• Aims for fastest time
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Manipulates luck
Video Plugin: Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6 Sound Plugin: Jabo's DirectSound 1.6 Input Plugin: TAS Input Plugin 0.6 RSP: RSP emulation Plugin
Together, AKA and Swordless Link worked in an attempt to beat Super Mario 64 in the lowest possible time, through several new opimisations as well as an entirely new route for one part of the game. They managed to finish the game in a mere time of 15 minutes and 8 seconds.
The new route saved about 6 seconds. It consists of avoiding Bob-omb Battlefield completely, and instead getting a third star from Hazy Maze Cave and Lethal Lava Land. The stars we chose were "Swimming Beast in the Cavern" for HMC (AKA's idea) and "Hot Foot it into the Volcano" for LLL (Swordless Link's idea). These stars seemed to be the fastest alternatives to BoB.
The never-before seen optimisations in this run contributed greatly to reaching the improved time. The optimisations may seem to be little things, like a dive in place of a long jump, or a cleverly executed wall kick, but overall they saved the rest of the time that wasn't saved through the new route.

AKA's comments

When I first saw the currently published run, I thought the movie was near perfect and could only be improved by 1 or 2 seconds, I had no interest in doing another run, mainly becuase it would visually look very simalar. However, when I saw a unique glitch in HMC being performed, I suddenly thought it might possible to grab the star and sure enough, with brief testing, it was, and it also worked out to be faster than the current slowest star. I was making minor improvements until by chance I stumbled across Swordlesss Link's WIP, which showed quite a lot of neat stategies I wasn't aware of. It had many improvements I didn't think were possible, although there were some bits where I was faster or I thought could be improved a little further, I proposed to him that we should work on it together and we also had a complete rethink on the all the strategies and lines of thinking at pratically every part in the game, some of the new strategies saved a very surprising amount of time. It was also shrewdly calculated that another star over the Chain Chomp star was faster to obtain when all the time diversions were calculated. In terms of work put in, it was near enough 50/50, a lot of time the person whose playing changes 6-7 times in a very short period of time, so no one was assigned specific sections to do. It should also be strongly noted that the real re-record rate is significantly higher than whats stated my estimate is probally over double what's stated.

Swordless Link's comments

I had been working on a TAS of this game in secret, and one day contacted AKA for help with editing a m64 for another run. It was at this time that he informed me that he had also been working in secret on a new SM64 TAS. We decided to show each other what we had so far, and discovered that there were parts where he had done better than I had, and parts where I had done better than he had. Granted, neither of us were that far into the game, but we decided at that point that the best solution would be to co-author the run, so that's exactly what we did. AKA suggested going to HMC for a third star, instead of the Island star in BoB. I then suggested getting a third star from LLL to eliminate any need for BoB, and AKA timed this to find that it was considerably quicker than the old route. Most of the time saved over the previous run, however, comes from our optimisations, and little things we discovered along the way. For example, I found that you could grab the third Bowser while he was in the air, which saved a reasonable amount of frames. Although this altered his final position, which placed us not quite under the star, the amount of frames gained by it outweighed the few frames lost by it. Another new strat we used was when backwards long jumping on the 50 star door stairs, I came up with the idea of long jumping onto them first. AKA then came up with the idea of getting Mario inside the next set of stairs to save time. Both of these combined saved a lot of time in that part of the game. We achieved a time of 15:08, after hoping initially to beat the current run by around 3 seconds.

People we want to thank

Mukki - For discovering the glitch we used in HMC.
Rikku - For your previous runs which served as a fantastic guide for most of this run.

