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Game objectives

This run was built in less than a week and mainly made from hex editing. I asked some SM64 TASers if they would let me use their optimized single star runs and they gladly accepted, which led to this masterpiece. I really hope you enjoy this run!
This run is an improvement of 2 minutes and 58 seconds to the first "16 stars" TAS by Spezzafer and an improvement of 30.6 seconds to the last "16 stars" TAS made by DennisBalow and ReneBalow.

New tricks in this run (pasted from the "0 stars" submission text)

0-Input BLJ
When you have no input on the analog in between the "A" button presses for a BLJ, your speed will not decrease, thus exponentially increasing the speed at the end result of the BLJs. This saves time in a few places.
Pause BLJ
Normally, you can only press the "A" button fifteen times per second because the game runs at thirty frames per second. If you had thirty continuous "A" frames, you'd just be holding "A" down, not tapping it. However, if you pause while pressing the "A" button, you are given an opportunity on the next frame to release the "A" button. You can follow that by repressing it when it's not paused (therefore letting you BLJ the equivalent of thirty times "per second"). This is useful when you need more speed to travel a long distance. It isn't as helpful as it seems as it takes three extra frames to do a Pause BLJ. In order to save time you need the extra speed to save at least 3 frames.
Forward Jump Kick Trick
While Mario is recovering after a forward movement (dive, long jump, etc.), you can hold the "A" button prior to landing, and on the frame you land, press the "B" button with the analog stick at ^54 or less (on the TAS Input Plugin), you will do a jump kick. The trick is that it maintains all of the same speed from before the landing. You can also apply this when moving backwards (such as after a BLJ), by holding "A" before you are in the running animation, and then pressing "B." This causes Mario to do a jump kick and retain the same speed. This is useful for crossing long gaps and covering large distances.
Slide Kicking
This has been found to be the best method of forward movement over a long distance, because unlike the jump kick, you can do it repeatedly without losing speed.
Punch Trick
Instead of running for one frame when accelerating from a stop, you press the "B" button with no analog input, which gives you a starting speed of 10 instead of roughly 8.
Forward Speed Conversion
After triggering text, Mario is in a frozen state with his speed stuck at what it was while activating the text. When the text is read, you have the ability to do many things. One trick we can do with this is to press "C^" (upper C button) and "Z" at the same frame and hold a specific direction to get forward speed (as opposed to backwards speed which we originally used to activate the text). This is useful because forward speed can be used for things like getting to high places, such as the endless stair case. If you don't use Z with C^, your options are limited, because you only move forwards or backwards in a state that will not let Mario jump.
Instant Jump Kick Trick
This trick allows you to jump kick on the very first frame that Mario has input. This also is enables you to choose an angle for Mario to travel. You do this by holding A for at least one frame before Mario can move, then push B and the direction you want to go on the first frame of input.

Star times (excluding text messages)

StarTime
Bowser in the Dark World Red Coins34"87
Blast Away the Wall7"17
Fall onto the Caged Island9"20
Shoot into the Wild Blue9"23
Inside the Ancient Pyramid16"95
Shining Atop the Pyramid6"13
In the Talons of the Big Bird13"67
Hot-Foot-It into the Volcano16"07
8-Coin Puzzle with 15 Pieces13"90
Red-Hot Log Rolling7"50
Boil the Big Bully14"37
Swimming Beast in the Cavern14"90
Watch for Rolling Rocks14"13
A-Maze-ing Emergency Exit10"77
Board Bowser's Sub33"48
Bowser in the Fire Sea22"27
Bowser in the Sky29"30

Authors

Eru

He did Boil the Big Bully (which was a pain to hex, along with Watch for Rolling Rocks).

Mickey/VIS

He did Bowser in the Dark World Red Coins, 8-Coin Puzzle with 15 Pieces, Watch for Rolling Rocks and Bowser in the Sky entry. Huge thanks to him, since I was struggling with that last part.

snark

He did Hot-Foot-It into the Volcano, Shining Atop the Pyramid and Inside the Ancient Pyramid.

