out of the way :D
I've had this star in mind for a while & wondered whether it would be possible to get into the pipe from the outside, rather than taking the intended route. I tried to do this by BLJing to gain enough speed to clip through the wall, but I couldn't find a viable setup. It wasn't until yesterday that I noticed the nearby bob-ombs & realised I could just bomb-clip to the star!
This TAS was pretty difficult to optimise, primarily because of the grind at the start. I saved a frame in the first dive after the grind by hitting the raised floor hitbox from the side on the last quarter-step of Mario's movement. If I had hit it earlier, Mario would have frozen in place for the rest of the frame, costing time.
This run is probably improvable, but hopefully I got the general movement & most of the optimisation right. I was able to get within 8 units of hitting the star a frame early, but with a jump trajectory which didn't seem to be able to make the downwarp work at the end.
I couldn't use the usual end-screen this time because the video's too short, so I guess I'll have to recommend you check out my other TASes if you liked this one here instead :P
SM64 Ztar Attack Rebooted is a ROMHack made by aglab2: youtube.com/channel/UC77uQeQh3PVdbI4usjFg1rA
My playlist of all my best TASes can be found here: youtu.be/3vVWQXNqVYQ?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3qCSR9CMqyJGhMcaObah7wU
I also have a playlist full of random TAS stuff which wasn't individually substantial enough to be worth publishing & notifying everyone about: youtu.be/moitEdFbFxQ?list=PLbYjr0fKUh3r1kVcme0kQfkBd59KFFmoR
Total rerecords: 3,193
[Small update]: Turns out Simpleflips managed to execute this strat in real-time at around the same time as I was TASing it! This was a complete coincidence & neither of us influenced the other's work in any way, but it just wouldn't be right if I didn't say shoutouts to him for that :P
It's been a while since I last uploaded any TASes, and with the recent release of Ztar Attack rebooted & a brief reprieve from coursework hell, I couldn't resist making a singlestar run...
The strat used in this run was pretty difficult to put together, as none of the angles & stuff quite wanted to work properly. My initial plan when I started this star was to use the flyguy, and use a sequence of bounces to get the required angle, but I quickly realised I could WK off the mushroom, and with a precise initial angle, I could achieve a trajectory which allowed me to collect both the 3rd and 4th secrets. Once I got to the 4th secret, I realised I may be able to do a glitchy wallkick off the slide corner to redirect Mario towards the final secret without losing speed. It took a bit of work to achieve the correct spacing, but it was definitely worth it :-)
This run is definitely improvable with low-level optimisations, but I think most of the larger movement is solid.
Note: The normal timing method is to start on the first frame the level is visible, which is 1f after the lag spike caused by the level loading. In this level, however, the level isn't readily apparent for an additional 2 frames, as the crossfade is quite slow. Extreme image enhancement reveals that the level is just barely visible on the normal frame, so I decided to use that frame for timing. Using the first obvious frame would give a time of 12"73.
Total re-records: 2,075
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• 6'48"82 by me: youtu.be/0_4yT0YKmnA
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• 6'10"27 (this run)
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• [UPDATE] 6'06"25 by me: youtu.be/eohfUpgjui4
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• [UPDATE 2] 5'53"17 by me: youtu.be/g-z9N-EMxos
Apologies for the lack of uploads in recent history, I've been in coursework hell for a while now, and just not had time to put anything cool together. Hopefully this speedrun of a random obscure game will fill the gap though!
Backstory behind this run: A while ago, some of my friends decided to try to get a meme WR in an obscure game with no recognised runs - which happened to be this game. Since I'm interested in speedrunning myself, I couldn't resist giving it a shot! I initially set the benchmark with a 7:23, and since I found the game quite fun to run, I decided to keep going, and brought it down to 6:48 a few days later. I kept improving from there, and after learning the game some more, I managed to save almost another 40 seconds!
The game itself is a pretty tricky platformer made by Xysspon in 2017. The story follows a harpy called Duri as she tries to find the cause of strong winds in her town. The gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Kirby games, with the protagonist being able to flap her wings to fly, but only for a limited amount of time. She can attack by grabbing a bag & throwing its contents at enemies.
This game has a couple of tricks, glitches & shortcuts which are abused in the run, and unfortunately a few glitches which make it harder to be consistent. These include:
+ Level 1 secret shortcut - which takes you straight to level 4
+ Mushroom boss skip - for some reason you can just fly over him & get to the exit, saving a bunch of time & avoiding a difficult bossfight
+ Bag animation cancel - flapping while grabbing a bag breaks the animation, and makes grabbing the bag slightly faster. You can also regain vertical control (and sometimes lateral if you time everything correctly, though it's not consistent) by doing this. This technique reduces the time-loss for grabbing a bag to pretty much zero when flying upwards.
+ Fast bag-grab via enemy: Grabbing a bag while facing & standing close to an enemy will cancel the grab animation & make the grab even faster than the previous method. I only know of one place where this is useful (the start of 4-2), and unfortunately didn't pull it off in this run.
- The flap counter doesn't reset immediately when you touch the ground. This is why I sometimes pause for a moment before flying again
- Sometimes you get stuck in a corner when you fly downwards. This didn't happen this run.
- You can kill enemies by grabbing a bag close to them, but it's extremely inconsistent (I do this by accident at 4:17). This is a shame, as it would save a lot of time waiting for enemies if it were consistent.
- Pressing X (grab bag) while already grabbing a bag will reset the animation. I do this by accident at 3:53.
This run is pretty good in most areas, but I can definitely still improve it. Sub-6 is probably possible but pretty difficult...
Overall, in spite of some jankiness & the high difficulty level (not helped by the fact that you don't regain health when you die), I found this game fun, both casually and as a speedgame, and would recommend checking it out!
It can be downloaded from: xysspon.itch.io/harpy2
Your move, friends ;)
I've been wanting to work on some singlestars for a while, and with ALX167 trying to get more people involved in his 170-star TAS project, I figured ZA would be a good place to look for inspiration. I quickly found it with this star, when I realised it would be possible to save time by cloning the star, rather than just swimming to it - an unusual strategy with some interesting problems to solve!
This run actually went through 3 iterations. The first version lost a lot of time because I grabbed the last bob-omb, rather than the one before. Alex fixed that error (I had spotted it myself at this point as well) & improved the jump into the water. However, he lost a lot of time to sub-optimal swimming. I then fixed that, saving another 18f, and giving the final time you see in this run!
This run is most likely still improvable - I'm not 100% confident in the moveset used before the start of the bob-omb abuse (so many jumpdives is unusual, but in this case seemed to work better than the alternatives), and there's probably a frame or two available for micro-optimising the swimming/water entrance. That being said, I'm very happy with how it turned out!
The most difficult part by far of making this run was cloning the star. If you don't know already, this glitch occurred because I grabbed a bob-omb exactly as it unloaded, so I was holding an unloaded object. If another object loads into its slot, I end up holding that object. The challenge is getting the correct object to load, as it depends very heavily on what other objects load in the meantime. In this case, there are all kinds of particles complicating things, and most of them are RNG-dependent, so getting the correct slot is just luck.
