This topic is for discussing Super Mario Odyssey (for Nintendo Switch).
Speedrunning this game is a good way to learn for people who have a hard time learning (~everyone) and who already like video games.
Single player games are best because you don't have to deal with other people. Other people are complicated and dealing with them is a big issue which distracts from the gameplay.
Single player games are mostly too easy. They don't challenge you enough. Speedrunning solves that problem by giving you a goal to work towards where taking on extra challenges gets you better results.
Mario Odyssey is a popular, modern game (in general and specifically for speedrunning) which is highly accessible (both for regular play and speedrunning). It has video guides for speedrunning, various speedrunners who stream on Twitch, and plenty of walkthroughs for regular play. It can easily be broken up into small parts to learn about one at a time, and you can practice a few minutes at a time and then pause. It's complex enough to have depth without being too complicated. It doesn't have much randomness or AI to deal with. It has some glitches but not a ton, and you don't need to do any until you're a very advanced speedrunner. The any% speedrun is a good length. Those are some reasons it's a good game choice. It's also beneficially if a bunch of philosophy-interested people play the same game so they can discuss it, so don't choose a different game that seems a little more appealing to you, it'd only make sense to play a different game if it was a lot better for you for some reason.
(Mario Odyssey has few downsides. The biggest one is it uses motion controls some. It also takes more work to record videos of console gameplay than Mac or PC gameplay, and you need a Switch.)
By playing Mario Odyssey, you can learn what it's like to get good and something and succeed. You can see how practice works and things that used to be hard become easy. Learn to practice efficiently. Learn to write down notes, to review videos (like other people's speedruns) and get useful help from them, and learn to remember a bunch of information. You can see what correcting errors is like. You can see what getting details right is like and succeed with high quality standards. You can see how to build up your skills. First you learn how to do basic movement. Then you practice until it doesn't take much attention anymore. Then you can learn harder combinations of movement which build on the basic things. Now that the basic things are easy for you, your attention is free to focus on combined sequences.
Speedrunning gives you clear metrics for success and failure, which makes it much easier to learn. Did you reach the location you were trying to jump to or fall down? What does the timer say about what you're doing? One of the main reasons people have trouble learning philosophy, and many other things, is because they don't know when they're doing it right or not. They want to fix their errors, but they don't know which things are errors and which are correct. With speedrunning, you can also compare what you did to videos of what faster runners and figure out specifically how your approach is inferior (so you don't just know that you made an error, you also can get good info about what to do differently).
Overall, doing everything may not be easy, but it's easier than learning philosophy. So if you're having a hard time learning philosophy, like most people, this is an easier place to begin. You can work on your ability to learn, find and fix errors, not get frustrated, be persistent over time, and so on, without the added difficulty of trying to understand hard philosophy ideas at the same time. Practice learning with something easier than philosophy so you aren't doing everything at once. And then, in the future, when you learn philosophy ideas about how to learn, you'll be able apply them to examples from your Mario Odyssey experience. This is something lots of people can do well, it doesn't take a "genius" (philosophy doesn't take a "genius" either but many people think it does).
You have to learn the game before you speedrun it. That's step one. Play it normally first and get used to it. If you start getting bored playing normally, or finish everything, then switch to practicing the speedrun.
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Studying Metro route #20
I practiced sections 1 through 5 again and completed it about 10 times.
This time I had many runs that finished without any large time losses (e.g. due to dying) and without many small time losses.
I'm also moving a bit faster than before in some of the areas where I used to intentionally go slow to make sure I don't mess up.
#15593 Seems like good persistence and attention to detail.
Studying Metro route #21
Moving on to next section.
Section 6: 8:41-11:54 starts by exiting the city hall building and ends by beating the boss.
Section 6.1: getting to the boss fight
- Get the flag
- Get out of the electric wire early by pressing what?
Section 6.2: beating the boss
- shoot up close in general cuz shoot more, also aims easier
I watched the video as I played. I’m going to continue watching/playing until I have all of smallant’s explanations written down.
Studying Metro route #22
This time I only watched the guide and didn't play at all.
These are my new notes for section 6.2
Section 6.2: beating the boss
- Primarily use motion controls to aim
- can avoid overheating by leaving no more than 3 bullets in the air at a time. so shooting up close allows for more bullets, also aims easier.
- When a bullet hits a segment, it’ll destroy that one and one on each side of it
- once all segments are hit, then aim at head, get close, and fire as fast as you can
- If beat part quick enough, then get in corner to let boss pass. Then move to other corner and do same. Once last body segment enters wall, move left a bit so boss will enter wall behind you. Move out of way before boss hits you. Back up and aim at the middle of the building.
