I beat Extreme Heights with only a Balloon Stall

How does one balloon stall get 4500 guests? Watch to find out!
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[@MarcelVos]

Ok so about the thing where I suddenly got guests quicker after year 500. As some have pointed out this is probably due to a higher park rating, but the park rating is higher than it should be. In the save files for 2000 and 10000 years the balloon stall somehow got ratings, and its now 0.00 excitement and 9.60 intensity generates another 62 park rating. In the save file in between for 5000 years (not used in the video) it doesn't have ratings, which seems extremely odd but does have an explanation. I only realized I wanted to do 2000 years later on and by that time I had lost the autosaves for 2000 years, so I went back to the 1000 year checkpoint (also unused) and ran it again for another 1000 years. So somehow the balloon stall got ratings between 5000 and 10000 years in the first run and then again between 1000 and 2000 years in the second run.

[@Tharronis]

Save corruption glitch of some kind? Or some kind of weird edge-case where some buffer overflows and overwrites something it shouldn't..

[@Tahngarthor]

But what causes it to get stats calculated?

[@Bloobz]

Could it be it simply because of lag? Because the of the lag the synchronisation is not exactly the same and more guest get stuck.

[@P1ankt0nb0y]

What happens if you remove and replace the stall while it has rating? if the rating drops and doesn't come back up then we can narrow it down to being related to the calculated age of the stall somehow (and vice-versa).

[@Zichqec]

Balloon stall 1 looks too intense for me...

[@zahnloli123]

Guest 23795: "Man this sucks, there is only a balloon stand here. I'm leaving. Why don't you?" Guest 1005: "The thought never occurred to me"

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

"Every time it comes to my mind, those dazzling balloons catch my attention"

[@staticradio724]

"I've got to get my steps in, bro."

[@familhagaudir8561]

''Aren't you scared of exploding if you think about leaving the park?''

[@mystifoxtech]

​@@familhagaudir8561 "This feels very dystopian" *_explodes_*

[@mjc0961]

Leave the computer running for 20,000 hours?! Computer 739: "I want to get off Extreme Heights with only a Balloon Stall 1"

[@TheOobo]

The ride never ends...

[@theuncalledfor]

Mr Vos' Wild Park

[@AissurDrol]

I think the reason that watching them makes them leave is when you watch a guest for a long time they say something along the lines of: "I have a feeling I'm being watched" and they stop and scratch their head.

[@TheOobo]

Good intuition, that animation could screw with the timing and desynchronize the stasis-state

[@ks_cerealkiller]

The Marcel Vos Uncertainty Principle

[@chunnin33]

Schrodinger's guest

[@ambercheshire6881]

I think you're right, at least one of the watched guests had that thought pop up not long before leaving

[@JNJNRobin1337]

wait. thats in the game?

[@MuffinOrama]

What I learned from this video is that not only do guests exhibit wave-particle duality, but that they are also affected by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle; the more accurately we observe their exact position walking back and forth, the less we know about their exact speed&synchronization with game ticks.

[@Dupletor]

The quantum guests, watching them modifies the outcome and forces them to leave. That's genuinely hylarious.

[@SomeRandomPersonOnTheNet]

My first thought was the Farnsworth quote from Futurama: “No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it.”

[@mopsnuf]

Haha

[@BroccodiIe]

i never would have guessed today i will be learning about the importance of guests' oscillating frequency and phase... RCT science is beautiful

[@frtzkng]

What Marcel built here is a notch filter, passing (in analogy, letting guests leave) all frequencies except for one or a few specific ones which get blocked (in analogy, get trapped inside the park); the extreme case of a band-stop signal filter.

[@frankvandorp2059]

It must be so strange to be a guest getting stuck around year 2000, trying to start a conversation with a fellow stuck guest, but finding out you can't understand him because he entered the park during the reign of Emperor Trajan and only speaks Latin.

[@Sceptile29]

"Salve amicus. Vita est dura"

[@Ultimaximus]

Well they'll certainly have enough time to learn each other's languages

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@Ultimaximus and the old guest would speak the purest, most correct classical latin ever seen. Well, or it's a moron and he tries to pick up guests with "romanes eunt domus", when we all know that will get him nothing but a response of "romani ite domum"

[@ChamblesRNG]

3:12 Awww, buying the map put a smile on his face... I guess he is happy he will be able to find the info kiosk now

[@rubenvanbelzen1217]

At 9:27, the reason why guests leave when looking at them, is because when you look at a guest, they will sooner or later have the thought “I have the strange feeling that someone is looking at me”. When having this thought, the guest stops walking for a brief while, and that stop is enough to get the guest out of the “at stall”rithm, causing them to leave the park Edit: I discovered a typo

[@TehButterflyEffect]

Edit; you missed a bunch more.

