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MUGG wrote:
So I was gone for a while. Still don't like the new forum style, old was much better. It's one of the reasons I visit this site so much less now.
Congrats on your run. I will check it out later.
58:30 looks like a really good time.
I knew you could go a decent chunk below 1 hour back when I attempted a run, before I stopped it after the tunnel clip discovery...
Speaking of which
Tunnel clipping
(...) This was found by mugg and was applied in Hoohoo Mountain by SolidifiedGaming to save a full minute.
It was actually found by SolidifiedGaming and in a test I verified that it saves about 1 min 05 sec in Hoohoo Mountain. See here.
Still a bit sad about that actually... But very happy to see this game progressing so well now.
Also excited to see if anything comes out of your most recent discoveries that you posted in the topic.
Unfortunately, RETIRE made a bruteforce script and after over 1 million attempts from each of us we weren't able to get the game to crash even once. We need an accurate debugger and someone that knows how the GBA functions inside and out if we want to make the credits warp work. But in theory it is possible to get.
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Here are some more IL TASes that I did over the last week or so. The plan is to have a TAS for every single main course since the game is still not beatable on Ruffle, however updates have been made to it which make it look almost exactly the same as it does on Flash Player. I might do the secret stages as well but I'm not sure about Tidal isles and Red Shine since they have big shine requirements that can't be skipped.
Link to videoLink to videoLink to videoLink to videoLink to videoLink to video
Also a new Any% TAS has been published by Tomothy which you can check out below.
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Hello there, I am a TASer that mostly makes Superstar Saga TASes, but I always wanted to make a TAS of SM63 as this was the game that introduced me to the speedrunning community in the first place. Unfortunately, due to the lack of TAS tools existing for Flash games, I wasn't able to make one, but now that Ruffle was released which made it possible to use libTAS with the game, my interest picked up again for trying to TAS it. At the moment I am working on a Game Resources page for the game so if anyone wants to help me out with making it it would be much appreciated. Here are some of the TASes that I made recently using Ruffle, with help from fellow users Tomothy and Vexxter:
Link to videoLink to video
There's also a Hover FLUDD Only TAS made by Tomothy, which you can check out below:
Link to video
TASing this game is almost becoming a reality now, me and the other 2 people are almost ready to start making full game TASes for both 100% and No Major Skips, the only thing we have to wait on is an update to Ruffle that makes it possible to complete the game, as right now the game softlocks in True Bowser if you try to play it.
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This document contains all the useful information that we have found so far.
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This is an update to the post I made yesterday, because we have made a lot of progress during the last 24 hours.
when Luigi breaks out of the barrel (or when Mario hops off the barrel), as soon as both bros are on the ground, the game always sets the byte at $2336 to 0A which corresponds to the star animation being played. This caused the progress to stop dead in its tracks, since we realized this value is most likely not useful for us if we want to make credits warp a reality in real time.
In the previous post I mentioned that trying to modify $2336 in IWRAM was established to not actually be useful for pulling it off legit, however we discovered that $2336 is not the only value that handles what scripts are being run or what events are being triggered. The memory address $2337 handles which minigame you are currently into; when you are not inside of a minigame, the game simply sets this byte to FF, and when you are inside the game changes this byte to one of these values, depending on which minigame you are in.
Byte value
Minigame entered
00
Minecart minigame (Hoohoo Mountain)
01
Geno minigame (Little Fungitown)
02
Border jump (Stardust Fields)
03
Barrel minigame (Cruise Ship)
04
Winkle minigame (Chucklehuck Woods)
05+
All entities disappear, game softlocks
This value is also not very useful for us since it stays as FF while doing the crash, but it was something to work with. What is useful to us, however, is that there is another address that changes what script you trigger, located at $2339. This byte is responsible for the shop menu and which one you open (the menu for buying items, the menu for selling items, and the menu for buying clothing gear & badges). It is usually set to 02 for the EU version and 00 for the US version, and after you talk to a shop NPC the game sets it to one of these values, depending on which shop you enter and if you want to buy/sell.
