Simply amazing. I, too, was curious as to how speedrunning would be affected with camera angles thrown into the mix. I even wondered if there was a way to "detach" and see the game from a perspective you weren't really meant to (a la recammed Quake films). I do have one serious question, though, which is what settings/resolution the rendered AVI would be at, since the emulator allows pretty much any number your monitor can take. IMAX (approx. 4000 X 3000 pixels) Mario 64 run, anyone?

There isnt a real point in a high res movie of low res textures on low poly geometry. Actually though the recamming *might* be theoretically possible with a lot of manual work... It would depend on the game I would think you could intercept the calls to OpenGL/DirectX and render the level into a list buffer and then apply a secondary transform to that.... I played on an N64 emulator before that wasnt applying a transformation correctly or something and the viewpoint would be way off. It would be much much harder to control than the Quake recams though as I would think you would see a lot of conflict with the real camera and isnt really worth it.

Wow.. impressive. I really have to cast a yes wote :] well done

I'd go with 512x384 now.

I thought we agreed that 640x480 was the best because that was the highest the Nintendo 64 could go.

Further questions/criticisms about the run: To the top of the fortress: The jump up to the main platform off of the steep wall seems slower than in the previous star. Also, is grabbing the ledge before getting the star actually faster than waiting to not have to grab the ledge? Blast away the wall, could you have avoided picking up those 3 coins? They count up quickly but... still wastes time in the hi score screen (unless it takes extra time to avoid them). Bowser 1, could you have avoided the cold coins you collected? Also, could you have done a quick turn (side flip to dive) off of the exclamation block? The turn seemed slower than it would have to be. Could you have switched the order of obtaining the 4th/5th red coins by long jumping to the spike island as soon as the fenced section ended? I'm almost positive this would have been faster.\ Shining atop the pyramid: I have gotten this star by jumping straight to it, avoiding that little slide hop you do. Is your method somehow faster? I don't see why it would be. In the Talons of the Big Bird, avoid coins? btw, let me know if there is some magic number of coins that, under that number, you do not waste time at the high score menu. MIPS, when you catch him, if you had angled towards the door as you caught him, you wouldn't have wasted time turning right after the star appeared. Spiral stairs, jump through the floor: You definitely ran into the wall and shuffled against it after getting through the floor... looks clumsy and slowed you down. Right after that you should have waited to start backwards long jumping, that seems like it took extra time rather than just running to the stairs and then starting. Bowser 3, after you did that unbelievable almost impossible jump were you unable to avoid running in place for a few moments? note: Did you long jump off of a bob-bomb near the end? It sure sounded like it, if so - wow. Again, awesome run but I am just trying to say everything I say that could make it perfect.

Grabbing the ledge is faster than waiting for the platform to elevate enough. I've never really payed much attention to coin tallying after a level because it never seemed to waste any time since it looked as if the save+continue prompt came up at the same time. I tried many times to coordinate a side-flip dive followed by a long jump after the ! switch in Bowser 1, but I couldn't allow enough space for a long jump to the cork blocks to keep from falling off. Probably could have but it was bunk at that point because I had established that it wasn't possible with the test run. The turn-flip here actually may have taken longer because turn-arounds on the ! switch won't let you turn-flip as soon as you'd like (I think). The red coins near the end of Bowser 1 is probably faster in that order, but consider the red coin above the revolving pair of platforms which I could barely reach and land on the platform which had reached a position close enough to land on. In the test run getting it was actually faster because I had reached that point late enough for the platform to be in a good spot. I had reached a very fast speed after sliding off the desert incline which allowed me to reach the star a little too fast to be able to do an uninterrupted sequence of jumps to it. Instead of running into the ledge on which the star sits (halting Mario and wasting a few frames) and jump-diving to it like in the first test run, I figured I'd try to keep it smoother by just staying to the right and diving at a slight angle (and Mario was already facing closer to that direction anyways). I actually calculated the difference from the test run and ended up saving some time although I'm not sure if it was from the more optimized triple jump/dive over the desert hill or the jump to the star. I don't think turning around after grabbing the rabbit wasted any time since it was an instant turn-around (because Mario was completely idle). Facing the door after grabbing him would mean Mario would be further away from the door, and you'd have to walk longer to get out from under the star to make fast jumps (so you don't touch the star). I probably could have saved more time if I had faced at a wider angle from the door before dropping MIPS so I wouldn't have to turn-crawl around as much. The spiral stair thing is kind of tricky because you can't see Mario, but it probably could have been done faster. I didn't notice any shuffling against the wall but I wasn't listening for it so it could have been there. The 'impossible jump' didn't take as many rerecords as I thought it would (lucked out), but you might be able to do the 2nd wall-kick to get Mario facing the right direction (left, in this case) so you can execute the turn-flip much faster. Mario wasn't going fast enough to trigger a turn-around and there wasn't enough room in the direction he was facing to get the speed, so I had to gain a little speed by moving away from the edge to the left to do it. nah there wasn't any bob-omb jump near the end regarding the Dire Docks level...yeah it was kind of ugly at some places and could be more optimized, and the two points of lag where Mario swims through the water might have been reduced with other camera angles thanks very much for the crits; stuff like this should definitely be taken into consideration when a faster TAS is made