[@QemeH]

Watching the guests bumps them out of frequency and/or phase... just your average 1999 video game casually simulating Heisenbergs uncertainty principle...

[@blackvulture6818]

It is only logical, after all SM64 has paralel universes

[@shunkurosaki7449]

one day itll be just an empty plot or something

[@MarcelVos]

Maybe...

[@christiankhoo]

real

[@Panzermeister36]

"I beat Amity Airfield with only a garbage can"

[@PineappleDealer37]

He shall beat a scenario with negative land owned

[@a_trauma_llama2991]

An empty plot with endlessly dancing animals

[@vdqm]

Came for silly little coasters, stayed for computer science lectures and cosmic horrors

[@CMKpower]

That's some cosmic horror. An ancient amusement park consisting of just one balloon stall and a furry walking on a pile of people who believe they're having fun just enough that they'll never feel like leaving. Many people are drawn to it, but most leave quickly, just a few will get stuck forever, becoming immortal in the process as they enter their own personal purgatory.

[@TehButterflyEffect]

It's interesting. There was a twilight zone episode with a similar plot. The one with the dad who was going to go commit suicide because his daughter died.

[@twodumbcats390]

I discovered the channel this week and it has quickly become a favorite. Hilarious and fascinating content on this classic game and just how deep you can go

[@eriklakeland3857]

If you haven’t seen his roller coaster that, with improvements, goes from 12 real life years long to longer than the existence of the universe… check it out! It’s one of my favs

[@Paintplayer1]

Welcome to the rabbit hole lol

[@rubenvanbelzen1217]

@@Paintplayer1haha I am definitely stuck here. Last week I had some spare time, and I rewatched most of Marcels videos in that time. They are just that good

[@heartysquid]

Welcome to the cult, here's your balloon.😂👉🎈

[@asgilly]

9:30 isn’t it because they stop walking because they “have the feeling like someone’ms watching them” thus getting out of sync?

[@thefidgetspinnerofdoom]

I formally propose to dub the term "Vossian Quantum Interference"

[@glebglub]

@@thefidgetspinnerofdoom unfortunately it's already got a term: the quantum zeno effect (or anti-zeno effect, in this case)

[@Holek2]

At this point, Marcel is basically a QA Engineer for the OpenRCT team. Coming up with the weirdest edge cases I've ever seen

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Is it even a bug, when it happens in the original engine

[@doc.rankin577]

When you have to use physics terms to describe guest behavior. Marcel just straight up dehumanizes his guests. They are all just particles to be manipulated and im all for it.

[@MeriaDuck]

7:18 unintentionally you just explained how a LASER works! Same energy levels, in phase and increasing in numbers! 😂

[@C.I...]

"Certain guests cannot leave a park because together they are technically a laser" was not on my RCT bingo card.

[@WackoMcGoose]

10:30 has the same energy as "Light Speed isn't fast enough, we're gonna have to go to... Ludicrous Speed!"

[@Davtwan]

So technically, the guest is in a cyro-state. Never getting hungry, never feeling truly tired, never aging. All they can do is walk and enjoy their balloon.

[@TheExileFox]

Cryo*

[@weatherby2378]

They don't buy balloons, so no joy for them. Just walking.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

You will look at the balloons and you will enjoy it!

[@siclan4wild5]

Next week "Here's how I beat Diamond Heights without even booting up the game"

[@Foxtrot369]

The easiest way to beat *_any_* game, is to not play it. But where's the fun in that? 😉

[@TheLetterJ0]

It's probably possible to edit the game's saved data to tell it you completed a scenario and add the checkmark in the menu. So yeah, that sounds doable.

[@Smothtiger]

The kind of sleuthing I enjoy the most to watch. exploring potential bugs or quirks and how that can be used to the users advantage.

[@mirjanbouma]

On the off chance that you play / like / know about Stardew Valley, I recommend BlaDe! He is a programmer who has forgotten more about SDV than most of us know. He often does completely insane things with his knowledge, like proposing to a villager within 3 days of meeting them for the first time or finishing things that normally take about an in-game year within a few days.

