Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics
Short version: Just watch this video.
Okay, now what was that?
So a few months back some of my friends were passing around these videos of something called “Kaizo Mario World“, which I was told, at first, translated to “Asshole Mario World”. This turned out to have actually been a misunderstanding of something in the youtube posting of the original creator’s videos:
[Asshole Mario] is not the real name for this series of videos, but it is my personal name for it.
The literal translated name for 自作ã®æ”¹é€ マリオ（スーパーマリオワールド）をå‹äººã«ãƒ—レイã•ã›ã‚‹ is “Making my friend play through my own Mario(Super Mario World) hack”, hence Kaizo(hack) Mario to the USA.
…but, the name is pretty appropriate. Kaizo Mario World is one of a series of rom hacks people create in special level editors that let you take Super Mario World and rearrange all the blocks; the point of Kaizo appears to have been to create the most evil Super Mario World hack ever.
I started watching these videos, but after seeing how the player got past the first gap stopped, went wait, this actually doesn’t look so bad, and started playing it instead. It’s actually not that bad! I was expecting it to be like Super Mario Frustration, Kaizo Mario World’s equivalent in Super Mario Bros. 1 hacks– all ridiculous jumps that require pixel-perfect timing, memorizing the location of a bunch of hidden blocks that exist only to foil a jump and, occasionally, actually exploiting glitches in the game engine.
Kaizo Mario World actually turns out though really to be kind of more like a puzzle game– giving you a series of seemingly impossible situations and then leaving you to figure out how to get past them. It only uses the sadistic-invisible-block trick sparingly (and, hey, even SMB2JP did that a couple times). And it actually turns out to be kind of fun.
It’s still sadistically hard, though, so if you want to play it you have to use what are called “save states”. Most emulators let you do this kind of save-and-rewind thing, where if you screw up you can back up just a few seconds to the last time you were standing in a safe place. So if you’re playing Kaizo Mario world you find yourself playing the same four-second section over and over and over until you get the jump just right, listening to the same two seconds of the soundtrack looping Steve Reich style…
Anyway, the idea for the video up top was inspired by an offhanded comment in the “original” Kaizo Mario World youtube post I linked above:
The original videos were in god awful codecs that were a bitch to convert, so unfortunately the Tool Assisted Speedruns came first to most youtube watchers.
This is rather unfortunate, as I feel you lose a lot of the “appeal” by watching those.
This refers to the way that most emulators, if you are recording a video of yourself playing a game and you do the save-state rewind thing, they’ll rewind the video too, such that the video shows only your final attempt, not any of your messups. People use this to make “speedruns” showing a best-of-all-possible-worlds recording of them playing through some game or other, with all the errors scrubbed out. The guy’s point was that watching Kaizo Mario World this way kind of ruins it, since most of what makes Kaizo great is watching someone fail over and over and over again until they finally get it right.
On the other hand, Kaizo Mario World involves SO much failing that this means all the “real” videos are, like, twenty minutes long just to get through what in a tool-assisted run would have been a two-minute level. So I was thinking, what if you had a special tool that instead of erasing all the screwups, it saved all of them and made a video of all the screwups plus the one successful path superimposed? I kept thinking about this and eventually I just sat down and hacked SNES9X to work exactly like that. The result was the video up top, showing the 134 attempts it took me to successfully get through level 1 of Kaizo Mario World.
I think I’m going to make some more videos in this style of different Kaizo Mario World levels and post them back here, but in the meanwhile, if you want to make your own many-worlds speedrun videos, here’s my custom version of SNES9X 1.43 with the multi-record function:
- For the Mac OS X version, click here.
- For a Windows version, click here. (Many thanks to Syndalis of 360Arcadians for compiling this for me.)
- If you want a Linux version, you’ll have to compile that yourself, but you can do this by finding a copy of the 1.43 source and replacing movie.cpp with this.
- And for the full Mac OS X source, click here.
[Update 2/9/08: The Mac version now correctly processes movies recorded in the Windows version.]
[Update 2/10/08: Mac version updated to fix a problem where certain kinds of corrupt recording files could cause the program to loop endlessly; window titlebar now contains status information.]
Note that this is a quickly-tossed-together hack all done to make a single video, and I make NO promises as to the quality, ease-of-use, correctness, or safety of these links. Also, I think the video feature should work with any SNES game, but I’ve only tested it with Kaizo. If anyone attempts to try this yourself, I’d be curious to hear about your results.
To make a video: First, use SNES9X’s “record movie” function to record yourself playing some game; while the game is running, use the save and restore feature at least once. When you’re done, you’ll find that SNES9X has created a yournamehere.smv file and also a series of files with names like yournamehere.smv.1, yournamehere.smv.2, etc. These .number files are all the different “mistake” playthroughs, so keep all these files together in one directory.
To turn this into an actual movie you can watch, you will need to use the OS X version of the emulator. Unfortunately, the Windows and Linux versions can only record multiple-run SMVs– they can’t do the export-to-quicktime thing. The quicktime-export code is based on alterations to the mac-specific parts of 1.43 (although considering that I hear the Quicktime API is mostly identical between Mac and Windows, it might be pretty easy to port that code to Windows at least…).
Anyway, in the OS X version, open up the appropriate ROM and choose “Export to Quicktime Movie” from the Option menu. Before leaving the export dialogue, make sure to click the “Compression…” button. You *MUST* choose either the “None” or “Planar RGB” codecs, and under the “Compressor” pane you *MUST* choose a depth of “Millions of Colors+”. The “+” is important. Once you’ve saved the movie location, go to “Play Movie” in the Option menu and choose the .smv you want to play. The emulator will play through each of the playbacks one by one; when it’s done (you’ll know because the background turns back on) your movie will appear in the location you chose. Note that there’s one more step! You won’t be able to actually play this movie, at least not very well, because the export feature works by creating a different movie track for each playthrough and the file will be huge and bloated. Open your video in Quicktime Player, then choose “export” and export to some video codec with actual compression (like H.264). This will flatten all the different layers of the movie into one. Okay, NOW you’re done.
…So what’s this about quantum physics? Oh, right. Well, I kind of identify the branching-paths effect in the video with the Everett-Wheeler “Many Worlds Interpretation” of quantum physics. Quantum physics does this weird thing where instead of things being in one knowable place or one knowable state, something that is quantum (like, say, an electron) exists in sort of this cloud of potentials, where there’s this mathematical object called a wavefunction that describes the probabilities of the places the electron might be at a given moment. Quantum physics is really all about the way this wavefunction behaves. There’s this thing that happens though where when a quantum thing interacts with something else, the wavefunction “collapses” to a single state vector and the (say) electron suddenly goes from being this potential cloud to being one single thing in a single place, with that one single thing randomly selected from the different probabilities in the wavefunction. Then the wavefunction takes back over and the cloud of potentials starts spreading out again from that randomly selected point.
