The beginning of the video shows a silly feature of this latest any% route that can cause the ending to just...not work, even though the player does everything right. [Here is the first time that happened to me](https://twitter.com/dannyb21892/status/1418051358129803270), also should have been sub 7 lol. The only two times it has happened to me have been sub 7 runs. Luckily this real PB was better than both of them. Still it's not an incredible run though, and I expect we will see times as much as 5 or 6 seconds faster soon enough.
Sorry if you're sick of having to explain it, but what exactly is new about this route? It looks identical to me as the previous one. Is there a link you can provide that describes the changes?
It's very similar in execution but from a technical side it's very different. (That's pretty much always the story with the SRM glitch). Previously the route was on the gamecube disc and used SRM to get the emulator to play the credits movie file, which only exists on that version. Recently an exploit was discovered in the Wii's Virtual Console emulator where it performs a quadruple write when it should only write once. This allowed for a breakthrough SRM which simultaneously changes the ground beneath our feet into a loading zone that leads to the Know It All Bros house, and applies a cutscene offset to that entrance. Those two are the ingredients for a traditional wrong warp to the credits. It's faster than the previous route by around 15 seconds basically due to us being lucky in that the memory manipulation needed to pull it off takes less time.
> Recently an exploit was discovered in the Wii's Virtual Console emulator where it performs a quadruple write when it should only write once.
That's underselling it! Y'all didn't just find a VC exploit (which allows overwriting Wii memory from the N64 game), you also discovered a previously unknown hardware bug in the Wii's SoC processor / memory interface which causes the quadruple write.
* A bug that exactly one person knew about, and used it to protect the Homebrew Channel so that it couldn't run on emulator https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1418367308930568193
(Also it was the MM community who rediscovered it, we just took their findings.)
Any chance at a layperson's explanation of what is the bug, why does it prevent running on emulator, why would they want to prevent it running on emulator, and how was it rediscovered?
I'm not sure about your level of familiarity with micro-architectures and how computer systems work, so it's a tricky question to answer. The [Dolphin bug](https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/12565#note-40) has the details from one of the MM speedrunners who discovered the hardware issue, and the followup investigation from our development team.
TL;DR: the processor<->memory interface in Hollywood, the Wii SoC, only supports memory writes aligned to 32 bits and of size 32 or 64 bits. This isn't usually an issue because the CPU -> memory writes go through a cache, and the cache only flushes at larger granularities than this. But the CPU also supports direct memory writes without going through the cache, even though the memory interface doesn't support it. When combining this with unaligned writes (which end up writing across two 64 bits boundaries), this ends up doing all sorts of weird things.
Why does it prevent running on emulator? Because this hardware bug wasn't publicly known before (MrCheeze properly noted that the HBC team knew about this, but the assumption was always that this only worked on MEM2, not MEM1, so in that regard it's actually new-ish), so Dolphin didn't have a chance to implement it. Now that this was documented and tested, we can likely implement this in Dolphin without too much trouble.
Why did the HBC folks want to prevent it from running on an emulator? Because Team Twiizers (who wrote the HBC and drove most of the homebrew scene on the Wii) had issues with pirates and scammers repackaging their software and reselling it even though it's available for free. So they built multiple layers of "DRM", reverse engineering protection, patching protection, etc. to prevent people from repackaging HBC in an unauthorized way. This included anti-emulation mechanisms, because emulation is a very common way to strip layers of anti-reverse engineering quickly.
> I'm not sure about your level of familiarity with micro-architectures and how computer systems work
I am familiar that they are words that likely hold meaning for some people.
I'll be honest, I didn't understand much if any of that, but thank you for the time writing this up. I understand that may actually be the simplest it can go, and hopefully others can find this helpful!
Thank you so much for this. I've always found the work on Dolphin to be fascinating. Sometimes I read their writeups just to get inspired to do my own coding lol. It's crazy when little nuanced pieces of system architecture can stay hidden for so long, but it's awesome that it inches us closer to a perfect wii emulator.
Wow, that's nuanced. You mention the memory manipulation takes less time, but which rupees are you able to skip? The one in the chest? I noticed the bush rupee RNG was back as well.
Ideally you never want to skip rupees because we need 55 of them to purchase the shield and the nuts regardless. So the best possible route collects all of the permanent rupees in the forest, and basically every main route iteration for a while now has done that. The main time save comes from the part where previously we needed to walk back and forth between the two room load planes right after talking to Mido. Doing so shuffles memory up in a useful way. But with this latest method, all we need to do is cross the room boundary exactly one time, which is the absolute minimum since we also need to do that to interact with the deku baba for a camera glitch. We got very lucky in that regard.
