After playing and destroying many different kaizo::hard and pit hacks, I finally wanted to build a hack of my own. Instead of making yet another Item Abuse or Colon Three like hack with shell jump chains, my goal was to make CATACLYSM II include many obscure tricks, even if this meant that the hack would be somewhat slower paced.
I originally wanted to release the hack this C3, but I greatly underestimated the time I would need for all the custom graphics and quality-of-life patches, so here's a video showing off around 80% of the hack.
Don't let the intro message and the initially calm atmosphere fool you. This hack is extremely difficult and you'll need to know a lot of obscure mechanics to have a shot at clearing this hack. Difficulty was not my main focus, but some setups require you to line up a lot of different things, which can be difficult even if you know what you're doing.
Imagine beating a hack like this tool-less.
thanks for the video guided tour.
It was fun because most of time I didn't understand what happened on screen.
From my interpretation it seems like Luigi needs to unlock all the switch palaces to let Mario get to the right door in his own level... That's a weird storyline if I can say. Will they ever meet ever again in this hellhole of a hack?
Drinking game idea: watch this video and take a shot every time a setup uses a weird exploit :p
Originally posted by ninj
Imagine beating a hack like this tool-less.
You can't beat this tool-less. For example, the Mario parts require you to alternate between pressing A and pressing B 60 times per second and you simply can't mash that fast. (And that's one of the easier parts of this hack.)
Originally posted by qantuum
From my interpretation it seems like Luigi needs to unlock all the switch palaces to let Mario get to the right door in his own level...
It's a bit more complicated than that. Mario has to die a bunch so that Luigi can hit all the switches. Luigi has to die after hitting every switch as beating the level would softlock him on the overworld. The switches force Mario and Luigi into new sections of the level. The entire setup is a parody of the fact that Pit hacks usually consist of only 1 exit.
The ending I have planed involves Luigi activating a "show level message 1" sprite which warps Mario on the overworld to a level that's actually beatable (and that triggers the credits). Together with the switches, this makes it much more difficult to skip half the hack with a level-end glitch.
Originally posted by dacin
You can't beat this tool-less. For example, the Mario parts require you to alternate between pressing A and pressing B 60 times per second and you simply can't mash that fast. (And that's one of the easier parts of this hack.)
"Easier" for whoever is accustomed to play pit hacks, you mean :p
How much time did you take to build and play this hack almost all the way through before showing it off? I ask because this is really lit and with so many obscure glitches that even using them at all is a surprise. I'm keeping an eye on this.
Also, I'm sorry xHF01x, but my expectations here exceeded by a lot 👀
ugh, this perfectly encapsulates what makes pit so interesting: watching it all play out. i can't keep up with half the shit going on, and i love how this ain't too bad to look at either - so many pit hacks are full of map16 spam to allow for their setups, and you managed to create so many interesting interactions while also making the thing look kinda pretty as well. also in love with the music choices - would you have a song list handy by any chance?
can't wait until it's done!
When I saw that you uploaded this, I considered not watching the video to play the hack blind instead..... But then I got impatient and watched it anyway, oops. (I got clickbaited by the sad clouds in the thumbnail!)
Now onto the main point: This is absolutely amazing. There were numerous times that I was amazed at how you managed to require a particular glitch (e.g. 6:35), numerous parts during which I just enjoyed how broken this game's mechanics are (e.g. the entire part with the null-sprite-corrupted p-switch) and some parts that I straight-up did not understand (e.g. most of the room at 14:15). At other times (e.g. 11:25), I was chuckling as I saw the subtle difficulties that are present in deceivingly simple setups. Also, the room at 10:55 is a nice reference.
The sheer length of the hack is impressive (almost the length of unbroken ColonThree :o ) and it manages to present new ideas all the time. Also I love the different cloud graphics that you used throughout the hack.
I'm looking forward to the final release! This is exactly the kind of pit hack we need. I'm also curious at how difficult this actually is... most of it doesn't seem to be too precise but there are probably some subtleties that one can't notice in a youtube video.
Whenever you think you know a lot of SMW glitches, just come watch this video to see how terribly wrong you are xD
Seriously, this is super impressive! It looks so unique even when compared to most pit hacks out there (Cataclysm is the most similar, but this still manages to be completely different as well)
There are a lot of glitches i've never seen or heard of, to the point where most of the time i'm just watching this being completely clueless to what's happening yet being super entertained by the whole thing! (I'm still proud of understanding a few of them lol)
It's super cool to watch how limited your toolset is in each room and yet how much use you can make out of each and every particular sprite you're given to achieve a room transition!