A lot of scientists really don’t like this “collapse” thing, because they’re uncomfortable with the idea of nature doing something “at random”. Physics was used to dealing with randomness before quantum physics came along– the physics of gases are all about the statistics of randomly moving gas particles, for example– but those kinds of randomness aren’t assumed to be actually random, just “effectively random” because the interactions of air molecules are so chaotic and complicated that they’re too unpredictable for humans to track. Think about what happens when you roll a die: the number that comes up when the die lands isn’t strictly speaking “random”, it’s absolutely determined by the physics of motion and the velocity at which you let go of the die and so forth. The “randomness” of a die roll isn’t about actual indeterminacy, but rather just a way of talking about your ignorance of how the deterministic processes that control the die operate. Quantum physics, on the other hand, has things that as far as anyone can tell are really, objectively random, with no mechanism producing that randomness and nowhere apparent to stick one.
Since this makes some physicists uncomfortable, they came up with a sort of a philosophical trick: they interpret quantum physics in such a way that they say when there’s more than one possible random outcome of some quantum process, then the different possibilities all happen, in alternate universes. They can’t prove or disprove that this idea is true– from the perspective of someone inside one of these universes, everything behaves exactly the same as if the “wavefunction collapse” really was just picking a random option. But it’s one way of looking at the equations of quantum mechanics, and as far as the mathematics cares it’s as valid as any other. Looking at things this way, if there’s a 3/4 chance of a quantum process doing one thing and a 1/4 chance of it doing the other, then we get three universes where the one thing happens and one universe where the other one does. This does mean that there’s some universe where two seconds ago all of the atoms in your heart spontaneously decided to quantum-tunnel two feet to the left, but in almost every universe this doesn’t happen so we don’t worry about that.
Science fiction authors love this. There’s a bunch of stories out there exploring this idea of a multiverse of infinite possibilities all occurring side by side (the best of these I’ve ever read being Robert Anton Wilson’s Schrödinger’s Cat). Most of these stories get things totally wrong. Science fiction authors like to look at many-worlds like, this morning you could either take the bus to work or walk, so the universe splits in two and there’s one universe where you decided to walk and one universe where you decided to take the bus. This is great for purposes of telling a story, but it doesn’t really work like that. The many-worlds interpretation is all about the behavior of quantum things– like, when does this atom decay, or what angle is this photon emitted at. Whereas human brains are big wet sloppy macroscopic things whose behavior is mostly governed by lots of non-quantum processes like neurotransmitters releasing chemicals.
This said, tiny quantum events can create ripples that have big effects on non-quantum systems. One good example of this is the Quantum Suicide “experiment” that some proponents of the Many-Worlds Interpretation claim (I think jokingly) could actually be used to test the MWI. The way it works is, you basically run the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment on yourself– you set up an apparatus whereby an atom has a 50% chance of decaying each second, and there’s a detector which waits for the atom to decay. When the detector goes off, it triggers a gun, which shoots you in the head and kills you. So all you have to do is set up this experiment, and sit in front of it for awhile. If after sixty seconds you find you are still alive, then the many-worlds interpretation is true, because there is only about a one in 1018 chance of surviving in front of the Quantum Suicide machine for a full minute, so the only plausible explanation for your survival is that the MWI is true and you just happen to be the one universe where the atom’s 50% chance of decay turned up “no” sixty times in a row. Now, given, in order to do this, you had to create about 1018 universes where the Quantum Suicide machine did kill you, or copies of you, and your one surviving consciousness doesn’t have any way of telling the people in the other 1018 universes that you survived and MWI is true. This is, of course, roughly as silly as the thing about there being a universe where all the atoms in your heart randomly decided to tunnel out of your body.
But, we can kind of think of the multi-playthrough Kaizo Mario World video as a silly, sci-fi style demonstration of the Quantum Suicide experiment. At each moment of the playthrough there’s a lot of different things Mario could have done, and almost all of them lead to horrible death. The anthropic principle, in the form of the emulator’s save/restore feature, postselects for the possibilities where Mario actually survives and ensures that although a lot of possible paths have to get discarded, the camera remains fixed on the one path where after one minute and fifty-six seconds some observer still exists.
Note: Please do not use the comments section of this post to discuss ROMs or where to get them. IPSes are okay. Thanks.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:23 am
[…] Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics […]
February 4th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
The speedrunners at tasvideos.org will be very excited to hear about this. This is right in line with the kinds of trickery they like to do. I’ve mentioned it in their thread where they proposed the concept earlier: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=157838#157838
February 4th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
You were frontpaged at http://selectbutton.net/ !
February 5th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
[…] Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics This is pretty sweet. Both the video and the physics are mind-boggling at first, but become slowly less so. (tags: art games physics videos nintendo) […]
February 5th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
[…] Link […]
February 6th, 2008 at 3:40 am
[…] overlay of a dude’s 134 attempts to complete a hacked Super Mario World […]
February 6th, 2008 at 3:53 am
[…] Strange video overlay of many, many attempts to complete a Super Mario Bros level. Via Kottke, who also notes several other examples of videos representing multiple times at once. […]
February 6th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Thanks alot. That was quite fun. The video and your link to Quantum Physics.
And thanks for sharing the hack.
Yes!
February 6th, 2008 at 7:15 am
You were featured on http://tigsource.com/ too.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
haha, amazing. Truly amazing.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
you talk about Science Fiction books talking about quantum, and I think there’s a really good one very related to this video and its explanation: Greg Egan’s “Quanrantine”
I really think you should check it out.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
This is a really cool post. I’m not much one for watching videos of people playing through games, but your idea for the many worlds playthrough was clever and it’s cool that you were able to execute it in short order. As someone who studies quantum physics, I was amused by the analogy and impressed and pleasantly surprised by your seemingly pretty firm grasp of the MWI, something obscured by a lot of science fiction that even many physicists don’t have a firm grasp of. Even without talking about the MWI, I like the idea of this being sort of like looking at decoherence in action, and it makes for a pretty interesting illustration.
February 6th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I have, in reply to the subject in this
WebSite, made a posting in news:ger.ct
which I quote here. Please allow me not
to translate.
Here it is:
———————————————–
18 Pluviôse an 216 de la Révolution
23:41:23 +0100
Christian Garbs wrote:
> …
> Im folgenden Beitrag kommt nur QSM, aber keine QR vor, dafür aber
> Vielwelteninterpretation mal bewegtbildlich vorgestellt 🙂
>
> http://msm.grumpybumpers.com/?p=20
THX fuer den Link.
