Submission #7685: BruceShankle, Fox, andzura & Seedborn's N64 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask "game end glitch" in 22:44.10

DISCLAIMER

Where can I watch it?

Wait, haven't I seen this TAS before?

Movie Details

• Emulator: Bizhawk 2.6.1
• Core Type: Pure Interpreter
• Active Video Plugin: GLideN64
• Controllers: 1 and 3
• Game Version: Japanese 1.0
• Rom SHA1: 5FB2301AACBF85278AF30DCA3E4194AD48599E36
• Profile: N64 Tool-assisted Speedruns
• Required Plugin Settings: UseDefaultHacks TRUE
• Frame Count: 81,846
• Rerecord Count: 46,295

RAM Memory Addresses used

• 1EF48C - Current File (8 Byte, Hex, must be viewed in hex editor)
• 50B28C - Secondary File (8 Byte, Hex, must be viewed in hex editor)
• 3FFFC4 - X (4 Byte, Float)
• 3FFFC8 - Y (4 Byte, Float)
• 3FFFCC - Z (4 Byte, Float)
• 1EF46C - Time of Day "ToD." (2 Byte, Unsigned)
• 40005E - Facing Angle "FAC. ANG." (2 Byte, Unsigned) (2 Byte, Hex)
• 400A74 - Movement Angle "MOV. ANG." (2 Byte, Unsigned)
• 400A70 - Speed "SPE." (4 Byte, Float)
• 3E704A - Vertical Camera "VERT. CAM." (2 Byte, Unsigned)
• 3E704C - Horizontal Camera "HORI. CAM." (2 Byte, Unsigned)
• 1EF49A - Rupee Count "RUPEES" (2 Byte, Unsigned)
• 3FF3B0 - Room Number "ROOM" (1 Byte, Unsigned)
• 1EF506 - Bomb Ammo (1 Byte, Unsigned)
• 3E89C4 - Bomb Actor Count "BOMB ACTORS" (1 Byte, Unsigned)

Glitches, Techniques, and Game Mechanics

• Textboxes and Cutscenes: A little known mechanic about textboxes and cutscenes, is that advancing textboxes on the earliest frame possible is not always necessary for triggering the next textbox on the earliest frame, because the game has a timer for how long it has to display the cutscene the textbox is displayed on. This is why you sometimes see some delayed textboxes, because they didn't need to be cleared on the first frame possible to achieve the best time. And in terms of textbox mechanics, normal textboxes can be advanced by pressing A, B, or C-up at the end of the dialogue, although some textboxes can be "quick-text" where pressing B will immedietly display all the textbox, allowing you to advance the textbox much sooner than normal textboxes.

• File Name Code: File names can be used to write code when setup properly, and whenever a file is created, its name is written into an unused portion of memory until the game is reset. Because the current file name you are playing on is always loaded somewhere else in memory, this gives us access to 2 file names to point to using SRM.

• Curved Backwalking: Holding slightly down and to the left or right relative to link and the current camera when z targeted allows you to curve the momentum of your backwalk. This is important for crossing long distances that aren't completely straight, such as the beginning of lost woods, or for when you need to open a door and using sidehops puts link too far away from the door to outspeed backwalking.

• Curved Sidehoping and Backflipping: Holding any direction (that isn't the last frame of the sidehop/backflip) allows you to shift the movement angle. This is important in sections where you shouldn't move in a straight line, such as in the next area of the lost woods where link sidehops across the stumps.

• Untargeted Initial Sidehops/Backflips (I don't have a good name for this): When you sidehop or backflip by pressing A without being in a targeted state and retarget by pressing Z afterwards, it causes your current movement angle to shift in the direction you were sidehoping/backflipping towards. For example, if you were to do an untargeted sidehop to the left and retarget, your next sidehop would act as if link had turned slightly to the left, putting him slightly down of left relative to the initial sidehop.

• Untargeted Deku Sidehops/Backflips: If deku link is not targeted while airborne during a sidehop/backflip, he will turn in the moving direction until retargeted. This is useful because every other form of link has to land on the ground before being able to make any significant changes to the direction of their sidehops, which costs 2 extra frames, though it may only cost you one frame since link continues moving on the frame you change his facing angle.