Fortunately though, this is TAS, and luck can be manipulated! More specifically, since it's a singlestar, I can just enter the level with the correct RNG, and I just have to find a value that works. In the end, the odds of an attempt being successful were probably in the region of 1%.
Instead of tediously testing values manually, I wrote an automatic bruteforcer using LUA (thanks to MKDasher for helping & Timestoppa for giving me a sample of code 4232Nis gave him to work from, and shoutouts to 4232Nis himself for being the RNG master in general!), which made the RNG more tolerable to deal with.
Since some of you like my explanations of subtle, easily-missed micro-optimisations, here are a few tricks you probably didn't see:
• For the dive-recover onto the bridge at 0:07, I enter the floor hitbox from just off the side, rather than landing straight on the top. This allows me to delay the landing until Mario's last quarter-step (qframe) (normally he'd land on the 3rd, and not move during the final quarter-step. I couldn't manipulate Mario's speed to fix it in this case as I was on the ground for a long time), saving 1/4 of a frame.
• When the dive/recover ends at 0:05, I walk for exactly 1 frame before jumpdiving. This causes my speed to be capped at exactly 48, which happens to be the maximum speed for which Mario will land on the last qframe. This saves several units over just slowing down & using vertical speed manipulation & jumpdiving earlier, or 3/4 of a frame over ignoring the qframe landing altogether.
• My last movement before grabbing the bob-omb is a slidekick, which vastly overshoots the bob-omb's location. You might think this is slower, but since grabbing the bob-omb earlier just means you have to wait longer for it to blow up, the fuse is actually the bottleneck. Alex didn't notice this, and lost a frame because of it.
• It actually turned out that with the slidekick I could barely make it to the edge where I wanted to clone. One trick I used to make it possible was the -15.99 speed trick, in which I maintained -15.99 speed (the max sustainable negative speed while airborne), rather than just angling the joystick back, which would cause Mario's speed to oscillate between -14.xx & -15.xx. This saved many units & made the save possible.
Total re-records: 3559
I'll probably make more singlestars like this in the future, and upload them if they end up being particularly interesting. You might want to subscribe if you've not already so you don't miss them - you must have some interest if you're still reading ;)
• TheGael95's channel (creator of this ROMHack): bit.ly/2QpmMDQ
• ALX167's channel (helped optimise this TAS): bit.ly/2sEZrjR
• MKDasher's channel (helped with LUA stuff): youtube.com/user/mkdasher
• Timestoppa's channel (helped with LUA): bit.ly/2W8WJRh
• 4232Nis' channel (designed the original RNG script): youtube.com/user/4232Nis
Relevant links:
• TAS Competition Discord server: discord.gg/yTnEgvY
• GSA Twitch channel (for reveal streams): twitch.tv/speedrun
• MKDasher's YouTube channel (for compilations): youtube.com/user/mkdasher
• 1Ted59's YouTube channel (for reveal stream videos): youtube.com/user/1ted59
• My WIP TASing tutorial series: bit.ly/2LFDJVG
• Sonicpacker's explanation video of what a TAS is: youtu.be/R3-ohYvi_fc
This video was made in collaboration with the TAS Competition and its organisers (of which I am one). Thanks to all involved for helping in various ways ensure that this video was as good as it can be!
This is part 1 of my (WIP) tutorial series explaining how to create tool-assisted speedruns of Super Mario 64. In this video, I explain how to set up Mupen64 (the emulator primarily used by the SM64 community), ready to explain how to TAS using it in part 2. If something doesn't work as expected, I'd recommend asking for help in one of the Discord servers linked below!
If you don't currently know exactly what a tool-assisted speedrun is, I would recommend watching Sonicpacker's video on the subject, which provides a detailed explanation: youtu.be/R3-ohYvi_fc
Part 2, in which I explain the basics of how to create a TAS in Mupen64, will be linked to here & in the end-screen, once it's done. If you can't wait that long, check out Sonicpacker's old video on the subject: youtube.com/watch?v=00FRKyy97Vs
And Mario64Masters' old video (which explains how to continue a TAS after you stop recording): youtube.com/watch?v=azziIrQs7_k
If you get stuck, feel free to ask for help in one of the Discord servers linked below!
MAIN SM64 COMMUNITY DISCORD SERVERS: (Good places to ask for help if something doesn't work)
• SM64 TASing/ABC (general server): discord.gg/ECskvyF
• TAS Competition server (often more active with more TASers): discord.gg/jxyRgsU
This video was made in collaboration with the TAS Competition and its organisers (of which I am one). Thank you to all involved for motivating me to finally start work on this much-needed series, and for giving me advice & helping to make the video as good as possible!
In this video, I complete SM64 Ztar Attack 2: A Blast To The Past (A ROMHack created by TheGael95) in the shortest time possible, using any glitches available. This is done by skipping straight to the final boss battle using hyperspeed wallkicks to clip through the door to that stage & into the warp behind it.
I tried pretty hard to make sure as much of this run as possible was as optimised as possible, and tested as many movesets as possible in each area. Some parts are probably improvable though, especially the flying, which probably isn't quite so optimised, as I don't fully understand flight optimisation.
As the TAS is too long to fully describe/explain, instead, here is a section-by-section description, along with some interesting details in each part:
• First, I navigate to the warp to the Ztar Seal Temple. This is just a straight-line, but time can be saved by using the correct moveset, and landing on the last possible quarter-step in a frame wherever possible (otherwise Mario will not move for the remaining quarter-steps, losing distance). Speedkicking twice at the end is faster than slidekicking, as although slidekicking loses less speed, it loses it immediately rather than at the end of the movement, so speedkicking allows you to use the speed you have for longer. This saved a single frame.
• Next, I navigate to the pipe to the underground area. Turning around after navigating behind the staircase proved tricky to optimise, and it turns out the fastest movement is just to walk around & turn as tightly as possible. I tried wallkicking off the walls & speedkicking after turning, but I guess sometimes the simpler strats are the best. Note that I didn't pipe-clip as it would not save a frame here. Diving 1f earlier means my angle is too far off to reach the pipe at all.
• Next, I navigate to a small wall where I will wallkick to build up speed. This part was very tricky to optimise, both with the pipe in the way at the start and the awkward turning to get into the HSWK gap at the end. At the start, I abuse the pipe collision to almost clip through it both in & out, allowing me to reach the edge in 1f instead of several, and dive twice to gain speed, using the pipe to return to the freefall state. This part may be improvable with a different moveset, idk.
• Next, I wallkick repeatedly, abusing Mario's unbounded forward acceleration to gain speed.
• After the HSWK, I break out, and clip through the door. This was reeeeally hard to optimise, as I had to use the minimum possible speed, making the clip very precise. In the end, I clipped through the door within a ~0.1 unit (spacing-dependent) window, and given that Mario's acceleration is 0.15 units per frame (meaning the window would be -0.05 units if done 1f sooner, though perhaps possible with a better angle), I'm not convinced that I could save another frame here, and because attempting it would require redoing much of the HSWK, I'm not going to try.