Spezzafer, thank you for your reactions to my crits. One thing it seems you didn't address though was: "Bowser 2, I'm pretty sure doing Martin's strat of long jumping along the rim of the lava and then hopping straight into the funnel would be faster. " Did you experiment with this at all? What do you think? Again, excellent run.

... ...... .........holy crap. Someone give this a star.

mupen64 and I have waged war for quite some time now. This latest battle is to get a high quality AVI made, suitable for publication. Hint hint. No timeframe though, but here's hoping for a matter of hours.

I can barely wait to see this. As usual I don't have the emulator but I watched the test run (the avi) and that was very impressive! I surely hope you will take the fearsome task on to do the 120-star run, and preferably before the 70-star run. But that might just be my vote ;) Awesome that you are finished anyway!

Does anyone know how long this is by SDA timing? (I'm just curious as to how much time was saved over the current fastest non-assisted speedrun of this game.)

with SDA timing it is 15:30 the real non-TAS wr is about 18 minutes but it is not on SDA. he who did it said, after he watched the toolassisted testrun, that he don't want to try lower anymore (sub 18), he would feel stupid because he would do mistakes and couldn't do it as good as the TAS..

after he watched the toolassisted testrun, that he don't want to try lower anymore (sub 18), he would feel stupid because he would do mistakes and couldn't do it as good as the TAS..

Hmm, that's a dumb reason to stop doing a speedrun, if he really wanted to do it in the first place. Nobody has done a perfect run in real-time - there's no point to giving up because you can't achieve that. They shouldn't be directly compared that way (unless the goal is to get other people angry).

http://dehacked.2y.net/BT/torrents/supermario64-tas-16stars-spezzafer.avi.torrent An AVI of this run for bittorrent download. It might become the one published if Bisqwit gives it the thumbs up. If not, at least all you users who can't watch it will now be able to. I had to thoroughly abuse frame dropping on this one.

mupen64 and I have waged war for quite some time now. This latest battle is to get a high quality AVI made, suitable for publication. Hint hint. No timeframe though, but here's hoping for a matter of hours. ... http://dehacked.2y.net/BT/torrents/supermario64-tas-16stars-spezzafer.avi.torrent An AVI of this run for bittorrent download. It might become the one published if Bisqwit gives it the thumbs up. If not, at least all you users who can't watch it will now be able to. I had to thoroughly abuse frame dropping on this one.

What sort of problems are you having? I did some test recordings using the built in AVI capture and it seemed to work just fine. Using Xvid at 780kbps at 640x480, I could record this whole run at 1/4 frame rate, or in about 64 mins.

There don't seem to be any seeds. I'm at 0.0%. EDIT: Never mind. It just started downloading. I'll keep BitTorrent open to help it spread around.

All I can say is that you HAVE to do a 120-star, or at least a 70-star speedrun someday, when you're up to it. The 16-star, although disappointingly short but excellent and entraining, is very nice. I was really surprised to see several new techinques I have never seen compared to SDA's attempt on this. This definately deserves a gold star.