• Z-targeting with walls: Pressing Z-target while up against a wall will force links facing angle to align with the wall. If you do this during an untargeted sidehop, it also shifts link's momentum towards the wall. This is useful during fox's TAS of the stock pot inn, where he uses this technique to fall forward under the upper wall to get around a corner faster.

• Z-Sliding: Pressing Z every other frame allows you to retain your current speed without being affected by slopes. By pressing Z during the 2nd input frame of an untargeting visual frame, you can Z-Slide without losing your speed while z-target is being locked on an object, such as the dog in south clock town. Z-slides are typically done out of a backwalk or a Hyper Extended Superslide, though it can be performed from most grounded movement.

• Superslide: A superslide occurs when link rolls into a grabbable object while shielded, then grabs the object with A and then takes recoil damage from an explosion. The superslide will end if you let go of the R to stop shielding, causing link to stop by picking up the item that was superslided off, even if it isn't currently loaded. This is one of the most common ways to perform Stale Reference Manipulation.

• Hyper Extended Superslide: HESS for short, rolling into any kind of damage source during one of two correct frame of link's roll animation and holding the extended superslide position (which requires a minimum of 16x, as opposed to Ocarina of Time's 8x) on the control stick, will momentarily cause link to gain -18 speed, allowing link to quickly travel backwards using methods like the extended superslide position or Z-sliding to retain the speed. His directions can be controlled by holding ESS in the opposite direction of where link needs to be pivoted. Holding Z in this state will allow you to move in the opposing direction of the control stick without changing link's facing angle.

• Extended Superslide Position: ESS for short, holding a minimum of 16x on the analog stick in any direction that isn't link's facing angle will cause link to turn to the direction of the analog input relative to the camera. This is mostly useful for maintaining the negative speed gained from HESS's, but it can be used for ESS-twisted sidehops/backflips as well.

• ESS-Twisted Sidehops/Backflips: Holding the ESS position on the analog stick until link's movement angle has shifted will allow you to change link's facing angle and use Z to target on the same frame. If you backflip or sidehop during this time after changing link's facing angle this way, link will shift his current facing angle to the pre-targeted facing angle. This can be entertaining to see during playarounds but can also be useful in some circumstances where you are not traveling in a straight line. But this technique unfortunately seems limited to a certain range of angles depending on the current camera.

• Gainer: If you target a wall and backflip without holding Z and retarget the wall on first frame of the backflip, you can use the backflip to climb low hanging ledges that could be otherwise unreachable. An example of this being useful would be the platform in front of the clock tower doors, which is otherwise unreachable without using the business scrub deku flower (which would cost time), or using a gainer on the wall closest to the silver rupee chest in east clock town as zora link to reach the chest faster.

• Lost Woods Tatl and Deku Flower Skip (very precise movement): It is possible to skip Tatl's textbox near the deku flower and the flower itself at the end of the lost woods using a precise backwalk around the textbox trigger in combination with a VERY precise spin-jump to popup on the ledge.

• Escaping East Clock Town: It's possible to easily escape east clock town by backwalking against the guard on the side of the entrance closest to the milk bar/inn. This is used to collect rupees outside of clock town as well as skip the north clock town introduction cutscene.

• RNG Manipulation: It's possible to manipulate seemingly random events in the game without losing time by making analog inputs while an area is being loaded, giving you a different RNG seed. This was used to manipulate the bombers kids to be farther away from link so that pressing A to sidehop does not trigger their textboxes, as well as before 2nd cycle Termina field to get two bomb drops and before the observatory to get the blue rupee drops from each pot to be directed towards link. These manipulations are done using a lua script that generates random inputs between up, down, left right, upleft, upright, downleft, and downright.