- When projectiles come out, try to shoot them so you don’t have to move around to avoid them.
- Aim at head and fire. Possible to shoot all segments without readjusting aim. Prioritize segments near the head first.
GISTE's documentation of his gameplay is a bit similar to this documentation:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FO5lgQdzW53oJ_Jq8-gcJ8wCHeXre8C_-xP7PtjYyC8/edit
It's a good sign about people when they write significant documentation. I too have written documentation related to Baldur's Gate, e.g.:
https://curi.us/1728-baldurs-gate-ii-playthrough-notes-part-1
There are 184 forum pages of (often long) forum posts at https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/62202/the-lob-scs-solo-challenge-and-the-tales-of-iwdification
Karl Jobst on the role of sleep on memory consolidation and skill acquisition
At 3:27 in Advanced Speedrunning Principles - Episode 2: How To Practice, Karl Jobst talks about “the role of sleep on memory consolidation and skill acquisition”. (Note: Jobst refers to research that I haven't reviewed.) Here is my transcript of that part of the video:
> Now I want to talk about sleep. We all know it is very important to get an adequate amount of sleep, as being well-rested will help with motor function, memory, and reaction speed. However, it is also very important to understand the role of sleep on memory consolidation and skill acquisition.
> The time you spend directly practicing a technique isn't the only time that counts towards developing that skill. The sleep you get *after* practicing a motor skill actually continues to solidify the technique, causing an improvement of skill even after the practice session has ended. Studies have shown an increase of 20% or more in proficiency of a motor skill after sleep, with complex skills getting the most benefit.
> So how do we apply this to our practice schedule? Well, basically, in order to learn a motor skill as efficiently as possible, we want to practice it every day, ensuring that every sleep that we have is contributing to the consolidation of that skill. If we want to spend 3 hours per week practicing a particular technique, we don't want to spend that 3 hours on a single day. It is a much better idea to split those 3 hours down into 30-minute chunks, and practice 6 days per week.
> So let's compare two different ways of structuring our practice. The first way is to spend 2 hours on day 1 practicing Technique A, then spend 2 hours on day 2 practicing Technique B. The second way is to split up these practice blocks into two parts and practice both techniques for 1 hour each day. In this example, the second method is far superior to the first. The second hour of practice for each technique has taken advantage of the sleep from the night before. The increase in proficiency will mean a higher success rate of attempts and more accurate play. The more accurate play allows for the quicker development of the correct muscle memory. Furthermore, the practice for each technique is able to utilize two nights of sleep versus one. The benefits continue to compound in this way.
> And if you're wondering “Why don't I just spend 3 hours every day practicing one technique?”, that's usually not a good idea if you have hundreds of techniques to learn in a speedrun. Time spent practicing one technique is time not spent practicing another.
> Being aware of the role of sleep after practice is also a great way to avoid frustration. You should never feel as though you need to perfect a technique during a practice session. You have to appreciate the fact that the full effects of the practice are not actualized until hours later, after a good sleep.
> Once a skill has been acquired, you no longer need to practice it every day. Maintaining your current skill level in any technique requires far less work than the process of learning it. In fact, skills that you already have acquired may not even need direct practice. Your run attempts themselves are usually enough to keep you at a competent level.
Tool for beating the "Sploosh Kaboom" minigame in Wind Waker
How We Solved the Worst Minigame in Zelda's History is a 20 minute video explaining a tool that lets you beat the "Sploosh Kaboom" minigame in *The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker*. The video was made by Linkus7, the current 100% world record holder for the game, with contributions by others, including Peter Schmidt-Nielsen, the main developer of the tool.
Sploosh Kaboom is similar to Battleship. Hidden targets are placed on a rectangular grid according to the output of a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG). The player places shots one at a time on the grid and is told after each shot whether it was a hit or a miss.
The PRNG uses the Wichmann-Hill algorithm to generate a deterministic sequence of floating-point numbers between 0 and 1. The sequence repeats after about 7 trillion numbers. If you knew exactly where the game was in the PRNG sequence when the Sploosh Kaboom targets were placed, you could figure out *where* they were placed.
At world record pace with current routing, it takes about half an hour to get to the Sploosh Kaboom minigame. Without using any info about the PRNG, the player would successfully complete the minigame only about 1/4 of the time. The other 3/4 of the time, the player would have to reset the entire game and start over. That means it would take about 2 hours on average to get past Sploosh Kaboom. However, by using the tool, a player can successfully complete the minigame every time, thereby saving 1.5 hours that would otherwise have been wasted.