• Next, I collect the wingcap & go to the spring. Imo this part looks rough, but it seems to be the optimal movement. I saved a frame here by gradually shifting Mario's angle so he strains gradually more over time, allowing him to get closer to the wing-cap box while still having enough speed to reach it a frame earlier.
• Next, use the spring to start flying. By holding A for 2 frames, I could delay Mario's landing by 2 quarter-frames, giving him a perfect qf landing. This may or may not save a frame.
• After that, I kill all the Ztars (basically remodelled boos), by flying through them. By not landing, I can avoid their text, saving many seconds. This part is extremely tough to optimise & definitely improvable, but it looks pretty clean.
• After that, I fly down to collect the time-star. The arc path I took down saved a frame over flying in a roughly straight downward line, which is pretty interesting.
• Finally, in the ending, I navigate back to the Ztar Seal Temple, which resets the game. I end timing on the frame Mario disappears (because TASVideos timing is flawed). This part has different movement to the start, as you can dive immediately, and the sign is no longer there.
This video is encoded in an unusual way. I wanted to try encoding in widescreen, but the only plugin that lets me do that is Jabo 1.6, which doesn't look as good, so I decided to also encode the central section using the Rice video plugin to get the best quality, and combine the two. There's a noticeable seam, but imo it looks better than encoding normally.
As mentioned already, this hack was made by TheGael95. It's really fun to play, and I'd definitely recommend checking it out! Gael's channel can be found at: bit.ly/2QpmMDQ
Total re-records used: 14,645 (my largest TAS project yet!)
Thank all 400+ of you for subscribing! :D
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• 11"07 by Dargos: youtu.be/HY0Qte37G_I
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• 11"03 By Superdavo0001 & Dargos
* Dar Gos' Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCEgfodfjfo3J-bUAHrwl0Lw
* Snark122's Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCyoAdfPdT100F12BmXDUpbw
* TimeTravelPenguin's Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCUMWpmbkD0HvkgFC0BqrTFw
In this video, the star Swingin' In The Breeze (in Rainbow Ride) is collected 2 frames faster than the previous record by Snark, and 1 frame faster than a run created by Dargos earlier today. This was achieved by fully optimising the new movement strat used in the original 1f save.
As was the case for our recent BitFS save, this was done in collaboration with the legendary Dargos, and we both contributed important details that led to this save.
In fact, this save happened in a remarkably similar way to the BitFS improvement (at least if you in include Plush's initial 1f save as an equivalent to Dargos' initial 1f save).
It began with TimeTravelPenguin investigating the star. He asked Snark for his files, and tried to find a way to save time. Unfortunately, his searches didn't find anything improvable, but led me & Dargos to look at Snark's original run more closely. We found that he used some rather unusual movement, which didn't look like it should be optimal, shortly after the ledgegrab. TimeTravelPenguin gave us Snark's run to look at, and Dargos realised that it should be faster to grind continually instead of recovering (Snark's recovery had significantly less speed, costing a lot of distance). When he TASed the run, he found that it saved a frame, and put him quite close to saving an additional frame.
Once Dargos posted that run, I decided to look through it & see whether he did anything that could be improved, and I found a couple of things. The main one was that he took a dust-frame during the initial grind. While this was useful in BitFS, that was only because we couldn't do perfect qframe grinding otherwise. Dargos assumed the same to be true here, and so took the dust-frame to avoid having to take a 1/4 transition. However, I realised that this was actually not the case, and was able to achieve a perfect qf grind. Dargos also jumped for 1 frame before diving to reach the axle (there was probably a reason for this in his run), when it would be faster to dive immediately.
I then fixed all these details, and tried to save a frame with them. Unfortunately though, I was unable to land on the axle a frame earlier, which was needed to save the frame.
Dargos then looked into this, and found that I was just 0.6 units (subject to correct speed manipulation on the jumpdive) from saving the frame, and set to work trying to save them. As was the case in BitFS, he managed to save just enough distance to save the frame, though it's still within a unit or so.
It really is weird just how similar the progression of this star is to the progression of BitFS - in both cases, a slower movement was replaced with divegrinding, which saved a frame, then I found a way to save a qframe, then Dargos finished the save by finding tiny unit-level improvements.
Although this run improves Snark's TAS by 2 frames, it still contains his inputs up to the ledgegrab, and he is therefore still an author. Pretty much all of the inputs that follow (except the grind setup, which has a few frames of my inputs) were done by Dargos. However, as I found the bulk of the most recent frame save, we decided that I should upload the run. Massive thanks to Dargos for letting me upload this one :D
Special thanks to TimeTravelPenguin for , and to Snark122 for giving us TAS files to work from! Their channel links are at the top of this description, along with Dargos' channel. I'd recommend checking them all out, as they've all been responsible for some awesome TASes!
Total re-records: 62,946 (2,527 by me & Dargos, the rest by Snark)
This dark room is supposed to be accessed from a warp at the end of the bonus levels, and contains a warp which takes you back to the title screen. From there, you are supposed to re-enter the save & return to the hubworld to collect the final star (hence the warp isn't really the "ending" as such, so I'm not sure whether this category truly counts as a kind of completion). Unfortunately, the warp from the bonus content uses a Mario Spawner object rather than another warp inside the dark-room, and is therefore not reversible.
Conveniently, to save having more separate levels, this room was placed out of reach in the Ztar Seal Temple (hubworld), underneath the central pathway through this area, and inside a grey box to make its location less obvious. I quickly realised this fact once I reached the dark room during my casual playthrough.
Before I found this out, I realised that it was possible to BLJ to extremely high speeds (Over 20,000!), by abusing the slope to the upper platform, and the ceiling of the long arch behind it (this ceiling keeps Mario "stuck" in place near the top of the stairs). I had also realised that it was possible to use a negative-jump to reach the grey box. After realising that the dark room was inside the grey box, I wondered if it would be possible to do another negative-jump to access the dark room. After a bit of testing, I found a way to make it work, and as a bonus I could even keep my speed once I was down there! Unfortunately, the second negative-jump only works if Mario is not in the squish state (as the vertical displacement is halved in that state), so I have to wait on the grey platform for Mario's squish animation to end. I also have to wait a couple of frames before I can jumpkick at the very end, as Mario also cannot jumpkick while squished.
This TAS is probably improvable in a couple of places (though I tried quite hard to optimise the first section to the best of my ability). In particular, it's possible that there might be a better hyperspeed route after the BLJ, which might save a considerable amount of time.
Note that at the very end, I cannot quick-crouch into the teleporter (a trick which is used in most TASes that enter teleporters), as its hitbox is too high up for Mario to reach when crouched. Instead, he just crouches underneath it.
