I'm having trouble practicing things with RNG involved (e.g. boss fights, hammer bros) because with save states, I seem to get the same pattern every time. Does anybody have a good way to work around this?

Also, is it bad to start runs from a savestate on the title screen? Does that save your RNG seed in any non-kosher way?

_ The HB RNG to learn is quite minimal, it basically comes down to knowing how to do high/low pattern for twin HBs. You can do a savestate in the overworld before moving towards the HB. The RNG changes every frame so you'll naturally get different scenarios.

_ For Koopakids the situation is way more complex. To begin with it's important to understand how the RNG works for them. The patterns of the koopakids change every 8 frames. And the internal timer that decides on the pattern starts at the end of the last stage (or HB fight) in a world and ends when entering the pipe leading to the boss. What it means is that if you want to learn firekills, you're gonna have to learn a firekill method for each possible scenario depending on the duration leading to the boss.

I'll give you some concrete examples. If you finish World 1 with 1-6 (meaning you fought the HB before 1-6), the timer will start at the end of 1-6 and finish on entering the pipe at the end of the airship. Because it's an autoscroller, there's very little variation to the duration. The small frame fluctuations will be linked to three things: your overworld movement between 1-6 and the castle, the number of frames "lost" (potentially) when pressing A after the Toad text box, and the potential number of frames lost to enter the pipe (but you shouldn't lose frames there because it's easy to enter the pipe as soon as possible). Basically, if your overworld movement is somewhat consistent, you'll almost always get the same pattern thanks to the 8 frames window because the three factors I mentioned should have little variation if you're used to them.

If you end World 1 by fighting the HB above 1-6, you suddenly have 2 overworld movements to the castle instead of 3 and the pattern will be different (because the timer will start at the end of the HB fight and will stop at the pipe still). Additionally in that case, you could skip the flower in the airship (which freezes the autoscroller) and it also affects the duration.

So what can you do? Well if you're willing to learn the firekills (and it's a mess in some worlds for warpless, it's actually easier to practice for 100% in that regard), you have to prepare a savestate for each scenario. So you kill the HB before 1-6, do 1-6, make sure your overworld movement to the castle is clean, play the autoscroller and savestate while entering the pipe. If you did it correctly, you'll be able to practice the pattern you'll get in that same situation during runs. An important note is that luckily, the patterns for world 1 in normal situations pretty much always allow you to do the exact same firekill. So if you practice on one pattern, you should be ready for all the world 1 situations (there's actually a small annoying detail with one situation but don't worry about it for now).

Now where it gets tricky with warpless is that there is another factor affecting the duration between last stage & castle in some worlds: if there are HBs on the map still (like in world 2), depending on if they give you a movement of 1 or 2, the pattern will also be affected by that. Lots and lots of scenarios to know.

If my explanation isn't very clear, don't hesitate to ask questions, I'll try to explain better.

_ Using a savestate to reset an emu isn't really a problem as far as RTA goes because it's virtually the same as resetting a console as we can't expect or manipulate the values. It goes without saying but the savestate should be before you press start on the title screen and totally independent from the start input (although even if the state & start were bound together, you'd only maybe manage to keep the RNG somewhat consistent for a stage or two at best). The RNG changes every frame so it's virtually impossible to control/keep track of due to all the obvious gameplay variations.

Thanks, that was really helpful! I've got a few follow up questions, though, if you don't mind:

1. How many patterns do the koopa kids have? Is it way too many to learn all of them and react to which one you see?
2. You say it's easy to enter airship pipes asap--is there a way to buffer this or something? The way I currently do it is by walking at the front of the screen and hitting down when it looks like I can go in, but I feel like I'm by no means frame-perfect at that.
3. Is it really possible to consistently hit the same 8 frame window going into a fight? It seems like (non-buffered) overworld inputs are going to vary by a few frames each, and mashing for the toad dialog box should vary by that much too, even if you can buffer the pipe input. If your average pipe enter time isn't right in the center of the 8 frame window, you could mess up by just a couple of frames and get the wrong pattern.
4. What would you suggest doing to learn the fire kills? Should I just study some runs and try out what I see?

1. I don't know, I think I remember hearing 16 a while ago but this might be completely wrong. Don't try to react on the fly because some patterns are impossible to differentiate until it's too late. You really need to know in advance what you're dealing with.

2. When you run against the border and go for the diagonal slightly in anticipation, with the momentum it'll work as soon as possible (down or up can be pressed in advance when entering a pipe). Diagonal inputs work to enter pipes so it's really free.

