I wanted to explore that top shelf area up there, i think there's a box with a one up or something there too. I remember thinking that going up there might trigger the cheating (it's where the shortcut drops you off) but did it anyway. I was wrong that going up there was the problem, but right that it would lead to me cheating. I must have stayed in the air for a little too long. Lmao when i would take the shortcut and get told for cheating, I would think, "How did she know?! She didn't see me" and I was seriously confused about it
Hey, we want to see what the level looks like without the ship, can you remove it? How about I make it invisible so we can add it back later if we want? That'll do ... (both forget about it)
Honestly, it IS easier to do. Just give it's properties of invisible and intangible and you've "removed" something. It's faster than going through the code to find the ship and removing it. Plus, as David said, it may still need to be used as a reference anchor.
Technically, levels aren't really code, they're data READ BY the code. "Code is weird" is a good explanation for plenty of things, but not really this. Plus it's possible they had something like a special level editor that made it an easy visual process rather than writing lines of text. They most likely made it invisible and left it there because it's a good idea when you're not sure you want to fully commit to removing something, in case you come back later and decide you did indeed want it there.
@Mia Wu can confirm this, my uncle that worked at nintendo when the game was being developed told me this was true, but was removed from the game because the developer that worked in the script of the Ghost ship rising from the water in the second Star died misteriously and the Ghost ship was cursed, i can double confirm this cuz the developer that died was also my uncle and i asked him through a weegee board
@Mia Wu i playd it at 4 in the morn and WARTIO APPEARD and he screamed like in pain and stuff and there was BLOOd and my screen glithced and i got mental illness
it's the location of the 121st star, u gotta launch uself up there using the cannon, and to get the star you have to fight a bunch of ghost pirates and defeat the captain (theyre all just boos with hats and eyepatches, and the captain has a hook)
who knew that all you had to do to astral project was to grab the chukya that's grabbing you? i was taking meditation classes for no reason, smh separating my struct and object has never been easier also, - we explore deep time in moments as we force a koopa to walk aimlessly for 55 minutes
59:55 This honestly seems like something that'd be part of a playground rumor. "If you wait 41 minutes, all the bowling balls will fuse together and transform into Queen Bob-omb" or something dumb like that
@@pedrofelck You spent hours and you still didn't get him? You must've been missing out on a serious clue or something. I usually unlocked Luigi within minutes of starting the game.
22:55 wow, that's _really_ cool. Ties the whole level together. It makes sense why mission 1 has that layer of fog. You swim towards this ghost ship, it disappears, you look down, and...there it is
that's actually a really cool concept. you see a ship on the water, then when you get close, it vanishes. you look down, and see the current state of the ship. what you saw before was what the ship used to look like. it's as if the universe itself is recalling a memory about the ship's previous state
The visualized "focus" made me appreciate SM64's camera a lot more. It sure can be frustrating, but the way it reacts and moves in response to Mario's movement was really visionary.
I'd say it's overhated. Mario 64 has a way better camera system (not as good as Sunshine's) than Mario Galazy, Galaxy 2 and 3d World. Those games are very limited with its movement and it's always annoyed me. The camera sucks in romhacks tho
The whole thing with the camera always pointing at a focus point rather than Mario himself actually makes so much sense and really explains why other games at the time struggled making their cameras work as well as SM64's- particularly when their focus (if it even existed) moved too fast with the character.
It really sells the idea that there is a Lakitu cameraman filming Mario. Which also probably explains why SM64 is not disorienting-- it's like watching a film.
4:38 When I was a little kid (we're talking 6 years old), when Mario was on the edge like that, I always imagined it was Bowser seeing Mario in danger of falling and trying to shake the screen to try to make him fall.
People like to rag on SM64's camera, but I feel like this serves as an amazing example of just how ingeniously designed it was for it's time, moving the camera to show the area ahead of your movement to give better spatial orientation as you move. Stuff we take for granted nowadays without even realizing it.
@@roo525 yeah, and many other games failed to do the camera properly, Mario 64 was the beginning of a new era of platformers, and it was the camera that made this game special and appreciated for many years.
@@roo525 All of the imitation 3D platformers of the time (and plenty more modern examples, let's be honest) failed to take note of this subtlety. A camera should never just "focus" to the character all of the time.
the thing is, the focus actually moving this way was only implemented later in the game's development, as Mario was in the center of the screen most of the time in the Shoshinkai 1995 demo
Without a doubt. I'm learning coding to break into the video game industry one day. With what I know so far and what this video has shown me, I can imagine what the code is doing. It's awesome. I'm loving videos like this even more now.
"...What does the water level checker do?" "It checks the water level in Whomp's Fortress." 'Yes, but what does it *do* with that information?" "Well, nothing."
4:39 So *THATS* why that happens. I've done that on accident a bunch of times and always wonder why the camera has a seizure every time I do it. It's honestly really cool to learn about the little nuances of this game. Thanks for making this Pannen
@Squant hi hello I do in fact design games! Even if these invisible things are placed by hand, the odds are that there WAS some decision making somewhere. Even if it was just some designer making a snap judgement. But the kind of stuff you can find in a design doc would definitely include the implementation details for the item boxes and stars
I used to just jump straight down to its head then wondered why its body didn't follow me. Then I did it the "proper" way and it worked. I was confused.
k i dont have the game and literally dont know what happens if you're not at the head but you've activated that checkpoint like what will it do? will it go back up? cross the bridge? chase mario terrifingly?
@@tomjackal5708 i assume after the checkpoint it just tries to change its angle to be pointing towards mario very slowly, if you're not at the head it would probably slightly veer towards you but it wouldn't have much of an effect
Wow, the camera center focus section really goes to show how groundbreaking the camera was for an early 3D game. It's not perfect, but it was miles ahead of other 3D platformers from the era.
Seeing the butterflies turn into bombs unlocked a deep memory inside me. I remember watching them spawn as a child and thought it was weird that they would just appear out of thin air. And now, 20 years later, I learned that it was because of the butterflies. Thank you for putting this conundrum I forgot I had to rest, Pannen.