So what is this Negative Jump (NJ) I'm referring to? It's basically what happens when Mario jumps with a high negative speed. You see, Mario's vertical speed is proportional to his horizontal speed. This means that when Mario is moving forwards, he jumps higher than when he is stationary. When he is moving backwards, his jump will be lower. If he has enough negative speed, his vertical speed will never be above zero, and so he will immediately move downwards (assuming he doesn't immediately touch a floor hitbox, which will simply move him back up to the top of the floor). Normally, his downward speed is capped at -75 (terminal velocity), but this does not apply for the first quarter-frame of Mario's movement. Thus, with enough negative speed, Mario can be displaced arbitrarily far below his initial location, allowing him to clip into areas far below his initial position. He still moves horizontally though, and so his lateral displacement also needs to be accounted for when planning NJ routes.
Negative-Jumps used to be known as Downward-Jumps (DJs), but the name was changed as the acronym is the same as that for double-jumps, which could lead to confusion. I used this glitch in a previous video, in order to clone blue coins productively without visiting parallel universes (youtu.be/QdT27ZpQjR0). Performing this glitch with PU speed (i.e. being displaced into a PU below the main PU grid) causes an "overflow jump" - a versatile glitch which can allow Mario to reach areas which are higher than his initial location.
SM64 Ztar Attack 2: Blast To The Past is an amazing ROMHack made by TheGael95. Gael's channel (including download links) can be found at: youtube.com/channel/UCiD6DYZSuu7N2302h83pLeQ
Total rerecords: 2,501
Dargos' channel: youtube.com/channel/UCEgfodfjfo3J-bUAHrwl0Lw
In this video, Bowser In The Fire Sea is completed in 17"50, saving 1 frame from the previous record by Plush. This is achieved by taking a slightly different approach to optimising quarter-frame movement, as explained below, along with a couple of general unit-scale improvements.
Additionally, by using different camera angles to reduce lag we were able to improve the console run-time by a significant margin.
This was done in collaboration with the legendary Dar gos, and this run contains inputs done by each of us. Both of us contributed towards different elements of this run, and we both found essential details without which the run would have been impossible.
This improvement means 1-key is now 1 frame faster (plus lag-frames on console), bringing the total emulator-time down to 4'21"13, and the console time down to 4'21"04.
So how did we save a frame? The answer lies in how the game handles movement. Basically, in order to reduce the likelihood of Mario clipping through hitboxes, the developers made Mario move in 4 substeps per frame, checking for collision at each. These are known as quarter-frames (abbreviated to qframes, qfs).
Ordinarily, you wouldn't expect this difference to have much effect, but when Mario transitions from being on the ground to being in the air (or vice-versa, jumps & related movements from ground-to-air are unaffected) on one of these qframes, he will not move for the rest of the frame afterwards. So for example, if Mario lands (air-to-ground) on the first quarter-frame, he will not move for any of the other three, so his net movement is only a quarter of what it could have been.
Because of this, it is optimal to always go from ground-to-air or vice-versa on the last possible quarter-frame. This is used throughout the grinding at the start, as well as various other places where Mario's quarter-frames can be controlled.
There is one place where it's a little more difficult though, and that's the last grind before the jumpdive. You see, Mario must strain during the time he's on the ground in order to get a good angle for the jumpdive. This will in turn cause Mario to strain more rapidly back towards the edge, which means he must be further away from it initially in order to make the 4/4 qframe transition work. It turns out that if you strain in too far from the edge, it becomes impossible to strain back out in 1 frame. It turns out that this means it's not possible to get the required angle while still getting a 4/4 exit (or anything better than a 1/4).
So how should this situation be handled in order to travel the greatest possible distance? Plush's answer was to take the loss from 1/4 qframe, but still maintain optimal speed & the ability to control the qframe he landed on the next platform at (by changing his speed).
However, it turns out that this is not quite the optimal strategy. I looked at this problem, and realised it would actually be faster to abandon the requirement of leaving the platform in 1 frame entirely, and take a second frame to strain to the correct angle, while still being able to leave the platform on the last quarter-frame. This would cost some speed, and would mean losing a quarter-frame on the next platform (the loss of horizontal speed makes Mario land a quarter-frame too early), but overall, it adds up to around 12 or so units saved.
On its own, this is not enough to save a frame anywhere in the run (the minimum required is 21), but there were other units to be saved too. Doing the jumpdive a frame earlier meant Mario had 1 more frame of acceleration in the air at the start, giving him 0.15 more speed each frame, and therefore causing Mario to get further ahead by 0.15 units per frame, at least until he slows down again & loses them while the old run would still be in the air. This "stretching" of distance-saves, combined with a few more units Dargos managed to save along the way, added up to just enough additional distance to allow Mario to land on the platform below the pole/tilting platforms a frame earlier, and therefore allowed us to save a full frame. Pretty complicated, but pretty neat!
At the end of the video, I show a slow-motion comparison between the new run & Plush's old run. The differences are subtle, but noticeable. The background music is Rashay Phase 2, made by DotStarMoney & used in SM64: Last Impact - a hack made by Kaze Emanuar. More info about both can be found here: youtu.be/pUwAXDd45wc
Thanks to Rcombs for console-verifying this run. He is Twitch channel can be found here: twitch.tv/rcombs
Total re-records used: 5,323
I found this while working on Casino Bingo Slide, after mysteriously losing a ton of frames on what should've been a faster route. It seems that hitting the finish above a certain height (-3700 in this case) makes the star not bounce like it usually does.
I doubt this is useful in vanilla, as it is incompatible with the fastest route through the slide (you must be buttsliding to jump), but it's pretty interesting nonetheless!
The current WR for the sliding timer star in Star Road has this glitch, though it was probably accidental.
Cba to add an end-card for this video. I'll probably do an update once the glitch has been explained.
Update: bad_boot has figured out the cause of the glitch:
"When the star spawns, it is given a vertical speed of (homeY - posY) / 30. That means that after exactly 30 frames, it will be positioned at homeY exactly. It looks like it moves in an arc, but that doesn't affect anything since the arc offset is 0 at the end.
However, they accidentally(?) made it move for 31 frames, so it receives an extra y offset of (homeY - posY) / 30 before entering the bounce action.
Then the bounce action moves the star up 20 units the first frame. To know when to end the bounce, it checks if posY ⟨ homeY. So to perform Star Bounce Skip, we need that extra offset to be ⟨ -20.
So (homeY - posY) / 30 -20, which is true when posY ⟩ homeY + 600."
Update 2: This is now faster in PSS - barely. Great job to Plush & Dargod for making it work!
This hack is designed to be completed in 4 stages, which are:
1. Navigate from the start to the warp at the bottom
2. Go down the first slide, collecting numbered casino chips. You must get enough to get a complete row, column or diagonal, but collecting more will make step 3 easier.
3. Navigate back to the top & enter the final slide. The chips you collected earlier are now platforms, which you can use to climb up. Trying to do this without a bingo will trigger an anti-cheat mechanism, placing you in an area that's almost impossible for a human to escape. It's possible for a TAS to get out (and might be faster), but I opted against using it in this run, as it would be less interesting.
4. Complete the final slide in under 35 seconds & collect the star.
My movement during steps 1 & 3 was somewhat unusual, and used techniques that don't look optimal at first glance, such as sliding and quickturning, stopping & punch-starting again rather than just walking forward. This is because the level is set to have the 'slide' floor type (used for Princess's Secret Slide in the original game). This has a few notable properties:
• Standing on any non-flat surface will cause Mario to slide
• Mario doesn't accelerate from rest as quickly as usual, gaining only 1.1 speed rather than over 8. I overcome this by quickturning to face the correct direction, and using the punch-trick, which immediately gives Mario 10 speed.
