How Speedrunners Beat the Brawl Ocarina of Time Demo

oh [Applause] this is the demo for the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time in Super Smash Brothers Brawl a crossover fighting game on the Wii featuring many beloved video game characters such as Mario link Pikachu Sonic and who the heck are you one of the coolest side modes in Brawl were the masterpieces which were free trials of many of the classic games these characters originated from likely to promote the Wii's now defunct Virtual Console service these demos however are very short and once the trial's time limit ran out you would be booted back to brawl and in the case of Ocarina of Time you only have five minutes of play time that's not nearly enough time to do more than run around for a bit right well in August of 2021 speedrunners have managed to defeat Ganon and reach the end credits within the brawl demo but how from an outside perspective this seems completely impossible but over the past couple months a lot of research brainstorming and creativity has been conducted in order to pull this all off and it certainly wasn't easy in today's video I am going to go over the whole quest to beat Ocarina of Time within brawl's 5-minute demo each significant route idea put to the test as well as explain the very complex strategies and glitches used [Music] before we begin I should probably talk about what sets the brawl demo apart from a fresh copy of Ocarina of Time first off the brawl demo contains the entire game and not just a few small Snippets the demo of course has a five minute timer that starts ticking down after the game is loaded booting you out once time's up secondly saving the game is useless as you'll be unable to reload your saved games upon playing the demo again after resetting or running out of time and finally the brawl demo contains two pre-made save files save file one named link starts off in Kokiri Forest as child link with the sword shield and 50 rupees with the path that the Deku Tree open save file 2 also named link starts off in the Temple of Time as an adult before any adult temples have been cleared there are some notable differences between the North American and Japanese brawl demos which include having different permanent rupees being collected in Kokiri Force as a child the adult files beginning with a different amount of Health different items and Mido blocking the path to Lost Woods in the North American demo but not in the Japanese demo differences aside these pre-made files are a blessing and one of the main reasons this was all even possible as it skips not only creating a new save file but the nearly three minute opening cut scene as well without these save files beating the demo would certainly be impossible but even with this Advantage what could you really do in just five minutes in January 2019 Ocarina of Time speedrunning Legend zfg was messing around in the brawl demo and using the adult save file an assortment of glitches he was able to just barely defeat the water temple and Shadow Temple bosses on separate runs of the demo while Gannon remained out of the question after this short phase no one really messed around with a brawl demo too much that is until July 12 2021 when the any percent world record holder Save State received an interesting question in the chat can we finally beat ODC and brawl uh uh depends on what adult has if adult has something good we might be able to do credits SRM and Lost Woods yeah we could probably credit sport yeah I'm sure we can probably credit score and um in the Lost Woods [Music] this peak saves States curiosity since in the two and a half year time frame since zfg was playing around in the brawl demo the most powerful glitch in the game had been discovered stale reference manipulation or SRM for short thanks to the contributions of several glitch Hunters including the likes of glitches and stuff big Mr Cheese Exodus Roman thorough fash mzx rules full-grown gaming Natalya has died blinny and save State SRM was found to have several useful applications such as editing the contents of a treasure chest wrong warping to any desired location obtaining all the items in the game by loading the debug save file obtaining glitch items not normally obtainable and even arbitrary code execution every idea you see in this video revolves around SRM so here's how it works when link carries an object such as a rock pot or a bush the game gives him a reference to where in memory the actor he's carrying is link uses that reference every frame to copy his position and rotation data to the thing he's carrying to give the illusion that he's holding that thing above his head which is key to how SRM works if the object link is carrying is deleted while not breaking the reference to the area in memory where it was then something else can load into its place and receive that rotation and position data from link potentially overwriting arbitrary attributes of the new actor to control what loads in the area of memory that the thing link was holding used to be we have to perform something called a heap manipulation when Crossing loading transition within a scene for example between each square and Lost Woods the game loads stuff from the new room and then unloads stuff from the previous room shuffling things around in memory but in a predictable way we can manipulate how memory gets shuffled up by do doing things such as dropping bombs or a fish before crossing a loading plane or by charging your sword over one by performing a predetermined set of actions while crossing loading planes we are able to perform Heap manipulation so that particular data of our choosing will load into the spot of the thing we're carrying before unloading it to unload an actor without breaking Link's reference to it he needs to call the actor enter a new room while it unloads while cold and then he needs to attempt to pick it up after it was unloaded the important thing here is that the actor must unload while it's cold this is because the game never properly clears out the data that prevents link from picking it up if it's unloaded while cold this can be accomplished by using methods such as super sliding off the grabbable actor with an inverted camera angle or by using the walking while talking glitch to lock the camera and carry the actor through a loading plane thus allowing link to hold the unloaded