Originally posted by dacin
It's a bit more complicated than that. Mario has to die a bunch so that Luigi can hit all the switches. Luigi has to die after hitting every switch as beating the level would softlock him on the overworld.
Oh, this makes sense. I was wondering why Luigi couldn't just beat the level and then re-enter it to continue.
Also, it's really neat to see all the different ways you set up for the player to kill themselves in order to switch between Mario and Luigi.
I look forward to see this hack being completed, as well as what you have in store for the actual ending sequence!My Youtube Channel
Thanks for the all kind comments. I do want to finish this sooner rather than later, but I don't want to rush out a broken half-backed release.
Originally posted by Katerpie
How much time did you take to build and play this hack almost all the way through before showing it off? I ask because this is really lit and with so many obscure glitches that even using them at all is a surprise. I'm keeping an eye on this.
I started building the hack (with cement blocks and munchers) in June 2019, although I began collecting ideas in a text document even before then. I had to take a lot of breaks as building pit hacks is very exhausting. For every obstacle in the hack there is also one that's impossible (or that I can't figure out how to beat), and you usually only figure that out after trying the obstacle for the while. Failing at an obstacle that might not even be possible is just the worst.
Originally posted by idol
ugh, this perfectly encapsulates what makes pit so interesting: watching it all play out. i can't keep up with half the shit going on, and i love how this ain't too bad to look at either - so many pit hacks are full of map16 spam to allow for their setups, and you managed to create so many interesting interactions while also making the thing look kinda pretty as well. also in love with the music choices - would you have a song list handy by any chance?
can't wait until it's done!
Yeah I was also tired of the vanilla music and graphics used in most older pit hacks, so I wanted to get at least decent custom aesthetics. An experienced hacker can definitely tell that this was my first time using custom graphics (and that's perfectly fine with me), but I tried to at least sort out the worst issues, such as contrast between walls, spikes and background. The orange and purple death beams are really the saving grace against cuttoff, as some setups require very specific death block placement.
Music wise, I wanted the hack to start out with a strong contrast between Mario's hellish atmosphere and Luigi calmly hanging out on a lake, not knowing what might soon happen to him. Luigi's atmosphere gets more dire as the hack goes on, but this might be hard to tell without the final part of the hack.
Originally posted by xHF01x
When I saw that you uploaded this, I considered not watching the video to play the hack blind instead..... But then I got impatient and watched it anyway, oops. (I got clickbaited by the sad clouds in the thumbnail!)
Now onto the main point: This is absolutely amazing. There were numerous times that I was amazed at how you managed to require a particular glitch (e.g. 6:35), numerous parts during which I just enjoyed how broken this game's mechanics are (e.g. the entire part with the null-sprite-corrupted p-switch) and some parts that I straight-up did not understand (e.g. most of the room at 14:15). At other times (e.g. 11:25), I was chuckling as I saw the subtle difficulties that are present in deceivingly simple setups. Also, the room at 10:55 is a nice reference.
The sheer length of the hack is impressive (almost the length of unbroken ColonThree :o ) and it manages to present new ideas all the time. Also I love the different cloud graphics that you used throughout the hack.
I'm looking forward to the final release! This is exactly the kind of pit hack we need. I'm also curious at how difficult this actually is... most of it doesn't seem to be too precise but there are probably some subtleties that one can't notice in a youtube video.
I didn't intend for this to be played blind, as some sections would outright confusing. I do plan on releasing this with a move file so that I won't pull a pitiless. It would have made for a nice tough challenge, but it's too late for that now. Oh well...
I'm glad you got the Item Abuse 1 reference. My playthrough is really unoptimized (as usual), so we'll have to wait for an actual TAS to see how long this is compared to :3.
I didn't specifically try to make every section super precise, but some sections turned out to simply be so (e.g. the under water corner clip with the invisible cement block). The difficulty usually comes from not knowing a trick or from having to coordinate multiple sprites, not from precision. For me, the most difficult parts to execute were using three keys to push one key into the wall and getting the revival boost off of the big boo flame.
Originally posted by ECS.98
Whenever you think you know a lot of SMW glitches, just come watch this video to see how terribly wrong you are xD
Seriously, this is super impressive! It looks so unique even when compared to most pit hacks out there (Cataclysm is the most similar, but this still manages to be completely different as well)
There are a lot of glitches i've never seen or heard of, to the point where most of the time i'm just watching this being completely clueless to what's happening yet being super entertained by the whole thing! (I'm still proud of understanding a few of them lol)
It's super cool to watch how limited your toolset is in each room and yet how much use you can make out of each and every particular sprite you're given to achieve a room transition!