• Loading Lag Manipulation: To start explaining this section, first let's get one thing out of the way. Majora's Mask does not load area's in the same way as Ocarina of Time. You may enter a load zone and end up outside on one frame, but if you enter that load zone and make a any kind of input right before the loading starts, you may end up coming out a frame later, or sometimes a frame sooner than you would have if you had not held any inputs. RNG manipulation, which is done by making inputs while the game is loading, seems to affect future loading zones and how they react to inputs being made before the load. You can end up in a circumstance where performing RNG manipulation causes the first, second, or third loading zone from that point to have an unpreventable extra frame of lag, but it's completely unpredictable, which means it has to be accounted for by testing it manually. But some loading zones have a "cursed seed", which is a scenario where no matter how many manipulations you perform with your current RNG, there is no way to accomplish your desired result. This TAS had a cursed seed, which occurs after the 2nd hard reset, in which we need to collect two RNG bomb drops in Termina field and manipulate the pot drop trajectories to hit link. While only testing random inputs from the loading zone to Termina field, it was impossible to guarantee those results. So I began doing RNG manipulations in earlier loading zones so that we would have a different seed to use when we manipulated in the loading zone to termina field. In earlier loading zones, such as the load to clock tower and the load to south clock town, performing the RNG manipulation would cause us to be cursed with an unremovable lag frame in the load to termina field. But then I did 5 different manipulations with the loading zone to east clock town and we still ended up with a lag frame. Notice how I didn't say "unremovable" this time? Because certain lag frames can be remedied by making an input on the analog stick for at least one frame during link's state prior to the load while link is entering the loading zone. Based on my testing, your manipulated RNG can affect the loading zone lag as well, which was such the case with the RNG manipulated in the loading zone to west clock town from day 3, in which nearly every other RNG seed seems to have caused a lag frame upon re-entering SCT with the same inputs. In short, to optimize for loading zone lag, you should avoid holding inputs on the analog stick during link's uncontrollable state when entering a loading zone to prevent possible lag frames, but you should test to see if holding an input happens to cause your load to happen sooner and use that if it does. When factoring in RNG manipulation, you must take into account that the RNG could affect whether you get the lag frame or not (depending on the circumstances). Try to setup a scenario where RNG does not affect the lag, so that you can effficiently optimize RNG with lua scripting. Otherwise, you may be encountering frequent desyncs and wasted script time. This is not a well understood mechanic, as it seems I am the first person to have found it, so there's not much known about how it actually works. I can only suggest ways to get around the extra lag frame which can sometimes happen.

• Input Lag: The previous events that have lead to the game's present state seem to affect which frames the game checks your inputs, even if there isn't any noticeable visual lag. This is noticeable during the heap setup for SRM, as executing the same input file even with a working RNG seed for aligned pot drop trajectories is nearly guaranteed to result in a desync during either the input change during the HESS, and sometimes during both the first and third backwalks as well. Because of input lag, whenever a new optimization was found to the run after the 2nd hard reset, I had to redo the inputs for manipulating the SRM heap due to different amounts of input lag each time. Despite coining the term "input lag" though, there is no in-game lag, the inputs are just processed on different frames.

• Cutscene Skipping: The Happy Mask Salesman Cutscene can be skipped by never being on the cutscene trigger for more than one frame at a time. This can be done by continuously pausing the game to advance the game one frame at a time. Cutscenes that occur just after the game is saved can be skipped by hard-resetting the game, such as after exiting the clock tower for the first time or anytime after confirming the song of time textbox.

• Stale Reference Manipulation: Often referred to as SRM for short, is a technique to write data to a referenced location that isn't pointing to the original actor it was supposed to point to. This can be used for various purposes such as modifying a chest's contents to rely on link's angle, run the current file names as code (N64 only), or even skip first cycle (Wii only).

• Arbitrary Code Execution: Often referred to as ACE for short, is a technique available in few games, which allows controller inputs to be ran as code within the game. It is the most potent glitch any video game can have, as it allows literally anything within the limitations of the console/emulator to occur.

