The Gold Split - Week #12: A New Dimension for Sunshine
Week #12 (September 19th): ACE in SMS; Castlevania Glitches; Experimental Timer; Speedrun.com Challenge; Marathon News; New Records: Portal 2, BioShock, Devil May Cry, Mario Kart 64, Baldur's Gate 3
Happy Week #12!
Here at the Gold Split headquarters, we have moved to a completely Gold Split-centric calendar. We’re on Day 84 and Week 12 of Year 1 (or Year 0?). The month is Splitember…
We have a cool story this week: ACE in SMS through the use of CUG and SPE. I made half of this up, but if you’re curious what this mess of acronyms is all about, do keep reading.
Contents
Up to Speed ⚡️
I’d like to cover much more, but many great stories stay confined to the communities for a specific game or series and rarely get out. I encourage you to think about what happened recently in the communities you are a part of. If there are any stories, articles, glitches, events, or other topics I should cover, go ahead and submit them here or on the Gold Split Discord! 📨
Story of the Week
I think it’s fair to say that speedrunners have a somewhat complicated relationship with new findings that completely change what the fastest completion of a game looks like. And what does completion even mean?
In most cases, Any% is defined as the fastest route through a game that leads the player to the credits. But does triggering the credits through any means necessary really complete the game if it barely includes any intended gameplay?
I’m going to just leave these philosophical topics for a discussion at another time, but it does lead us to this week’s main story: Arbitrary Code Execution (ACE) in Super Mario Sunshine.
In Week #5, I talked about the most prominent example of ACE in speedrunning: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Broadly speaking, ACE implies a way to inject custom code into the game, often through normal controller inputs, and then execute it. Often this is done by manipulating the game’s memory and “writing” code through a complicated and precise series of movements. Executing the code can have almost any desired effect, but often also sends the player straight to the credits.
Some players call it the Holy Grail of speedrunning, but for others it’s a curse they’d rather not see on the leaderboards at all. On one hand, more often than not it becomes the fastest way to complete the game. But on the other hand, the gameplay that players originally fell in love with, the main reason they enjoy replaying the game over and over again, is now barely recognisable.
Arbitrary Code Execution has been known to be possible in tool-assisted speedruns (TAS) of Super Mario Sunshine for several years. Here is a video of a recent TAS, beating the game in just 9 minutes and 50 seconds by skipping straight to the final cutscene and the credits.
But only about two months ago, players found a way to make it RTA-viable. That is to say: a method has been developed making it possible for a human to perform a different ACE setup in real time. And only recently, on September 10th 2024, Japanese speedrunner orange was the first to complete a run using it that’s faster than the world record of 1:12:51 at the time. Here is a video.
Nearly two-thirds of the 47-minute run are spent on the complex setup, and it's only clear afterward whether it even worked. It’s neither a joy to watch nor to execute, and so it sparked a debate among the community about the future of the leaderboards. Technically, it is now the fastest way to complete the game. But should it still be considered Any%?
The decision was in favour of a leaderboard split: Any% (No ACE) will remain the main category of the game, and Any% (ACE) has been implemented as a subcategory. And at the time of writing, orange’s time has been more than cut in half. The best time now stands at 23 minutes and 57 seconds by Jcool114. It’s safe to say the first implementations of ACE are never the fastest, so the time is expected to decrease even more.
But how does it actually work? I’m by no means an expert, but I’ll do my best. If this sounds abstract, that’s because it is. Please do correct me if any of this is incorrect!
The Cutscene Underflow Glitch: The game uses eight slots to handle active cutscenes, adjusting two counters as cutscenes start and end. Normally both values should be the same when there are no cutscenes playing. But by starting a certain cutscene during another, the ending counter becomes decremented twice. This can result in a value of -1 for the remaining cutscenes to play. The player can now replay a previous cutscene.
Stale Pointer Exploitation: Replaying a certain cutscene in an area of the game where it's not meant to be played causes a memory pointer to reference invalid data, such as the render data for a different object.