Die Idee, die ManyWorldInterpretation der QM an einem VideoSpiel
zu demonstrieren, hat was. Sie hat ja besonders deshalb etwas,
weil MWI nicht nur vermoege der QuantenMechanik emergent
ist. Schon die Idee eines raeumlich unbegrenzten Universums
fuehrt zu einem MWI-Szenario, und ganz besonders die MUH
(Mathematical Universe Hypothesis). In diesen beiden Paradigmen
kann man auf die QM verzichten – und es gibt doch
unterschiedliche und einander wechselwirkungsfreie Realitaeten.
Und das hat natuerlich auf Folgen fuer die QuantenRente. Der
QuantenSelbstMord – also das Erzeugen weiterer Realitaeten ohne
einen selbst – bedarf der QM nicht! Nicht nur das – diese
unterschiedlichen MWI-Paradigmen koennen sogar gleichzeitig wahr
sein.
Wie sich das etwa auf die Emergenz von Wahrscheinlichkeiten
auswirkt, kann ein bescheidener Verstand wie der meine nicht
ergruenden.
In dem von Dir zitierten Link ist uebrigens auch der Irrtum
enthalten, dass der Zufall in der QuantenPhysik fundamental
unterschiedlich zu dem Zufall in der makroskopischen Welt ist –
letzterer sei ein Zufall des NichtWissens.
Aber wir wissen es besser: Da das SuperPositionsPrinzip auch
fuer makroskopische Systeme gilt – auch fuer das ganze Universum
– heisst NichtWissen um ein Faktum nichts weiter als KoExistenz
dieses Faktums in allen moeglichen Auspraegungen relativ zu dem
nichtwissenden Bewusstsein. So einfach ist es. Und so
kompliziert wird es, wie schon in einem anderen Thread
kommentiert, fuer einen QuantenScharfRichter, der die Verwendung
einer Messung eines typischen mikroskopischen QuantenZustandes
in SuperPosition begruenden soll, das aber nicht kann:
Klassisches Russisches Roulette geht im Prinzip genauso gut.
Wie kriegen wir wohl diesen Unsinn der zwei ZufallsTypen auf
Millionen von SchulZimmern und Tausenden von HoerSaelen raus?
Wie machen wir all diesen Lehrern und HochSchulLehrern klar,
dass in der ZusammenFuehrung dieser unterschiedlichen
ZufallsBegriffe die Physik das macht, was sie immer macht, wenn
sie irgendwo erfolgreich ist, naemlich zu zeigen, dass
verschiedene Dinge nur verschiedene Aspekte ein und derselben
Sache sind?
Ein NobelPreisTraeger muesste diese Gedanken von sich geben –
auf einen armen ScharfRichter hoert ja niemand. Und einen
NobelPreis kriegt der ja auch nicht.
Herwig
—
**************************************************
* Herwig Huener http://www.quantenrente.de *
* Assistierender QuantenScharfRichter *
**************************************************
February 6th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
also front paged http://kotaku.com/
February 6th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
You, sir, are a genius.
February 6th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
[…] Super Mario World Explores Quantum Physics [Kotaku, via Mechanically Separated Meat] […]
February 6th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
This is a very enlighten article. I love it how you can simply explain quantum physic using video game.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
[…] Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics (tags: design science physics quantum super mario world nintendo) […]
February 7th, 2008 at 2:18 am
People interested in how you might use games to interpret quantum mechanics should see this post by mathematician Terence Tao entitled “Quantum mechanics and Tomb Raider”:
http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2007/02/26/quantum-mechanics-and-tomb-raider/
February 7th, 2008 at 2:52 am
[…] seeing above is 134 playthroughs of Kaizo layered upon each other using a custom SNES emulator. Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics […]
February 7th, 2008 at 6:33 am
You got posted on g4tv.com’s theFEED!
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/682656/Quantum_Mario.html
February 7th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Being used to seeing some cool stuff be Windows-only, I’m chuffed to see this hack is OSX-friendly!
Thanks for explaining the system – I might try this later tonight!
February 7th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Reminds me of the movie Next with Nicholas Cage based on the Book, the Golden Man. Very cool.
February 7th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Reminds me of the Movie Next with Nicholas Cage, which I believe was based on a book called The Golden Man. Very Cool.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:08 am
[…] Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics [Mechanically Separated Meat – thanks, Ricky!] […]
February 7th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Over 6GB???
You weren’t joking about it being bloated!
Is there any way to get it smaller without having bought Quicktime Pro?
February 7th, 2008 at 11:52 am
As someone with a wholly unnatural obsession with the Many-Worlds Interpretation, I have to say I find this exercise incredibly fascinating.
February 7th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
[…] now what was that? Read More Share Article: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover […]
February 7th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Really cool. It’s sort of eerie seeing all the Marios die off one by one, until there’s just the one left crossing the goal. I’d love to see some more videos like this- would the emulator hack also work on different games (I don’t see why not)?
February 7th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
[…] Super Mario World e a Mecânica Quântica […]
February 7th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Andrew,
Perhaps if you worked as hard on the campaign as you did on this frivolous video project I might have won in California.
:|:
– B.O.
February 7th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I wish there was a windows export, this looks awesome.
February 7th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
A fan of your animation posted a link to it at my Imagining the Tenth Dimension forum, I have to say I am blown away. What a fantastic visualization, and my compliments on your explanation of the quantum mechanics ramifications of what we’re seeing.
Rob Bryanton
February 7th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
hahaha there were lotsa marios!
February 8th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Well, this only makes sense under the guise that you actually don’t know the quantum numbers related to the particle (Mario). Because you cannot have a particle in the same place at the same time (obviously)…however upon inspection it may look as if the particle is in the same place as another particle, but it may turn out that the particles have different quantum numbers (n,l,m,ms). Just Google “quantum numbers” . Sweet vid.
February 8th, 2008 at 5:23 am
So I have my files: myname.smv and myname.smv.1-312 (took me a while). When trying to export them to quicktime, the video plays through the run once (the perfect run) with the background on, then the same run again with the background off, then stops recording. Any idea how to get it to recognize/play through the other 300+ runs?
February 8th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
[…] Mechanically Separated Meat » Blog Archive » Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation … (tags: video games mario physics nintendo design programming) […]
February 8th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Best blog post eva!!
February 8th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Reverend: A friend of mine had that exact same problem last night, kind of worrying. I am going to look into this tonight but just to ask: Did you record the 312 videos using Windows or OS X?
February 8th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
@mcc
The recordings were done on Windows, then transfered to the mac. The same thing happens when I delete all but myname.smv and myname.1-10.