I'm glad I could surprise you (and many others) with some new tricks. Ever after all these years, new tricks/glitches are still found occasionally. I myself learned a lot of tricks just from watching youtube videos of hacks, so I'm happy if I can create a similar opportunity for other people.
for me, watching videos of pit hacks is like watching a foreign language film without any subtitles - likewise, it's often not easy to spend 18 minutes watching something you hardly understand, let alone while feeling strongly engaged throughout, but i did watch the whole thing and i was utterly absorbed. very cool.
Originally posted by goldenrules
for me, watching videos of pit hacks is like watching a foreign language film without any subtitles - likewise, it's often not easy to spend 18 minutes watching something you hardly understand, let alone while feeling strongly engaged throughout, but i did watch the whole thing and i was utterly absorbed. very cool.
Well I'm glad you enjoyed it all the way through. If I ever run out of things to do, I might make an explanation video of this hack, but given that some of the tricks in this are extremely obscure, I'm not sure how easily I could break them down.
This is oddly similar to what I wanted to do with my kaizo hard's final level (but frankly better executed because you know how to TAS effectively and I don't). I was planning on making it so that it was one huge puzzle where you had to hit every switch palace + die constantly to unlock new parts of the stage.
This is incredibly cool. Probably the best implementation of glitches that I've seen in a very very very long time.
I'd love discussing how tf a lot of the tech in this works. Would you mind talking on discord about it sometime?
at 7:19, 12:00 12:04, 14:08, can you explain how those glitch works?Give thanks to RPG hacker for working on Asar.
Originally posted by HammerBrother
at 7:19, 12:00 12:04, 14:08, can you explain how those glitch works?
7:19 Not sure whether you mean the corner clip or the sticky fly. If you're right next to a corner with high enough speed, you clip into it. This trick is also used at 3:30. Catching air right below a ceiling allows you to stick to the ceiling: The air catch doesn't complete until you reach a certain vertical speed and the ceiling resets your vertical speed to 0, so you don't move vertically. This trick works even if your body is inside a block and then you get pushed to the left by 1 pixel every frame (but if your feet touch a block, you loose flight or get crushed, so you can't just fly though a wall like this).
12:00 When Yoshi is on the ground, it bounces up and down. This makes Yoshi move up if it's inside a wall. With perfect running speed and perfect positioning (be as close to the wall as possible without touching it), you can clip far enough into the wall so that you can throw Yoshi into the wall with some very specific inputs. If you're familiar with subpixels: Luigi needs -49 speed and a .0 x-subpixel next to the wall, so that he ends up 3 pixels inside the wall. Then you do a wall jump and dismount Yoshi on the next frame while pressing left + X. This gives Yoshi -3 speed. Yoshi needs to have a 0./.1/.2 x-subpixel, so that it moves left by another pixel.
12:04 Luigi's hitbox is made up of single interaction points and you can navigate these points past the top block with some careful movement. With small Luigi on Yoshi, the interaction points kind of look like the magenta dots in the following picture (although this is not 100% correct and there are some weird quirks to it).
More precisely: The interaction points at the feet, which are responsible for the top edge of blocks, only have collision if you're moving downward. This allows you to clip into the bottom block slightly by moving upward, so then you don't hit the top block from the side. By jumping, you can squeeze Luigi's head diagonally through the top two blocks. After jumping, Luigi's body is inside the top block, so he gets pushed to the left and not to the right.
12:08 When Yoshi is off screen, his tongue behaves weirdly. In this particular case, the tongue is slightly closer to Luigi while it's retracting, which allows him to bounce off of the springboard right before it enters Yoshi's mouth. This allows you to repeat the Yoshi+Springboard glitch in midair and get a lot of height.
Originally posted by goldenrules
for me, watching videos of pit hacks is like watching a foreign language film without any subtitles - likewise, it's often not easy to spend 18 minutes watching something you hardly understand, let alone while feeling strongly engaged throughout, but i did watch the whole thing and i was utterly absorbed. very cool.
Pretty much the same with me too. I had no idea what was going on at the end with the garbled infinite use P-Switch that later became a garbled shell somehow (or a lot of parts of the hack, but that part especially), and even if I read how that works it still would probably be gibberish to me. That part kinda reminds me of TAFH's Mario's Drug Trip 2 and 3. Also looks harder than ColonThree. How come u have to die after hitting each switch? What happens if you press a switch without killing yourself? Also that's the most insane mushroom juggling I've seen in the history of ever.
