kkomputer

kkomputer:

There’s a fine line between genius and insanity.

A super detailed, delightful glimpse (24′38) into the speedrunning / romhacking community, pushing the limits of videogame physics to where none of the original developers ever went in their worst nightmares. This guy finds and goes the most complicated way to save a half button press in Super Mario 64. My brain is fried. Impressive! Here’s the same video (5′25) without explanation and comments.

From the YouTube comments:

edfreak9001: “But first we need to talk about parallel universes.” …are… are we still playing video games about a chubby plumber?

TheAJGShow: “then you let Mario sit for 12 hours so that he can build up enough speed to jump into a FUCKING PARALLEL UNIVERSE!” WHAT

Why would someone do this? The author pannenkoek2012 answers: “Finally, I’d like to answer a question that I’ve been getting since the beginning, which is: Why? Why play the game with limited functionality? What’s the point of executing these complicated techniques when a simple A press would accomplish the same thing? Well, the answer is because it’s fun and interesting! Super Mario 64 has been a game that I’ve loved since my childhood, but over time the challenge of collecting the stars became too easy. So what’s left to do in the game after that? Well, invent your own challenges! If collecting the stars is too easy, then why not impose restrictions to make it harder? People have devised several of these challenges, such as: not pressing A, not pressing B, not pressing Z, not pressing any buttons, not pressing the joystick, not opening any cannons, not activating any caps, not collecting any coins, not touching the ground, even not having Mario make a sound. By imposing a restriction, it forces you to think in new and creative ways in order to find workarounds. That star that’s usually so trivial to collect? Now it requires an unintuitive and complex route that would have never been used otherwise. Out of all of the challenges, I find the A button challenge to be the most interesting, in that it has the most potential for creative workarounds. After all, the A button’s primary purpose is to jump. Since the programmers intended for Mario to jump during every mission, this means nearly every star will require some workaround. Furthermore, jumping is such a simple maneuver that many things can function as a substitute depending on the situation, which allows for a great diversity in creative workarounds. Lastly, the desire to save A presses has been beneficial for SM64 as a whole. That’s because in order to save A presses, new glitches have been discovered and certain game mechanics has been understood better, and these findings carry over to other areas of SM64 as well.“

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Happy 35th Birthday Super Mario!

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“ If you’ve been following pixel art blogs for a while, there’s a good chance you came across color-cycling art by Mark Ferrari before. The GIFs of detailed landscapes started making rounds on social media after Joseph Huckaby of Effect...

retronator:

If you’ve been following pixel art blogs for a while, there’s a good chance you came across color-cycling art by Mark Ferrari before. The GIFs of detailed landscapes started making rounds on social media after Joseph Huckaby of Effect Games reimplemented the clever rendering routine in HTML5, bringing the pinnacle of 90s computer art to the present for new generations to admire.

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Animations with color cycling are achieved simply by changing palette colors in an indexed painting as explained in a couple of blog posts and Ferrari’s must-watch GDC talk:

Most of Mark’s art from that era comes from the real-time strategy game Magic: The Gathering: Battlemage, and the illustrated personal organizer Seize the Day

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The latter brought graphical trickery to the max, blending between different color palettes at different times for a smooth transition through the day (you can play with it in Huckaby’s lesser known Living Worlds demo).

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To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the organizer, the software’s original author Ian Gilman is bringing Huckaby’s work further with a release of the Living Worlds mobile app. The scenes feature extra animations and special effects such as moving clouds, stars, footprints appearing in the snow, smoke coming out of chimneys, lights turning on and off, randomized weather …

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The app is essentially a beautiful pixel art screensaver/animated digital image frame made to run on your (charging) tablet or phone. Since it costs $2, I imagine it will find a warm home with those of us who also buy coffee table books just to stare at beautiful art. There aren’t any sounds to go with the scenes, but after talking to Ian, we might just get some soon to get maximum mood for our living rooms.

The app will start with the January scene (seen at the top) and get a free update every month to get the next artwork. The Android app just got its release, with iOS following soon, so make sure to sign up for the mailing list on the app’s website if you want to enjoy it on Apple’s devices.

🕹 kkomputer Tech Aesthetiks 🕹
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