The "0 stars" team

They let me use their Lakitu skip, Bowser in the Dark World entry, Bowser in the Fire Sea and Bowser in the Sky.

The Japanese SM64 community

They did Fall onto the Caged Island and Shoot into the Wild Blue.

Special thanks

sonicpacker

He supported me and helped hexing the rerecords.

Efrain and Jesus

They let me take a look at their "16 stars" WIP which helped me saving 1 frame from the second key door to Shifting Sand Land.

DennisBalow and ReneBalow

Their "16 stars" TAS helped me for comparison.

The SM64.org community

For keeping SM64 speedrunning, hacking and TASing alive!

Suggested Screenshots

[dead links removed]

DarkKobold: Claimed for judging
DarkKobold: I'd like to first start by saying that this run was extremely well done, and no one is questioning that.
However, in reality, the original 16 star, followed by the 1 star, and finally 0 star are technically mislabeled, and should all be labeled as "any%," for purposes of site standardization. (Why Super Mario 64 got special treatment is beyond me). Originally, that wasn't a problem, as no one was clamoring for a 1 star run over a 0 star run. Now, it has to be dealt with as a separate category.
That said, a precedent for this has been set, in #2136: Saturn's SNES Super Metroid "glitchless low%" in 42:37.13. I'll quote mmbossman:
"Quoting the Judge Guidelines: ‘’Keep the number of different branches per a game minimal.’’ This run is an attempt to resurrect a movie branch that is now obsolete, ..., and I see no need to resurrect a dead category."
The majority of the audience has stated things in agreement with that last sentiment. As there is no major reason to revive this category, I am rejecting for goal choice.