Through a series of precise movements, that object is then positioned to occupy another memory address. Afterwards, meticulously crafted input sequences write code into a buffer that in turn gets referenced by the stale memory pointer. Here’s where I’m a bit uncertain about the details of how that code then gets executed and what exactly it does. But essentially: the player is then able to enter the final stage of the game and defeat Bowser, despite not having collected nearly enough Shines.
The silver lining is that, at least so far, the setup doesn’t let players skip directly to the credits and that the final boss fight is still required.
Here is Jcool114’s run in all its glory:
If you’re hardcore, there is a document detailing the setup based on a wonky translation of a video by the Japanese Super Mario Sunshine community.
However, you might be better off waiting for an English version. Alternatively, you can watch from the sidelines like me and look forward to the inevitable video essay on the topic.
Up to Speed
🏰 Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Any% got significantly faster (10 minute video)
The speedrun went from being mostly glitchless to a full glitch-heavy within just one week following the release of the Castlevania: Dominus Collection. A surge of new players caused many new discoveries, and all glitches talked about in the video are possible on all versions of the game.
⏱️ SpeedTool is a new experimental frame-perfect loadless scriptable timer (3 minute read)
The timer promises to be more accurate and more secure than LiveSplit, the most widely used timer. It’s currently only available for Windows, but support for other platforms as well as a plethora of more features are planned.
🏆 Speedrun.com is hosting a $1,000 challenge for Tails Noir: Rebel Rush (3 minute read)
Tails Noir: Rebel Rush is described as a speedrunning driving platformer. The game is quite cheap on Steam and the prize pool is generous. The top three will share $1,000, with the winner taking home $500. The challenge lasts for four days until the end of Sunday, September 22nd.
Marathon News
Running:
Until September 29th: Long Speedrun Summit 2024 (Schedule)
Upcoming:
Starts September 20th: NSG Fall 2024 (Schedule), raising money for the Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted
This Week’s Top Times
🥇 First Place:
Portal 2 (Single Player: No SLA) in 00:55:55.717 by Burger40
Video • TwitchRed Ball 4 Vol.1 (Any%) in 00:01:54.400 by Starline (She/Her)
Video • YouTubeDeltarune (Chapter 2: Main Route, Glitched) in 00:26:07.000 by CrystalSRL (She/Her, They/Them, It/Its)
VideoTony Hawk's Underground (Any%: Beginner) in 00:31:59.000 by shnazz
Video • Twitch • YouTubeBioShock (Any%: PC) in 00:24:55.000 by KPCzombie
Video • Twitch • YouTubeDevil May Cry (Any%: Normal, Dante) in 00:33:51.000 by Waifu
Video • Twitch • YouTubeMario Kart 64 (All Cups (Skips): N64) in 00:22:52.339 by abney317
Video • Twitch • YouTubeAnimal Well (Any%: Glitched) in 00:03:06.099 by SpidersNRhap (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeBaldur's Gate 3 (Any%) in 00:03:19.409 by bisc (He/Him)
Video
🥈 Second Place:
New Super Mario Bros. 2 (Any%) in 00:24:29.866 by Cads (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeKirby and the Forgotten Land (Any%) in 01:34:56.000 by Kaug
Video • Twitch • YouTubeMinecraft: Java Edition (All Advancements: 1.16, RSG) in 02:19:57.773 by oxidiot (She/Her, They/Them)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeNintendo World Championships: NES Edition (Legendary Trial) in 00:21:35.950 by nuirapa
Video • Twitch • YouTube
🥉 Third Place:
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (2019) (Any%: Normal) in 00:59:30.000 by ta0myo
VideoThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Any%: v1.0.0) in 00:40:48.000 by RedSlay9 (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeHotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (NG+ Any%) in 00:32:44.000 by Agamem (He/Him)
Video • YouTubeChess.com (Puzzle Rush: Solve 10 puzzles) in 00:00:12.233 by xKagameX
Video
Fun Stat of the Week
🔍 An exclusive preview of what the Any% speedrun for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom will look like when the game launches on September 26th:
Reddit Choice
🔝 The r/speedrun choice of the week is… this completely new way of completing the final stage of Super Mario 64.
👋🏻 And that’s it for this week! See you next Thursday, September 26th 2024. 👋🏻
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