Byte value
Shop menu entered
01
Item shop (selling menu)
03
Item shop (buying menu)
07
Badge shop (Beanbean Town)
0F
Badge shop (Little Fungitown)
One reason why this byte is useful for us is that we can actually enter all of these menus from room 4 in Teehee Valley, but the main reason that makes it especially useful is because of this line inside of the game's code, which looks like this after being simplified:
03002339 = 03002339 & 0xee;
The game takes the value at $2339 and ands it with 0xEE, and this process is looped however many times you close out of a script. Then, the game runs this code with the result:
The first check is for the shop menu script, whether or not it's the script that is active. After this check is done it sets bit 0 if it is active, then it ands it with 0xEE once you close out of the shop and then bit 0 is removed. The second check is for whether or not this script is active, and if it is, it sets bit 4.
The third check is for whether or not the script for the credits sequence is active. If it is, it sets bit 5. Past 0x20, the majority of values will yield us a credits warp, and since bit 0 is always removed no matter what script you close, this means that the conditions for a credits warp to happen would be to set any value that has bit 5 set but not bit 4. So now, all we have left to do is figure out which process is writing to here.
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So, it was just a normal day yesterday when I suddenly got the idea to try and mess around in Peach escort room 4, the infamous room where Mugg got the credits warp back in 2014 that was deemed impossible to replicate outside of the VBA emulator. But back in 2022, RETIRE figured out that it's possible to do it on mGBA, although it requires memory editing to change the byte at $2336 in IWRAM to 10 in order for the game to load the credits sequence. Up until now, based on the attempts that were made to pull off the credits warp legit, the result always ended up being one of the scripts being played, and the script loaded stayed mostly consistent every time it was loaded, so it was pretty much assumed that this game only had Arbitrary Script Execution to work with. Below is a list with all the scripts that could be played by changing the byte at $2336.
Byte value
Outcome
05
Mario turns into his form when he ingests water
07
Warp to room ??? (room ID: 128)
08
Warp to room ??? (room ID: 128)
09
Start minecart minigame
0A
Star amimation from when entering a battle (softlocks the game)
0B
Open suitcase menu
0C
Open save menu
0D
Open map (area selection screen)
0E
Open shop selling items menu
0F
Trigger death warp (respawn screen)
10
Trigger credits sequence
11
Warp to test room (room ID: 0, unused)
12+
No effect, game simply softlocks
The byte at $2416 is responsible if the game crashes when Luigi breaks out or hops off a barrel. Throughout the game, this byte is set to 0 most of the time but a few rooms, like room 4 of Peach escort or Chuckroot's room, change it to 22 instead if Luigi is in a barrel which triggers the crash to happen. However, when Luigi breaks out of the barrel (or when Mario hops off the barrel), as soon as both bros are on the ground, the game always sets the byte at $2336 to 0A which corresponds to the star animation being played. This caused the progress to stop dead in its tracks, since we realised this value is most likely not useful for us if we want to make credits warp a reality in real time.
It was already established for years that the bros' position in the room and what action command Mario had in the back could lead to different scripts being played, but yesterday I decided that I wanted to try to trigger as many of these scripts as I could and make input files for them in order to maybe analyze them and potentially figure out why they happen when they happen. I was able to trigger some of these events, as well as some other events that couldn't be achieved by editing $2336. But probably the most interesting result that I got during my testing session was this:
This is the shop selling menu, a script that is by no means a rare script to trigger, in fact I managed to trigger it dozens of times before. However, this instance of the script was special because it had this glitched badge at the bottom (which I was able to actually sell and not softlock the game), something which never appeared in any of my other instances of triggering the shop menu. I am not sure why this badge was generated but my assumption is that it had to have read some garbage parameters from somewhere when it was loading the items, which got my hopes up a bit that actual Arbitrary Code Execution might be possible to do in this game. I have yet to figure out how it happened but this might a good step in the path to discovering ACE.