Apparently, players on world record pace with current routing reach Sploosh Kaboom at around position 5.5 million (+/- 0.2 million) in the PRNG sequence. To use the tool, the player intentionally loses the first game of Sploosh Kaboom just to see where the targets were placed. The target locations are fed into the tool, which is then able to make some intelligent guesses about how far along in the PRNG sequence the game must be and to narrow down the possible target locations for the next minigame of Sploosh Kaboom. As each subsequent minigame of Sploosh Kaboom progresses, the tool also uses the result of each shot (hit or miss) to further narrow things down.
The video features animations and graphics that help explain how the tool works. The video also explains, at the end, why using this tool was deemed to be legal in Wind Waker speedruns.
#16683 Thanks for posting this. Great video. And I somehow accidentally marked the YouTube email notification for this video as read without watching the video or remembering that it existed.
It also has great video production values in *concretely useful* ways. They put effort into making *functionally useful* graphs, animations, etc. And they did it while solving hard technical problems. This is the kind of quality work that Google would be lucky to get from a coders they pay $300,000/yr (this kind of productivity and effectiveness would be maybe a top 5% result at google? guessing, idk specifically).
Also it's a great example of how speedrunning causes people to run into hard problems and encourages them to actually solve the problems instead of giving up fast. Most people aren't nearly persistent enough to care much about a problem like this, let alone solve it. Most people declare this kind of problem is impossible to solve early on (no doubt many people who have *never played the game once* have said so).
And it's a great example of how *knowledge of reality gives you power to control reality*. This excites Linkus very visibly in the clip example where he beats the game with no misses, which is a great demonstration of how powerful his approach is for making reality turn out the way he wants it to.
I also appreciated Linkus mentioning how he learned to play with one hand on the controller and one on the keyboard in order to go fast. And he's so good at this that people thought it was being automated by software instead of something he did manually.
And the video is a good example of *not* overreaching. They actually know what they're talking about (not faking) and aren't trying to add in a bunch of extra, unnecessary sophisticated or complicated stuff.
I watched a different video right before seeing this comment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl2NWuXDlhQ
> Destroying the Fabric of Society - My Truth and Social Justice
And I had those thoughts about not overreaching *for that video* from Upper Echelon Gamers. Then they applied again to the Linkus video too.
Studying Metro route #23
I read my notes (#15605) on section 6.2 and now I’m going to play it with those ideas in mind.
Trial 1: died once. I was bad at aiming. I was also bad at being aware of the oncoming projectiles so I got hit a lot.
I reread my notes and compared and contrasted it against my trial 1.
- I mostly forgot to aim with motion controls
- I mostly forgot about not leaving 3 bullets in the air at once. I’m also not sure whether or not I overheated
Trial 2: did not die. I was a bit better at aiming but not much. I was much better about being aware of the oncoming projectiles. I also shot most of them out of the air before getting near me. Some of them I let pass by me as I started to shoot the snake segments. I remember getting hit once by a projectile while being aware of it and trying to get out of it’s path. I remember being surprised that I got it because I thought I cleared it’s path.
I reread my notes and compared and contrasted it against my trial 2.
- I improved a little bit with using the motion control to aim. I often resorted to using the direction pad to aim.
- I don’t think I ever overheated. I remember being concerned about it because I was shooting a lot and I remember thinking that my shots must been hitting quick enough so that I didn’t have more than 3 bullets in the air at a time.
- I remember wanting to shoot the head but it was so far away from where my aim already was and there were other segments that were very close to my then current aim so I resorted to shooting them (low hanging fruit) instead of re-aiming towards the head.
I think I’ll do this a few more times and then I’m going to rewatch the video to see if I can figure out more things that I didn’t figure out on my first viewing prior to any trials.
Studying Metro route #24
Reread my notes for section 6.2 and my notes from last session.
Trial 3: didn’t die. I got hit by projectiles twice. My aiming with motion controls doesn’t seem to be working. I still resort a lot to aiming with the direction pad. For the last phase of projectiles, where there was only 1 more snake segment to shoot, I didn’t try to shoot the projectiles and instead I just tried to avoid them as I was focussed on shooting the snake segment.
Reread my notes and compare and contrast it against my trial 3.
- I haven’t managed to incorporate this “Possible to shoot all segments without readjusting aim.”