It's actually impressive how much there is to see here. You'd think everything was already discovered or found through datamining, since the game released like 25 years ago, but no. You can still make a 1 hour long video about unseen stuff, or explaining how the physics work or why glitches happen. Truly amazing.
And I like the fact that he doesn't even ask for subs, not like other youtubers that make a 20 minutes video just to show us something we already know, and then they ask for subs. -_-
Everything WAS found in a way - there was a laborious project to decompile the source code and meticulously label everything, so we now have a very readable full source which compiles to exactly the same code found on the cartridge. Of course the average layperson hasn't *read* the whole source, but some people have - like that one guy who optimized the heck out of the game and made splitscreen multiplayer
Speaking of which - that project really blew my mind. You would think the developers of the day were masters of squeezing performance out of their hardware and that it would be a lost art, but no - apparently we've learned new optimization techniques that you can apply to old games to make them faster
"Finally, you can press A to end the free movement" Well there go all my hopes and dreams for finding a way to activate and use Free Movement to save A presses.
33:41 I've seen this animation show up a lot in romhacks where level entries are inside of things like warp pipes instead of paintings. Now I know where it comes from!
@@GaudyGabriev02 It probably partially is (you can presumably use a different level transition, or put it behind a painting of a sort), but to my understanding the tools are also frustrating/confusing to use (hence why some hacks have paintings that aren't regular paintings and don't reliably work).
54:20 So if there’s an “effort” value that changes from 4 to 8 when Mario finishes (and is far away from KtQ), I’d actually be really interested in seeing what happens when we manually change that value Like, sure, if Pannen just said “hey I hacked Koopa to be faster” that’d be kind of whatever, but since it’s actually tied to like, a uniquely titled “effort” value it makes it a little more fun. I wanna see KtQ with 255 effort.
I remember seeing boulder 86 one time while leaving the game idle. I always thought it was some random occurrence that I'd never see again. Very cool to see it again and find out the cause after all these years!
DeRockProject & the Attack of the Really Long Channel Name But if you do the same set of inputs, the game will always respond the same way, and if you do a different set of inputs the game will do something different. PROVEN
44:35 is actually super helpful to know. I could never figure out how to consistently get the snowball to follow mario at the end. That explains everything.
As a game dev who builds everything from scratch, I find these videos very inspirational. I get to see how certain features were implemented back then (or at least in Mario 64) and on a system with a different architecture.
Pannen you can't just drop a 1 hour video of observations on us like that in the middle of a pandemic. No but thanks really it's great to see you again after a long while.
aizay Mario 64 does multiple things to screw with first time players, such as the Tall Tall Mountain Death slide, Big Boo’s Haunt tilting floor trap that sends you to the basement, and the infamous Piano loudly coming to life to attack you. The reason I believe screwing with players (in healthy moderation) is good sometimes is because of the philosophy Satoru Iwata covers very well in his 2004 GDQ talk, that entertainment needs emotional response in order to resonate and succeed. Laughter, joy, surprise, fear, anger, pride of accomplishment, etc. all make the experience more memorable. You can’t lie and say you don’t remember the piano or death slide in Mario 64 even if they are not exactly “fun”. Bomb butterflies are definitely a surprising shock if you were one of the few kids to discover it, or other hard to find secrets like the random 1-up in Whomps Fortress castle or any of the hidden triggers shown in this very video.
Steel balls rolling down a hill following a complex path: all follow the same path. Huge boulder rolling down a narrow tunnel in a cavern towards a pit: 256 possible paths.
It's actually a lot simpler behind the scenes, too. A circular/spherical detection aura is one of the easiest ways to program a detection range, since it's just simple math to check whether Mario's x, y, and maybe z coords are within a set distance from the Goomba's. It's actually a lot harder to make enemies _less_ aware of the player than it is to make them more aware. xP
@MrOmega That is actually very true; and the easiest way to make enemies less aware of the player would be to simply reduce the radius of the detection circle/sphere.
@@MrOmegatronic I'd love to know how enemies on Skyrim behave like this (i use a mod so they can like, not see me on the night, but i'd still like to know.)
So the earthquake glitch isn't even something really happening in the game, it's just how the player can see the game being affected. Massive mindblow. I love seeing new stuff about this game all the time, SM64 was the first console game I really got into playing video games with and kind of worked my way backwards to discover all the classic greats. Keep it up Pancake Man! 9:55 Bikdip's least favorite scene, no question
@@jongyon7192p, that glitch that happens when Mario is halfway on a ledge and halfway in mid-air. The camera will start shaking and Mario will start making a weird noise and is about to fall off the ledge.
The unused ghost ship really interests me. Could it be that they had planned to make a 3D version of the Sunken Ghost Ship level in Super Mario World? Who knows?
Since it only appears in the first mission, it's possible it's the same ship as in later missions, just moved out of bounds, and in later missions, moved onto the water's surface.
I don't know why but the Observatory theme playing every time you sped up the path recording was absolutely hilarious. Thanks for posting this, I absolutely adore learning about how the logic and reason of these things works and while I dont know much code I can make inferences about game design based on stuff like this.
Man, I'd hate to have been the kid who finished the penguin race legitimately, then did some air tricks while waiting for the penguin to finish, and then got told they cheated.
@@markymark443 Less complicated to just check airtime. But they Should have made it just stop tracking the value after you finish, instead of when the penguin does. A different idea, and how I always thought the slide worked, is that you have to pass certain checkpoints to not be considered "cheating" like in mario kart. But this airtime method is the most efficient, and much easier to implement than your idea.
@M. That would be much better. Yes, I recognize it would be more work, like TheBrandonGame said, but this was in an era, when Nintendo actually *PUT* some effort into their games to make sure they were good and worked. Of course, the checkpoint-idea of TheBrandonGame, and even just terminating the airtime check after *YOU* finish, would work just as well. I really don’t know, what the thought process behind the current system was. Maybe it was just a programming oversight. I mean, in Super Mario World, Chargin’ Chucks are technically power-ups. 🤔
@@PC_Simo there are a lot oversights in mario 64. BLJs to achieve near infinite speed even existing showing an oversight in not capping marios max horizontal speed. cloning existing. The invisible walls that infest tick tock clock. 100 coins stars being able to spawn in ceilings, therefore unattainable. The hitbox of the star in the pilar in whomps being slightly outside the wall. Bomb clipping. Ect. This is game was one of the first of it's kind. Errors are to be expected. This slide one is a exceptionally ridiculous one though.