• Sliding doesn't reduce Mario's speed nearly as much as usual. Since sliding is not bound by the 48 speed cap, this means turning while sliding is a convenient way of maintaining more than 48 speed while changing angle. Mario's speed can then be recovered/increased by being airborne, allowing for significant speed accumulation, and saving a fair amount of time.
During the slide sections (steps 2 & 4), it is optimal to be airborne wherever possible, as sliding has a speed cap of around 105, whereas speed increases without bounds in the air. Furthermore, Mario moves slower on slopes due to the de-facto multiplier. Ideally you would want to be airborne & building speed all the way, but sooner or later you have to land otherwise you'll just fall to your death. This turns out to not be a problem, because if you land for a single frame before becoming airborne the frame after, the speed cap is not applied. Furthermore, the slope still applies its acceleration, causing Mario to gain up to around 5 speed each time. I abuse this glitch very extensively in both slides, allowing me to gain as much as 150 speed, and saving many seconds.
During step 3, it is fastest to intentionally die at the wallkick area rather than manually crossing it, as Mario will respawn on the other side.
Step 4 has a weird start, where the whole stage appears to move relative to Mario, causing him to seemingly fall through the floor, before returning to normal. This glitch is entirely visual, and does not affect the gameplay. I've seen it in a couple of places in Last Impact as well, and I'm not sure why it happens, but I'd guess it has something to do with how hacks handle cameras.
This run is the single largest TAS project I've ever completed alone, with a total rerecord count of 10,586 (my first TAS to go over 10k!). I was inspired to create this after seeing TomatoBird8's playthrough (bit.ly/2E10tiJ) of the hack. I completed step 4 first (because if I lost motivation at this stage, I could just upload this part), before slowly working on the other parts occasionally over the following 3 months or so. Unfortunately, when I came to hex it together a few days ago, I found that I couldn't make step 2 sync with step 1, so I ended up remaking it. This was a blessing in disguise, however, as I found a way to continue conserving speed right to the very end, saving 29f & making what was the worst part of the run an awful lot cooler.
This run is definitely improvable, but hopefully not by too much...
Shoutouts to:
• Aglab2 for making the hack itself: bit.ly/2Qvo4cC
• Simpleflips for running the hacking competition: bit.ly/2y7AJxt
• TomatoBird8 for making the playthrough that inspired me to make this TAS: bit.ly/2CtxjY3
Don't forget to check out the rest of my channel & subscribe before going to theirs though ;-)
This huge improvement is due entirely to the use of the Parallel Universes glitch, which allows me to bypass the entire level and reach the star extremely quickly.
Here's a step-by-step description of what is going on:
• First, I navigate to the elevator. Unfortunately, I have to wait for it to rotate around a bit before I can use it to BLJ & gain speed, so I mess around for a while to keep the run entertaining.
• When the elevator reaches the correct position, I begin long-jumping, before landing on the very edge (to give myself more distance to gain speed later). I then begin to BLJ to gain speed. I pause-buffer all except the first BLJ to gain enough speed to become stuck before reaching the end of the elevator & falling off. I gain as much speed as possible here, and land right at the end of the platform. Being stuck in the corner means I'm standing on a special kind of misalignment, which is not above any wall hitboxes. This will be important for keeping my speed later.
• Once I'm stuck, I no longer need to pause-buffer BLJs. I manipulate my speed at this stage to never be between -31,000 and -38,700 during this stage, as that will cause me to break free prematurely & lose my speed. Specifically, I aim for a speed of -39,102, as that exact speed will allow me to gain the correct final speed. This speed is only reachable thanks to the optimisation I did during the pause-buffered BLJs.
• I then BLJ up to a final speed of -1,879,790. I turn to angle 7424 and Overflow Jump. This puts me in PU (-1, -1), on the slope near the star.
• I then turn to angle 40960, and return to the main-map, within the star's hitbox, causing me to collect it.
If you don't understand what these glitches are, I've posted a description of the important ones in a pinned comment (The description is too long to post it unfortunately).
For convenience, I show a relative view, which shows where Mario is within the PU at any given time. This was achieved by hacking Mario's position & speed, as well as giving him the metal-cap (so he can walk in the water). Many of these changes were automated using script-locking.
This TAS would not work on console, as it would crash at the start of the PU movement, as I have not locked the camera. The route itself should work (Overflow Jumps do not crash, and ground-to-air transition used to return in 1 qframe does not crash either) however. Although this is considered to be an issue for TASes of the original game, it is generally accepted in Romhacks, as they are intended to play on an emulator rather than the original console anyway.
This is probably one of the most difficult TASes I have ever made, and I'm amazed that it actually turned out to be possible... It took me hours to make a working & accurate bruteforcer to find the PU route, only to realise I couldn't even keep my speed... A few days later, I realised a misalignment would solve this problem, but the misalignment was on the wrong corner. I tested the other corner anyway (out of desperation I guess), and was surprised to find that it was also a misalignment (caused by a completely new glitch I'd just discovered exactly where & when I needed it). Putting the run together was very hard too, as I needed to start the BLJ in exactly the right place to ultimately end up in a 3x3-unit area with enough speed to not fall off the back of the elevator, while making sure I gained enough speed to reach a specific value that would let me avoid a range of other values which would cause me to break free early... Still - it was an interesting & enjoyable learning curve, and I'm really happy with the result!
This probably isn't the end for Ztar Attack PU strats - in fact I think most of the stars in this level can be improved using this glitch... Hopefully they should be easier to do now I've solved many of the difficult issues involved...
This run is part of a 170-star TAS, currently being made by ALX167 and several others. His channel can be found here: youtube.com/channel/UCYGO_S0xzN4AnE612PgCeEA
SM64 1.5: Ztar Attack is a hack made by TheGael95. Download links to the hack can be found at Gael's channel: youtu.be/_I8VscZ3-q4
Total re-records: 3,897 (though most of the effort spent on this run was not in physically TASing it)
.m64 download: cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/416082560393805824/487373533152804866/Behind_The_Grills_1253_V2.zip
Came up with the strats for this run a few days ago, and decided to put them together in a run. It's almost certainly improvable, but probably not by too much, and I think the overall strats are probably optimal.
Beating the boss quickly requires the use of two precise ground-pounds, each exploiting a different trick:
1. The front segment of the boss overlaps with its head, so ground-pounding it very near the front can allow Mario to land back on the head, rather than falling to the ground. This is used in RTA speedruns, and isn't too difficult to perform.
2. Ground-pounding the seam between two segments causes both to fall at the same time, dealing two hits of damage at once. Doing this makes it almost impossible to stay on top of the boss though (I managed it by accident, but it's very slow), hence I use it for the final blow. The boss only requires 3 hits anyway, so there's no point in trying to do this for the first hit. I don't know whether this trick is known, but it's quite easy to do RTA - if a little risky. Miss the two hits and you'll have to climb back up!