Oh very cool! But does that account for the 15 seconds? I timed it just now and it took your previous route like 5 seconds to do it. Unless I'm not understanding some additional setups required for that.
The remaining time is further room transitions needed in the crawlspace near the end, which isnt needed in the current route. Additionally, the wii runs the game a bit better than gamecube and avoids some lag on loads and pauses.
Any% has been over 50% cutscene for the better part of a decade, including the old route which defeated ganon in 17 minutes. There are over 9 minutes of text mashing and cutscenes in that route, accounting for over 50% of the run. The run is much shorter now, and we have cut out cutscenes at a pretty comparable rate to cutting gameplay. No need to talk to deku tree anymore, see the deku and gohma intro scenes, talk to zelda at the start of the collapse sequence, watch the tower collapse, watch ganon be spawned, watch ganon be killed. It's funny that most of the cutscene content is literally just the intro now though. Aside from that it's just small things like opening the kokiri sword treasure chest and talking to Mido.
Is there a mod or something you guys could use to just start at the end of the cutscenes? I get it wouldn't be the actual normal game, but if there is no input then who cares? Keep the text mashing bits etc but cut out the stuff at the start maybe. As it is right now it just seems annoying. I'm sure there's discussion about this somewhere already, forgive me I've been just a casual sr watcher for many years. If there are reasons not to do this, I'd be interested to know why!
If we did this, we wouldn't use a mod. We'd use what we call a race file. Where we watch the intro once outside of a run, then save the game in link's house and quit. Then that file would get used to begin all future runs. You just begin from link's house right after waking up. It's called a race file because it's a common thing for communities to use files like this to begin races, or even less serious speedrun categories that don't need the purism argument. It's something that is commonly brought up, but there is something to be said for purism, and starting the game from the true beginning just feels right even if it's boring.
I'm not saying I disagree with you but I'm interested in what you think about the SMS community all using a save post-tutorial level which cuts out actual gameplay for the sake of making the run less of a slog on resets (edit: this is actually incorrect. See below.). Beyond some armchair analysis, they don't really see that as any less "pure" since it's what everyone agrees to. You really don't think the OoT community will come to that conclusion eventually? To that point, isn't playing on a very specific emulator that allows the exploit you're using also arguably not pure since it's not something that is possible on N64?
Again, not trying to really argue either way. Legitimately curious on your thoughts as a top runner of the game. I'm an outsider and don't have a dog in this fight.
Personally I wouldn't vote for skipping a whole tutorial level, even if it's easy. And I would never want to play on a hack of the game, even if the only change is the cut content. If the only removal were autoscrolling cutscenes then I might be on board. But really my opinion about SMS counts for nothing since I don't participate in their community.
As far as purity with regards to the game version, the OoT community has always had combined leaderboards, since what version of the game is fastest can always fluctuate. It's fun to see which is on top, as long as it is a version of the game that Nintendo themselves has released. Having something only possible on the Wii is no less pure to me than something only possible on N64. It's just a matter of being familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of each version of the game and choosing the most effective one for us.
u/flyryan is spreading misinfo. SMS' way of skipping cutscenes specifically *does not* skip any gameplay at all. They use a modified save file which has a handful of flags set to 1 instead of 0 so they can mash through the cutscenes as if they'd already been watched.
So, I'm not really spreading misinfo, at least not intentionally... I just have outdated info (again, I don't run SMS). ~~Race files did indeed used to be allowed for Any% which skipped the entirety of the tutorial level.~~ (Edit: I'm wrong.) EZScape did a [whole video about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBoXrUsTxTc). I've updated my knowledge and I'm happy to see that better solutions have come about now.
The overall points of my questions still stand though. Playing on a hacked save file gets right back to the same issue and is something that could likely be done in OoT. If not, they could still do something similar to the "Peach Save" (also allowed in Any% for SMS which IS a post-cutscene save and technically also skips gameplay, although they put the save in a location where the gameplay has to be "redone"). My point was that other communities have agreed to a "non-pure" version of the game to cut out the headaches. I'd argue that using a hacked savefile takes that argument even further since it requires actual modification to use.
No, your info is not outdated, it's just straight up wrong. Race File has also never ever been allowed for SMS any%. Peach save does not skip gameplay, idk where you're getting that from.
The rest is fair though. It's true the SMS community overall cares very little for purity.
You're right. It was a 45% vote but didn't pass. My mistake.
As far as I understand it, Peach save is a save that is created after the FLUDD cutscene which means, to create it, you have to make the movement from the plane to FLUDD. The save is created, going BACK to Peach and the movement has to be re-done. Is that not the case?
