Softlock from Spawning a Star Too High Up & The 12k Limit

I show a softlock that occurs from spawning a star too high up (i.e. above y=12000), and then explain the 12k limit.
To summarize, there's a function in the game (obj_move_using_vel_and_gravity) that manages how certain objects move. However, it will only move the object if the coordinates of the object's position have absolute value less than or equal to 12000. When spawning a 100 coin star, the star goes through certain actions before telling the cutscene to end. The first of these actions (action 0, or the star's first bounce) won't end if the star's position is prevented from updating due to being outside the 12k limit, and so a softlock occurs.
Also, thanks to JoshDuMan ( / joshduman ) for showing me the code responsible for the 12k limit.

[@LayZKimochi420BlazeIt]

These sound like the made-up steps i would do to try to unlock luigi when i was younger

[@404waffles]

that's my favorite part of vids like these tbh

[@casssaph2287]

"do to try"? more like "try to do" although if you were actually able to do this shit, i congratulate you

[@mehdisilini7296]

@@casssaph2287 Not a relevant correction. Plus, you do understand this is a joke right?

[@casssaph2287]

of course i do buddy! i was making a joke myself, jeeze..

[@mehdisilini7296]

Haaa gotcha

[@Sagragoth]

if i wanted to see someone collect 99 coins and then softlock i'd just open simpleflips' stream

[@plushifoxed]

i genuinely cackled

[@mattiviljanen8109]

Shoutout to simpleflips

[@user-bd4oc9jt9e]

The man, the legend

[@PianoMastR64]

Will you please post the link to whatever it is you're referencing?

[@IanZWhite00]

PianoMastR64 he just has unfortunate things happen when going for 100-coin stars in romhacks He also encounters a lot of soft locks and crashes It’s more a reference to somebody’s content in general, not really one specific moment.

[@FightingTorque411]

"First, I collect 99 coins" *Me, scribbling notes: "Okay, Professor Pannen, that's simple enough"* "Then I teleport while holding a hands-free Bob-Omb" *"You do what? Oh, wait. Right, I see, I follow you - go on."* "Next, I grab a wing cap and wait for it to almost run out" *"Yep, yep..."* "THEN I INITIATE HYPER SPEED FLYING, RETRIEVE THE BOB-OMB, LET THE WING CAP RUN OUT, SET THE HOLP TO 12,000 AND DIVE OUT OF BOOOOOUNDS" *pencil snaps*

[@Regneno]

Adam L I love this comment

[@FabioGnecco]

bless this comment

[@KamiBakura]

Literally me while I was watching this video. I couldn't have written it better. Thank you! x'D

[@TanasinnAZ]

Yeah I definitely had to pause for that section too lol.

[@LeJ3n021]

why is this comment giving me calebcity vibes?

[@ericpeterson6520]

This is a massive oversight, I can't believe they let this get past playtesting. Smh

[@Saxie81]

Complely unplayable lol

[@TheCandoRailfan]

A glitch like this would not happen under normal circumstances.

[@Allen1350]

@@TheCandoRailfan if there were a captain obvious star in SM64, you'd collect it every time.

[@joyride6062]

@@TheCandoRailfan you are brain damaged

[@TheCandoRailfan]

@@joyride6062 no, Eric Peterson is.

[@Bspammer]

Hey I remember this glitch from when I played as a kid. Happened so often, really annoying.

[@twilight-sparkle]

I kept accidentally cloning a bowling ball and getting Koopa the Quick softlocked. I eventually just had to complete that star after beating Bowser, it was taking too much time.

[@robertanderson9447]

This game is so easy, all you have to do is place the HOLP below y=12000 and the Stars just appear, like what's the point man?

[@piksadft5179]

Robert Anderson So, setting the HOLP to y = 11999 works? Thank you for that vital information. Now I can progress in the game!

[@robertanderson9447]

@@piksadft5179 Yeah that's an entry-level trick, very simple once you adjust to it.

[@athath2010]

@@piksadft5179 Actually, from what I've seen in the explanation section, I don't think that that will work, since star will still hit that y=12k limit mid-bounce.

[@zekeram129]

Can't wait to see us know literally everything there is to know about this game in a few years

[@ddlc_monika]

well since we already have the code... what else is there to know

[@neoxus30]

@@ddlc_monika How to apply that code to understand fully about it. I don't think PUs were coded explicitly in the game)

[@zekeram129]

I mean every quirk, every function, every glitch, all known and documented.

[@reddodeado301]

@@neoxus30 PU's are an oversight due to how the game handles Mario's collision.

[@mrmimeisfunny]

@@ddlc_monika We can brainscan the devs.