@TheBrandonGame That is true. Cloning being possible is a common one among games in general, I have heard. I don’t work in the business, myself, so all I have is second-hand information.
The object paths were awesome. It’s so wild to find out that the rolling balls respond to slopes over time. I always assumed they were on a strict loop
33:22 *OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPP-* This videos are really wonderful, definitely give amazing insight to how things were handled by the devs. Awesome work!
I know what you mean. It feels odd for such a long video to end abruptly, having an end screen would be nice, even if it's just a "watch these videos with similar content"
I just read a large portion of your FAQ, and wow... I'm sorry on behalf of the people who comment without understanding you and the way you work, it's obviously far more complicated then it seems at face value and mental health is no joke. Wish you the best of luck, and thanks for all the stuff you have made on both channels.
Do you really think I'm gonna watch an hour long video with a mysteriously title which will probably go into detail about obscure SM64 mechanics and shenaningans? The answer is yes
44:34, no wonder why every time I jumped straight down next to the snowball head instead of sliding down the mountain, the snowball body never followed me and fell of the level, because I never touched the checkpoint beforehand.
This is a mastercourse in how to make the next big platformer. All of the great techniques like the camera tracking ahead of Mario's direction and having easing, to the way to handle collisions. Great job on this video investigation!
So THAT'S why the Penguin claimed I was a cheater! One of the times I completed the race I tried to showboat by seeing how long I could stay in the air before he finished, and he called me a cheater for it. I was so offended as a little kid... at least now I know >why
I feel like one of these days I'm totally gonna teach a beginner-friendly course on phenomenology that starts with a Pannenkoek video like this one "See, things *appear* to you like *this* when you play Super Mario 64, but there are elements of Mario's phenomenal world that can only be grasped by suspending your "natural standpoint" or "natural perspective" as a player or viewer, in order to understand the ordinarily unseen processes that make everything appear and function as it does." In short, I'm saying that Pannenkoek's videos could just be called "The Phenomenology of Mario" and it'd be a pretty accurate description.
I hope that more people understand that you are way more than just the parallel universe guy. This info and investigation is so well structured and explained it's ridiculous. Congratulations.
"When chuckya grabs Mario, the Mario struct remains in place, while the Mario object is what appears in chuckya's hands. In other words, the 2 positions desync. The camera still focuses on the Mario struct's position, even though the Mario struct has no graphic." 155,000 people: fascinating
Sir, the last known copy of Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64 has been destroyed! Whatever shall we do! Pannenkoek: I gotchu fam (proceeds to build an entire SM64 copy from scratch)
Just realized: the unused Mario Spawner in the Foyer where he falls in his standing pose counts as one of those deaths where you fall into a bottomless pit and land on the ground, where it takes away a life
Ngl, this video started out creepy as hell for me personally (and it’s interesting to see how many creepy elements of this game Nintendo hid), but it got more and more beautiful as we neared the end. Thank you for your work pannen :)
Highlighting the Focus is such a great little "a-ha!" moment from a game design perspective. Seeing how they achieved the camera's predictive behavior in real-time shows a lot of what went into the forward-thinking 3D design of the game.
The focus point of the camera is really interesting to see, its like the camera thing super mario world does to make it easier to see the way you're going but in 3d. Even though it doesnt always work
I came here to see the pink coin in the thumbnail, knowing that it's "unseen" in normal circumstances, and surely enough, I wasn't disappointed at all. Good job! 😉
"recall that the HOLP is a point in 3D space representing the last position of a held object" Pannen's like "come on, I know you've seen at least *one* of my other videos.
It's MY sleepover and I get to choose the movie
lmao
lmao
lmao
lmao
lmao
I had no idea just how many 1-Up locations there were in this game
Yeah, I had no idea either.
Oh hey Trigger Happy
Get it?
Hello NB
Stop responding to his comment, he won't respond to you back
Me neither
You've heard of Watch for Rolling Rocks, now get ready for...
1:00:35
Watch Rolling Rocks.
Rolling Stones*
But can you watch rolling rocks while drinking Rolling Rock on a Roll-n-Rocker?
Common Sense Bro
That’s too much. What next, TAS with a Power Glove?!?!
Common Sense Bro Yes, but can you do that in 0.5 A presses?
Dont remind us of his dark times...
Imagine a kid playing in 1996, finally beating the penguin in CCM, jumping around in excitement, and being told that you cheated for no reason.
it happened to me ! Not in 1996 (wasn't born lol) and not on original console, but still, I got this on emulator when I was around 12 lol
I wanted to explore that top shelf area up there, i think there's a box with a one up or something there too. I remember thinking that going up there might trigger the cheating (it's where the shortcut drops you off) but did it anyway. I was wrong that going up there was the problem, but right that it would lead to me cheating. I must have stayed in the air for a little too long.
Lmao when i would take the shortcut and get told for cheating, I would think, "How did she know?! She didn't see me" and I was seriously confused about it
@@inafridge8573 or did she...
Why 1996?
@Oshabot 16 I know but why does it have to happen on the year it was released? I bet kids are still playing N64 and this is happening to them
"Here I've placed a pink coin at a scuttlebug's home"
Scuttlebug appreciates your generosity
ivelischpfuli stick bugged lol
Scuttlebug is very lucky. Pink coins that update with your home are incredibly rare.
🤣
@@lucas_gaming2734 more like scuttlebugged lol
@@PC_Simo pink coins by themselves are quite exquisite.
"Hey should we remove this massive ghost ship object that we never used?"
"Nah just make it invisible"
Hey, we want to see what the level looks like without the ship, can you remove it?