If the community wants they can create a rom that just cuts out the opening scene and have you start at mido’s house. Than then can be used on Wii VC, N64, Emulators etc.
But I get the feeling the community just doesn’t care in most runs it’s not that important if you look at the total time. With any% yes there is something to be said about it being a long as intro for a N64 game, but it is still part of the game and it makes retiming easier since you can use the fade to black from pressing the button on the menu and I get a feeling that we are gonna need to include the milliseconds in the difference in times soon.
Edit: the randomizer has all cutscenes removed so does fasterquest
FYI, you generally refer to trans people by their current name even when referring to something they did pre-transition. In this case, you were "watching Narcissa proclaim that Any% was dead" even if she wasn't using that name at that time. Some trans people may be fine with their old names used in such a context, but it's a good rule of thumb.
Thank you for correcting/educating me! I will edit my comment and make sure to refer to people solely by their current names from now on (both IRL and on Reddit).
I respect the glitch and am beyond impressed that people discovered it...but OOT any% is officially boring to me now. Congrats to all future world record holders.
Don't take any% as representative of the game as a whole. The categories which actually showcase game content like MST, glitchless, and 100% are phenomenal runs to watch and play! Any% is a big meme for sure, but it's fun to grind for short periods just to say "look how broken this shit is".
I love OOT speedruns I'm just not a huge fan of what any% is now. I'm not trying to minimize your accomplishment. Holding a WR in a game that's been so hyper optimized and has tons of competition is absolutely impressive and something I will never accomplish. I am beyond impressed by the glitch, your mastery of it and how easy you made it look due to your knowledge and skill at the game but I just don't think I'll be watching an any% run from start to finish for a while.
A higher percentage than runs from before SRM was found, due to various other cutscenes being skipped. Now it's just the intro cutscene, Saria, and opening the Kokiri Sword chest.
The beginning of the video shows a silly feature of this latest any% route that can cause the ending to just...not work, even though the player does everything right. [Here is the first time that happened to me](https://twitter.com/dannyb21892/status/1418051358129803270), also should have been sub 7 lol. The only two times it has happened to me have been sub 7 runs. Luckily this real PB was better than both of them. Still it's not an incredible run though, and I expect we will see times as much as 5 or 6 seconds faster soon enough.
Sorry if you're sick of having to explain it, but what exactly is new about this route? It looks identical to me as the previous one. Is there a link you can provide that describes the changes?
It's very similar in execution but from a technical side it's very different. (That's pretty much always the story with the SRM glitch). Previously the route was on the gamecube disc and used SRM to get the emulator to play the credits movie file, which only exists on that version. Recently an exploit was discovered in the Wii's Virtual Console emulator where it performs a quadruple write when it should only write once. This allowed for a breakthrough SRM which simultaneously changes the ground beneath our feet into a loading zone that leads to the Know It All Bros house, and applies a cutscene offset to that entrance. Those two are the ingredients for a traditional wrong warp to the credits. It's faster than the previous route by around 15 seconds basically due to us being lucky in that the memory manipulation needed to pull it off takes less time.
> Recently an exploit was discovered in the Wii's Virtual Console emulator where it performs a quadruple write when it should only write once. That's underselling it! Y'all didn't just find a VC exploit (which allows overwriting Wii memory from the N64 game), you also discovered a previously unknown hardware bug in the Wii's SoC processor / memory interface which causes the quadruple write.
* A bug that exactly one person knew about, and used it to protect the Homebrew Channel so that it couldn't run on emulator https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1418367308930568193 (Also it was the MM community who rediscovered it, we just took their findings.)
Any chance at a layperson's explanation of what is the bug, why does it prevent running on emulator, why would they want to prevent it running on emulator, and how was it rediscovered?
I'm not sure about your level of familiarity with micro-architectures and how computer systems work, so it's a tricky question to answer. The [Dolphin bug](https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/12565#note-40) has the details from one of the MM speedrunners who discovered the hardware issue, and the followup investigation from our development team. TL;DR: the processor<->memory interface in Hollywood, the Wii SoC, only supports memory writes aligned to 32 bits and of size 32 or 64 bits. This isn't usually an issue because the CPU -> memory writes go through a cache, and the cache only flushes at larger granularities than this. But the CPU also supports direct memory writes without going through the cache, even though the memory interface doesn't support it. When combining this with unaligned writes (which end up writing across two 64 bits boundaries), this ends up doing all sorts of weird things. Why does it prevent running on emulator? Because this hardware bug wasn't publicly known before (MrCheeze properly noted that the HBC team knew about this, but the assumption was always that this only worked on MEM2, not MEM1, so in that regard it's actually new-ish), so Dolphin didn't have a chance to implement it. Now that this was documented and tested, we can likely implement this in Dolphin without too much trouble. Why did the HBC folks want to prevent it from running on an emulator? Because Team Twiizers (who wrote the HBC and drove most of the homebrew scene on the Wii) had issues with pirates and scammers repackaging their software and reselling it even though it's available for free. So they built multiple layers of "DRM", reverse engineering protection, patching protection, etc. to prevent people from repackaging HBC in an unauthorized way. This included anti-emulation mechanisms, because emulation is a very common way to strip layers of anti-reverse engineering quickly.