[@crazynaut223]

"Then I teleport while holding a handsfree bob-omb." Wait, what? I thought all Bob-ombs were handsfree.

[@underrated1524]

Can't tell if you're joking or legitimately confused, so I'll clarify just in case. Certain interactions between Mario and level geometry can cause Mario to remove his hands from his held object *without* dropping it. Teleporting while the object is in this state causes it to be "lost in limbo", as it is neither attached to Mario nor in existence out in the world. However, unlike other grabbable objects, Bob-ombs still affect the game world while the game is treating it as being held by Mario; specifically, they create the smoke effect. Pannenkoek makes use of this interesting property to help him collect a coin far above the level.

[@crazynaut223]

Underrated1, buddy They don't have hands

[@brasilballs]

though tbh this is a mistake in pannen's part, shouldn't it be "Then I teleport while holding a bob-omb handsfree" instead

[@igNights77]

Oh so it wasn't the Y2K bug... it was the Y12K.... no wonder nothing happened.

[@gairisiuil]

holy shit what a legendary comment.. 12 likes? wow

[@elchuchooofin3807]

got me doing funny dances on the floor

[@corentingraulier4133]

Thank you. Now I'll be careful to avoid that during my next mario 64 run.

[@fritfrat]

This means that for every romhack with extended-size levels that resulted in these softlocks, all we had to do was just ground pound and look at the animation to know if it was going to softlock or not. All of the hours of pain and (mostly) anxiety it could have prevented to have known that!

[@reddodeado301]

Isn't it oddly hilarious (in an ironic way) how something as easy and simple as ground pounding is much better and efficient than whatever method you mentioned?

[@fritfrat]

@@reddodeado301 Yes! The method we used was mainly trial and error- don't collect stars over by where it has softlocked before!

[@cachemist4149]

The amazing thing too is it looks like a simple patch to remove that 12k check from the "move something" function

[@EmanueleX]

there is a sign in Star Revenge 1 (one of the first extended boundaries hacks) that says something like "if you ground pound and see strange particles don't spawn 100 coin stars or the game will soft lock" so someone did think of that lmao

[@stormbornapostle5188]

I like how we've effectively done the Human Genome Project, but for Mario 64. Now maybe we can find something in it that will let us get the Fire Sea star without an A press...

[@LordBeau]

Stormborn Apostle just don’t press a, it’s not that hard

[@sophiegrey9576]

Fire sea star? Do you mean defeat bowser in the fire sea or the red coin star? If the former, you should also specify on N64 now.

[@mrmimeisfunny]

A lot of people seem to be asking why the 12k limit exists. So I decided to look into the code and see if I can find more insight, and I just got more confused. The only time the function obj_within_12k_bounds() is called is in obj_move_using_vel_and_gravity(). The only other reference to the number 12000 is in the code for the bowling ball spawner. Where it only spawns the bowling balls when in 12k range of mario. I don't think it is related. The decompilation obviously didn't preserve the comments (they get removed during compilation). So there are 2 ways to check for why that bound exists. Either remove the bound and start messing around with the game until something else breaks so you will know that was the effect that convinced the devs to put a hard limit, or ask the devs directly why the hard limit is there, which I doubt anyone will remember. I just realized while writing the comment that it also checks X and Z positions, not only Y positions. So it might be an optimization thing of "don't run this code on unnecessary things". Then again, what objects could possibly call it from outside the -12000 to 12000 cube? Also the code is just a few addition functions so I don't expect too much optimization from adding the check. And why only that one function?

[@Sylocat]

Maybe the 12k limit is a sanity check that was put in during debugging/QA and they forgot to remove the code for it? That's the only thing that makes sense to me, since, IIRC, none of the courses are even 12k units wide, let alone tall, so even in *theory* there'd still be no reason to check if something is 12,000 units away.

[@DallinBackstrom]

the naive prediction that I would give is that at best the checks don't improve performance at all and at worst they do a few unnecessary comparisons- not that those are expensive on n64 hardware, much less modern hardware, but still it does beg the question of why the limit exists, and what would happen if we hacked around it

[@andy02q]

My best guess is... so you know how in some flash games, if you open them in a flash player and mess with the aspect ratio, then sometimes you can see objects not perfectly unloading, but instead being tucked to the side and marked inactive, but because you made the window very tall or wide you can still manage to see these objects above or below or next to the area, that should be the viewable area. So at some point during development certain objects, like King Bob Omb or the racing penguin (or maybe even whole sections like the slide in the tall mushrooms map) might have been tucked away behind that 12k barrier for quick easy un- and reloading and the 12k check prevents them to fall below the death barrier causing unwanted behaviour.