How about I make it invisible so we can add it back later if we want?
That'll do
...
(both forget about it)
Wouldn't surprise me if the level breaks if the ship is fully removed, like something is needing to reference it.
Honestly, it IS easier to do. Just give it's properties of invisible and intangible and you've "removed" something. It's faster than going through the code to find the ship and removing it. Plus, as David said, it may still need to be used as a reference anchor.
@@davidmcgill1000 Code is a finicky bitch, so you're most likely correct.
Technically, levels aren't really code, they're data READ BY the code. "Code is weird" is a good explanation for plenty of things, but not really this. Plus it's possible they had something like a special level editor that made it an easy visual process rather than writing lines of text.
They most likely made it invisible and left it there because it's a good idea when you're not sure you want to fully commit to removing something, in case you come back later and decide you did indeed want it there.
Imagine just casually dropping info that there's an invisible ghost ship in the sky in Jolly Roger's Bay like that.
Isn't that something, that people knew about for a while now. At least i did.
invisible ghost
heh
@Mia Wu can confirm this, my uncle that worked at nintendo when the game was being developed told me this was true, but was removed from the game because the developer that worked in the script of the Ghost ship rising from the water in the second Star died misteriously and the Ghost ship was cursed, i can double confirm this cuz the developer that died was also my uncle and i asked him through a weegee board
@Mia Wu i playd it at 4 in the morn and WARTIO APPEARD and he screamed like in pain and stuff and there was BLOOd and my screen glithced and i got mental illness
it's the location of the 121st star, u gotta launch uself up there using the cannon, and to get the star you have to fight a bunch of ghost pirates and defeat the captain (theyre all just boos with hats and eyepatches, and the captain has a hook)
Today on the Dark Arts of SM64:
- We see the dead
- We visit a ghost ship floating high above the water
- We perform astral projection
- We transcend all mortal laws of physics and A-pose on the goombas to assert dominance
- We cheat without getting caught, but make up for it by getting caught without cheating.
- Make Moneybag homeless
- Press A several times
- We see the unseen mechanisms that control our fate
who knew that all you had to do to astral project was to grab the chukya that's grabbing you? i was taking meditation classes for no reason, smh separating my struct and object has never been easier
also,
- we explore deep time in moments as we force a koopa to walk aimlessly for 55 minutes
Appropriately named "Seeing the Unseen", too
59:55
This honestly seems like something that'd be part of a playground rumor. "If you wait 41 minutes, all the bowling balls will fuse together and transform into Queen Bob-omb" or something dumb like that
Time travel?
Oh boy, I remember the rumours there were in my school about unlocking Luigi, how many hours I spent trying it.
@@pedrofelck You spent hours and you still didn't get him? You must've been missing out on a serious clue or something. I usually unlocked Luigi within minutes of starting the game.
@@pedrofelck Luigi is already unlocked from the start of the game. Looks like your Super Mario 64 was a rare personalized copy.
@@pedrofelck *L is real 2401*
22:55 wow, that's _really_ cool. Ties the whole level together. It makes sense why mission 1 has that layer of fog. You swim towards this ghost ship, it disappears, you look down, and...there it is
that's actually a really cool concept. you see a ship on the water, then when you get close, it vanishes. you look down, and see the current state of the ship. what you saw before was what the ship used to look like. it's as if the universe itself is recalling a memory about the ship's previous state
on this day we have been blessed with 1 hour pannen
and it's not an April fools video :)
Wait, that was an hour? Felt like 10 minutes!
Amen
Maybe 2020s not so bad after all
I feel like i'm dreaming, it's been so long
The visualized "focus" made me appreciate SM64's camera a lot more. It sure can be frustrating, but the way it reacts and moves in response to Mario's movement was really visionary.
I'd say it's overhated. Mario 64 has a way better camera system (not as good as Sunshine's) than Mario Galazy, Galaxy 2 and 3d World. Those games are very limited with its movement and it's always annoyed me. The camera sucks in romhacks tho
The whole thing with the camera always pointing at a focus point rather than Mario himself actually makes so much sense and really explains why other games at the time struggled making their cameras work as well as SM64's- particularly when their focus (if it even existed) moved too fast with the character.
Point at where the character's attention would likely be.
So simple yet so smart.
@@musaran2 or the players attention
It really sells the idea that there is a Lakitu cameraman filming Mario. Which also probably explains why SM64 is not disorienting-- it's like watching a film.
4:38 When I was a little kid (we're talking 6 years old), when Mario was on the edge like that, I always imagined it was Bowser seeing Mario in danger of falling and trying to shake the screen to try to make him fall.
And then Mario lands safely and Bowser`s like "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFU--"
Thaf would be a great mechanic for a mario game, lol
Bowsers like "Fa- Wait WHAT?"
My family called them bowser shakes. So happy we’re not alone
That's retroactively canon from now on
Mario: *decides to show off at the end of the penguin race with his famous walljump into groundpound maneuver*
Penguin: Was that a cheat I saw?
Penguin gets salty and finds an excuse not to give him a star
@@captainmidnightgaming Penguin really be pulling a Wario --[apparition]--
@@markymark443 every pink coin is personalized
@@ej-jz5rcevery personalized is mario
@@elchuchooofin3807mario personalized is every
It feels really weird to actually realize how often Mario isn't in the center of the screen.
People like to rag on SM64's camera, but I feel like this serves as an amazing example of just how ingeniously designed it was for it's time, moving the camera to show the area ahead of your movement to give better spatial orientation as you move. Stuff we take for granted nowadays without even realizing it.
@@roo525 yeah, and many other games failed to do the camera properly, Mario 64 was the beginning of a new era of platformers, and it was the camera that made this game special and appreciated for many years.
@@roo525 All of the imitation 3D platformers of the time (and plenty more modern examples, let's be honest) failed to take note of this subtlety. A camera should never just "focus" to the character all of the time.
the thing is, the focus actually moving this way was only implemented later in the game's development, as Mario was in the center of the screen most of the time in the Shoshinkai 1995 demo
@@TorutheRedFox
That's a neat tidbit, but it doesn't change that it was added at all.