Trial 4: didn’t die. I didn’t get hit by projectiles but I screwed up early and got hit by the tank before I got control of it. i did get a bunch of hits in without changing aim (instead of not doing any of that previously). I had 3 phases of projectiles, which is the least I’ve managed so far (I think it goes down to 2 phases if you hit all the snake segments per phase).
Reread my notes and compare and contrast it against my trial 4.
- I’m still not using motion control to aim much but I’ve noticed that there are cases where I use the direction pad to quickly move my aim in the general area of where I want it and then I use motion control to get closer to where I want.
Next steps: Do another session like this and then then rewatch video guide. Then start doing timed runs.
Studying Metro route #25
Reread my notes for section 6.2 and my notes from previous sessions on section 6.2.
Trial 5 analysis: I didn’t die. I got hit once by projectiles. I only needed 2 phases of projectiles, meaning that I hit all the snake segments with each phase. I mostly didn’t use motion control to aim. I remember using motion control for shooting the tank. I don’t recall using motion control for any of the snake segments.
Reread my notes from last session and compare and contrast it against my trial 5.
- Problem: I still haven’t managed to incorporate this “Possible to shoot all segments without readjusting aim.” I think at most I shot two consecutive snake segments without readjusting aim. I also did not try to start by shooting the head. The snake moves much faster than I’m able to aim at it.
- Brainstorm solutions: maybe I could just wait until the snake stops moving, aim at the head and shoot it, then without changing aim, let the snake start moving again and shoot every other segment.
Trial 6 analysis: I didn’t do well shooting snake segments without changing aim. I found that my aim changes even without using motion control or the direction pad. I’m wondering if my controller is broken. Or maybe aim adjusts due to recoil from a shot. It took me 3 phases of projectiles to beat the boss. I didn’t die at all. I think I got hit 3 times with projectiles.
Reread my notes and compare and contrast it against my trial 6.
- Problem: i noticed at one point that my elbows were propped on my knees, which prevents using motion control.
- Brainstorm solutions: remember to use motion controls. Remember to avoid propping my elbows on my knees so I can be free to use motion controls.
Decide next steps: rewatch video guide to look for things I missed.
Studying Metro route #26
This time I only watched the guide[1] and didn't play at all.
These are my new notes for section 6.2
Section 6.2: beating the boss
- I noticed that the first thing smallant does is grab the tank to the right (I’ve been getting the one to the left) and then immediately start shooting the snake instead of first killing the other tank.
- Then I noticed that he used exactly 3 shots to kill all the snake segments.
- In the first cycle (after killing the snake segments), aim at the head because it doesn’t move much in this cycle.
- Immediately after the first cycle, I should be towards the right front corner.
- Move into that corner and face the opposite direction and don’t move.
- After the snake goes past, move along the wall to the corner in that direction and turn 180 degrees.
- After the snake goes past again, move left a bit so the snake will exit the wall behind you.
- Move out of the way before the snake hits the tank.
- Turn 180 degrees and aim up to the top of the building while moving backwards.
- Once the tank is aimed at the top of the building, stop moving and aim to the center of the building.
- For the 2nd cycle, after the snake stops moving, try to kill the segments near the head first as those are the ones that become invulnerable first.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMTl5aVqHdA&list=PLiinoyifvFb64od8RyqPFmVqDrFwkgaa0&index=7
Studying Metro route #27
Activity: Doing trials
Instructions and analysis:
Reread my notes from previous session.
Trial 7 analysis: I did very badly time wise. I guess that’s because I was trying out new things. i’m still bad at remembering to do motion controls. I remember saying it twice during play. I did well following the path described in my notes. I also successfully got the right tank and shot the snake without looking at the other tank or shooting it. I don’t remember paying attention to it. Maybe I killed it after completely killing the snake in the first cycle.
Reread my notes from last session and compare and contrast it against my trial 7.
- Problem: haven’t been remembering to use motion controls. context: I changed my seating position so that I can’t prop my elbows on my knees.
- Brainstorm solutions: for this next trial, try to focus on using motion controls as the main thing to focus on.
Trial 8 analysis: I tried to count how many times I shot and how many times out of those I remembered to use motion controls. i lost count but my best guess is less than 50% success rate.
Reread my notes from last session and compare and contrast it against my trial 8.
- Problem: low success rate of using motion controls when shooting.
- Brainstorm solutions: keep practicing until I’m approximately doing it 100% of the time.
Decide next steps:
1. continuing practicing until ~100% success rate of using motion controls when shooting.
2. Then do timed runs.
speedrunning sesson 1
I beat the game and I want to do speedrunning.