[@ETXAlienRobot201]

that would make sense as a lot of games do this exact thing

[@JackBond1234]

My theory is that it was meant to prevent memory leaks, or at least slow downs in the case where an object, or perhaps an increasing number of objects unintentionally got lost far outside the bounds of the map, having to update their positions forever for no good reason. It may be simple addition, but if a lot of objects use that function, especially on a system like the N64, it can become a real problem.

[@TEGEKEN]

Hello old friend file select music

[@mekb1]

Ahh, that's why the particles are weird in PUs.

[@mrmimeisfunny]

I see you are enjoying the decompiled SM64 code.

[@emmbeesea]

Spawning the Star too high crashes the game. - Stryder7x has entered the chat

[@aturchomicz821]

Que Lisa the painfull ughu music

[@TheCandoRailfan]

It didn't crash, just went into an infinite loop.

[@alfo2804]

@@TheCandoRailfan It's technically a hang, but in this case it's effectively a crash since there's nothing to be done except reset the console.

[@TheCandoRailfan]

@@alfo2804 but it's, from a technical point of view, not a crash, just a softlock or infinite loop. A crash is the result of a fatal error, such as a division by zero, or an overflow.

[@dmas7749]

crash causes the game to hang, softlock means the game is still running but nothing can be done to further progress

[@toasterman3000]

These informational videos about the game’s code are actually way more interesting than the actual speedrunning videos.

[@Croissant90_]

MARIO 64 EPISODE VI: Return of the Pannen

[@simon88397]

The explanation was really great I'm a second year programmer and I could basically understand everything you explained

[@cachemist4149]

As someone who is trying to get into programming this entire channel helps me learn to find those special cases where everything is on fire.

[@exterminator9676]

The limit was most likely put in as a failsafe. honestly, there's not much more to it. when coding, you just want it to work. especially under deadlines. they probably thought it'd prevent a few glitches by stopping it from moving if it gets too far away. what I'm curious about is how pannen got the source code, and what happens if the checks are removed.

[@Minty_Meeo]

Look up SM64 Decomp. It's awesome.

[@origamiscienceguy6658]

A dedicated group of people decompiled the game using the rom and lots of testing.

[@R.P.Genocraft]

Plumber flies out of the stratosphere and perpetually drifts through space e v e n t u a l l y , m a r i o s t o p p e d t h i n k i n g

[@Evnyofdeath]

So basically... "If you combine a bunch of glitches in a specific way you confuse the game's code and cause it to lock up"

[@MattTrevett]

It explains why large custom maps get stuck if stars are located out of bounds.

[@hps362]

Simpleflips will be finally end his 20+ GBJ drystreak from this, calling it now.

[@officialEricBG]

I really liked the code breakdown, if you could do more of those it would be fantastic!

[@Nightcaat]

2:02 - My brain during a test.

[@Zachruff]

owo

[@tails183]

ovo

[@GewelReal]

ow

[@yasd8493]

ov

[@BasedSakurai2024]

oWo

[@austinhundley8813]

Thank you Pannen very cool

[@GameSuxLifeSux]

pancake is back

[@CaptmagiKono]

I aspire to make a channel like yours, with emphasis on the code explanations, but with other games. Thanks for your videos.

[@DollyBowman]

I love seeing your upload notifications, thanks for making a bad day a little bit easier!

[@HylianDefender]

Any video by you is great, Pannen. I love your videos and I might rewatch some old ones for fun!

[@JorgetePanete]

1:30 Mario Jackson *_HEE HEE_*

[@absoluteaquarian]

@Damian 2000 imagine getting butthurt over a michael jackson meme 🤔

[@nuxx1876]

@Damian 2000 i'm pretty sure you're the asshole, he didn't do anything wrong here

[@reddodeado301]

@@nuxx1876 You clearly haven't seen how much of a grammar asshole the other guy is.

[@reddodeado301]

@Damian 2000 Finally! Someone agrees!

[@DanielFerreira-ez8qd]

Just don't make any mistakes lmao

[@Tuxfanturnip]

I am so excited to see you work with the decompiled code more :D

[@_kyoshi]

It has been a long time since a new video!

[@gildedlink]

I like that even though the source code is literally within our hands now, you're not letting the mysteries you want to investigate run out just yet.

[@Accrovideogames]

That isn't the source code at all. They only decompiled the game. The only way to access the source code is from Nintendo themselves.

[@gildedlink]

Accrovideogames they've decompiled it so fully that it can recompile without issue. That's effectively source code. It's not the original source code, it's reconstructed and well labelled source, but it can behave and compile just as the original source did.