February 8th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
[…] Mario World (gefunden von Stella bei Kotaku), kann sehr nett als eine Reise in das Multiversum gedeutet werden. Laut der Quantenphysik bestehen alle möglichen Resultate eines Versuchs alle gleichzeitig […]
February 8th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Terry Tao beat you to it: http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2007/02/26/quantum-mechanics-and-tomb-raider/
February 9th, 2008 at 5:15 am
inspired, now i cant lose, i just adjust my probablity of being in the right m.w.i. and off i go. more please
February 9th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Hehe, I remember writing an article about this, but with Sonic the Hedgehog as the subject: http://www.realvg.org/display.php?type=articles&id=142
Still, great to see an actual video of the concept :D.
February 9th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
It works beautifully. Here’s a Luigi’s Adventure level: http://www.vimeo.com/676234
February 9th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Reverend, sorry about that! There was a bug that was preventing the movies recorded in the Windows version from being processed in the Mac version. The bug has been fixed in the Mac version currently linked in the post. (The Windows version is unchanged and you do NOT need to rerecord your 312-playthrough movie for this to work.) Incidentally if you get that movie posted somewhere let me know, I’d be curious to see it!
February 9th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
[…] Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics. The video will amuse but you’ll get a little exasperated reading the explanation. Get to the point, you’ll scream. Give me the cool physics stuff! And then, right at the end, there it is. And it’s very cool. via russ.l.icio.us […]
February 9th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Cheers, new version works better, but I’m still having some trouble 🙂
When recording, now, it goes through the first (normal run), then several others, but then appears to reset the rom and continually records the game’s attract mode (with the background off). Maybe it’s my recording. I’ll try to record a new set soonish.
February 9th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Reverend, oddly enough, I was just encountering the EXACT same problem! In my case I have a recording (from the Windows version) of about 87 overlays that a friend sent me a few days ago and which I’ve been trying to render on my mac. The problem occurs because for some reason file .11 in the sequence (it would likely have been a different file in your case) turned out corrupt in a really weird way, which caused the thing with endlessly looping the intro screen to happen when that file was reached. I managed to get around the problem by deleting file .11 (well, actually I replaced .11 with a copy of .10, just deleting it wouldn’t have worked). I’m not sure why this is happening but I’ll look into it when I’m done with my current rendering attempt.
I do NOT think that recording a new set will fix the problem– first off the windows code hasn’t changed any, second off the problem you experienced occurred also with the attempt we recorded so this seems to imply it happens every time at least once.
Sorry about all this, thanks for the beta testing I guess? 🙂
February 9th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Hah! The idea of this being an example of quantum superposition was the first thing in my mind, too. The video rather elegantly displays the (almost) full range of possibilities all at once. Obviously, with such indiscreet controls, you’d need a close to infinite number of play-throughs to properly demonstrate it, which is, in this case, a practical impossibility.
The idea of describing conventional RTS game mechanics as a potential field/cloud was also a strong inspiration for Goo, where, instead of controlling individual units, you control the potential field of an army of units.
What’s interesting about treating games (any game) in this way, is that it very quickly exposes how deep or shallow a game really is. You start to see whether the implication of depth actually matches up to the number of truly interesting and useful choices.
February 9th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
@mcc
I replaced #11 in my recordings, and it no longer resets to the attract mode, but it seems to be recording the same one or two attempts over and over.
Requests for future versions:
1) some indicator of which recording number is being played (possibly in the window title or something)
2) Would it be possible, when recording to quicktime, to begin playback from the most recent save state for each failed attempt (instead of having each recording start at the beginning)?
February 9th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
In an alternative universe, I was going to leave a response, but all of the atoms in my keyboard suddenly jumped 18″ to the left. In THIS universe, I think this is a cool video and very thought-provoking discussion.
February 9th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Reverend: So, you should be able to get information like which .number file is currently playing if you look at the debug messages in the “Console” program (under /Applications/Utilities) while Snes9X is running. This is very inconvenient, though.
If it looks like it’s just playing the same couple of attempts over and over, this *may* just be because successive playbacks begin the same way. However as far as the “attract mode” problems go I don’t think replacing #11 would be sufficient (even if #11 WAS the busted one in your recording) . For example in my attempted render .82 turned out to be busted as well. I think that I am just going to have to create and upload another update of the custom Snes9X tonight that is able to handle these busted/”attract mode” playbacks. Let me get back to you on this…
A feature to allow restarting failed movie exports would of course be great, but that would be very difficult to implement because of the way the sound export works.
Putting status in the title bar is a really good idea though, I’ll look into that in the next update.
February 9th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
@mcc:
I think you’re right about the successive playbacks causing the looping, not some issue with the actual recording ::whoops::
I just did a brand new (shorter) recording and #11 is busted again (causing the attract mode recording). Thought that was kind of interesting.
February 9th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Oh, but then #78 was broken too. I was hoping for #82, oh well.
February 10th, 2008 at 5:12 am
Reverend, you may want to take a look at the new update. The new version is smart enough to bypass files which are corrupted in the way the .11s were (that’s so weird it always happens at #11…); there’s a guard in place so that if a corrupt file gets past the defenses it at least won’t loop forever; and there’s status information in the titlebar now…
February 10th, 2008 at 9:55 am
[…] Tällä sivulla on selitetty kvanttifysiikan monen maailman tulkintaa. Siitä tekee katsomisen arvoista hieno Mario World-video, jolla tätä havainnollistaa. Siinä on otettu jonkun japanilaisen nörän tekemä älyttömän vaikea Mario-taso ja otettu videolle paitsi se onnistunut läpipelaus, myös ne toistasataa epäonnistumista. Kannattaa katsoa ainakin se. […]
February 10th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Holy cow! I would’nt be able to do that…
February 10th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
@mcc:
Thanks, looking forward to trying the new version (it’s currently 404) 🙂
February 10th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
[…] A crazy overlay of playthroughs of a nasty Super Mario World level hack. It is Many Super Mario Worlds. Read the explanation here. […]
February 10th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
[…] thought it was pretty cool really. Original source for this video is here. You can also download the modified SNES emulator the guy […]
February 10th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Reverend: Argh! Sorry about that. Fixed the link, try again? Incidentally I was able to get through my friend’s 85-pass Windows recording last night so I’m pretty confident this version should work.
February 10th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Hmm, just to warn you, there *may* be something messed up with the sound production in that last update, at least when using Windows-originating recordings… I’ll do some more testing on that.
February 10th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Thanks, trying it now. Any suggestions for speeding up the record to quicktime process? It’s currently “half way” through a set of 200 recordings, and has taken about 90 minutes (and the second half of the recordings should take even longer, since all the deaths are closer to the end).