[@larryinc64]

The local "theme park" in the middle of the dessert that has been there for thousands of years, where there is only a single balloon stand and there is a high chance if you go you will never leave sounds like the plot of a Goosebumps book.

[@PaulCashman]

"I REALLY need to use the bathroom after 5,000 years of holding it in, but wait, that entertainer has made me forget everything and I'm happy!"

[@MrLlama-gl2hk]

You should submit this to TASVideos for the most chaotic verification process ever. TASVideos timing ends at the last frame of input, so in theory the TAS itself would be < 1 second but the total video length would need to be 16,000+ hours. 😈

[@glebglub]

better yet livestream speedrun attempts. nearly 2 years of pure RNG dependancy, not only from the code itself but IRL too, as power plants and ISPs do their thing

[@AvenDonn]

​@@glebglubRun's dead because cosmic ray

[@WillowEpp]

In fairness, he wouldn't sell everything in a speedrun, so verification might be significantly faster?

[@unfoldingspace8]

8:34 Love the Smosh reference there with Keith 😂

[@IBeforeAExceptAfterK]

Guest 241543903: I don't get it. This park has been running for thousands of years, and all it has is a balloon stall. Why are there so many people here? Guest 1337: Thou may findeth our ways strange, young one. But through them we have achieved eternity.

[@eesi7170]

RCT has made the leap from classical to quantum! Fixed energy levels, phases and observation problems... Love it!

[@xXLordYggdrasillXx]

Watching a video about reverse engineering the code of a 25 year old video game feels very similar to being back in quantum physics lessons in university. "Guests in this quantum state are trapped, but the phenomenon disappears if we try to observe it". Great stuff.

[@IsmaelSantos-xv9qf]

Wanna think something Fun? 1) In the "it took 400 hours to beat this challenge" when Marcel trapped thousands of guests with a No Entry sign and, upon releasing them on the sequel to revive the park in massive debt he offhandedly mentioned that they would need a lot of therapy to process that nightmare. 2) At this point, the foremost expert in Guest psychology is probably Marcel, which means.... 3) All those thousands of guests will receive therapy sessions.... from Marcel. The ones that he drowns are the lucky ones.

[@TheOobo]

The gods of RCT are cruel

[@Paintplayer1]

​@TheOobo yes, and their names are Marcel, Cody, and Deurklink lol

[@miracleeskimobattleship2874]

​@@Paintplayer1 With Mr. Bones as the God of Gods

[@fernbedek6302]

Quantum mechanics observation effects...

[@minerscale]

The quantum effects don't stop there, the park only allows guests of specific energy levels to exist. The de Broglie wavelength of the guests is determined by the length of the park path and their energy. Only certain wavelengths form a standing wave with the park.

[@lazerlord_lance]

You tellin me the guests behave differently when observed? Now this is just quantum mechanics

[@amg7222]

If the devellopement team of this game was still active, you would be Chris Sawyer biggest nightmare.

[@michaelmoses8745]

Bug tester is more likely in all due honesty.

[@amg7222]

@@michaelmoses8745 He would be their most effective contributor

[@SirMrDrProfRick-fq2lm]

The fact you guys find new and crazy stuff like this still is so incredible amazing to me. And makes me love this game so much more. They don't make them like the used to

[@AaronRotenberg]

Every time I watch a video like this, I keep expecting the Mario 64 file select music to kick in at any moment.

[@trolololo720]

Pannen and Marcel share the same energy

[@NarokathCrimzonAE]

So let's look at it from the side and let's look at it from above

[@canolathra6865]

The fact that 1: this trick requires a specific level of energy to achieve the correct frequency while also being in phase, and 2: that attempting to observe the effect causes it to break reminds me of EM experiments. Just like here, you can create a magnetic "box" that traps electromagnetic radiation of an exact frequency and phase, and they will be trapped forever as long as you keep pouring energy into the magnetic box (otherwise entropy takes over and they lose energy), and while you can know exactly what the frequency and phase are using math the moment you try to read the frequency and phase in the experiment all of the em radiation escapes because reading it changes it.

[@Showsni]

Watching the in-phase guests bumps them out of it, but watching out-of-phase guests might bump them into it. If you can find guests who have the right energy level to sync up, but didn't spawn in phase, you could try watching them to see if they'll get into phase. If watching them or moving them is enough to get them into phase, you might be able to get all 1/16 that spawn with the correct energy level to be in-phase, which could speed up the time needed; but would add a lot of tedious micro-managing.