Pannen would be a legitimately great college professor. Fantastic use of text and visuals to educate and instruct.
As if we don't already have credit hours in Mario 64 physics at this point.
Without a doubt.
I'm learning coding to break into the video game industry one day. With what I know so far and what this video has shown me, I can imagine what the code is doing. It's awesome. I'm loving videos like this even more now.
If I recall correctly, he already is
he is a college professor
+ What's your favourite SM64 object?
- The water level checker.
I always liked that one.
"...What does the water level checker do?"
"It checks the water level in Whomp's Fortress."
'Yes, but what does it *do* with that information?"
"Well, nothing."
"Hm yes this water is at water level."
@@LonelySpaceDetective The best part is that the water's height is fixed, so measuring it wouldn't be necessary even if there was a purpose behind it.
NOOP 4 LIFE
4:39 So *THATS* why that happens. I've done that on accident a bunch of times and always wonder why the camera has a seizure every time I do it. It's honestly really cool to learn about the little nuances of this game. Thanks for making this Pannen
Even I did this many time and I was confused on why the camera was breaking
Imagine all this research accumulated into the "True Mario 64 Manual." Hundreds of pages of pedantic little details which are fun to know nonetheless.
Where can I order the hard cover signed limited edition?
It's called the design documentation lmao
@@benaldo138 does it exist
@@whythehecknot5038 internally, at nintendo, probably.
@Squant hi hello I do in fact design games!
Even if these invisible things are placed by hand, the odds are that there WAS some decision making somewhere. Even if it was just some designer making a snap judgement.
But the kind of stuff you can find in a design doc would definitely include the implementation details for the item boxes and stars
"As you can see here, i've hacked a pink coin at the 3d point location of Mario's soul."
"The very culmination of his being..."
Well yeah how else are you going to run it into the Friendliness Pellets?
Keiya YOU IDIOT! IN THIS WORLD, IT’S KILL OR BE KILLED (evil laughter)!
Keiya Yeah! Run into the Bul- Friendliness Pellets!
I don't see the coin...
as a child I always wondered what I had to do for the snowball to get to its destination. This is mind blowing to see that it is that simple
I used to just jump straight down to its head then wondered why its body didn't follow me. Then I did it the "proper" way and it worked. I was confused.
k i dont have the game and literally dont know what happens if you're not at the head but you've activated that checkpoint like what will it do? will it go back up? cross the bridge? chase mario terrifingly?
@@tomjackal5708 the vid says it just works normally
@@tomjackal5708 oh wait shit sorry I read that wrong lol, it seems like it would just work the same as it always does
@@tomjackal5708 i assume after the checkpoint it just tries to change its angle to be pointing towards mario very slowly, if you're not at the head it would probably slightly veer towards you but it wouldn't have much of an effect
44:00 There's something pleasing about Yoshi's waypoints being in the shape of a Y.
Y stands for Yoshi!
@@alisiaale565 smart man
(i am definitely not pulling a "no shit sherlock" on you)
@@nil8659, thanks, lol!
The water level checker is weirdly cute. "What's the water level!? Oh, ok, still 58439. ...What's the water level!?"
10.04.99? Coming soon to a filtered camera near you!
@warmCabin I can’t help but agree 😆.
"Vegeta, what does the Checker say about the Water level?"
"It's over 53200 Uniiiiiiiiits"
9:17 Well to be fair it is called STAND tall on the four pillars. Not hop over the four pillars.
Wow, the camera center focus section really goes to show how groundbreaking the camera was for an early 3D game. It's not perfect, but it was miles ahead of other 3D platformers from the era.
And there are still lots of bad cameras to this day...
@@lgasc As a fan of Souls games, I feel this
Seeing the butterflies turn into bombs unlocked a deep memory inside me. I remember watching them spawn as a child and thought it was weird that they would just appear out of thin air. And now, 20 years later, I learned that it was because of the butterflies.
Thank you for putting this conundrum I forgot I had to rest, Pannen.
You thought you were in a creepypasta
I remember being utterly confused as a kid when I returned to a level where I had definitely found a 1-up before only to find it was a bomb this time.
It's actually impressive how much there is to see here. You'd think everything was already discovered or found through datamining, since the game released like 25 years ago, but no. You can still make a 1 hour long video about unseen stuff, or explaining how the physics work or why glitches happen. Truly amazing.
And I like the fact that he doesn't even ask for subs, not like other youtubers that make a 20 minutes video just to show us something we already know, and then they ask for subs. -_-
Truly insane.
@@diegoescobar4268 Pannen doesn't care how many views he gets here, it's unmonetized anyway.
Everything WAS found in a way - there was a laborious project to decompile the source code and meticulously label everything, so we now have a very readable full source which compiles to exactly the same code found on the cartridge.
Of course the average layperson hasn't *read* the whole source, but some people have - like that one guy who optimized the heck out of the game and made splitscreen multiplayer
Speaking of which - that project really blew my mind. You would think the developers of the day were masters of squeezing performance out of their hardware and that it would be a lost art, but no - apparently we've learned new optimization techniques that you can apply to old games to make them faster
20:47
Therapist: "Elegy of Emptiness Mario doesn't exist; he can't hurt you."
Elegy of Emptiness Mario:
*Reversed Peach's Castle theme starts playing*
he's just standing there
*MENACINGLY*
46:10 Man, for an object with such a large hitbox, the Snowball Checkpoint sure is easy to miss.
"Finally, you can press A to end the free movement"
Well there go all my hopes and dreams for finding a way to activate and use Free Movement to save A presses.
it could still be used to turn a 2+ A press star into a single A press!
AN A PRESS IS AN A PRESS
@@user-zg4dx2sw3y you cant say its half an a press
@@user-zg4dx2sw3y You can't say it's only Jim Hoffa!
33:41 I've seen this animation show up a lot in romhacks where level entries are inside of things like warp pipes instead of paintings. Now I know where it comes from!
I always thought that are romhacks bug, or arent well design by hackers...