February 10th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
[…] Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics se intenta en la práctica (con todo y video) con una versión modificada de Super Mario World. Si […]
February 10th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
214 recordings took around 5 hours to complete (there were actually about 250), but at some point the input became ‘out of sync’ with the actual game, so the recording has me dying, exiting the level, trying a different one, and walking off an edge instead of what really happened. Maybe some kind of slight difference between emulation on the PC vs on the mac?
February 11th, 2008 at 7:56 am
[…] makes this more interesting is the oddly fascinating essay on quantum physics thats goes along with it. 02/11/2008 | Games, Web Tags: nerdy, Nintendo, Super Mario Bros., web […]
February 11th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I also was reminded of Greg Egan’s “Quarantine” by your post. It’s really amazing and involves the idea of manipulating the eigenstates.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
This is absolutely amazing. I’m hoping for a Windows version that can export videos soon, unless there’s a way to run the Mac version somehow.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:48 am
[…] you’re interested in Quantum Physics you might want to check out the backstory for this video. If not you can enjoy it simply for what it is, 134 simultaneous play-throughs of the Super Mario […]
February 12th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
So, is there a way to record the multi-plays on windows, or is that out for now?
February 12th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
I made three, full-level recordings so far (in windows), and they all have the same problem when actually recording to quicktime on the mac: The mac version has me dying at some point that I didn’t in game. The background-on perfect-run-through has recorded properly every time so far, but part way through the level I’ll start dying (where I didn’t when actually playing), then running around the overview map randomly, occasionally choosing a new level to start then falling off an edge or dying to something else.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:22 am
Reverend: I’m really sorry, that is very strange! Since the version of SNES9X is the exact same in the windows and mac version, I don’t see any reason how the recordings could become desynced like that. Unfortunately, unless somehow I’m corrupting the input data on the Windows side when I write it to the file (seems unlikely?!– here’s one question, does it fail the EXACT same way EVERY TIME?), it really sounds like this is an emulator issue. If it’s an emulator issue there’s unfortunately not anything I can do. Meanwhile even assuming that there is something I can do, unless I had the videos myself it would be very difficult for me to even attempt to debug this.
If you don’t mind me asking, what game were you using? Is it Kaizo? I am finding a post on the SNES9X forums indicating that SNEX9X actually has desyncing troubles with some games, the example given was Mega Man X2. However since I’ve done multiple videos so far with Kaizo and not had this problem (I did have, exactly one time, a problem with the *sound* getting desynced, but that isn’t the same thing as your problem and it went away when I rerendered) it’s probably not what’s happening with Kaizo or any other SMW variant. (One thing I did notice, although I REALLY doubt it will make a difference, is that there’s an option in the SNES9X prefs labeled “Enable Internal Speed Ups (that Break a Few ROMs”. I wonder what this does?)
I am sorry I cannot be more helpful 🙁
February 13th, 2008 at 4:32 am
More random responses: Michael, inertiaticsp, although I agree a Windows version would be really nice, and I *think* it would be fairly easy to do, I do not think it is likely unless I could find someone with Windows development experience to help with the port. I don’t myself have the ready ability to test or compile Windows executables. I may try to find someone I know to rope into helping with a port at some point but I cannot promise anything.
At the moment my immediate development goal for the multiplay SNES9X hack, when I get time to work on it, is getting a universal binary version of the mac version up. The main holdup there is some endianness issues. Past there I’m not sure, but one thing that would be nice is if I could get the video output all on a single layer instead of this hundreds-of-layers nonsense. This would eliminate the problems Bezman was describing above, since the compression could be done internally to Snes9X, and would make the rendering process a little (maybe a lot?) faster. (Such a change also might help ease the porting to windows process, if the windows port ultimately winds up using something other than Quicktime.)
February 13th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
@mcc
Tried recording with Enable Internal Speed Ups enabled and disabled, but it had no effect on playback sync.
>does it fail the EXACT same way EVERY TIME?
For a given recording, yes.
>unless I had the videos myself it would be very difficult for me to even attempt to debug this.
I can certainly provide them. One of the videos goes out of sync by the 6th recording, if that helps.
Is there any way to play back these multi-recordings on the windows version (even without recording to video)? Then I could tell whether the recording went bad somehow, or if there really is some emulation issue between the mac and win versions.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Perhaps somehow we can get a windows export? If anybody would be willing to do this, that’d be great. Of course, I’d do it myself if I knew how to re-code the emulator…I use C# and C++. Maybe I should look into how to edit the emulator like you did.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:37 am
SNES is coded in C++[so sayth the website] so yeah. Please look into it.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:56 am
What version of OS X does this run on?
February 14th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
why add quantom physics if there are little real physics in the game already (like the cape or his jump hight
February 14th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Hey, mcc, can you give me the source code for the Multi-Record thing? I’d like to try make a windows exporter. Send it to support@mighty-thunder.co.uk.
February 16th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Amazingly done…that and I think I remembered part of the college physics courses I had forgotten.
You’ve got a new reader.
I agree with you the game is more a beatable yet sadistic puzzle game than pure hate, however…
I wouldn’t go so far to say “It’s actually not that bad!”
Some of the later levels are really out to get you.
The fact KAS (the player) does not use save states makes it that much more impressive.
February 17th, 2008 at 5:07 am
Dude, that was kinda sad now that I know more about it! LOL, each time we get the cool effect of dozens of Marios, it’s because they all die but one!
Very cool video and physics discussion! 🙂
February 17th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I’m sure the folks at snes9x would LOVE to incorporate this into their program as a regular option on the OSX version. Perhaps someone should mention this?
Not only is this idea superbly unique, it’s downright hilarious at times.
As an avid mario hack watcher, I’m already impressed with the two videos released in this style.
February 18th, 2008 at 4:14 am
I can’t figure out how to implement any AVI export. Could you give me the code for the MOV export, and then maybe I can work it into windows. In fact, that should work perfectly.
February 18th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Michael:
This should run on any version of OS X 10.2 or higher, although as noted above there is currently a problem on Intel macs which I have not gotten around to fixing yet.
PING:
I have an account on their forums, and I definitely was going to go talk to them about it at some point. I hadn’t gotten around to though, since I was going to see whether I needed help with the universal binary thing first.
Drmelon:
Sorry for the late response! The MOV export code can be found at the link in the above post, under “for the full Mac OS X source, click here”. The specific files effected are Sources/Mac/mac-quicktime.cpp, Sources/snes9x/snes9x/movie.cpp (not exactly the same as the movie.cpp linked above), and I think some minor changes in Sources/snes9x/snes9x/snapshot.cpp. If you want to see exactly what is different do some sort of diff against the base version of 1.43 custom for OS X; keep an eye out for any code that triggers when “mwi.mwing” is true, as this is the flag that says “there is a multi-playback quicktime export going on”.