The rest of the TAS is pretty self-explanatory.
Total re-records: 1410
I'll probably try to improve this run sometime. I have a couple of ideas...
This run is also a TAS WR benchmark for this star, with a time of 29"17. However, as there are efficient methods of getting the bee powerup without talking to the queen, there's a good chance that this isn't as fast as just collecting the bee powerup. To help test this in future, I tried to ensure I wasn't too sloppy with this run, thus giving a fair comparison with any bee-powerup run. That said though, I wouldn't be surprised if a full second could be saved with a few key optimisations.
Anyway, here's a detailed explanation of what I did:
• First, I navigated to the outside area. I was able to avoid swimming by briefly landing on the lilypads, and long-jumping away before they sank low enough to make me enter the water. Interestingly, this also makes it possible to collect the red coins without the bee powerup, but this is almost certainly slower.
• Next, I dive & recover onto a very steep floor triangle (that's supposed to be a wall). Normally it wouldn't be possible to stand on that wall, but in the most recent version of Last Impact, Kaze made it so that you can walk on pretty much any slopes, regardless of steepness. However, I will still slide if I lose all my speed, and I cannot land on it from any airborne state which involves dust-frames. This means my possible movement options are limited & slow. I navigate to the top of the slope, so I have more height for precise platforming later.
• Next, I use hyperspeed punching to efficiently cross the floor triangle. This is a glitch where punching on sufficiently steep slopes causes Mario to gain speed, rather than losing it. In the original game, this is possible on slopes with rather narrow ranges of steepnesses (too steep = Mario slides), but because of Last Impact's aforementioned slope physics changes, it is possible to perform HSP with far steeper slopes, and far more acceleration. Thus, I accelerate to around 100 speed before I break free. I do two 1-2-kick sequences, followed by 3 punches, which moves me just far enough for the next step to work.
• Next, I turn around & jumpdive onto the mushroom. This is pretty precise, but would be easier (and slower) had I continued the HSP for longer.
• I then get to the bar platforms using a long-jump + wallkick, being careful to pass under the ceiling of the other bar.
• Next I go to the next platform by long-jumping, and using the narrow floor of a gap in the white wall to reset my vertical speed, delaying the fall & allowing me to make it all the way.
• Finally, with a long-jump & 2 wallkicks, I make it to the star platform & collect the star.
SM64: Last Impact is a major ROMHack of Super Mario 64, created by Kaze Emanuar. His channel (with links to the hack & other projects of his) can be found at: youtube.com/user/KazeBG0
Also, shoutouts to MKDasher for making a LUA script which automatically finds the best possible input for moving at a given angle. This is the first TAS I've made using the script, and I found it very helpful. Here's his channel, where he does a mixture of SM64 TAS and Mario Kart DS time-trials: youtube.com/user/mkdasher
Total re-records: 2,906
Enter Melting Snow Peaks and break 1 colored box, and one big cork box, then end by dying.
- If you start off holding a, it is counted as a full a press, and not a half.
- You may not kill any enemies
- You may not press the a-button more than 5 times.
- No breaking more or less than 1 of each kind of box stated above.
- Use Version 1.01 of Star Road
Timing starts on the first off-white frame, and ends on the screen being completely black after dying.
Not a bad run, considering I did it in a couple of hours... The strategy I used is pretty self-explanatory, and the route is roughly the fastest. I missed a couple of things, such as the fact that you can WK off the ! block while still breaking it (and use that to get onto the slope & slide down quickly), and the fact that you can break the other box by grinding (which I'm surprised is possible). Better movement choices would've saved time too.
I also show another route idea I had while working on this run. The video as shown would be DQ (for killing an enemy), but I think it's possible to avoid with good RNG. You could also start with 1hp and can just barely avoid collecting coins as well. Even with all that, the route in the way I used it would still be ~1 second slower, and I couldn't think of a way to speed it up, so I gave up on it. AlexPalix came up with a pretty creative way of making it faster, but it still wasn't the fastest route in the end.
Re-records: 1078 (~1500 counting the alternate route run)
The Star Road TAS competition is being run by YO_WUZ_UP. If you're interested in joining in, all the relevant info can be found at discord.gg/PYJWnBK
Also if you're interested in the main SM64 TAS competition, all info for that is at discord.gg/yTnEgvY
In this video, I show that in some bizarre reality where PUs and their associated memes do not exist, it is in fact still possible to clone a blue coin productively (i.e. in a way that allows allows the original to be collected too, and therefore allows you to have more coins than you're supposed to). I do this by BLJing, before using the Downward Jump (DJ) glitch twice to reach the pipe & loading-zone before the blue coin block's timer runs out.
First of all, here's a step-by-step description of what happens:
• I start the run holding a blue-coin clone. If you want to see how this is achieved in practice, see Pannenkoek's video: youtu.be/fjY7mEtqvK4
• I use the ceiling of the star box to activate the handsfree glitch. Using this glitch, I can do a variety of moves I shouldn't be able to do while holding an object, which will be useful later. Unfortunately, I cannot walk or stand still for too long, so I have to jump & kick to where I need to be
• I navigate over to the elevator & activate it, as I'll need it to be at the bottom later
• I then navigate to the blue coin block & ground-pound it, activating it, and making the blue coin clone collectable. I then drop the coin from the handsfree state by running, and collect it as I navigate to the elevator
• I then BLJ to ~16,000 speed. I use pause-BLJs both to ensure the elevator doesn't go too high for the trick to work, and that I'm far enough away from the end of the elevator to avoid a weird floor glitch that kills all speed
• I then turn & downward-jump to the floor below, keeping as much speed as possible, before downward-jumping again to near the loading zone.
• After the last DJ, I enter the water-entry state, keeping my speed (though not moving because my next quarter-step is oob) & normal collision, and am upwarped to the water's surface above the ceiling. Soon after though, I enter the true swimming state, and water physics applies, which makes the ceiling downwarp back into the pipe. I swim to the loading-zone ASAP, with only 18f to spare. I think I can hit the loading-zone directly, but I was happy to reach it at all.
• I then navigate back to the blue coin block, and collect all the coins, to demonstrate that I can still collect the cloned coin. This process can be repeated indefinitely for infinite coins, but instead I just collect the blue coins.
Backstory
-----------------
Back in 2014, Pannenkoek2012 made a video (youtu.be/1GeID2o7CV0), explaining how blue coin clones work. In that video, he showed that it was seemingly impossible to clone blue coins in a way that allows them to be re-collected, whether by cloning the blue coin block, or the coins themselves. However, he did suggest one possible solution - if you could get to a loading-zone before the block timer runs out, it would be possible to re-activate the blue coin block, making the coin collectable again. At the time though, this seemed impossible - there was nowhere near enough time to get to the loading zone legitimately, and glitches just didn't seem to work.