[@Sponsie1000]

it's Really cool to see actual code from the game and have you explain some of it!!, l would definitely like to see more vids about random crashes/glitches/whatever with an in-depth explanation like this one! (As long as you like doing the code-explanation thing as well of course :] )

[@kyledowney8551]

By God you've done it again. Really though, incredibly interesting stuff. Great video.

[@Ylurple]

this felt like review for the final exam in a college course about mario 64. so much reference from past videos that I (somewhat) remember but it's been a while so i've forgotten a lot of the material but professor pannen is going off on a crazy tangent and i'm sweating

[@Absolute_LUNA-C]

THE WORLD HAS BEEN SAVED PANNENKOEK IS BACK

[@PC_YouTube_Channel]

God returns

[@the_lava_wielder6996]

Atta boy first

[@hypatch8014]

I LOVE PANNENKOEKS

[@Sleestiq]

When it said "Well, let's examine the code..." I was so hyped for the menu music that I knew always played! So glad you finally uploaded!

[@hokostudios]

Well, can't complain about this mystery being solved! This one's been lingering around a long while.

[@Pimpeaux]

How could Nintendo not notice this game-breaking oversight? smh my head

[@General12th]

rip in peace you atm machine

[@ThatOneGib]

I can hear the save menu music already, thank you YT for bringing me back to this channel!

[@TIJEY-BEG]

You are a genius "Unkommentierter Pannenservice". Unfortunately I am no computer scientist. I am glad I am capable of using emulators. This was already a huge challenge to me.

[@sileo__3712]

Very cool, I actually learned something I could understand

[@Minty_Meeo]

Now that SM64 Decomp is publically released, Pannen can start referencing the source code more frequently and without worry! I look forward to more videos like this.

[@lordsnek]

That's a really cool way to initiate hyperspeed flying. I don't think I've seen that before.

[@dargos]

you are clearly not subbed to me then

[@lordsnek]

@@dargos I guess I hadn't slowed down a video enough to see exactly how it happens. It's a really cool way to triple jump quickly.

[@jongyon7192p]

@@dargos SUBSCRIBE TO DARGOS!!

[@doublespoonco]

Yes a pannen video my day is good again

[@pegleg759]

I love how some small piece of code written over 25 years ago for an unknown purpose is now causing confusion as to why it exists in the first place.

[@TheRealFigLizard]

I would watch a whole series on the code for this game.

[@kerbonaut2059]

Wow, it was a great idea to subscribe.

[@BobTimeIsNow]

This is beautiful

[@King_Yef]

Nice! Although it'd be easier to do things if you could spawn stars in PUs, I'd imagine. Might simplify certain movements.

[@Qbe_Root]

It would probably not work on console either way, unless there was also a way to lock the camera on the main map during cutscenes

[@rexpro02]

great video thank you!

[@crazynaut223]

Thanks for the jumpscare at 4:47 just in time for Halloween

[@Kat21]

*first new upload in a month* Everyone: YAY Pannen: *continues not to upload for another month* Fans: *aw*

[@veldhuis94]

Well, it lets us know he still makes videos! :) He puts a ton of research and effort into his videos, so it's only logical they take a lot of time to make. Especially these informative videos

[@zibberebbiz]

any morsel of pannen content gives me fuel for at least two months

[@Boothenson]

Pannen out here doing gods work

[@InfoManiac742]

Why does obj_move_using_vel_and_gravity even need to check for the 12k limit?

[@neoxus30]

I think its to make sure things don't fall too low or go too far, so it stops velocity and gravity, but since it takes the absolute value, it also affects how high can it go)

[@alphachrome713]

Imagine trying to pull this off but you miss the cloned coin

[@ZachFoxPhotography]

Great video

[@Saetta06]

Nice vid, pannen!

[@framenothing6561]

I’ll be sure to avoid this one in my next playthrough, thanks pannenkoek!

[@zibberebbiz]

you are a scholar and a gentleman

[@CoTeCiOtm]

This answered a completely unrelated question I had regarding the game, about the maximum amount of fall damage you can take. I thought that maybe there was height where you could potentially die of fall damage, but apparently the maximum amount is four pieces

[@PerpetualCamel]

Pannen is the most gifted QA tester of our lifetime

[@TheGogglebrothers]

Seeing The games source code is a trully magical experience

Hyper speed flying might be the coolest trick in the game.

[@nimboss]

It's interesting how we are seeing advanced soflocking techniques because we have probably ran out of normal game mechanics at this point. Pannen used a bunch of previously presented concepts to reach this point. It's just mind blowing, and you can understand a lot of this stuff if you have seen most of his previous videos.