DeHackEd: AVI under way

Sir_VG
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Tompa wrote:
To unlock the second Bowser lvl you need to take the submarine star. So far no one has figured out a way to get in there without taking the star.
Outside of using Gameshark codes.
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Sir VG wrote:
Outside of using Gameshark codes.
Obviously.
Has never colored a dinosaur.
Chamale
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I wonder if it would be possible to somehow "deactivate" that thing for just a few frames, enough to sneak past it...
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Or if there were a BLJ point into the attic door. That would rule. I second the AVI request, by the way. As I'm on Kubuntu I haven't the means to watch this no doubt amazing run and wine-ing Mupen is an exercise in pure pain.
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mushroom wrote:
Or if there were a BLJ point into the attic door. That would rule.
That's already been done. The second floor doesn't load unless you open the door with the key though.
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Ah. That sucks.
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This run had me grinning ear to ear the entire time. Keep the surprises coming!
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Amazing run! Voted YES! I like the way you beat bowser the third time, I didn't know that you can throw him again without much waiting. Excellent work!
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Yes vote and great job. I'll give a free economics textbook to the person who gets this game under 15 minutes. How's that for an incentive?!!? // Seriously, the textbook company reps just give them away like candy to grad students.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [849] N64 Super Mario 64 "16 stars" by SwordlessLink & Mitjitsu in 15:08.00
Mitjitsu
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I've put it the AVI on YouTube incase anyone want to see it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZOBdU_5zlA
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I'm disappointed that you didn't remade the last part of the bowser road, but ok...
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I'm disappointed of the camera action. It didn't seem very good. Different, yes, but being different from what is good has high chances of being not good, as was shown here.
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So I wasn't the only one unimpressed by the new camera work. Oh well. It isn't under my control, but I didn't like it...
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Mind telling me what was wrong with the camera?
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The camera angles were great, good job. : )
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Swordless Link wrote:
Mind telling me what was wrong with the camera?
The camera should view what the viewer is interested in seeing. ― At 2:25, it should view from the left side to better show where Mario is going. If you view it frame by frame, or are familiar with the scene, you can follow it, but not otherwise. ― At 3:09, the camera goes off from viewing where Mario is going and shows the skies and his hat instead. ― At 4:40 onwards, Mario does a multitude of jumps towards the camera onto platforms that the viewers gets to see only a fraction of second before Mario lands on them. A broader view would be nicer. ― At 4:45, Mario goes behind a wall. ― At 4:49, the camera angle suddenly changes in a confusing way, and Mario is temporarily lost from view ― At 4:54, Mario is again lost of view because Mario is behind platforms from where the camera is. Let me guess, you're nearsighted? This movie suffers critically from a nearsightedness syndrome: you won't know what you bumped into until it's at an arm distance. Combined with a hyperactivity syndrome: the viewer cannot concentrate on any fixed point of the scene because the camera moves a lot. In movie filmography, close angles and fast camera movements are used in scenes designed to give a sense of panic and chaos. Broader views and smoothly moving cameras are used when everything is under control. In TAS movies, the player should be in control. ― At 6:00, Mario disappears from view again, camera is showing a wall instead. ― At 7:31 onwards, the camera does a couple of annoyingly fast movements, because the objects of the interest (Mario, star, bully) cannot fit into the same view due to the positioning of the camera. And I'm only halfway to the movie. Need I comment on the second half? EDIT: Here's the second half. ― 11:59, where did that platform suddenly appear from? Where did Mario move? What happened? This does not give sense of Mario doing some neat trick, it gives a sense of bad camera control. ― 12:02, where is Mario going? Camera should be preparing in advance, but now we get to watch what appears like several seconds on a gray wall. ― 12:02 onwards, where is Mario heading? The platforms Mario approaches are first seen less than half a second before Mario stands on them. Is Mario running blind? At least the camera is blind! ― 12:14, where is Mario heading? I cannot see, until he's actually there! ― 12:30, is there only half of the platform? I cannot see the other half. What's there? So this is why I think this movie has bad camera control.
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― At 2:25, it should view from the left side to better show where Mario is going. If you view it frame by frame, or are familiar with the scene, you can follow it, but not otherwise. I'm pretty sure you can see fine well what is going on. ― At 3:09, the camera goes off from viewing where Mario is going and shows the skies and his hat instead. That was AKA's idea, but personally I liked it. I thought it made the fall more dramatic. ― At 4:40 onwards, Mario does a multitude of jumps towards the camera onto platforms that the viewers gets to see only a fraction of second before Mario lands on them. A broader view would be nicer. Only being able to see it for a fraction of a second just adds to the suspense, and makes it appear to be moving faster than it is. ― At 4:45, Mario goes behind a wall. I'll accept that, but to be honest, it's only for a split second, and in my opinion, looked better than rotating the camera, then having to rotate it again a second later to see him. ― At 4:49, the camera angle suddenly changes in a confusing way, and Mario is temporarily lost from view That's because of the star animation. We had no control over that. ― At 4:54, Mario is again lost of view because Mario is behind platforms from where the camera is. I agree with you here. We should've turned it so you could see his right side. ― At 6:00, Mario disappears from view again, camera is showing a wall instead. Only for a split second. It's not exactly a big loss. And it looks fine, in my opinion. ― At 7:31 onwards, the camera does a couple of annoyingly fast movements, because the objects of the interest (Mario, star, bully) cannot fit into the same view due to the positioning of the camera. The bully was dead by that point. All that had to be in view was Mario and the star... And I'm only halfway to the movie. Need I comment on the second half? Please do.
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Swordless Link wrote:
Please do.
Did. I think of the camera control as, "if I were actually in that scene myself, as a spectator, and I could fly, where would I want to be, in order to watch the whole show and not miss anything?" I would naturally choose the locations with best view, and I would try to predict where the interesting things are going to happen and look at them in advance while keeping the actor(s) in focus. That's what kind of experience I think the camera controller(s) should strive for offering to the audience. In Mario 64, at times, the game takes control over your camera. You should cooperate with the game's camera control so that the end result is smooth for the viewer. Know that the game does not actually insist on jerking the camera ― it only insists on viewing some scene. By having the scene at lesser angle to the camera's focal point to begin with, you can lessen the jerk.
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All I'll say is that I would like to discourgage people judging movies solely along these lines, we've already had such issues with stylistic choices in 2D games.
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I've noticed that people who complain are people who've never done N64 tasing.
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laughing_gas wrote:
I've noticed that people who complain are people who've never done N64 tasing.
I remind you that the audience of these movies surpasses the small group of people who have done N64 TASing by several orders of magnitude. The players produce a video for the audience. Your (implied) argument could be generalized to "you have never done X, hence you are not qualified to criticize X". It belongs to the discussion killer group of arguments, also known as the elitist argument.
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Any chance of getting this to Google Video?
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laughing_gas wrote:
I've noticed that people who complain are people who've never done N64 tasing.
I've done plenty of N64 TASing and I've greatly stressed the importance of camera angles, in any game but especially for this one where the camera can be controlled.
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comicalflop wrote:
laughing_gas wrote:
I've noticed that people who complain are people who've never done N64 tasing.
I've done plenty of N64 TASing and I've greatly stressed the importance of camera angles, in any game but especially for this one where the camera can be controlled.
I didn't complain about it on this run because the camera influences lag, and it's hard to control the camera + finding the fastest frames, which is an issue on a any% run. But for the 100% run, the player should focus some on entertainment too... I'd say something like this (my opinion): what the player should focus: any% run = 99%speed 1%entertainment 100% run = 80%speed 20%entertainment I don't mean that the run should be 80% of possible fastest time, giving room to speed/entertainment trade-offs, I mean that the player shouldn't focus so much on frame count, because that detracts his attention of what could be more entertaining for the viewer at especific oportunities.