In 2016, with the discovery of the Parallel Universes glitch, it became possible to reach the loading-zone by BLJing, and using an Overflow Jump to hit the loading-zone, before returning to the main-map. youtu.be/fjY7mEtqvK4
A couple of days ago, I re-watched Pannen's video, and began to wonder whether it could be possible to do this without ever leaving the main universe. My idea was to BLJ to crazy speeds, and use the downward jump to go straight to the LZ. It was a long shot, but worth a look. I tested it using an Excel-based calculator I made for PU movement, but which is applicable for ordinary hyperspeed too, and unfortunately found that the required speed would put me much too far away to be able to swim to the LZ in time. However, I also realised that it was possible to get there in two steps, using the main floor as a stepping-stone. Furthermore, the speeds required for this worked out extremely well, and no slow punching was required to kill speed anywhere. Further spreadsheet testing showed that it should be possible to make it work, and get to the LZ quickly enough.
I then put it all together a couple of days ago, creating a run that made it to the LZ with just 18 frames to spare, and confirming my idea!
I've included a description of the Downward Jump glitch in a pinned comment, because I couldn't make enough space in the description lol
Total re-records: 1,330 (Not including lots of testing & problem-solving that was not recorded)
In other news, thanks for 300 subs everyone! It's nice to know you like my content :D If you're new here & you enjoy the tool-assisted shenanigans, you might as well join those 300+ people ;-)
This isn't my 300 sub special btw - I'll make a proper one eventually, but for now I've got coursework to do...
Recently however, Tyler Kehne found a way to get at least 150 speed, and several other new hyperspeed techniques have been found. Because of this, it became worthwhile to investigate whether so much speed was really needed, and what the true minimum is.
Tyler then investigated the geometry of the area, and found that with perfect spacing & angle, a speed of ~110 was required to break free from the floor triangle & fling to the star - much lower than the ~285 Pannen used. At this point, I became interested in whether it would be possible to optimise the movement to the rock, to conserve more speed. I found a better way to reactivate my speed from the water, by using Z+C^, and using the small ledge to become airborne, which reduced the speed lost in the reactivation from ~100 to ~50 or so (depending on initial speed). That, and generally better execution made it immediately possible to collect the star from 400 speed (youtu.be/j9B4Lg9-10c), cutting the requirement considerably.
After that, Tyler asked me to look into reducing the speed further, and specifically to see what I could do with ~200 speed, as that was close to being feasible. Unfortunately, at such low speeds, I lost a lot more speed during the speed reactivation, due to it taking longer to become airborne. In the end, this speed loss was far too much to be feasible, so I looked into higher speeds.
While testing at ~250 speed, I found that although you could indeed launch to the star at very low speeds, you couldn't reach the star. Further testing showed that with a perfectly optimal launch, you still needed at least 162 speed to reach the star with enough height.
After more testing, I found that I needed to start with ~275 speed conserved to have enough left over to reach the star. All that was left to do was putting a run together, and executing everything correctly. I decided to start with 280 speed rather than 275, to give myself more room for error, as this would not be easy to execute properly. After some trial-and-error, I eventually succeeded.
To reiterate, this demonstration reduces the required hyperspeed to save this star's 'A' press from ~500 to ~275 - almost a 50% cut!
Note: I didn't travel along the most optimal line for this run. This is because I had to try different movements to get the spacing to work correctly. Thankfully I had a few frames to spare, so I could afford to do this. At ~275 speed, there would be far less room for this kind of movement.
I haven't had much time to TAS atm - especially not enough to make any more competition entries (especially decent ones), but here's a little run to bridge the gap...
I've been wanting to TAS this star for a long time, but until recently was put off by this level's lag. However, I recently tested it & found that lag-avoidance was pretty easy for this star - the only lag spike I saw was at the beginning (hence the camera moving closer to Mario at the start to fix it).
I'll probably TAS the (shoutouts to) Simpleflips strat for the other star in the near-future...
This ROMHack was made by Kaze. His channel can be found here: youtube.com/channel/UCuvSqzfO_LV_QzHdmEj84SQ
Total re-records: 1,475
Task:
In Rainbow Ride, warp from the big house to the area above the red coins and collect the red coin star.
- Time starts when stage is visible after warping and ends when Mario celebrates after collecting star
- Start recording just before warping. Do NOT record too late
- No grabbing objects prior to warping
- No collecting red coins prior to warping
- No interacting (killing, receiving knockback, etc.) with any killable enemy at all
- Activating bob-ombs fuse timer accidentally is fine if they don't affect you in any way (No pushing Mario or taking its coin)
This is a solo task and you may not co-operate with anyone else.
This time, I not only rushed the entry in limited time, but also screwed up the routing completely... I didn't really enjoy TASing this particular run, and never really wanted to work on it. Just when I was finally thinking of doing something, it started snowing, so I was slightly distracted...
Re-records: 2632
I haven't got much to say about this run really - I just chose the most intuitive route & tried to make a run out of it. I made a lot of sloppy mistakes, but I didn't really have time to correct them. Don't judge me for this - it's not my usual standard :P
One interesting thing about this run is that I inadvertently trigger a glitch that locks the camera in flying mode. This happens because I triple-jump to initiate a flight, but land shortly before I'd start flying. This confuses the game & puts me in the flying camera, which is fairly cool. It allowed for some funny camera-shake at the end too.
Task:
In Bob-Omb Battlefield, begin your run inside any cannon. You must break all 3 wing cap boxes and finish your run by entering any cannon.
- Begin recording just before going in the 1st cannon, do not take longer than 5 seconds to fire once firing is possible
- Timing begins when you shoot the 1st cannon and ends when you see an X on the camera while entering the cannon after you've broken the final wing cap box
- No equipping wing cap before timing begins
- No breaking wing cap boxes before timing begins
- No cloning or HOLP manipulation before timing starts
- No BLJing
- No warping
- No koopa shell usage
- No grabbing anything before time starts
This is a solo task and you may not co-operate with anyone else.
Deadline: 18 February 12:00AM GMT
If you're interested in joining in with the competition, or following what's happening, we have a Discord server: discord.gg/yTnEgvY
Also, if you want to see a compilation of the best entries, check out Sonicpacker's channel: youtube.com/user/sonicpacker
Finally, if you want to see uploads of the livestreams of all entries done shortly after the deadline, 1ted59's channel is the place to go: youtube.com/user/1ted59
Total re-records: 724
Task:
Enter Whomp's Fortress and collect 4 yellow coins, 3 red coins and 2 blue coins without collecting multiples of the same color coin in succession. Then collect any star.
- You may not BLJ
- Collecting the same color coin twice in a row will result in disqualification
- Collecting more coins than required will result in disqualification
Time starts on first visible frame of the level and ends on star celebration animation.
I'm surprised I didn't screw up like this sooner... My mistake here was that I inadvertently collected the second red coin 1 frame before the first blue coin, meaning I collected 2 consecutive red coins. This was due to bad RNG, which I didn't notice as I was under immense time-pressure, and only submitted 2 mins before the deadline.
Even if I wasn't DQd, this run would've been a meme. The route was basically me not knowing what to do as quickly as possible, and it's full of obvious errors, including uncorrected dust-frames. It looked fairly cool imo though, even if it was far from polished.