[@ikryxxdev4756]

This one bug in a video game that just came out that takes like 20 min full off precisely setup that you saw on KZbin :

[@SirCorvid]

I was not aware that the community got ahold of SM64's source code. When was it retrieved?

[@vinesthemonkey]

it's decompiled as you can tell by the yet unnamed subroutines

[@jongyon7192p]

The only way we get the source code is to sneak our way into Nintendo Headquarters. Get employed or... yeah.

[@ZebitasMartinex]

It's been a long process But it seems it was finally decompiled www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cbvl6l/super_mario_64_was_fully_decompiled_c_source/

[@SirCorvid]

@@vinesthemonkey Not the answer I was looking for as I was looking for a date, but thanks for saying "decompiled" anyway! That was the term I was looking for when I wrote my comment and I just couldn't find the perfect word. ^^;

[@Alex-qq1gm]

The Japanese release was compiled with debugging data which they left on the cartridge. This was used to identify the function structure of the game, and translate the assembly back into a sort of mangled version of the original code. People are slowly cleaning it up and making it readable.

[@tripleswaggaroni1544]

Spends 2 nonstop months researching a set of very specific maneuvers just to crash the game *BIG BRAIN*

[@MiguelDiaz_]

Been watching a lot of Pannen recently, hoping for a new video soon, and then he uploads

[@pirate_cove_man]

Spawning a star in the sky -crashes- softlocks -Paper Mario- Super Mario 64. Seriously though, this guy must be related to Stryder7x.

[@pirate_cove_man]

@@mariiimu what

[@thealmightydave]

how people discover this stuff will always be the biggest mystery to me

[@jacobsullivan8512]

Yeah I think I ran into this once or twice back in the day

[@nin10doadict]

I guess this would also explain why the game softlocks in Chaos Edition if a star spawns when the 'object magnet' effect is going on. The chaos code constantly pulls the star toward Mario, so it never gets to complete its first bounce properly and the cutscene never ends... The cutscene also probably prevents the magnet effect from turning off.

[@fabby2998]

And now that we know that, it could be possible to "fix" it at some point (if "fixing chaos" makes sense), because it's kind of obnoxious. Though tbh, the magnet hack is probably the worst one

[@SonicCDFrench]

it's always a good time when you hear the file select theme

[@chimebirdplayer3327]

Very interesting; I'm glad to see that you're still around. Btw, where did you get that code? Did you reverse engineer the machine code?

[@paleblank0]

Can you examine why Mario's buttons vanishes for a couple frames in his breakdance animation? Maybe a video about animation mistakes with the Mario model?

[@andreytube1000]

Super mario 64 still have undiscovered stuff? I am surprised.

[@harukatakahashi8822]

You're like a god of this video game

[@whatisthis2809]

I got an idea than can be awesome or can be suck. Setting the HOLP during the demo, specifically, before the run starts. And better yet you can use (reverse or normal) spawning displacement!

[@TheJayKayA]

5:25 does the »coin spawn animation thing« from earlier count to those, too?

[@baggothree]

Interesting! I wonder if anything else can cause this, like the chests in the water levels.

[@ElectricFortune]

This also explains why spawning a star under certain codes in Chaos Edition ends up softlocking the game. The two bounces aren't finished properly because the codes are messing with the star's movement, and once the star stops bouncing, if it didn't reach the threshold for both state 0 and 1 to finish, it'll never finish the cutscene.

[@CygnusGalactic]

AYYYY, I MISSED YOU

[@GretgorPooper]

If Pannen was a physicist rather than a gamer, we'd already be able to get to mars in a few seconds with 0.5 A presses.

[@Larx3476]

Wow. Your learning something new every day

[@Terkzorr]

And this is how you unlock Luigi. But because of the softlock you never reach the unlock cinematic.

[@friedchickenUSA]

i see our local mario wizard has been hard at work these past weeks he knows more about mario 64 than even mr nintendo himself

[@kinkajuu1]

YES I LOVE NEW VID TIME :)

[@DarkOmegaMK2]

*raises hand* is this going to be on the test?

[@bigstevie01]

THIS IS THE TEST

[@TheJayKayA]

1:59 would this also happen in bounds? just because its so high? or what exactly is the point of the game erroring? :D

[@vtmagno23]

*YAYY NEW PANNEN VIDEO*

[@AmeVIRUS_]

tbh i just feel sorry for the amount of times you must've looked away for a split second near a coin and had to collect the first 99 all over again.

[@explosionate]

i don't know what's happening, but i like it

[@HardSonicStorm]

How did you get the code ?

[@DustyMusician]

My favorite place to go for SM64 science

[@purplepeak8575]

Can't wait til SimpleFlips pulls this one off.