Well done. It's the first 3D TAS. This game should get a star too.

This movie desynchronized for me. After the last bowser dies, Mario just stands there, never collecting the star that appears.

Sigh...

mupen64 and I have waged war for quite some time now. This latest battle is to get a high quality AVI made, suitable for publication. Hint hint. No timeframe though, but here's hoping for a matter of hours. ... http://dehacked.2y.net/BT/torrents/supermario64-tas-16stars-spezzafer.avi.torrent An AVI of this run for bittorrent download. It might become the one published if Bisqwit gives it the thumbs up. If not, at least all you users who can't watch it will now be able to. I had to thoroughly abuse frame dropping on this one.

What sort of problems are you having? I did some test recordings using the built in AVI capture and it seemed to work just fine. Using Xvid at 780kbps at 640x480, I could record this whole run at 1/4 frame rate, or in about 64 mins.

How do you slow it down? I did it in realtime and had to do it at 320x240 ... used DivX on fast encoding. The result was 270MB and can be dl'd from my server here: http://www.people.virginia.edu/~avw6s/random/Mario64_TAS_1637.avi Unfortunately, I did this for the original version so I had to jump for the star and didn't realize at first... in any case, it's here for those who want it. I would like to know how to encode not in real time though!

after he watched the toolassisted testrun, that he don't want to try lower anymore (sub 18), he would feel stupid because he would do mistakes and couldn't do it as good as the TAS..

Hmm, that's a dumb reason to stop doing a speedrun, if he really wanted to do it in the first place. Nobody has done a perfect run in real-time - there's no point to giving up because you can't achieve that. They shouldn't be directly compared that way (unless the goal is to get other people angry).

Yeah, we've tried persuading him, but he hasn't responded for a while. He's an amazing speedrunner, and it's sad to see him give up so soon. If you have seen his 70 star, no death run, you'd see him at his best.

after he watched the toolassisted testrun, that he don't want to try lower anymore (sub 18), he would feel stupid because he would do mistakes and couldn't do it as good as the TAS..

Hmm, that's a dumb reason to stop doing a speedrun, if he really wanted to do it in the first place. Nobody has done a perfect run in real-time - there's no point to giving up because you can't achieve that. They shouldn't be directly compared that way (unless the goal is to get other people angry).

Yeah, we've tried persuading him, but he hasn't responded for a while. He's an amazing speedrunner, and it's sad to see him give up so soon. If you have seen his 70 star, no death run, you'd see him at his best.

You're talking about Jacob Cannon right? If he decides not to break his own record because of the TAS than he is dumb as Red Scarlet. I totally respect the guy but how can you let a TAS affect your decision? They are not even in the same league. I've heard (wont mention any name) from several speedrunners who thought that when Red Scarlet gave up speedrunning Super Metroid because of Jecy, that it was a very stupid move and very lame. I second that and I absolutely have no understanding. There is absolutely no excuse. Hope Jacob hasnt got the Red Scarlet syndrome.

What sort of problems are you having? I did some test recordings using the built in AVI capture and it seemed to work just fine. Using Xvid at 780kbps at 640x480, I could record this whole run at 1/4 frame rate, or in about 64 mins.

What you need to understand is that, unlike what you do, I do NOT use the built-in movie capturing code. I rewrote it from scratch. There were no survivors. My emulators don't produce AVIs. They feed programs (mencoder, oggenc, etc) which are designed to make movies. They use less than 10 MB of temp disk space per hour of movie, not including the final AVI produced. My problems included premature movie termination and encoder deadlocks. I'm still not sure what I did to provoke the first. The second was my fault. I don't mean to sound rude, but there's really nothing you can do except wait it out while I try and fix things. Mupen64 is a new beast which needs to be tamed, and it has its own quirks which I still havn't quite figured out.

Yeah, I think Jacob Cannon goes under the alias LeCourer103, so yes, same person. Hopefully he doesn't decide to give up speedrunning. I'd love to see an actual sub 18 run on console. Oh well, there's always HolyMoly, who has shown he has the skills too. (But he got banned from Radix's place, lol).