[@MarcelVos]

That's a neat idea, but the issue is that you won't know whether they're in the correct phase until it's too late.

[@killerbee.13]

The out-of-phase ones won't keep the same energy level forever (as discussed, they only stay at the same energy level forever because they don't lower in energy while at a stall, so they have to already be in-phase), which doesn't necessarily make it impossible to achieve that (it depends if there's a hard limit for how long they'll stay in the park if out of phase), but it significantly complicates the analysis.

[@MarcelVos]

@@killerbee.13 Good point, although it will actually be the lack of a change in hunger that will first signify the synchronization. Only once hunger is very high the energy will go down.

[@Aukejorrit]

You cannot keep getting away with this! This is capitalism in the worst possible form. You are morally a terri.....Hey a balloon!

[@glebglub]

9:06 never thought I'd see an example of the quantum zeno effect in RCT2 of all things

[@Arntonach]

Love how you're just causally listening to Rebecca Black's Friday while you're recording

[@RyanEdwardsVA]

This is mad genius applied to investigation and I love it.

[@robertsullivan4706]

It's amazing just how far the understanding of the game can change the way you play.

[@BruceReggieDebbie]

We are through the looking glass here people. \(o.o)/ The forbidden knowledge of the universe feels right around the corner. Marcel is ascending into becoming a being of pure RCT knowledge

[@Penguiniel]

12:20 "ime not shore y more guests are now sticking around, but it is useful" I can explain part of why more guests are now sticking around. the park rating influences guest generation. as you get more guests, your park rating increases. this increases the guest spawn rate, so it also increases the speed of your progress.

[@MarcelVos]

You're probably right, but that's only because the park rating increased more than it should've. Somehow the balloon stall gained excitement and intensity ratings between year 500 and 2000, which gives extra rating.

[@glebglub]

@@MarcelVos if that's the case it might be a floating point error happening in an adjustment script, or possibly an issue of using non-ECC RAM operating outside of the JEDEC spec (i.e. using DOCP or XMP) causing a bit flip. would be interesting to see if that would stop it happening if you disabled XMP/DOCP, or used certified ECC server RAM with a compatible cpu/motherboard

[@staticradio724]

Wow! At this point, I wouldn't think there'd be anything new you could learn about the game, but you always prove me wrong!

[@nicholasbeck2649]

Guests have quantized energy levels and change behavior when observed. RCT guests are photons confirmed.

[@SneakyDingo]

this is such a cool video! discovering more and more interesting things in this game as you push the limits to the max; nice work!

[@TheZombiewill]

Looking at the guests changes the results. Presence of an observer changes reality. We're in some quantum physics stuff right there.

[@JeffGoldblumsChest]

Schrodinger's guest: simultaneously leaving and not leaving the park

[@Doornenstroom]

the guests actually all went to hell and being stuck in one of marcel's parks for eternity is punishment for their sins

[@shottysteve]

loll optimizing the tiles is like optimizing a presses. you are now the pannenkoek of rct

[@JesseFeld]

You have founded making RollerCoaster Tycoon a science and now mastered it

[@corican]

You are the LockPickingLawyer of RCT.

[@cattrucker8257]

For what it's worth, this is in the spirit of the park, it's pretty darn extreme.

[@johnfoltz8183]

Balloon Stall 1 looks too intense for me!

[@christopherm4739]

Damn, I cannot believe the guests are in a quantum state where observation changes the outcome.

[@karnewarrior]

The people in the comments saying that the "I feel like I'm being watched" headscratch is desyncing guests makes me think... Could it be possible to use the Quantum Headscratcher to *sync* guests and thus speed up the run?

[@607]

Wow, this is such a satisfying explanation!! I'm impressed that you found it at all. I love it! You did not explain why the guests leave when you look at them, though! Does the "strange feeling" thought have an animation that disturbs the phase?

[@Roman8707]

I've been watching a lot of your videos over the past week or so, and I've been enjoying them a lot! Takes me back to me playing the original RCT1 and 2 in the early 2000s. Was(is) one of my favorite games. One thing that has always illuded me was how excitement rating was related to raising guest happiness/energy. I was wondering if you might ever consider making a deep dive into what a ride's excitement actually does as that's never really explained more than "gives guests higher chance to say ride was great".