3. OK I've actually wondered myself if the 8 frames value is accurate because it feels like more. It's a value I asked for a long time ago and I haven't felt the need to check myself since because I have the patterns down consistently anyway (at least in hundo). All in all the important thing to know is that the window is big enough to reach something consistently. But you are right that depending where you land in the frame window, it can be tricky. I didn't want to fill your head with too many informations at once in my previous reply but there's some rare situations where I'm sometimes too "early" if my inputs were too good so to speak. The typical example is when I kill the HB above 1-6 (warpless or hundo makes no diff in this case), if my inputs are too fast I reach a pattern where he starts the fight with a jump. So I always slightly delay my pipe entering (but sometimes I can enter as soon as possible and get the good pattern, so we're close to the frontier in that case). Delaying can also be useful to force an easier/faster to kill pattern in some cases (I do it in world 2 in 100% notably).

About the 8 frames being accurate or not, there's a few possibilities. To begin with, a pattern being different doesn't mean that the same kill method won't work (as I told you in world 1, there's a single method for all the situations as long as he doesn't open with a jump). Also a koopakid doesn't have that many options so he might begin consecutive patterns the same way and then would look the same because of it. All in all, even if it would be nice to double check the value, the important thing to know is that we manage to consistently get the patterns we want with a bit of practice. Note that the frame consistency is helped by the buffered inputs we discussed in another thread for the overworld movements.

4. Yeah that can be tricky because there's not really good resources for that, and there's actually very few runners who know what they are doing for every world. I'll try to give you a quick rundown of where to look.

_ World 1: use any good run as a reference for the method, whether it's in warpless or hundo. Just know that from certain map positions, he'll shoot earlier during the fight at the start and it makes the kill tighter. But the kill method remains the same.

_ World 2: this one is a mess (both in warpless and hundo). And firekills for some patterns won't work at all on other patterns so it's important to know in advance what you'll get. I haven't gone back to warpless seriously yet (I will soonish) and reworking on the firekills was one of my priorities, so I can't help you a lot for that one (same for w4). You can experiment yourself a bit with various situations and try to see what other top runners are doing on various patterns. The thing is that in world 2 we sort of all do different things I've noticed because it often comes down to what we're comfortable with and what risks we're willing to take.

_ World 3: Wendy can have slightly different behaviours (like walking instantly or not) but it doesn't make much difference as long as you have a good grasp of the distance to her. Any method you learn will be fine if you can slightly adjust your positioning when needed.

_ World 4: Last time I did some warpless grinding, nobody was doing a firekill on that one in warpless. I know that i've seen iluvmario and cujo going for some stuff in attempts since but I haven't worked on anything myself yet. Again, having HBs on the map or not will influence so keep that in mind. Contact the runners I mentioned if needed.

_ World 5: this one is a mess because you have to use a cloud and it becomes super hard to predict because of it. This is the one case where if you really want to firekill, you would have to be able to adapt on the fly to what he does.

_ World 6 has no firekill in warpless.

_ World 7: I don't know what's possible for warpless, I know the natural patterns you get while going to the airships are not compatible with firekills but there's prolly some possibilities, haven't investigated myself yet.

All in all, going for firekills in warpless is often pretty advanced stuff that requires a lot of knowledge (100% is easier in that regard except for world 2). I would recommend learning world 1 and 3 for sure if you haven't learned them yet. You can also try to learn some stuff for 2 and maybe 5 if you want. You should probably forget about 4 and 7 for now.

Wow, I didn't expect that comprehensive of a reply. Thanks Kirua, you're the best!

I can do the fire kill on Wendy (badly), so it sounds like I should make it a priority to learn the world 1 one, and not worry about the others for now. I still have a bunch of macro-level stuff I should learn first (2-4?, the new 3-2, the new 4-4, 7-F2, consistent 8-1, etc.).

It makes me happy to hear that there's still stuff to explore in this game. I've been kind of worried that I walked in on a pretty much solved game.

Hi Kirua, I am making a TAS and having some trouble manipulating the ¤direction¤ the hammer bros go after a given level. Does it have anything to do with Mario's score number, coin number, or time number? Thanks in advance.

It's frame based RNG, so basically you delay beating stages by one more frame until you get the desired outcome. If you have SMB3 TAS concerns, I would suggest contacting Tompa as he's been TASing this game for as long as time.