R-ACK - The End - romhack

[Catabo]

Spider-Plumber doing an appropriate action pose instead of the usual peace sign after stage clear is SO GOOD.

[Grounder]

what was his canon event?

[KobaBeach]

what was his canon event?

rise of the mushroom kingdom by randy solem (rip to that dude, lots of content warnings heads up)

[Daizo]

Petario M. Parker was bitten by a radioactive Scuttlebug, and competed in a wrestling competition. After he won, he let a criminal get away, resulting in his Uncle Benji M. Parker dying by the same crook. The Scuttlebug reminded Petario of the spiders he found in Brooklyn, so he adopted the name Spider-Plumber.

Petario and The Plumber (and others?) co-exist in this same R~omh~ACK universe.

[KobaBeach]

another day saving the world at Narshe, Utah. everyone keeps asking me if they can fuck the flag. buddy, they wont even let me fuck it

[KobaBeach]

The method behind getting the dup consistent really is shooting it at a specific point of the screen (specifically the x position; y position doesn't matter), thus why it's "position based duping powers" and not just RNG. But it is a glitch, and not really an SMW-made one either so it's definitely super questionable.

i think it may take the fireball's position into account due to how the MarioFireball block code offset is set up in SMW (or Lunar Magic, not sure which, thanks FuckSoYa), which may wind up accidentally causing the map16 drawing to be at the fireball's position relative to the block rather than just on the block. this is going by what i saw in the level though, im not in the mood or mindspace to properly debug it. it's a very funny use of asm jank.

when rao managed to kill the wall in the kfaraday subarea, he shot the web-ball in a way that it hit the lower right of the web block, and i think that's why it duped (quaded really).

[Daizo]

could be nice to give a warning to motion sickness for this level, btw.

e: well I have actually watched the episode, and yeah! something about that level kinda clicked, didn't it?

[PSI Ninja]

In the Camera Man level, I appreciate how the player is forced to figure out the trick with the screen scrolling in the second section themselves, without needing it to be spelled out for them in message boxes. When I played this level, I didn't notice the control you had over the scrolling in the first section either, and I think it was deliberately designed that way. That kind of "aha!" moment is difficult to achieve in level design.

The top of the screen flickered a lot in yesterday's Spider-Plumber/Narshe level. I noticed that this tends to happen in levels where the Map16 for a block is changed dynamically (e.g., the dots turning into webs). I don't know if it's a Snes9x-only phenomenon, though (since I also use Snes9x). And the last time we heard that Dancing Mad remix on rao's channel was during the YUMP 2 LP (The Bridgekeeper's Third Question).

Also,

I wonder when he'll learn that you can talk to the NPCs in town.

[Lord Ruby]

The top of the screen flickered a lot in yesterday's Spider-Plumber/Narshe level. I noticed that this tends to happen in levels where the Map16 for a block is changed dynamically (e.g., the dots turning into webs). I don't know if it's a Snes9x-only phenomenon, though (since I also use Snes9x). And the last time we heard that Dancing Mad remix on rao's channel was during the YUMP 2 LP (The Bridgekeeper's Third Question).

I don't think there's a fundamental reason for why changing tiles should cause this - the vanilla game also does these things fairly often, such as when you hit question mark blocks, so I'm inclined to say that this isn't an emulator thing. While flickering can be caused by running too much code during V-blank, so many scanlines are lost that that code would have to be very inefficient for something so simple as just overwriting a tile, which doesn't even need any custom V-blank code in the first place. But this level would most likely need V-blank shenanigans to overwrite the plumber with the spider-plumber anyway, so perhaps it is running the web-ball code there after all?

[KobaBeach]

this level is a nightmare and i love it

[Daizo]

Toxic Hole is definitely one of the "questionable" levels in terms of difficulty, so maybe a good idea to clear other areas first lmao.

or rip the band-aid

[Grounder]

the lesson: never praise a boo cloud

[Daizo]

intended strat according to "flamboyant aardvark"

to be a bit fair, when I accepted the level, I too had a pretty dumb strat of like, retaining P-speed and jumping the 2 tile pillar to the goal post. It was still like the worst thing in the universe to pull off.