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It's very good. Yes from me. High points: Glitching LLL and going though a wall. And also Insta-winning against the large bully. Faster then SDA Mips glitching. If this is not published, then it should at least serve as a nice start (of some sort) to a new 120 run.
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Patashu wrote:
There is indeed a real time 0 star completion of SM64: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12887548
Is there actually a way to watch the video somehow? No player shows up at least here, nor can I find any obvious link or button for that effect. (And my Japanese is not good enough to decipher the mystic runes in that page.)
spweasel wrote:
In my opinion, "no Side-BLJs" is a less arbitrary goal than "no sword except against Ganon" or "kills no enemies except bosses".
I have to fully disagree with that opinion. The goals you are comparing them to are not glitches. They are legitimate goals which are popular not only in TASing but in speedrunning in general. The "except against Ganon" part of the "no sword" goal is simply by necessity rather than being an arbitrary random choice. It would lack that qualifier if it was possible. Basically it's just a "no sword" run. The "minimum kills" category doesn't even need to be explained. Only kill what is absolutely necessary. No different than eg. only collect the stars that are absolutely necessary (which in this case would be none). However, forbidding one glitch which is no significantly different from other glitches is completely arbitrary and serves no necessity. The comparison is just invalid.
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Warp wrote:
Patashu wrote:
There is indeed a real time 0 star completion of SM64: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12887548
Is there actually a way to watch the video somehow? No player shows up at least here, nor can I find any obvious link or button for that effect. (And my Japanese is not good enough to decipher the mystic runes in that page.)
Google Chrome has a built in translator. You have to sign up to watch videos on nicovideo. It isn't difficult though.
Tompa
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You could also use a different nico link, such as nicozon http://www.nicozon.net/watch/sm12887548 Just change the movie number to view the videos you want without making an account.
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Tompa wrote:
You could also use a different nico link, such as nicozon http://www.nicozon.net/watch/sm12887548 Just change the movie number to view the videos you want without making an account.
For some reason it isn't working. The player loads with something that looks like a snapshot of the run, but when I press the play icon on it, it goes black, some garbled characters scroll on the upper edge, and nothing else happens. There's no network traffic either, so it isn't downloading anything. The progress bar still advances, though.
Tompa
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That should just be the loading of the video, which may take a while.
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The garbled characters is user comments. Yeah, nico video is weired like that.
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Warp wrote:
Tompa wrote:
You could also use a different nico link, such as nicozon http://www.nicozon.net/watch/sm12887548 Just change the movie number to view the videos you want without making an account.
For some reason it isn't working. The player loads with something that looks like a snapshot of the run, but when I press the play icon on it, it goes black, some garbled characters scroll on the upper edge, and nothing else happens. There's no network traffic either, so it isn't downloading anything. The progress bar still advances, though.
This happens to me quite often - you have to reload a few times to get it to work.
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mmbossman wrote:
*Still patiently waiting for a 70 star run with a well defined list of disallowed glitches...*
I disagree with this statement. The game really is divided into several goals: 1. Every one of the stars you get that causes you to exit the stage. 2. The 3 keys 3. Figuring out which stars will have a detour of getting the 100 coins. 4. Optimizing the travel between each of those stars, getting the power up blocks at the right time, and getting those "free" stars between stages. A run with just 70 stars is cutting out the longest to get 50 stars. The current 0 star run includes the bowser stages, only because it is needed to beat the game. The interesting part (in addition to the 120 star run) is the optimization outside the stages. An ungliched 70 star run, in my viewpoint, is just a lazy run of the ungliched 120 star run, with 50 stars taken out.
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I am one of the biggest SM64 fans out there, I think SM64 will never get enough love, I like to see as many SM64 runs as possible, and this one is no exception, it looks very optimised and entertaining. However, despite all of these good motivations, I still think we should be objective and that this category is arbitrary nowadays. Sure there are other games with even more arbitrary categories, but somewhere in the guidelines it says that one error done in the past shouldn't be ground to redo the same error in the future. For the same reason I think a 70 stars run should be rejected, and focus only on the 0-stars and 120-stars, AND possibly the CCC run since it has a completely different goal. But 16-stars, 70-stars, 42-stars (isn't 42 the answer to everything?) are arbitrary categories which should not exist. Voting meh.
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Watched the movie, it's awesome, but I maintain my vote. this is the biggest tease ever
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subanark wrote:
mmbossman wrote:
*Still patiently waiting for a 70 star run with a well defined list of disallowed glitches...*
An ungliched 70 star run, in my viewpoint, is just a lazy run of the ungliched 120 star run, with 50 stars taken out.