I believe that much of this can be ported very closely to windows– some Macintosh constructs, like GWorlds and handles, are used, but I believe that the Quicktime for Windows API actually contains these constructs. You might only need to strip out the mac save dialog code and you’d be good to go 🙂
February 18th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
One more small thing, I ran across this and it seemed… appropriate:
Where does Mario go when he dies?
February 19th, 2008 at 4:44 am
[…] Posted on February 19, 2008 by Casey. Categories: Computing, Current Affairs, Entertainment, Gaming.Super Mario vs. Many Worlds (thanks, […]
February 19th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Just to be clear, there is currently no way to export and create a video fully on Windows?
February 19th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Not currently, and I’ve so far been unable to use the recording exports that were made on Windows when using a mac to output video.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
[…] what is going on. Appearently someone superimposed many runs of a hacked version of Mario. Here is the link via BoingBoing. The name for this and related series of videos in Japanese is […]
February 21st, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Holy crap… this has got to be the single most brilliant example of quantum physics. I kept expecting to see the phrase “Dude, this is how it works!” LOL
You made our website’s news section… http://www.rpgx.org
February 24th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Every Possible Path A Mario Can Take At Once…
Crazy emulator hack that allowed him to record every single attempt he made to play the level through via the save state feature, creating a menagerie of Mario mutilation….
February 25th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I have a Kaizo .smv video I made on the Windows SNES9x, and I have the 196 files (….smv.1, …smv.2, etc.) that comprise the ‘mistakes’. The problem is, I cannot get the multi-record snes9x (or the normal one, for that matter) to a) play the mistake runs, or b) overlay all the runs into a single .smv file. Is there something I’m doing wrong?
February 28th, 2008 at 2:17 am
I’m afraid windows doesn’t have the function. I’d be happy if it even allowed playback, or compiling, I don’t care much for movies. I’m exploring getting the MOV export on windows though.
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Hey! The Mac OSX version isn’t working! (I can’t download it)
March 4th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
[…] Here is a link to the full article explaining the video. There is something about using Super Mario to explain quantum physics that really speaks to me. I was a huge Nintendo kid growing up and I also LOVED science. In another life, I would study computer science and do work with visuals and technology like this guy. […]
March 7th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
[…] Awesome Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics […]
March 16th, 2008 at 3:23 am
[…] 有兴趣的去这里看原文。 link Quantum fucking brambles! from Sartak on Vimeo. […]
March 19th, 2008 at 2:32 am
[…] The detailed semi explanation is here. […]
March 22nd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Why not a Windows Version of this fantastic emulator with the Mov Exporter? T_T
No one can do that?
April 1st, 2008 at 3:50 pm
“April Fools” us with a Windows version?
April 21st, 2008 at 10:54 am
Welcome back! I posted a comment just as your domain expired on the 20th! Yikes! First time I ever witnessed a domain expire, I was afraid you would be gone for good!
I wrote that I would not be waiting any longer for a windows port and that I would go into production on this.
I hope this comment shows, seems your comments have been tampered with and that you’re not the only one on the web affected.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:21 pm
So, any chance of the windows version getting the quicktime export? Or the mac version exporting recordings made on windows?
May 21st, 2008 at 9:41 am
Bleah, the emulator will not run on an emulated macintosh.
I really want to do this.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Hey man, the spam’s ramping up here.
Any chance you can get a windows port working?
I still want to do this.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Any chance you will make the Windows version able to export to quicktime? I don’t have a mac to export to. Is there any other way to compile the multiple runs into one video using Windows?
June 6th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Come on, I want to do this in windows.
Could you also do this for 1.51? There are a few filters (Hq*x) in that version that actually make the games look better.
See the link for more info.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Is it possible for you to send me the windows project? If you can, send it to my email mystmaze@yahoo.com.
I can try to figure out how make that quicktime file too.
June 20th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Echoing Andrew:
Any chance you will make the Windows version able to export to quicktime? I don’t have a mac to export to. Is there any other way to compile the multiple runs into one video using Windows?
June 29th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Hi, sorry about my lack of responses and also the spam that was building up in here for awhile… let me try to update you on where I am with this.
There are basically two problems with my SNES9X patch which are standing in the way of a Windows version:
1. Because I based my changes on 1.43 rather than 1.51, there is no endianness checking. (This has to do with the difference between PPC and Intel chips.)
2. The source code file within snes9x to which my quicktime support is added is mac-specific; video export in the mac and windows versions is done via OS functions, and I can’t tell how (or whether) snes9x video export works in linux at all.
When I last worked on this I was trying to fix the endianness problem first, because I thought that would be easy to fix. However that turned out to be harder than I thought, and I then got very involved with a separate project (which I’m still working on but will hopefully be done soon…) which kind of derailed my work on this project.
So: I now find that there is a full mac version of 1.51 containing the features I need to make my multi-record patch work. This would make it very easy for me to add Intel mac support, all I would need to do is port my changes to 1.51. So that’s neat. However this would not help with (2), and as far as I can tell what people are wanting here is Windows support, not Intel mac support.
Windows support is tricky. If something is in a crossplatform component of SNES9X– like the smv-record feature– I can develop and test it myself and I may even be able to compile it for windows (I’ve recently got mingw working). But if something is in the win32 sections of SNES9X, which the AVI export code appears to be, there is simply not a lot I can do without having a windows machine available myself. So: windows support probably would not be a big deal, this entire project didn’t originally take more than like a month in the first place, but it does not appear possible for me personally to be the one to do this unless there is some way to export video from SNES9X in a cross-platform way (i.e. if there is Linux video export code or the mac-quicktime code can be cross-compiled for Windows somehow).
In the meanwhile, I have posted a request on the SNES9X development forums asking for help. I’ll let you know if anything develops from that.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:19 pm
XD itd be totally awesome if this worked for psp!
Good Work Though!
July 24th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
rock on. make more.
July 25th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
I really liked this, and I want it to keep going; now that I have a little more C++ experience, I’m going to have a bash at making it do AVI. I need to find some way to slap them all together; could you give me the basic process in which you did that? Once I can slap them together, AVI shouldn’t be a problem.
August 7th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Very well done, and brilliantly explained and executed. You are a very intelligent individual!
I have something that sort of relates to your subject of potential occurences: have you seen the movie Next (lead role is Nicholas Cage)? If you haven’t, it’s about this guy who can see a short distance into his future (something like 30 seconds, not enough to stop a war or anything), and he can go through all possible scenarios and see which he wishes to perform.