object while cold which gives link a stale reference when link then walks into another room things from the new room can load into memory in the same place that link has a stale reference to allowing him to write the position and rotation data to whatever is loaded into place in memory he has a still reference to thus allowing for stale reference manipulation after an evening of brainstorming ideas Save State spent two and a half hours the next day unlocking the Ocarina of Time demo in Brawl once that was all said and done save state began testing out some ideas in the Ocarina of Time practice wrong save State's initial idea was this you would boot up the Japanese brawl demo and use the adult file upon spawning into the Temple of time you would quickly head to the Lost Woods by super sliding or hessing across Hyrule Field and damage boosting off this bridge using the bombs provided in your inventory after this you would enter The Grotto next to the shortcut to Goron City to catch a fish in your bottle this fish would be used in the heat manipulation and a piece of grass would need to be unloaded and cold in order for link to set up a grotto SRM where this Grotto in the Lost Woods would be modified to warp link straight to the final fight against Ganon a few hours into the stream save state began some attempts and managed to successfully pull off the wrong warp after a few tries for the first time ever someone had reached the final boss in brawl's five minute demo there was just one problem the setup was too slow ironically catching the fish responsible for The Grotto SRM wrong warp left no time for Ganon to be defeated after ending their stream save state began looking for different setups using a python script developed by Mr Cheese in which simulations on how Ocarina of Time loads and unloads actors in memory are run in order to meet the requirements for a specific SRM a couple new ideas were tossed around there was a credits warp idea using SRM and death warps to edit the needed cutscene value for the wrong warp but numerous bottlenecks made the route too slow there is also an idea using the North American demo which involved using the restricted items glitch in order to set for Roars wind in Lost Woods and then use SRM to alter the ferror's wind warp location to the credits but this also proved to be too slow not too long after these ideas failed progress would halt for a few weeks after Mr Cheese discovered a faster route for the main any percent Speed Run using a technique known as file name light node SRM and thus everyone's Focus shifted to creating the new any percent route lightnode SRM is a particularly powerful form of SRM which can directly modify the game's Ram which allows for arbitrary code execution at this point in time lightnode SRM was used in the any percent route on the GameCube version where when performing SRM and Kokiri Forest the reference a fairy has to the light node which makes it Glow is replaced with a reference to the save file name in which both halves of the file name are treated as pointers with both halves copying the other's values to the other half's address this was used to instantly trigger the credits but this was unlikely to work in the brawl demo because there was no time at all to perform this glitch since creating a new file with a specific name and sitting through the opening cut scene wasted so much time however on August 8th Mr Cheese would upload a video detailing his idea for beating the brawl demo using a different form of light node SRM he would load up the Child Link file purchase Deku nuts from the shop and perform a heap of manip across an invisible loading plane between the Village area and the great Deku Tree afterwards the return a glitch is used to invert the camera until link enters the crawl space leading to the Rock maze after crawling back out the Deku nuts are used to perform the walking while talking glitch so that when link walks over to this rock and Strikes it with his sword the camera locks into a position where link can call and unload the rock for SRM the unloaded rock is then dropped near the loading plane at a specific angle before crossing the loading plane when the loading plane is crossed while specific buttons and a precise control stick position is held it modifies the ram without needing a unique file name this makes it so that when link dies and you quit to return to the title screen a wrong warp will occur and send you to a location based on your current entrance value by dying when entering the Deku Tree quitting out will warp link to a hidden save file that the title screen uses upon loading link spawns as an adult in the dongo's cavern with a full inventory at your disposal with this spawn point link can then head down to kakariko Village and back up Death Mountain Trail in order to set the entrance value needed for a credit's warp upon death this actually seemed like it could work as it was just barely fast enough to reach the credits before brawl would kick you out a milestone that none of the other setups had managed to reach however the inputs required for the light note SRM to work and the overall timing were very tight so tight that Mr Cheese would then post a faster setup several days later on August 14th this time using the adult file to perform lightnode SRM in the Lost Woods using bombs for the Heap nip instead of using a fish and then using the death wrong warp to reach the title screen file at Lawn Lawn Ranch for the credits Warp this setup actually looked quite promising but yet again there was one major roadblock while the setups worked in the emulator mupin 64 plus it did not work in the brawl demo as that version used an emulator that did not uncache recompiled code this ruled out any method of SRM which had been run before modifying it and it was back to the drawing board once again following this Mr Cheese returned to save State's original idea of using Grotto SRM using the adult save file to warp to Ganon on August 17th Mr Cheese would post a new Grotto SRM setup in the Lost Woods to wrong warp to the Ganon fight and was significantly faster than the previous setups save state had also developed a quick and consistent angle setup for the SRM with this breakthrough defeating Ganon actually seemed possible so when safe State booted up their stream later that day it seemed inevitable but as the stream progressed