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After making the submission I realised I sent the .bk2 file with the outdated rerecord count, so if any staff could replace it with this file it would be much appreciated. Hopefully you guys will enjoy the run.
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Glitchless TAS will be premiered today at 1:30PM EST on my YouTube channel.
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TheKDX7 wrote:
What improvements have been made to save 1 minute 30 ?
Will record a comparison video after my PC arrives and after I make the TAS public.
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Yeah that's basically what happens, the game has a list of 256 action command IDs that are stored in memory for each bro.
At address $2441 in IWRAM the game stores Luigi's action command when in front. $2443 isn't an address that stores an action command, it is simply an address that tells the game that Luigi is or isn't inside of a barrel.
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I am proud to present to you my newest TAS of this game: the All Bosses TAS.
Reveal will be once again on my YouTube channel and this time I will try my best to also release the commentary for it. Don't know the date though.
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So a few weeks ago Sjorec found out that the PAL version doesn't lag as much when using Void Barrel, and most importantly (for RTA at least) it also lets you change Mario's action command so you can hammer out of the Void Barrel. It's estimated to save about 10 seconds in Any% for RTA, and perhaps it could be slightly faster than the English version for TAS as well, but I'm wondering if there's anything else that's different in the PAL version.
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Doomsday31415 wrote:
There's no way to use this to ACE to the credits?
To put it simply, we don't know. We have been able to pull off ACE to warp ourselves into cutscenes, unenterable battles, etc. but we have no idea how or even if it's possible to warp to the end credits.
However, I'm talking about English version here, because on the Japanese version of the game, MUGG was able to warp to the credits about 7 years ago, but unfortunately this story has a tragic ending because we are almost certain him warping there was only due to the fact that he had been using an inaccurate emulator which didn't emulate the crash correctly and instead decided to send him to the credits. Ever since that one instance, MUGG nor anyone else in the community has been able to replicate the credits warp on mGBA or BizHawk.
It's a story that hasn't fully been written yet unfortunately.
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thatguy wrote:
I guess I have a particular TASer in mind for both of these but:
$10 for a Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga TAS, another $10 for a time below 1:05.
Was I the TASer that you thought of 5 years ago?
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Okay, so I've been trying to do teleports in different places on English just to see if we're able to skip cutscenes or reach loading zones that were not doable without the usage of teleports. Here are my results:
• With 2 precise teleports you can actually reach the Popple (Solo) fight in Chucklehuckle Woods early; one to get past the big koopa blocking the door to the cave section, and one to get past the NPC to skip having to do the minigame for 500 coins to reach Popple's room. You then need to do another teleport to get past the NPC on your way back as well. With some careful Follow Path positioning I was able to get all 3 teleports. This enables us to do Popple early if we want to for All Bosses, and we thought about it carefully, since he gives lots of coins and EXP. We'll see if we want to forgo doing him as early as possible over doing him later when you have more mush damage.
• Also in the Chucklehuckle Woods, you can do a 136 warp to go past Chuckroot without getting into his cutscene at all. Even though we are forced to switch more often since 136 gets overwritten very quickly, those switches obviously pay off if we can reach Chuckolator early. RTA used to do something similar on the Japanese version; they'd warp into a wall and then jumped with Luigi high in the air to make Mario clip past Chuckroot, and then they emerged with Luigi to enter the loading zone. What we do for TAS is obviously faster than what RTA does. We have been trying to come up with a way to 1 cycle Chuckolator, without letting him do any attacks using #1 Trousers, but that involves getting Mario to 59 speed, and that requires a LOT of level ups. We are going to further investigate if it's worth doing.
• The door in University that gets us to Cackletta can be barely teleported into. It seems like at Z 57344 there is actually another loading zone for this door that we can enter by letting the walls push us into it. But how do you even get to Z 57344? Well, you teleport into a wall, then use emerge. While emerging, the walls will launch Luigi in the air 57344 units upwards in a single frame. This skips having to hit the last switch to open the door which saves a lot of time.