@@GaudyGabriev02 It probably partially is (you can presumably use a different level transition, or put it behind a painting of a sort), but to my understanding the tools are also frustrating/confusing to use (hence why some hacks have paintings that aren't regular paintings and don't reliably work).
Show up in SM74?
54:20
So if there’s an “effort” value that changes from 4 to 8 when Mario finishes (and is far away from KtQ), I’d actually be really interested in seeing what happens when we manually change that value
Like, sure, if Pannen just said “hey I hacked Koopa to be faster” that’d be kind of whatever, but since it’s actually tied to like, a uniquely titled “effort” value it makes it a little more fun. I wanna see KtQ with 255 effort.
So we should EV train Koopa the Quick then?
Even more interestingly, since the speed seems to double when the effort doubles, his base speed is like, a quarter of the speed he uses in the game
@@hazelnotxyz so he's not even using 25% of his power? terrifying
Well, there was that one time where we banished KtQ to a parallel dimension...
Effort is a special variable that both KtQ and the ccm racing penguin uses. There's a TAS somewhere with an explanation of what effort is
The game is about an pink coin but mario keeps trying to be the focus.
Did u make a pun (ik that this comment was posted 10 months ago)
Appreciate the pink coin for following Mario so he feels like he has the spotlight.
That ghost ship transparency behaviour is really cool. They should've used that for a mirage in Shifting Sand Land, or something in Big Boo's Haunt.
I remember seeing boulder 86 one time while leaving the game idle. I always thought it was some random occurrence that I'd never see again. Very cool to see it again and find out the cause after all these years!
11:15 WHAT! I did not know the butterflies did that. Learn something new every day
First time bombs happened to me I almost jumped lol
every copy of super mario 64 is personalized
*The more you know*
DeRockProject & the Attack of the Really Long Channel Name But if you do the same set of inputs, the game will always respond the same way, and if you do a different set of inputs the game will do something different. PROVEN
I am pretty sure that he already made a video about that
th-cam.com/video/h8BHEMo-zOM/w-d-xo.html
44:35 is actually super helpful to know. I could never figure out how to consistently get the snowball to follow mario at the end. That explains everything.
As a game dev who builds everything from scratch, I find these videos very inspirational. I get to see how certain features were implemented back then (or at least in Mario 64) and on a system with a different architecture.
same
I appreciate the use of "Astral Observatory" from Majora's Mask while showing the object paths. It was trippy.
My mans is over here doing the lord's work by telling us the music name
I believe he also used that music in his video about the ABC Trials.
THANK YOU
Pannen you can't just drop a 1 hour video of observations on us like that in the middle of a pandemic.
No but thanks really it's great to see you again after a long while.
@@EdStuter Amazing, I love it
Pydrax Alpta Haha Pannendemic go brrrrrr!
Funny, the Pannendemic reply seems to be deleted
"I just call it the NOOP object."
Looks like assembly code is dominating him
He knows it was written in C, we know it was written in C...
I sometimes call it a POON object…
@@Bry10022 POON object? more like SPOON object
sNOOPing as usual,I see.
No Object Oriented Programming
what madman at nintendo decided that the butterflies should transform into bombs, how does that make any sense at all
Neither were fire breathing turtles or living mushroom people, jeez what were they smoking.
How the hell does a purple bomb throw you? And living flowers in snow? AND LIVING COIN BAGS?
aizay Mario 64 does multiple things to screw with first time players, such as the Tall Tall Mountain Death slide, Big Boo’s Haunt tilting floor trap that sends you to the basement, and the infamous Piano loudly coming to life to attack you. The reason I believe screwing with players (in healthy moderation) is good sometimes is because of the philosophy Satoru Iwata covers very well in his 2004 GDQ talk, that entertainment needs emotional response in order to resonate and succeed. Laughter, joy, surprise, fear, anger, pride of accomplishment, etc. all make the experience more memorable. You can’t lie and say you don’t remember the piano or death slide in Mario 64 even if they are not exactly “fun”. Bomb butterflies are definitely a surprising shock if you were one of the few kids to discover it, or other hard to find secrets like the random 1-up in Whomps Fortress castle or any of the hidden triggers shown in this very video.
Steel balls rolling down a hill following a complex path: all follow the same path.
Huge boulder rolling down a narrow tunnel in a cavern towards a pit: 256 possible paths.
It's incredible to me that a patrolling Goomba has more awareness than the Genome Soldiers from _Metal Gear Solid._
It's actually a lot simpler behind the scenes, too. A circular/spherical detection aura is one of the easiest ways to program a detection range, since it's just simple math to check whether Mario's x, y, and maybe z coords are within a set distance from the Goomba's. It's actually a lot harder to make enemies _less_ aware of the player than it is to make them more aware. xP
@MrOmega That is actually very true; and the easiest way to make enemies less aware of the player would be to simply reduce the radius of the detection circle/sphere.
@@MrOmegatronic I'd love to know how enemies on Skyrim behave like this (i use a mod so they can like, not see me on the night, but i'd still like to know.)
So the earthquake glitch isn't even something really happening in the game, it's just how the player can see the game being affected. Massive mindblow. I love seeing new stuff about this game all the time, SM64 was the first console game I really got into playing video games with and kind of worked my way backwards to discover all the classic greats. Keep it up Pancake Man!
9:55 Bikdip's least favorite scene, no question
Was not expecting a fellow BikdipOnABus fan in the top comments
what earthquake glitch?
@@jongyon7192p, that glitch that happens when Mario is halfway on a ledge and halfway in mid-air. The camera will start shaking and Mario will start making a weird noise and is about to fall off the ledge.
@@alisiaale565 They call the simple grind (not even a dive grind) a "glitch"? bruh . . .
@@samayo2006 Same, it's nice to see
This is so sad : this moneybag can not find his home :'(
Doomed to never return to his coin heaven
My head knows that this is just code interacting with code.
But... why is my heart sad? 😢
It's an enemy. Why sad?
moneybag; the way home
Alexa play slider
The unused ghost ship really interests me. Could it be that they had planned to make a 3D version of the Sunken Ghost Ship level in Super Mario World? Who knows?