Well, yeah. But from my understanding, the 120 star run will use whatever means necessary to get them, whereas a "decreased glitch" 70 star run would look significantly different. However, if you use the goal of "Doesn't glitch through star doors", you're right, the two runs would look nearly identical, minus 50 stars
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Yeah, the idea is to make a very different run by making it low glitch. This isn't fastest 70 stars at any cost. On that note route planning and strategy would be quite different. I wouldn't mind a 120 run, but 70 still makes sense because that's the fewest you need without glitching through barriers.
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It wasn't bad... but I agree.. I've been spoiled by 1 and 0 Star runs so that as good looking as this is, it's not as good as I could hope for. If this was like a WIP towards a 120 Star run, that would be phenomenal.. but it's not. It was a hard call as it was borderline Meh/No.. but many have made the valid point of how arbitrary anything outside of 0 and 120 has become. There's always going to be something missing or feeling left out and the levels selected will always come down to a "They did all those in this run, but xxx level would've taken 6 extra seconds but looked way more entertaining! That would've been an acceptable trade-off!" I wouldn't call this pointless as I would call it a primer for things to come. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
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Tompa wrote:
While the run is very nice looking, I can't see any reasons to have this run published. 16 stars existed in the past because there were no faster way to beat the game, why go back to slower tactics when there are faster ones? This goal would be the same even if it was 21, 63, 32, 79 stars, and we don't need one category/star.
As a lurker with 2 cents, I have to respectfully disagree. I think the 70-star category should still legitimately exist, if executed without any glitching through/passed minimum-star boundaries. Conceptually a "How fast can one finish this game whilst still playing within the main intentions of the original creators?" TAS. Additionally it allows for flexibility in deciding which 70 stars are the fastest to collect.
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
For the same reason I think a 70 stars run should be rejected, and focus only on the 0-stars and 120-stars, AND possibly the CCC run since it has a completely different goal.
I'm sorry I have to ask, but what is the "CCC run"?
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"Coinless-Cannonless-Capless". It is a definite goal, different enough from the 0-, 1-, 16-, 70-, 120-stars runs. I think it deserves publication along with the 0-stars and the 120-stars runs. 16 and 70 are arbitrary instead. But hey it's just an opinion, and it should not discussed here, but here. Off-topic posts do nothing good, and I am sorry I already posted one.
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First off, I gotta say: I loved this run. I wasn't following WIPs and forums to see what work people had done with individual stars, so I was pleasantly surprised here. The instant-bully-kill and the Inside the Pyramid star were highlights for me, though the Rolling Log star was also a really big surprise. As for my 2 cents about categories, 0-star and 120-star, both allowing all glitches, make sense to me. These show the game pushed to the extreme in as many situations as possible. Another interesting category, and the most true to the original spirit of the game, would be a 70-star run without BLJing. It's definitely a hard problem to determine which 70 stars are the best to go for, and the lack of BLJ should hopefully make for really interesting strategies. Thus, I would say these three categories are the ideal categories for this game. In the meantime, though, I do support this run for publication. It's of a digestible length, so in the meantime it's a good run for people who find a 120-star run too tedious. The 16-star cutoff, while being dated, is still a well-known cutoff for the game, and it's interesting to have this as a historical throwback to how SM64 TASing has progressed. It's a good compromise, in the meantime, between everything and nothing, while maintaining a fast pace all the way (except when boarding Bowser's Sub). Thus, I vote Yes for this to serve as an in-between third category, with the caveat that a 70-star BLJ-less run should obsolete this.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
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mklip2001 wrote:
As for my 2 cents about categories, 0-star and 120-star, both allowing all glitches, make sense to me. These show the game pushed to the extreme in as many situations as possible. Another interesting category, and the most true to the original spirit of the game, would be a 70-star run without BLJing. It's definitely a hard problem to determine which 70 stars are the best to go for, and the lack of BLJ should hopefully make for really interesting strategies. Thus, I would say these three categories are the ideal categories for this game.
then you'd just have HSWK replacing BLJs, no point really, what you're looking for is "glitchless" imo categories should by any% glitched (0-stars), 100% glitched (120-stars with BLJs etc), and not sure which would be proper for glitchless, if any% or 100%, or maybe both but I guess they'd look way too much alike