• If you don't defeat Chuckolator, there is a door inside Beanbean Castle that doesn't unlock unless you defeat him and play the cutscene of resurrecting Queen Bean. But at this point I wouldn't have talked about it if it wasn't possible to skip it. So, yes, you can skip it, but not in the same way the University door was skipped. You will need to do a 136 warp instead of a 256 one by teleporting from the ledge where the door is standing on. If your Follow Path Y is perfectly set up to be the exact Y coordinate of the loading zone behind the door, and if your Follow Path X is also between certain coordinates, you can barely manage to get inside. This means we don't have to do Chuckolator early, but we will still probably do it, mainly to skip having to teleport past the guards to get to Cackletta and to teleport past the rocks that block us from reaching the East side of Beanbean Town, which are also unlocked after you defeat Chuckolator.
I will test some more areas of the game, probably Joke's End and Bowser's Castle, to see how much more can be skipped.
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MUGG wrote:
For future reference, a list of battle backgrounds by ID.
When entering battle, $24BA (IWRAM) will tell which background to use and $4204 (IWRAM) and $654E (IWRAM) will be set to the same value subsequently.
How would this help though?
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MUGG wrote:
You can manipulate RNG without losing time or with losing only very little time, by optimizing the camera (having entities be active or inactive at different frame counts, thus causing a different advancement of RNG), but it is very time-consuming and tedious.
How do you exactly know when entities go offscreen? This information would be very helpful for future TASes.
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MUGG wrote:
I will be happy if this gets an improved TAS sometime in the future.
It will, but not for some time, as we have other categories that are deserving of at least 1 TAS each. Our next project is another big one, All Bosses, which should be way crazier than Any%. After this and Glitchless will be done, we will take a look again at Any% and improve it further.
Note that Colin used a script made by him to make the teleports and the glitches that had pixel vomit more visible. Otherwise, those look pretty horrible normally and you definitely know that.
As for the minecart minigame, I must admit I'm not very good at making stuff entertaining. Many of the music syncs were not done by me, most of them were done by Sno. I didn't know of anything better to do in that minigame, so without putting too much thought into it I copied your inputs as I've seen that they synced perfectly.
We did use the Start button several times. We used it many times in Cackletta and Bowletta.
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MUGG wrote:
To answer your question, in order to be able to buy #1 Trousers from the Bean clothing shop, you have to defeat Mom Piranha or Trunkle or Popple & Birdo, or collect all 4 star bean pieces.
Thanks, I also figured it out a few hours ago that you needed to defeat Mom Pirahna in order to unlock the #1 Trousers, but yours is way more helpful. We planned to do Mom Pirahna, Birdo & Trunkle early on anyway.
This is how the route looks so far for All Bosses:
1. Tolstar
2. Hoohooros
3. Dragohoho
4. Queen Bean
5. Popple & Rookie (I)
6. Mom Pirahna
7. Birdo
8. Trunkle
9. Popple (Solo)
10. Wiggler
11. Chuckolator
12. Cackletta
13. Popple & Rookie (II)
14. Hermie III
15. Chucklissa
And now we're trying to figure out the optimal boss order for Bowser's Castle.
We have 2 ways to look at it; the first would be to play through the castle as "normal" (meaning, no Castle Skip to reach Bowletta and doing Iggy first and Fawful last). The first thought we had was to do them in this order:
*Note: Since we're going to do Bowletta and Cackletta last no matter what they are not going to be in the list below.
- Iggy
- Roy (using teleports to reach him early)
- Ludwig
- Lemmy
- Morton
- Wendy
- Larry
- Fawful
The other way we could do it is to just do them in the intended order. This would mean, Iggy, Morton, Lemmy, Ludwig, Roy, Wendy. Larry, Fawful, but I think that may be slower than the previous order.