If I hadn't been DQd, my time would've been 19"9, and would've placed me in 9th, behind Cynimal. Oh well, hopefully I'll make up for this in task 3!
2816 rerecords were wasted on this mess.
I was only clickbaiting for the sake of the meme. Don't expect this normally, I'm not that kind of guy...
There was supposed to be a label at the bottom of the last run saying "Attempt 5 (-1f, Incomplete)", but I accidentally removed it in editing & only found out at the end of an hour-long encode, so it'll have to do... Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Task:
Enter Tiny-Huge Island from the small island painting and collect 4 secrets, then kill Mario. You must wall kick at least once after activating each secret.
- You may not wall kick before first secret
- You must start with Max HP
- If you wall kick and activate a secret on the same frame, the wall kick counts for after the secret
- Before blackness starts to fill the screen from Mario dying, Mario must have wall kicked for at least one frame
Time starts on first visible frame of the level and ends at the first black frame of Mario dying.
A good run imo. I put a lot of effort into trying to optimise my execution, saving many subtle frames in the process, but was mostly beaten due to using an inferior route (it would've been faster to collect the beach secret before the wall secret). Oh well, this was pretty fun to route & execute!
Also, 35 entries :O This competition is HUGE! Let's hope this continues through task 2 & onwards!
Also, to aid in comparison, here's a description of what changed between each attempt:
• Attempt 1: Came up with the basic route, didn't really try too hard to optimise it
• Attempt 2: Saved a frame near the start by clipping up onto the platform 1f earlier (through better positioning), then completely overhauled the latter half of the run with new movement
• Attempt 3: Landed from the DR near the wall further away, which allowed me to strain less, giving me a higher speed at the beach. Landed 1f earlier from both the DR and the speedkick on the beach area, as well as straining into the wall more, allowing me to wallkick 2f earlier. Also optimised the frame I chose to dive from the jump on, which I'd lazily missed in the previous attempt.
• Attempt 4: Changed the triple-jump + wallkick after the 3rd secret to use a double-jump instead, which causes me to take a lower trajectory, and means I have to jump one less time, which means I don't lose 1/5 of my speed twice. I was also careful to land high enough up on the slope to save a landing-frame at the end of the dive. I wasn't able to save the landing-frame at the end of the dive-recover though, as I couldn't move far enough (this may be fixable with VS manipulation, idk)
• Attempt 5: Saved a frame, by landing at the end of the first double-jump a frame earlier. This requires very precise (near-unit-perfect) positioning to be able to reach the platform before the end of the frame. I knew this frame could be saved from the 2012 120-star TAS, and wouldn't have thought of it otherwise. Unfortunately, I ran out of time before I could put together a new run with this save. Oh well...
Total re-records: 4379 (~1000 more if you count the 5th attempt).
If you're interested in following the competition, I'd recommend subscribing to Sonicpacker, his channel can be found at: youtube.com/user/sonicpacker, as he will be making compilations of the best entries, as well as helping manage the competition. It was an old video of his that inspired me to use this format for my competition entry!
The competition is being run at this Discord server, so head here if you're interested in participating, or just want to follow along! discord.gg/yTnEgvY
SM64 Ghost Race is a ROMHack made by Kaze Emanuar. That & other great hacks can be found at his channel here: youtube.com/user/KazeBG0
Anyway, here's a TAS I spent some time working on recently. It's not optimal, but (for aforementioned reasons) I ran out of motivation to work on it & don't have time over the next few days, so I decided to rush the ending somewhat so I have something to show for my effort. This was only a first-draft TAS anyway, so I'll probably come back to it at some point.
I became interested in doing an LI star after realising (with some help from SilentSlayers) that I haven't done much forward-movement-based TAS for a while. I also haven't done much hack-TASing, and I wanted to do a new star so I could test my skills at route/movement planning. I decided on this star as it had some stuff I hadn't done much of before (e.g. sliding-speed), and looked straightforward enough to not take forever, while complicated enough to actually be worth doing.
I think most of my movement (other than at the end) is pretty optimal - it's mostly just angles & landing frames that can be improved.
It's interesting to note how long this star is BLJless, especially compared to BLJ (5"43 by Dar gos: youtu.be/abtmNytZpQg). Most of the length of the run is simply getting to where I need to be because the level is so large. Just imagine how long the 100-coin star will take...
Re-records: 2739
I have some more videos planned in the new year, so it might be worth subscribing ;-) Also pls like the video - it's good for motivation :P
• Run time: 10"20
• Rerecords: 632
This route was very odd - visiting the red-coin area twice at different points, rather than just collecting them at the same time. This really shows how strange routing in this hack can be, as distance isn't always a significant factor - often, it's more important for the distance from A to B to sync up as a multiple of 4,000, than it is for it to be short. This makes routing for complex stars REALLY hard.
Anyway, I was lucky in this case, as the red coin area synced up very well with both the star and the cannon, allowing me to quickly navigate to both. It's a shame it takes so long to use the cannon, but I couldn't seem to find a better route.
This run was put together pretty quickly, so it's probably not optimal.
5'17"05 by TimeTravelPenguin: youtu.be/gHP9aAeMU_s
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4'15"87 by Luigihaxd: youtu.be/Q_TAGmaRfsI
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3'48"20 by Dargos, myself, Eddio0141 & ALX: youtu.be/FIx9TMOw5P8
Also shown:
• BitFS Bowser, done by me for the WIP 120-Star TAS: youtu.be/0XGsXcpam24
• 0-Star WIP, by Ethan White (no video)
In this video, I compare the new Releasio 0-star TAS with the previous WRs, section-by-section. Because some runs were part of other WIP projects or slower than others, various TASes have sections where they are fastest, and so multiple runs need to be shown here.
I made this video mostly out of curiosity, as I was interested in seeing how much faster some strategies were than others, and being able to compare them visually. It also made for a nice excuse to share the TAS on my channel & make more people aware of it :P
Huge thanks to Luigihaxd & Ethan White for giving me their .m64s, which not only allowed me to make this video, but were also very helpful in making the new TAS.
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18"33 by me: youtu.be/bAFwAKyhkLw
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18"30 by me
In this run, I collect the star Treasure Of The Ocean Cave in 18"30, or 1 frame faster than my previous run. That save came from me choosing a better angle for the jumpdive from the 2nd to the 3rd chest. This angle was closer to the angle I need to turn to in order to activate the third chest - by enough that it took me 1f less turning to reach it, allowing me to turn round to the last chest (and complete the level) 1 frame sooner.
I tried to expand upon this save to see if I could save a second frame, but by that point the angle is so far off the direction you want to move, you just can't strain back without losing time.
I should've spotted this save the first time around really, but it became more apparent after I'd done because I better understood the chests & the angles required to activate them. This led me to realise a couple of days ago that I may not need to change my angle by much to save a frame (~500 units in the end), which ended up being possible to do without going too far off the intended movement direction. I TASed it today, and here's the result!
It's interesting to note that this frame makes the TAS sub-18 by the Ghost Race hack's timer.
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