The future that he sees is only his, and is as if he is peering out of his own eyes. So, he can effectively dodge bullets (though he may feel repeated pain, that I am unsure of; it wasn’t explained in the movie), and he is basically a professional escape artist. Don’t worry, i haven’t given away the movie or anything, but I really suggest renting it (or buying it, I believe it’s worthy of a buy…), because it deeply corelates with everything you described here, and, it’s a very good movie; one of my favorites.
Again, I congratulate you on your effective performance and I thoroughly enjoyed watching your video.
August 24th, 2008 at 4:06 am
[…] What is the difference between the two Super Mario Galaxy covers? (Aug 24, 2008) […]
September 4th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Where can i actually find the game??
September 5th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Where Do I Get This Game?? (For PC) It Looks Like Fun To Clone Mario In “Super Mario World” How Can I Do It?
September 10th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
fuck this
September 11th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I’m sure I’m understanding this incorrectly, but if I interpret every possible situation and subconsciously choose the one in which I continue to exist, wouldn’t I live forever?
September 30th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
how do i do this in windows xp? i want to make a video like u did with mario world.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Wow, that was crazy-cool. The explanation behind it was interesting as well. Although I prefer the alternate universe idea to the more accurate quantum theory, both are amazing ways to look at the world. I bet you were tearing your hair out by the end of this.
October 19th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
If you have it working for 1.51 with intel mac support it *might* be possible to do the recording in windows and do the video assembly in an (and this probably would make you cringe) emulated mac environment. XD
Yeah, piss poor processing speed with an emulator in an emulator, but 1.43 wouldn’t even start when I tried. If it goes well with 1.51, I wouldn’t mind leaving my computer on overnight for video processing.
Semi – Off Topic:
If Mario World hackers could fix the game so that sprites/actions don’t freeze on death, it could result in cleaner/smaller video when recording in this style.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
I like the game,thanks for sharing this video
November 4th, 2008 at 2:38 am
I need to get on this stuff.
And i really, REALLY, REALLY need to find a simple wordpress CAPTCHA… 🙁
November 6th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Snes9x does not work in PearPC or VMWare running Mac Tiger at all. Oh well.
@MCC, Try Akismet?
VMWare running Windows?
November 9th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
This video seems not to be working anymore. Can you resubmit? The first level is nicer than the second one. If you ever feel like doing level 3 or more, I’d love to see it!!
November 14th, 2008 at 6:01 am
IT DONT WORK DUDE T_T
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Still wish it was possible to make these under windows. I don’t have a mac available to play on, but I do have one I can set up to do the post-game quicktime stuff.
Here’s a good captcha for wordpress: http://recaptcha.net/plugins/wordpress/
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm
For the people that want to do this in windows:
there are several open source compositors to superimpose movies once you’ve got them
avisynth looks like it should do what you want http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page
This reduces the problem to
1.) How do I get a pile of movies out of snes9x
2.) How do I get avisynth to merge them?
Item two should be relatively easy to figure out with a bash script or batch file and avisynth’s documentation, it is a tool built specifically for this purpose after all.
Item one I have no clue about, can you use a batch file? remember, the movie files are all full, normal movie files once you change the file type back from .1, .2 etc.
Hope this helps – Jerry
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:56 pm
err, nevermind, the movie export feature dinkers with the hardware scrolling registers to keep things spatially synchronized, grr.
Well, original poster: the windows port doesn’t need to create one file like your mac version does, (and to be honest, I’d prefer a stack of movies instead of 1 horrendous multi-layered monstrosity, like I said, there are many good open source compositing programs) plus, I think you’d have a easier time getting the snes9x team to accept a patch with minimal changes.
On another topic, the guts of the windows version has several x86 assembler parts that the mac ppc version does not. I think that is at the root of the sync problems with recording on windows and playing back on a mac. Note that cross platform netplay has never worked (for this reason is my guess)
Also, I forgot to thank you for a cool app, thanks man. (I’m on a G4 powerbook)
– Jerry
December 30th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
This is awesome.
Mcc, are you able to at least create video playback on the Windows port? You don’t need to export it, just to playback it…
January 1st, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Hello again:
So, first off, thanks for the captcha recommendations. I’m actually already using Akismet but a lot of spam seems to get through. I will look into this.
Re: Sanky and Jerry Segers: So, let me be a little more explicit about how the multi-record code works.
There are basically two parts to my custom SNES9X. The first part is very simple, and it’s the only part that exists in the windows version. The only difference here is a small change to movies.cpp, where SMV videos are recorded. (Note that this refers not to a “video” you can watch in a movie player, but to a .smv “video” that is really just a recording of keypresses. When you play back the “video”, snes9x just runs the game and takes controller input from the file instead of the user.) Normally, when you are recording a video in SNES9x and you use the “restore state” feature, it actually goes back in the SMV file it is recording and erases everything it has written since the point where the save state was saved. All I did here was go in and change things so that before it erases that part of the file, it makes a copy of the whole file and saves it with a name like yourmoviename.smv.4, yourmoviename.smv.5 etc. Each of these numbered .smv files is, I’m pretty sure, actually a totally valid SMV movie– you could rename it to yourmovienamefour.smv and it would play back. Again, this is all the windows version can do– create this pile of numbered SMV files.
Once you’ve got this pile of numbered smv files, it is necessary to synthesize them into something you can actually watch. This is what, at present, you need the macintosh version to do. There is no hope of having SNES9X emulate a hundred and twenty two SMVs at the same time, so here we have to use a separate SNES9X feature which exports to a .mov or a .avi. This feature is usually wired so that you can load in an SMV and be playing an SMV at the same time you are exporting an AVI. (This is where the problems set in, because this “movie” export code in SNES9X is highly platform specific. The windows code exports a .avi and shares no code with the macintosh code which exports a .mov, and the code that I used tragically is not just the macintosh version, it is a now-obsolete old macintosh version which only supports PPC macintoshes and shares little code with the new movie code.) In my modification of this “movie” export code, which again was made only to the obsolete PPC-macintosh version of SNES9X, there are several changes. This movie export smart enough to locate the smv that you’re creating the movie out of, and check to see if there is a pile of “numbered” smv files that goes along with it. If there is, it cycles through each numbered smv one by one. It runs each SMV, and as it does so it:
– Renders the video to its own standalone video track, with all background layers removed and replaced with the “transparent” alpha color
– Renders the sound to a pile of buffers, which are later mixed down into a single audio track
– As Jerry Segers noticed, it monitors the X and Y scroll coordinates for the foreground layer; for the first track it saves to a buffer that stores these coordinates at each moment, on every track after that it uses these coordinates to offset the video in such a way as to to keep all the tracks aligned.