Finally, there is also the possibility to do the bosses in the reversed order; this would imply doing Castle Skip to reach Fawful and fight him first, then work your way backwards to Iggy and then perform Castle Skip again to fight Bowletta.
We're not sure if you can defeat the Koopalings after you defeat Bowletta and Cackletta by skipping Prince Peasly's cutscene with a teleport. That will have to be tested in the near future.
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MUGG wrote:
Optimize RNG for the Stardust battles. Entering the 3rd battle takes a bit long.
You can try moving through previous rooms in a different way, or jumping to move the camera, or leave previous rooms at later frames, in order to advance the RNG differently.
Optimize RNG for Hohooros minigame. Entering Hohooros room takes a bit long. See hints above. You could possibly save 1.5 seconds. Minigame times for future reference:
#1 - The 2017 discontinued WIP - 23"98 (1 spin)
#2 - The 2021 submission - 22"98 (2 spins)
#3 - The 2012 old TAS - 22"06 (4 spins)
On the Mountain (room ID: 70), while Mario has ingested water, the submission had to go around a dry bones. Optimize RNG to avoid this.
There are a few things worth mentioning here; the most important one is that we don't have a bruteforce script to get good RNG for these fights. This means I have to do it manually. In the open world, RNG only advances based on the Global Timer or if entities such as enemies and NPCs go offscreen, and for both of those you have to lose frames. I obviously didn't like it that I spent 51 frames manipulating the last battle but since those improvements were mentioned just now I had no other choice. Had you helped me out earlier, the RNG would proably not have taken as long to manipulate.
I can point out more timelosses due to RNG:
- We talk to the toad NPC in Little Fungitown to manipulate later enemy patterns for when we did teleports.
- After we exit the item shop in Little Fungitown, the toad NPC spawns in a place that pushes Mario back.
And, of course, waiting 150 frames on the final textbox to manipulate Cackletta.
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MUGG wrote:
As for your plan to use #1 Trousers: I have never really been interested in All Bosses, but wouldn't it be the best strat to basicly go any% route, get mushbadge and then glitch to the other places? Aren't you too weak if you have #1 Trousers equipped?
No.
The routing for All Bosses is far more different than Any%. While we will still get the mushbadge as early as possible, the route for the bosses is gonna be vastly different to what you see in RTA speedruns. We're almost ready with the boss order, but until we're fully ready we won't reveal it.
As for the #1 Trousers, since we're using the English version, we will have some coins to spare before we enter Bowser's castle which we have nothing to do with. Getting them is going to be very beneficial if we equip them on Mario because we plan to drain most if not all of the health of most of the bosses in 1 chopper bros, so being able to always attack first is a major advantage. It's also going to make our work of manipulating RNG far easier.
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MUGG wrote:
I don't know. My script does not tell the drops, but you can use the script to go to and finish each battle quickly to test it.
The #1 Trousers aren't dropped in battles, but rather they are unlocked after one of the 5 flags "More items in shop __" gets set, and those flags are set whenever you beat a certain boss. My question was if you happened to know which bosses enable those 5 flags. We will use them for Mario for the All Bosses route since it grants us the ability to attack first no matter what.
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The third check is for whether or not the script for the credits sequence is active. If it is, it sets bit 5. Past 0x20, the majority of values will yield us a credits warp, and since bit 0 is always removed no matter what script you close, this means that the conditions for a credits warp to happen would be to set any value that has bit 5 set but not bit 4. So now, all we have left to do is figure out which process is writing to here.
This is the shop selling menu, a script that is by no means a rare script to trigger, in fact I managed to trigger it dozens of times before. However, this instance of the script was special because it had this glitched badge at the bottom (which I was able to actually sell and not softlock the game), something which never appeared in any of my other instances of triggering the shop menu. I am not sure why this badge was generated but my assumption is that it had to have read some garbage parameters from somewhere when it was loading the items, which got my hopes up a bit that actual Arbitrary Code Execution might be possible to do in this game. I have yet to figure out how it happened but this might a good step in the path to discovering ACE.