[@phlogchamp]

I had no idea you were a Smosh fan! 6:00 - Shayne Topp 6:17 - Courtney Miller 7:07 - Damian Haas 8:10 - Olivia Sui 8:34 - Keith Leak Jr. 8:50 - Noah Grossman

[@GamerNebulae]

9:05 Quantum peeps have been discovered

[@eduardohenriqueoliveira5082]

Bro is literally a RCT scientist at this point

[@Grdian]

500 years of visiting a theme park that has a single 5x5 path and an information kiosk.

[@carlstenger5893]

Very interesting. Great video, Marcel. Thanks!

[@davidromeroblaya7920]

There is an arabic proverb that says: "Men fear time but time fears the balloon stall".

[@armchairnixon]

I didn't realize you were a smosh fan, Marcel, but that is awesome. I noticed the guest names 😂

[@michalformanek2676]

You invented Quantum Mechanics in RC :-D

[@emmata98]

9:20 quantum physics in RCT2... Wow

[@catprog]

Apparently a guess can have the thought "I have the strange feeling that someone is looking at me" which slows them down.

[@Fox_on_a_Rollercoaster]

Ah yes my fav guests are back. The ones that pay for a map for one path tile.

[@daemonofdecay]

November 2024: “I beat Amity Airfield by doing nothing at all”

[@Zelinkokitsune]

1:00 That park is using very efficient engineering principals

[@StalwartTirith]

9:26 Observing the guests alters their function? RCT2 apparently has Quantum Guests :P

[@katt-the-pig]

People now have a legitimate reason to create a custom scenario with no available rides and only two tiles of land.

[@tornadotyler123]

"You changed it by measuring it" Is this a quantum supr position of electrons that can be in multiple places it once so once you observe it, it changes

[@zaakknight]

Imagining having an open and functional amusement park from the Phoenicians era today 😂😅

[@michasokoowski6651]

"observing the experiment changed the results of the experiment" Whoah, there are quantum mechanics in this game?!

[@louisnemzer6801]

Matching frequency and phase sounds like physics 😂

[@fonesrphunny7242]

It is. Also, mixing/mastering music

[@IncoherentOrange]

They don't see an empty park. They see a clean and tidy park with nothing in it. Big difference, I'm sure.

[@Hurricanelive]

walking back and forth for eternity in a complete state of orgasmic elation? I suppose there are worse things... like drowning. Or instantaneous combustion on a ride.

[@daanwilmer]

I kind of want to srt up an old laptop, running RCT, with this scenario, amd let it run to completion without spead-up. I think that's called art?

[@MarcelVos]

Should theoretically be possible. Two years is a long time, but not impossibly long.

[@vincehomoki1612]

See you in 2026!

[@MintyMimix]

Man, Twinleaf Town sure is a lot smaller and more sandy than I remember!

[@pierQRzt180]

wonderful analysis of the code. More!

[@Xdylan3131]

1:07 there's no way this wasn't an intentional design choice

[@Lugmillord]

You found the solution for immortality.

[@pierQRzt180]

"sir, humans are again spending a lot of energy computing things of debatable usefulness". "what? Bitcoin?" "nah" "AI?" "nah" "Videos of cats done by AI? "nah" "then what?" "they want to beat increasingly different scenarios in openRCT2 with a stall and weird synchronization features.

[@reecelearnsmusic8673]

"I beat Extreme Heights with only a Balloon Stall" - untrue!

[@nickb-whistler4431]

I love how guests in RCT are subject to "the observer effect."

[@fubini_yt]

The reason for the guests leaving as soon as you observe them is the collapse of the wave function. You have to treat your guests as quantum mechanical objects, and the wave function will collapse as soon as you observe them.

[@mirrorsandstuff]

Guests have energy levels, phases, frequencies and behave differently if you observe them. Guests are basically electrons, combined with quantum effects.

[@L1mJahey]

🎶In the year 8192, If peeps are still alive, if balloon stall can survive you will find.....🎶

[@StealthArcher]

Today we learned that RCT guests are semi-quantum particles, if you observe them the simulation collapses.

[@Wolfburns]

Balloons really do make people wanna stick around. I wonder how many guests had their hair standing up from static lol

[@radrezi]

this is great! but why is that one guest named Nudist

[@lazykatie42069]

lol I see what you did there, naming the guests after Smosh members

[@TS_Mind_Swept]

If you had made them green, then you could say Luigi won by doing absolutely nothing LUL

[@wastedbread8036]

my kind of park

[@martinligabue]

In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation.

[@Celastrous]

I knew my EE degree would one day help with RCT 2

[@danielbauer9275]

The way you're trending seems like we'll one day get a video where you beat a scenario without turning on the computer