I watched the first kingdom of smallant smo beginner's guide.
I practiced the first kingdom a few times.
Inbetween practice runs, I rewatched parts of the guide and found something I missed and corrected it on the next run. Here's what I missed. During the boss fight, I was doing a big jump from far away rather than a small jump close-up.
I'm gonna keep practicing this kingdom for a bit until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
speedrunning sesson 2
I've been practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced the first kingdom 10 or so times.
I focused on the boss fight, specifically successfully jumping and hitting the boss after the first cycle of his hat throws. I got it wrong about half the time. I'm gonna start timing it if I keep getting it wrong.
I'm gonna keep practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
speedrunning session 3
I've still been practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced the first kingdom 5 or so times.
I watched the first kingdom of smallant smo beginner's guide again because I didn't know what to do at one point.
I don't know how to explain what I was confused about, so I'm just gonna send the part I was confused about. https://youtu.be/tIr3hPpGjm4?t=60
I'm gonna keep practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
#16818 How do you like it so far?
speedrunning session 4
I've still been practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced the first kingdom 7 or so times.
I'm making a lot less mistakes now. I wasn't focusing on anything in particular, though.
I'm gonna keep practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
speedrunning session 5
I've still been practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced it 7 times.
I was able to end the boss' hat phase before it starts 6 out of 7 of the times I played.
I'm gonna keep practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
speedrunning session 6
I've still been practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced it 4 times.
I didn't make a noticeable improvement. I think this is because I didn't play for a long time.
I was able to end the boss' hat phase before it starts 4 out of 4 of the times I played.
I'm gonna keep practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
#16892 You didn't play much for a week. Maybe you're losing interest? Maybe you should try the second kingdom instead of optimizing the first one more? Maybe it'd be more fun to play a different part of the game.
#16893 No, I just stopped using the learning experiment for a week. like when I think of the idea to do a session and if I have a feeling I don't like, I make a learning experiment where I play the game, check my feelings, and I can quit the experiment if I want. (I've never done the quoting. but sometimes I just don't do the learning experiment in the first place. that's the only issue.)
speedrunning session 7
I've still been practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced it 5 times, but 2 times I wasn't really doing speedrunning so I'm not gonna count those.
I did make an improvement. I only made a couple mistakes on the 3 times I ran.
I was able to end the boss' hat phase before it starts 2 of the 3 times I played.
I'm gonna keep practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
speedrunning session 8
Still practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced it 3 times.
I was doing terrible. I made so many mistakes on each round. No rounds were done well.
I wasn't able to end the hat phase before it starts whatsoever.
I'm pretty sure this was because I was sleep deprived.
I'm gonna continue practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big times losses (likes 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
speedrunning session 9
Still practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced it 5 times.
I did a bit worse than usual, but way better than session 8.
I was able to end the hat phase before it started 4/5 times.
I'm gonna continue practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times
speedrunning session 10/11
Session 10:
Still practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced it around 6 or 7 times.
I did better than usual. I got no big time losses 3/10 times.
I was able to end the hat phase before it started the entire time.
I'm gonna continue practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big times losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
Session 11:
Still practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced it 3 times.
I did worse than usual, but nothing worse than how I did on session 8.
I stopped early because I felt tired and I planned to continue speedrunning later in the day but something got in the way.
I'm gonna continue practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
p.s. i stopped playing for a few weeks cuz i was sick
#16932 I think you're probably aiming too high. You don't need to get it pretty perfect yet. You can get it pretty good (like no 15s time losses) for now and learn some new stages.
It's easier to optimize this stage, and get it more perfect, after you have more practice on other stages.
#16934 If I have too much trouble with this stage then I'll try what you suggested and do the other kingdoms, but for now I'm gonna continue practicing the first kingdom.
speedrunning session 12
Still practicing the first kingdom.
I practiced it 4 or 5 times.
I did around average.
I was able to end the hat phase before it started 4/5 times (or 3/4 times).
I beat the kingdom 3/5 (or 3/4) times with no big time losses.
I'm gonna continue practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.
speedrunning session 13
Still practicing the first kingdom,
I practiced it 6 or 7 times.
I did better than usual.
I was able to end the hat phase before it started 5/6 (or 6/7) times.
I beat the kingdom 5/6 (or 6/7) times with no big time losses.
I'm gonna continue practicing this kingdom until I can beat it with no big time losses (like 5 seconds) 8/10 times.