Swankybox covered this.
Since it only appears in the first mission, it's possible it's the same ship as in later missions, just moved out of bounds, and in later missions, moved onto the water's surface.
Aargh, curses! The Sunken Ghost Ship was one of my favorite levels in Mario.
Who knows honestly? I'm just guessing. Maybe it WAS a Sunken Ghost Ship. We'll never truly have the answer unless a dev outright says it.
@Genowave ^
I don't know why but the Observatory theme playing every time you sped up the path recording was absolutely hilarious. Thanks for posting this, I absolutely adore learning about how the logic and reason of these things works and while I dont know much code I can make inferences about game design based on stuff like this.
I needed to spiritually prepare myself for this video. A 1 hour pannen video needs to be treasured and kept for generations to come.
Man, I'd hate to have been the kid who finished the penguin race legitimately, then did some air tricks while waiting for the penguin to finish, and then got told they cheated.
Yeah they should have done it a different way, like check if you haven't exceeded a certain physical distance from the slide surface
@@markymark443 Less complicated to just check airtime. But they Should have made it just stop tracking the value after you finish, instead of when the penguin does. A different idea, and how I always thought the slide worked, is that you have to pass certain checkpoints to not be considered "cheating" like in mario kart. But this airtime method is the most efficient, and much easier to implement than your idea.
@M. That would be much better. Yes, I recognize it would be more work, like TheBrandonGame said, but this was in an era, when Nintendo actually *PUT* some effort into their games to make sure they were good and worked. Of course, the checkpoint-idea of TheBrandonGame, and even just terminating the airtime check after *YOU* finish, would work just as well. I really don’t know, what the thought process behind the current system was. Maybe it was just a programming oversight. I mean, in Super Mario World, Chargin’ Chucks are technically power-ups. 🤔
@@PC_Simo there are a lot oversights in mario 64. BLJs to achieve near infinite speed even existing showing an oversight in not capping marios max horizontal speed. cloning existing. The invisible walls that infest tick tock clock. 100 coins stars being able to spawn in ceilings, therefore unattainable. The hitbox of the star in the pilar in whomps being slightly outside the wall.
Bomb clipping. Ect. This is game was one of the first of it's kind. Errors are to be expected.
This slide one is a exceptionally ridiculous one though.
@TheBrandonGame That is true. Cloning being possible is a common one among games in general, I have heard. I don’t work in the business, myself, so all I have is second-hand information.
The object paths were awesome. It’s so wild to find out that the rolling balls respond to slopes over time. I always assumed they were on a strict loop
44:00 shoutouts to one of Pannen’s earliest videos
We’ve come a long way from messy red circles lol
There was something really nice about the mapping of the enemies movement.
33:22 *OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPP-*
This videos are really wonderful, definitely give amazing insight to how things were handled by the devs. Awesome work!
Seeing the Unseen: AKA - To Go FURTHER Beyond
get back to the ANIME DUNGEON
Yo, Kenny, Mario bros. OVA review when?
AND THIS, IS GO EVEN FURTHER BEYOND
9:17 pannen is just flat out criticizing the developers at this point
Honestly being able to openly criticize your favorite game says a lot.
Just because it's his favorite game, that doesn't necessarily mean he can't criticize it if he thinks something is wrong!
dude he is the developer
I think the coins were placed higher just so we can see them more easily from afar.
Well, I believe most of us have been frustrated by this star at least once. Collecting the 4 coins only to realize it didn't work...
Normal people: Mario jump!
Pannen: I watch these balls for 41 minutes to watch them all overlap
*c0me oN mAriO jUmP!!!!!11!!!!1*
@blocks Pannenkoek: ”That’s blashemy!”
@@PC_Simo If Pannenkoek would just give his Mario some milk he could walk up all the stages
20:51 I would love to see a TAS of this game with "free movement."
We need this to happen
someone HAS to do it
i dont think you can collect stars in that state
@@emaaaaax Tested this Myself. It does indeed work with stars.
Took long enough but someone finally did it! th-cam.com/video/uQIKWt5Q7Ic/w-d-xo.html
Better late than never.
People: Every copy of sm64 is personalized
Panned: “You people are getting customized shit with no work?”
Pannen*
*GET THIS COIN OFF OF ME!!!!!!*
haha coin go BRRRRRRRR-
#Scuttlebuglivesmatter
Legend has it that when someone makes a 3rd reply, it gets deleted
@@pinkcoin7167 what amount of Coin i get when i chatch you?
@@emanueleromano2633 you can't
i literally said "thats it?" when the video ended, the hour went by so fricking fast!
I know what you mean.
It feels odd for such a long video to end abruptly, having an end screen would be nice, even if it's just a "watch these videos with similar content"
Now what do I do?
@@renakunisaki watch all of Pannen's other videos
@@EVPointMaster it's a vicious cycle
@@EVPointMaster Why does Pannen need to do the same thing as everyone else, though? I appreciate his simple no-frills style of making content.
Wasn't expecting t-posing noclip Mario
me: Whos your favorite Nintendo character?
them: Mario
me: Mario object or Mario struct?
them: ???
me: mario objuct
I just read a large portion of your FAQ, and wow... I'm sorry on behalf of the people who comment without understanding you and the way you work, it's obviously far more complicated then it seems at face value and mental health is no joke. Wish you the best of luck, and thanks for all the stuff you have made on both channels.
Do you really think I'm gonna watch an hour long video with a mysteriously title which will probably go into detail about obscure SM64 mechanics and shenaningans?
The answer is yes
I saw, i'ts all pretty interesting
i’ts
@@iamahater4318 I’m honestly sory
20:00 Mario finally transcends mortal existence and claims his godhood, it was only a matter of time.
Nah fam he just in creative mode
Nah a spectator mode.
44:34, no wonder why every time I jumped straight down next to the snowball head instead of sliding down the mountain, the snowball body never followed me and fell of the level, because I never touched the checkpoint beforehand.