[Catabo]

It came up during a discussion of people arguing over transliterations of names in another game series once: somewhere out there, there has to be a radical Yossy purist, someone who played the Japanese version of Yoshi's Island and decided after it was released overseas that this "Yoshi" business was localization gone amok and Yossy is his real name!

[EllenHouraisan]

raocow's reaction to seeing

Sans Undertale

was great.

[camwoodstock]

It came up during a discussion of people arguing over transliterations of names in another game series once: somewhere out there, there has to be a radical Yossy purist, someone who played the Japanese version of Yoshi's Island and decided after it was released overseas that this "Yoshi" business was localization gone amok and Yossy is his real name!

see to us, yoshi and Yossy are two distinct entities, and we internalize them separately. we will not clarify,

[Lord Ruby]

First level was really cool today. Second level was nice overall, except for its tendency to have setups where you're almost guaranteed to die the first time as you figure out what's going on. The actual solution for the final jump is pretty dumb too, I always tone down jumps like that even if they're technically possible and even if you can retry them many times. Bringing the red shell all the way there was really clever and it's a shame it didn't work.

[helucard]

Regarding the life farm shenanigans, I have a theory. Something to test if you have the time.

The shop had the 1up mushrooms available for both the first and second upgrades. You picked up both, but notably, you picked up the one for the first upgrade after the second (because it's a 1up, why wouldn't you grab it?) - my theory is that in picking up 1up Upgrade 1, it sets the life farm back to its first upgrade. I suggest picking up 1up Upgrade 2 and checking the life farm to see if it goes back to the second upgrade.

[KobaBeach]

Regarding the life farm shenanigans, I have a theory. Something to test if you have the time.

The shop had the 1up mushrooms available for both the first and second upgrades. You picked up both, but notably, you picked up the one for the first upgrade after the second (because it's a 1up, why wouldn't you grab it?) - my theory is that in picking up 1up Upgrade 1, it sets the life farm back to its first upgrade. I suggest picking up 1up Upgrade 2 and checking the life farm to see if it goes back to the second upgrade.

+1ing this, I think the 1-up may be the trigger for changing the life farm sublevel accessed by the door in The Plumber's house.

[repairmanman]

the deus ex machina level be like

the idea that raocow literally could have just made the jump the entire time fills you with determination

[CleanBittyDrawn]

I do hope raocow that you can look back on videos where you say that you're playing bad and that what you're dealing with is easy and say, "No, that's genuinely kinda difficult." Because I know that playing a game narrows one's mind like that, but I just hope you aren't looking over the footage and saying, "Wow, I was terrible today," or something.

Last night was a good example of that. I don't blame you for handling the final obstacle that way either. You had already died 98 times just getting there a second time (not to mention 65 times on the secret and 7 on the level before) before not being able to get that six tile jump and the level before was so obsessed with using the gimmick. There were better ways to circumvent it (as Daizo mentioned), but the mental fatigue of it all...

[KobaBeach]

Tags: I have a list of levels, that can be a problem, but I haven't looked at it, because I still want to get surprised, by the sometimes silly names, of the levels themselves

raocow please dont do this to yourself, open that txt file. i am your lp manager now, anonymous "shelljump" "jesus" bl00dlust is dead

noticed some people being sarcastic towards the level in the comments already. the sonic cycle marches on...