it soon became clear that there was still a very slim margin for error there just didn't seem like there was enough wiggle room for a human to feasibly defeat Ganon in time and so the route was shelved Save State and Mr Cheese then began to brainstorm some more ideas and these ideas would come to fruition the next day the new plan involved heading the Lost Woods as an adult grabbing a fish from The Grotto outside Goron City and then heading into Goron City this fish would then be used to perform a draw function SRM after a heap minute is done between this loading plane when a fish actor is spawned there's an instruction that writes a float value to an offset in memory that can be derived from where in memory the fish overlay was allocated this is contained in what is known as a fish overlay this fish overlay is key to the draw function SRM as it points the draw function of an actor in Lost Woods to the instruction in the fish overlay that does the float right the float value from the context when the draw function is called has the actor's rotation value allowing us to write the rotation data of the actor to memory based on where the fish overlay was allocated this will manipulate the current cutscene value later on which when combined with the proper entrance value leads to a raw long warped to the credits upon voiding out unfortunately there were no entrances in Lost Woods that had the proper entrance value that would work with Save State setup however this could be mitigated by using a grotto SRM setup which warps link to an unused lost wood entrance from there all you would need to do is the draw pointer SRM on the bush to point to the stale fish code and write the unloaded Bush's rotation angle to the current cut scene value this activates the last played cut scene which so happens to be the title screen cut scene which was the cut scene from the very start of the demo causing link to teleport out of bounds to the coordinates of his initial position on the title screen cut scene upon voiding out the game reloads last entrance combined with the new cutscene value set the end credits this setup was looking very promising but like all the other previous ideas there was yet another problem in the room in Lost Woods after the bridge damage boost contained hostile skull kids who shoot darts at link these are not necessarily hard projectiles to avoid getting hit by but what was the issue was the dart spawning which would mess up the Heap nip but as it turns out link could perform a Hess to navigate through the room faster than when the darts could spawn with nothing standing in their way on August 21st save state began this run [Music] foreign [Music] that's it that's absolutely it we just beat the brawl demo for OT and with that save state became the first person to beat Ocarina of Time within Super Smash Brothers Brawl in the 13 years that brawl had been out for the masterpieces were nothing more than time demos where you couldn't even come close to beating the games themselves but Save State armed with impressive knowledge of OT world record speedrunning experience an astonishing creativity had finally bested the timer the Run has gained a significant amount of attention online blowing the minds of hundreds of thousands of people who watched the run and this will go down as one of the coolest accomplishments in Ocarina of Time history except there was just one more problem at the start of the video I did say that speedrunners had reached the end credits and defeated Ganon in the demo did I lie well not really you see within the five minute time limit it's impossible to land the final blow on Ganon and reach the credits in the same run now I've explained how safe State reached the credits in the demo and now I will explain how safe State managed to beat Ganon remember that previous idea to defeat gen and I went over earlier and mentioned that it was too slow well the Strat to use The Grotto SRM in Lost Woods to reach Ganon still appeared to be viable it just needed a little modification sure enough Mr Cheese's new SRM setup from Goron City combined with a faster position and angle setup for the unloaded Bush developed by Save State seemed to be just what the route needed this new route would allow for Ganon to be reached faster than ever before although the timing was still very tight savestate has estimated that they had about 10 seconds of leeway before any mistake would jeopardize the Run on August 23rd Save State put their idea to the test once more and here's what happened [Music] [Laughter] [Music] I don't know I don't know I do not know [Music] [Music] I I missed the split but we got there oh my God oh is that like a 457 oh my God that lag there was so much lag there I was like is is it actually three seconds so look at my hands this is crazy after several failed ideas that were just too slow the brawl demo version of Ganon had been conquered so what's next will other people attempt this challenge would this even be allowed on the leaderboards well recently top Japanese speedrunners sunderer and CMA have recently been attempting brawl demo speedruns and managed to become the second and third people respectively to reach the credits within the brawl demo as for the speedrun being allowed on the leaderboards these runs would not be valid under any main categories as they use pre-bade save files and not brand new ones there is a categories extension page on speedrun.com though and a brawl percent meme category would likely be made there with the subcategories any percent and defeat Ganon regardless I hope you enjoyed the story and found it fascinating Ocarina of Time has some of the richest history and the craziest stories out of any Speed game and this has the case for being the most extraordinary one yet [Music] special thanks to Mr Cheese and save state for helping me with research and fact checking this video would not be possible without them so please go check out their work on their socials thank you so much for watching and remember to shoot for the Moon foreign [Music]

Channel: LunaticJ

Views: 3,335,888

Keywords: zelda, ocarina of time, oot, smash, smash bros, ssbm, ssbb, melee, brawl, smash ultimate, smash brawl, speedrun, speedrunner, speedrunning, zfg, super smash bros, super smash bros brawl, wii, lunaticj, lunatic j

Id: jusgAEW4soo

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021