This is a mastercourse in how to make the next big platformer. All of the great techniques like the camera tracking ahead of Mario's direction and having easing, to the way to handle collisions. Great job on this video investigation!
So THAT'S why the Penguin claimed I was a cheater! One of the times I completed the race I tried to showboat by seeing how long I could stay in the air before he finished, and he called me a cheater for it. I was so offended as a little kid... at least now I know >why
I never knew the penguin was toxic
20:56 I can’t believe they added creative mode
he literally t-poses while he flies through the air. gives me *SO LONG GAY BOWSER* vibes
@@cosmicjenny4508 I don't think you can clip through walls in this animation.
@@-._-._.-_.- Can't clip through walls in creative either
@Nathan Adam You can’t place unlimited objects in this mode, either.
At least you can go back in Survival by just pressing A
15:34 holy shit I always wandered why I would sometimes get a 1-up at the bottom of the slide
I feel like one of these days I'm totally gonna teach a beginner-friendly course on phenomenology that starts with a Pannenkoek video like this one
"See, things *appear* to you like *this* when you play Super Mario 64, but there are elements of Mario's phenomenal world that can only be grasped by suspending your "natural standpoint" or "natural perspective" as a player or viewer, in order to understand the ordinarily unseen processes that make everything appear and function as it does."
In short, I'm saying that Pannenkoek's videos could just be called "The Phenomenology of Mario" and it'd be a pretty accurate description.
Sounds phenomenal.
Could easily teach half of a game design course by analyzing this video alone.
I hope that more people understand that you are way more than just the parallel universe guy. This info and investigation is so well structured and explained it's ridiculous. Congratulations.
Pannen, you are driving the SM64 Community forward on a scientific level i cant explain.
Pannenkoek: the movie
Oh man I liked this movie a lot, the drama, the great actuation, it was all here! I can't wait for the next movie "Pannenkoek: the A buttom revenge".
Yoshi's waypoints give me a huge throwback to one of pannenkoek's older videos where he explained how to make Yoshi fall off the roof
Pannen is a goddamn international treasure.
Mario: reaches finish line first and celebrates with a wall jump
Penguin: Nope that’s cheating
Mario: ”I knew you were a poor sledder. Now I know you’re also a poor loser.”
"When chuckya grabs Mario, the Mario struct remains in place, while the Mario object is what appears in chuckya's hands. In other words, the 2 positions desync. The camera still focuses on the Mario struct's position, even though the Mario struct has no graphic."
155,000 people: fascinating
It would be lying to say it's not fascinating
With Koopa's trick on speed when you finish the race, I wonder what would be his personal best (like if we had a second timer running just for him)
Sir, the last known copy of Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64 has been destroyed! Whatever shall we do!
Pannenkoek: I gotchu fam (proceeds to build an entire SM64 copy from scratch)
Nintendo: "Thanks!" *proceeds to file cease and desist*
Don't worry everyone! Super Mario 3D All-Stars has got our butts!
@@racoonwhocannotbekilled9999not anymore!
@@nathansos8480 why what happened
Just realized: the unused Mario Spawner in the Foyer where he falls in his standing pose counts as one of those deaths where you fall into a bottomless pit and land on the ground, where it takes away a life
i’m sure i’ve said this before, but i absolutely adore your videos. i love seeing all the quirks of games like this, it’s super rad.
This is the modern equivalent of a dusty old tome full of eldritch knowledge.
Ngl, this video started out creepy as hell for me personally (and it’s interesting to see how many creepy elements of this game Nintendo hid), but it got more and more beautiful as we neared the end. Thank you for your work pannen :)
"When touching that butterfly, it becomes a bomb."
- thx Nintendo, very kid-friendly 😂
Yes.
Killer Queen has already touched the butterfly.
Kirby lore in a nutshell.
"This is a bomb! I didn't ask you for a bomb, Billy."
i just accidentally watched this whole video
didn't we all watch the whole video
Smorts
@@Volcanolotus04 cool story racist frog
@@nickblinko5677 ?
@@nickblinko5677 I may be a racist, but I ain't no damn frog
Highlighting the Focus is such a great little "a-ha!" moment from a game design perspective. Seeing how they achieved the camera's predictive behavior in real-time shows a lot of what went into the forward-thinking 3D design of the game.
The focus point of the camera is really interesting to see, its like the camera thing super mario world does to make it easier to see the way you're going but in 3d. Even though it doesnt always work
Pannen got really lucky with his personalized copy of Mario 64. Other people get wario apparitions and spooks. Pannen got debugging tools
you fool, Pannen simply send the apparition to the shadow realm then went back to uncovering TRUTH
@@Sigismund697 He grabbed the apparition to send it into limbo and did a handless teleport to get rid of the ticket
finally a good iceberg comment
He threw the apperition out of bounds like king bob-omb
"and a bonus, you can throw the wario apparition out of bounds"
Wow that bowling ball section really WAS magical lol
neat
neat
neat
neat
neat
neatette
33:33 anyone who’s played rom hacks has seen the death and star transitions lol
@Andrew S I think I’d be having a seizure too, if I warped to behind a painting on a star.
@@PC_Simo I think this mod was super Mario 74 which showed that
@@sembl. OK. Later, in ”Super Mario Odyssey”, Nintendo introduced a canon transitions, for painting warps.
I came here to see the pink coin in the thumbnail, knowing that it's "unseen" in normal circumstances, and surely enough, I wasn't disappointed at all. Good job! 😉
Now I can finally touch the butterfly triplets without being scared of the bombs, it has scared me out for decades.
Thank you so much!
32:16 Interesting fact: in the Japanese version, King Bob-Omb is moved under the map when he "dies"
@@saustin40 the camera probably snaps to lock on mario before that happens
Pannen: "I call it the NOOP"
Everyone: "It is now the NOOP and the NOOP it shall be, now and forever, amen."
actually very true lol
”All hail the Massiah pannenkoek…”
"recall that the HOLP is a point in 3D space representing the last position of a held object"
Pannen's like "come on, I know you've seen at least *one* of my other videos.
its been soo many years and this man, this mad man is still discovering new things in super mario 64...