None of these things is actually difficult. The only part that’s hard at all is figuring out where in the SNES9X source to plug in the hooks to do these three things; Jerry Seger’s suggestion of exporting a pile of movies rather than one big multi-track movie and then using something like avisynth to merge them is an exciting idea and would simplify things even further. But the problem is that of course since the standalone-movie-export code in SNES9X is not cross platform, and I don’t have a Windows development environment, I can’t do any of these things myself. What I’m holding onto hope of is that at some point I’ll be able to rig an avi export feature that uses crossplatform libraries can be shared by both mac and windows versions of SNES9X, in which case I can stick my code in there, but I’m unsure how much work it would be to construct such a thing from scratch. Alternately if someone who does do windows development is interested in just plain adding the three features described above to a Windows build of SNES9X I would be happy to help however necessary.
Not sure how helpful any of this is to know 🙁
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:55 am
Woah … this is so awesome !
January 3rd, 2009 at 5:29 am
Thanks, I got it. I’m just asking if it’s possible to render the movie in the emulator. There’s no need to make an avi for it: one can just record it using some screen recorder.
Still, thanks for the response!
January 5th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
So I’m on Windows XP, and I have the recording part done with 12 “mistakes” i just can collaspe them all into one file or replay any of the mistakes. Please help me.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
EDIT:——————————————————————————————can’t————————
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:20 am
If possible, could i have a Windows version of the project that compiles without errors? While I probably can’t make a cross-platform version of this project, I might be able to make a Windows version that does the job.
February 11th, 2009 at 9:48 am
I found a way to make avis in code, but I’m stuck since all versions of the emulator i find have code issues that would take weeks to resolve. So again, if i could get a copy of the windows project i could probably get the generation of the the movie file working. If the windows project version was lost there is not much i can do, i only have a windows computer. My email is the same as name at yahoo
March 14th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I am putting myself through hell and back repeatedly to get the Mac OSX one to work on my computer (I have Windows), but it’ll be worth it if I get this damned movie to work, so thank you for making this program at all. 😀
March 16th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Wow, this is really interesting! ^_^
May 18th, 2009 at 7:23 am
[…] Fascinating Video demonstrating the multi verse theory! Great article about it here: Mechanically Separated Meat Blog Archive Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Qua… __________________ Resource Based Living Sustainability in a World of Financial Corruption Power […]
June 4th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
What version of the Mac OS did you use?
I’m still willing to give this one last shot before I give up.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:00 am
[…] anonymous blogger/gamer wanted to take this to the next level — he wanted to make a video of one level of Kaizo Mario […]
August 18th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Any news on getting the recording to work with windows yet? Or is there any other methods we can do?
I’ve tried it on my mac but it takes ages to process all of the videos.
August 30th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Hi Jaysc,
I’ve come to the conclusion that the way the original many-worlds video maker worked is just hopeless, it can’t be made stable or made to work with any current OS, and I need to start over and do it a different way. More on this later.
August 31st, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Good to know your still here! Thanks for replying. I thought everyone would of forgot about this.
thanks.
September 5th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
how do you do the mario duble?plz rply
September 5th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
in code
October 26th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
That’s insane haha, excellent explanation of quantum physics.
November 28th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
This is amazing, to say the least.
However, I’m having trouble executing this myself… I’m using the Mac OS X version of your modified SNES 9x, and I’m following your directions… But when I Freeze or Defrost a savestate while recording, the recording stops. I just spent an hour playing a stage in Castlevania: Dracula X over and over, only to find that my recording stops right after the first death.
Am I doing it right?
February 2nd, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Wow, that is really great, but I can not understand a thing you said at the same time.
February 10th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I just lost like a whole day of my life when my 20k+ frame TAS on Snes9X v1.51 went out of sync after like 3k+ frames. I had completed over 7 levels of a nearly perfectly frame-optimized Super Mario World hack and the de-sync (during a shell jump too!) has me dying at the beginning of the second level.
I have also tried using Snes9X v1.52 which also plays the TAS incorrectly and further more has music issues where the music does not load for certain ROM’s only (but sound effects do). All sound channels are enabled and settings at default. I have Windows.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:36 am
hey MCC,
your idea blew my mind, and i tried in vain to get your version of snes9x working an a mac emu
sadly its just not possible =(
i was wondering if you had made any progress on getting the export to work on windows, or if you are still working on this at all
March 4th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Great article! Love the apt comparison!
March 22nd, 2010 at 2:42 pm
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January 9th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
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August 28th, 2013 at 4:49 am
[Quote] “Science fiction authors like to look at many-worlds like, this morning you could either take the bus to work or walk, so the universe splits in two and there’s one universe where you decided to walk and one universe where you decided to take the bus.”
that’s called the 5th dimension.
[Quote] “your one surviving consciousness doesn’t have any way of telling the people in the other 1018 universes that you survived and MWI is true.”
but if it did, it would do so through the 6th dimension. (or possibly the 7th, 8th or 9th.)
February 27th, 2014 at 2:39 pm
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May 14th, 2014 at 10:03 am
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Is going to be back frequently to check up on new posts
October 16th, 2017 at 4:23 am
Been trying this out with the normal Super Mario World, but then noticed i needed an OS X version to compile, and an OS X program must be ran on a Mac OS. I tried getting a mac emulator, but i didn’t have all the required settings to run it 🙁
It seems so much trouble though. Running a Mac in a PC with a virtual console, inserting the snes9x and the various SMVs, compiling them to create a video, and returning to Windows. That might simply be the reason not much many-worlds videos are out there in Youtube, so can you please convert the OS version to be spared the trouble of getting a Mac OS (virtual console or not.) and not have to go through big steps to create small videos?
June 19th, 2018 at 1:39 pm
Hi Mr. and/or Mrs. Anonymous Person:
Answering nearly a year late here, but: The unfortunate problem is that I wrote this to run on not just macs, but *very old* macs (I think it might work on PPC macs only). I wrote it for the computer I had at the time. It turned out to be surprisingly hard to port the software to other types of computers, because emulators are not as simple to port as other kinds of software, and because video creation APIs have changed a lot. I would love to update the many-worlds software to run on modern computers, but it would mean basically writing a new program, so I do not think I will have time anytime soon…!
August 18th, 2018 at 4:16 am
Aw, that’s too bad, I would’ve loved to see many Marios jumping around in one place seemingly doing nothing to progress. Well, I hope someone else will pick up the slack and do the conversion because like what many/some other people are here: unable to code.
Till then, I guess those files are going to stay in the folder collecting up dust.