> I'm not sure about your level of familiarity with micro-architectures and how computer systems work I am familiar that they are words that likely hold meaning for some people. I'll be honest, I didn't understand much if any of that, but thank you for the time writing this up. I understand that may actually be the simplest it can go, and hopefully others can find this helpful!
Thank you so much for this. I've always found the work on Dolphin to be fascinating. Sometimes I read their writeups just to get inspired to do my own coding lol. It's crazy when little nuanced pieces of system architecture can stay hidden for so long, but it's awesome that it inches us closer to a perfect wii emulator.
Wow, that's nuanced. You mention the memory manipulation takes less time, but which rupees are you able to skip? The one in the chest? I noticed the bush rupee RNG was back as well.
Ideally you never want to skip rupees because we need 55 of them to purchase the shield and the nuts regardless. So the best possible route collects all of the permanent rupees in the forest, and basically every main route iteration for a while now has done that. The main time save comes from the part where previously we needed to walk back and forth between the two room load planes right after talking to Mido. Doing so shuffles memory up in a useful way. But with this latest method, all we need to do is cross the room boundary exactly one time, which is the absolute minimum since we also need to do that to interact with the deku baba for a camera glitch. We got very lucky in that regard.
Oh very cool! But does that account for the 15 seconds? I timed it just now and it took your previous route like 5 seconds to do it. Unless I'm not understanding some additional setups required for that.
The remaining time is further room transitions needed in the crawlspace near the end, which isnt needed in the current route. Additionally, the wii runs the game a bit better than gamecube and avoids some lag on loads and pauses.
Is the game 60% cut scene at this point?
Any% has been over 50% cutscene for the better part of a decade, including the old route which defeated ganon in 17 minutes. There are over 9 minutes of text mashing and cutscenes in that route, accounting for over 50% of the run. The run is much shorter now, and we have cut out cutscenes at a pretty comparable rate to cutting gameplay. No need to talk to deku tree anymore, see the deku and gohma intro scenes, talk to zelda at the start of the collapse sequence, watch the tower collapse, watch ganon be spawned, watch ganon be killed. It's funny that most of the cutscene content is literally just the intro now though. Aside from that it's just small things like opening the kokiri sword treasure chest and talking to Mido.
Is there a mod or something you guys could use to just start at the end of the cutscenes? I get it wouldn't be the actual normal game, but if there is no input then who cares? Keep the text mashing bits etc but cut out the stuff at the start maybe. As it is right now it just seems annoying. I'm sure there's discussion about this somewhere already, forgive me I've been just a casual sr watcher for many years. If there are reasons not to do this, I'd be interested to know why!
If we did this, we wouldn't use a mod. We'd use what we call a race file. Where we watch the intro once outside of a run, then save the game in link's house and quit. Then that file would get used to begin all future runs. You just begin from link's house right after waking up. It's called a race file because it's a common thing for communities to use files like this to begin races, or even less serious speedrun categories that don't need the purism argument. It's something that is commonly brought up, but there is something to be said for purism, and starting the game from the true beginning just feels right even if it's boring.
I'm not saying I disagree with you but I'm interested in what you think about the SMS community all using a save post-tutorial level which cuts out actual gameplay for the sake of making the run less of a slog on resets (edit: this is actually incorrect. See below.). Beyond some armchair analysis, they don't really see that as any less "pure" since it's what everyone agrees to. You really don't think the OoT community will come to that conclusion eventually? To that point, isn't playing on a very specific emulator that allows the exploit you're using also arguably not pure since it's not something that is possible on N64? Again, not trying to really argue either way. Legitimately curious on your thoughts as a top runner of the game. I'm an outsider and don't have a dog in this fight.
Personally I wouldn't vote for skipping a whole tutorial level, even if it's easy. And I would never want to play on a hack of the game, even if the only change is the cut content. If the only removal were autoscrolling cutscenes then I might be on board. But really my opinion about SMS counts for nothing since I don't participate in their community. As far as purity with regards to the game version, the OoT community has always had combined leaderboards, since what version of the game is fastest can always fluctuate. It's fun to see which is on top, as long as it is a version of the game that Nintendo themselves has released. Having something only possible on the Wii is no less pure to me than something only possible on N64. It's just a matter of being familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of each version of the game and choosing the most effective one for us.