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Lakitu Skip: same as 0/120 star Bowser 1 entrance: same as 0/120 star Bowser 1 : same as 120 star Whomp's fortress entrance: same as 120 star Blast away the wall: same as 120 star Cage star: same as 120 star Shoot into the wild blue: same as 120 star Inside the ancient pyramid: same as 120 star Shining atop the pyramid: same as 120 star In the talons of the big bird: same as 120 star Hot fot it into the volcano: same as 120 star 8 coin puzzle with 15 pieces: same as 120 star Red hot log rolling: same as 120 star Boil the big bully: same as 120 star Swimming beast in the cavern: same as 120 star Watch for rolling rocks: no blj Toad: same as 120 star A-Maze-ing emergency exit: same as 120 star MIPS glitch: not in any run Board Bowser's sub: same as 120 star Bowser in the fire sea: same as 0 star 50/70 star door skip: starts on 50 star stairs instead of spiral staircase Bowser in the dark world: same as 120 star As you can see, pretty much 90% of the run is redundant to the 120 star run. There are route changes to the castle (for example instead of BLJing out of a room, they will go into the painting and then select "exit course", or in the basement instead of BLJing from the small staircase into shifting sand land, they go there on foot) but otherwise it's pretty much the same. As for showcasing the MIPS glitch? With 10 minutes of practice, anyone can do it. If anything, this run shows that a 120 star run could be hexed together. SM64 is realitively hexable. 60 stars guaranteed to hex well? I would kill for a game where half the levels could be hexed in without fail. Take any other game, and there are infinitely many more random elements, or there's subpixel carry over, or there's lag. SM64 has none of this. the m64 format doesn't even have input written for lag frames, so it will always hex no matter how much lag you have! Not only that, Nahoc managed to produce a 16 star run in less than a week, where a number of these stars (like watch for rolling rocks and Bowser in the dark world) were considered unhexable by the SM64 community. As such, I'm voting "no" because this is highly redundant to another category that people are making excuses not to finish. Other than that, it's well played and has a lot of memorable moments.
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Thank you SM64 team! But our TAS is in another castle! I am very glad that the 16 star run was updated. I wanted to see what it would like with the new discoveries. It was very awesome. Voted meh out of respect. I think a glitchless 70 star run would be a better third category. This is definitely gruefood delight and deserves mention on the 0 star run.
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Great run and it makes me want more from you. However I feel this category is arbitrary and redundant. I hate voting No for an exceptional video, but I fail to see why we need this run. Any% and 100% are the only 2 categories that we need and maybe a CCC just for fun.
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I really wanted to vote yes on this, but after watching it (thanks for the youtube link), I gave it a meh. The redundancy aspects have already been well-stated by others. The 0-star unsassisted run posted earlier is extremely impressive though. Too bad he choked twice on the last Bowser throw and wasted another 30 seconds.
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andymac wrote:
Nahoc managed to produce a 16 star run in less than a week, where a number of these stars (like watch for rolling rocks and Bowser in the dark world) were considered unhexable by the SM64 community.
about BitDW, I was wondering how he was able to hex in that goomba hit so nicely, that's what I suppose was thought impossible to hex in? that about input files not counting lag frames actually sounds very nice, why don't all emulators do that? does it screw with the completion time count?
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that about input files not counting lag frames actually sounds very nice, why don't all emulators do that? does it screw with the completion time count?
Well, we define lag as a frame (or in the case of the n64 a VI) where input isn't polled. Most games on most consoles poll input 60 times a second unless there is lag. With the n64, a lot of games poll input at 30Hz rather than 60Hz, and others still poll input at even more arbitrary intervals, so technically, there is one frame of lag every other frame for a game running at 30FPS. This would be extremely annoying to TAS, because half of all frames would do absolutely nothing. This is also why mupen doesn't have a lag counter, because there is no reliable way to find lag in the first place. Also, some games like conker's bad fur day and banjo games have systems in place that allow for input to be polled at irregular intervals, while still maintaining a regular speed (which for all intents and purposes means that the game doesn't slow down at all, so lag is irrelevant. It also means that hexing is impossible for these games). This means that for emulation and TASing purposes, it's a lot easier to skip forwards to the next input poll, rather than the next rendered frame. For any other console however, it's much easier to advance one frame every time, rather than one input poll. It's just conveniant. Emulators like FCEUX and VBA have frame advance: skip lag options, which means that when you enable this, it works like mupen64 in the way that the emulator skips over any frames of lag. I use this sometimes in very laggy sections, because it means I can TAS normally and not have to worry about lag delay. Unfortunately, it makes it very easy to forget about lag altogether, and many times I have had to redo sections in order to fix lag that I missed. Now there are a few reasons that emulators record input for lag frames. Firstly, timing. Most new input recording formats are text based, so the input is human readable. These generally don't have a frame count (or a VI count) in the header. They just count the number of times input appears and then divide it by 60 to get the time. fm2 for example is a format which does this. This means that you can hex in a level, and not have to change the frame count in the header of the file. Secondly, accuracy. Allthough input might not be polled during a frame, it doesn't mean that the input doesn't exist. What if you want to reset during a frame with lag? you wouldn't be able to in the emulator, but you could in real life. Also anyone with knowledge about hexing knows that you can insert or remove frames where there is lag in order to make a game synch. It's a little extra effort compared to mupen64's system, but as far as I know, that's the only disadvantage. I think the fcm format had solutions to all these problems, but in doing so, it also produced a hellish format which noone could comprehend or hex edit. As for hex editing in SM64, there aren't infinite possibilities for every random element. In all likelyhood, Nahoc changed a few things before the level started and that changed the RNG to be a good value.
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