The Route

1st Cycle

1. Setup File 1 to write the "080200BE AF801448" hex code.
2. Get to clock tower from the lost woods.
3. Skip the Happy Mask Salesman cutscene using pause buffers to prevent the game from having two frames of being in the cutscene trigger.
4. Hard-reset the game after the game saves to skip a cutscene with Tatl.
5. Reach night of the 3rd day by advancing time using grandma's stories and the scarecrows dancing.
6. Collect the stray fairy in east clock town and escape east clock town.
7. Collect at least 50 rupees by manipulating the RNG from the patches of bushes Termina Field and get the magic reward from the NCT great fairy.
8. Buy the bomb bag from the bomb shop and use a gainer to reach the clock tower platform.
9. Wait until midnight for the clock tower door to open (this is the main reason why first cycle takes such a long time to complete)
10. After the clock door opens, shoot a deku bubble at skull kid and collect the ocarina of time.
11. Learn the song of time and equip bombs along with the ocarina of time. This is the only pause in this TAS.
12. Hard-reset after saving the game through confirming the song of time save prompt.

2nd Cycle

1. Setup File 2 to write the "0807BD23 3C1C8017" hex code.
2. Load file 1 and enter the clock tower.
3. Learn the song of healing and obtain the deku mask.
4. Leave Clock Town through the east entrance and obtain 2 bomb drops from the closet patch of grass via RNG Manipulation.
5. HESS using the nearby chuchu as a damage source and clip behind the fence around the observatory using an acute angle with the wall, and then use a Z-slide to redirect link's movement angle to reach the observatory door faster.
6. Manipulate the Actor Heap using bombs between observatory (room 1) and the hideout (room 0).
7. Trigger SRM by supersliding off of a pot using a bomb that is placed to apply recoil link to link without breaking the pot
8. Release the Z button while the camera is inverted to twist the camera away from the observatory and cull (unload) the pot by having it off-camera.
9. Re-enter the observatory and drop the SRM within a certain range of angles to point to the moons tear draw function.
10. Make link's last targeted angle either EE8C, EE8D, EE8E, EE8F or EE90 in hex and face angle 0807.
11. Pull out the ocarina to pan the camera with link's current facing angle to load the moons tear draw function.
12. Use the two loaded file names to allow controller 1 and controller 3 to write inputs that can be ran as code.

Technical Explanation of Total Control ACE, by Seedborn

Contributors to this TAS

• Türkenheimer helped me determine the fastest combination of file names for triggering the total control ACE.
• Rylie walked me through how the heap manipulation worked and explained how the angles could be setup.

What is Each Author Responsible For?

• I, Edwin Bruce Shankle IV, TAS'd the 1st lost woods section, the 1st half of the 2nd lost woods section, movement to the inn, movement to WCT from ECT, night 3, and 2nd cycle, except for the last ACE angle, as well as the RNG manipulation for the two bomb drops in Termina field and the pot rupee spawn trajectories. I've also redone this entire TAS several times due to re-optimizing, desyncs, finding better file names, having the wrong file name to begin with, etc. This may be 6th or 7th time redoing this, but it is my BEST! At this point, if this run is ever beaten without any new strategies, it will be from lag reduction in some way that isn't currently known about.

• Fox TAS'd the 2nd half of the 2nd lost woods section, the pause buffered HMS CS skip, the stock pot inn movement, and the movement to the scarecrow shop. There's no way this TAS would have as much optimization as it does today without Fox's help, he essentially TAS'd the two most precise tricks in the entire run which I don't think anyone else could pull off as well as he did.

• Andzura TAS'd the flower angle to sync fox's inputs for 2nd half of the 2nd lost woods section, lua scripted RNG manipulation for the two bomb drops in termina field, lua scripted rupee spawn trajectories in the observatory, found the input for the last angle before Seedborn executed ACE, and researched the heap manipulation. He has ran his lua scripts for this movie several different times, I really appreciate how much work he has put into making this TAS possible.

• Seedborn TAS'd the inputs for total control Arbitrary code execution to load the end of the credits using controllers 1 and 3. He also wrote the technical explanation of ACE for this submission, and looked over this submission with me for a little bit, as well as providing the addresses for file name 1 & 2 and discovering ACE in the first place. He's the real legend here.

Closing Notes and 1st Cycle Skip