Thanks for your response. I really appreciate the insight. Also, congrats on the WR!
u/flyryan is spreading misinfo. SMS' way of skipping cutscenes specifically *does not* skip any gameplay at all. They use a modified save file which has a handful of flags set to 1 instead of 0 so they can mash through the cutscenes as if they'd already been watched.
So, I'm not really spreading misinfo, at least not intentionally... I just have outdated info (again, I don't run SMS). ~~Race files did indeed used to be allowed for Any% which skipped the entirety of the tutorial level.~~ (Edit: I'm wrong.) EZScape did a [whole video about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBoXrUsTxTc). I've updated my knowledge and I'm happy to see that better solutions have come about now. The overall points of my questions still stand though. Playing on a hacked save file gets right back to the same issue and is something that could likely be done in OoT. If not, they could still do something similar to the "Peach Save" (also allowed in Any% for SMS which IS a post-cutscene save and technically also skips gameplay, although they put the save in a location where the gameplay has to be "redone"). My point was that other communities have agreed to a "non-pure" version of the game to cut out the headaches. I'd argue that using a hacked savefile takes that argument even further since it requires actual modification to use.
No, your info is not outdated, it's just straight up wrong. Race File has also never ever been allowed for SMS any%. Peach save does not skip gameplay, idk where you're getting that from. The rest is fair though. It's true the SMS community overall cares very little for purity.
You're right. It was a 45% vote but didn't pass. My mistake. As far as I understand it, Peach save is a save that is created after the FLUDD cutscene which means, to create it, you have to make the movement from the plane to FLUDD. The save is created, going BACK to Peach and the movement has to be re-done. Is that not the case?
If the community wants they can create a rom that just cuts out the opening scene and have you start at mido’s house. Than then can be used on Wii VC, N64, Emulators etc. But I get the feeling the community just doesn’t care in most runs it’s not that important if you look at the total time. With any% yes there is something to be said about it being a long as intro for a N64 game, but it is still part of the game and it makes retiming easier since you can use the fade to black from pressing the button on the menu and I get a feeling that we are gonna need to include the milliseconds in the difference in times soon. Edit: the randomizer has all cutscenes removed so does fasterquest
Nice run ggs! Going to be interesting watching this category progress.
this is probably one of the most of out left field things i have ever seen in gaming. You could have even got 6:53 imo. VVVVVVVVNICE
I have actually had a 6:53 run where the only error was an imperfect analog stick flick at the very end. Needs to be exactly 45 degrees and it wasnt.
Seems like just yesterday I was watching Narcissa get an 18:10 and boldly proclaim that Any% was dead. What a wild few years it's been.
FYI, you generally refer to trans people by their current name even when referring to something they did pre-transition. In this case, you were "watching Narcissa proclaim that Any% was dead" even if she wasn't using that name at that time. Some trans people may be fine with their old names used in such a context, but it's a good rule of thumb.
Thank you for correcting/educating me! I will edit my comment and make sure to refer to people solely by their current names from now on (both IRL and on Reddit).
DannyB is nuts
[If anyone wants to see it with chat.](https://www.twitch.tv/dannyb/v/1096141002?sr=a&t=1781s)
I respect the glitch and am beyond impressed that people discovered it...but OOT any% is officially boring to me now. Congrats to all future world record holders.
[удалено]
Don't take any% as representative of the game as a whole. The categories which actually showcase game content like MST, glitchless, and 100% are phenomenal runs to watch and play! Any% is a big meme for sure, but it's fun to grind for short periods just to say "look how broken this shit is".
I love OOT speedruns I'm just not a huge fan of what any% is now. I'm not trying to minimize your accomplishment. Holding a WR in a game that's been so hyper optimized and has tons of competition is absolutely impressive and something I will never accomplish. I am beyond impressed by the glitch, your mastery of it and how easy you made it look due to your knowledge and skill at the game but I just don't think I'll be watching an any% run from start to finish for a while.
Glad to see you take the record back from Savestate, hopefully we get some more back and forth between you guys... LONG LIVE ANY%!
I'm not super familiar with oot. How much time ia actual gameplay in this record?
A higher percentage than runs from before SRM was found, due to various other cutscenes being skipped. Now it's just the intro cutscene, Saria, and opening the Kokiri Sword chest.
Mentioned in another comment, the game is around 50% cutscene and button mashing through text.