Because I know that playing a game narrows one's mind like that, but I just hope you aren't looking over the footage and saying, "Wow, I was terrible today," or something.

you know he is, raocow always thinks he's the one that is being the problem and i think that's part of why people get vicious towards super hard levels he plays on youtube. he really shouldn't beat himself up over it like. im good at mario (on keyboard, btw) and i suck dick a lot at video games too

this stage is also very kaizo informed which i think helps explain why raocow was so fucking wasted and ravaged by the end. those levels are very grindy and doing a one shot of them usually takes around an hour or so if they're pretty demanding.

intended strat according to "flamboyant aardvark"

the spinjumping actually kind of reminds me of a kaizo tech, you run back and forth a smaller ledge and spinjump to lightly hop without getting propelled too far, so you can turn back mid jump. p-speed is retained so if you keep doing this in a wide enough ledge you'll wind up getting p-speed eventually. i think most ledges work, i forget what's the minimum amount of tiles necessary, but it gets harder to execute the smaller it gets.

anyway (dev guess, do not confirm if i'm right or wrong)

i think the dev was morsel based on the "handle name" and high execution level design alone. i'm probs wrong

anyway i agree ronco shouldn't play

sands undertail

. i saw the posts from when the request thread exploded (partial exaggeration) with requests for it back in 2016 and raocow was like "i saw it everywhere on tumblr im not in the mood" and honestly? i just know people would be extremely unbearable and sebby about it

[PSI Ninja]

I wonder when he'll learn that you can talk to the NPCs in town.

Turns out, it would be the very next day.

Catching up on the videos, raocow remarked that the hall section of The Spooky House made good use of the Boo Cloud, because it's designed so that you can't outpace it and make their hitboxes disappear, thus removing the challenge. He didn't say it (or was about to and got interrupted midthought as usual), but I think another reason why the Boo Cloud was used well was because you had free movement in all directions with the Lakitu Cloud. The Boo Cloud appears in the Sunken Ship level of the original SMW, where swimming gives you free movement to avoid the Boos. When Boo Clouds are used in a regular platforming context with normal gravity, that's when they can be annoying, because of the more limited space you get to navigate around the ghosts.

As for that six-tile-high jump in the Deus Ex Machina level, I understand that it doesn't always work because of Mario's oscillating running speed. So does that mean that attaining the 10/10 score in the JUMP level is also luck? raocow got it on his second try, and I got it on my first try, so it wasn't clear to me if you got the reward for indeed getting the maximum height (or if there's a tiny bit of leeway for that).

the spinjumping actually kind of reminds me of a kaizo tech, you run back and forth a smaller ledge and spinjump to lightly hop without getting propelled too far, so you can turn back mid jump. p-speed is retained so if you keep doing this in a wide enough ledge you'll wind up getting p-speed eventually. i think most ledges work, i forget what's the minimum amount of tiles necessary, but it gets harder to execute the smaller it gets.

Trying it myself, I find that four is the minimum amount of tiles needed to get P-speed using this method. The edges have to be open for you to do the spinjumps, though. Just turning around while grounded seems to kill too much of your P-speed for that to work with only four tiles.

I don't think there's a fundamental reason for why changing tiles should cause this - the vanilla game also does these things fairly often, such as when you hit question mark blocks, so I'm inclined to say that this isn't an emulator thing. While flickering can be caused by running too much code during V-blank, so many scanlines are lost that that code would have to be very inefficient for something so simple as just overwriting a tile, which doesn't even need any custom V-blank code in the first place. But this level would most likely need V-blank shenanigans to overwrite the plumber with the spider-plumber anyway, so perhaps it is running the web-ball code there after all?

You're right, it's likely a V-blank overflow issue. I checked this level in ZSNES and got the same problem, but the flicker wasn't as bad as in Snes9x. The reason I pointed this out was because I noticed it happening in

some levels of AAT where the Map16 gets changed dynamically in some of our custom code

, and I wanted to know if something like that can be fixed.

[Daizo]

if you want the switch palace gag to land, I would recommend not using the switch pain relief (at least not until you see...the reason why it exists)

[EllenHouraisan]

While I agree with Koba on being against raocow playing Undertale, it has been such a surreal experience to see him being bombarded by Undertale music without recognizing it, lol.