Units, Speed, & Sense of Scale

I explain what the units are that we use for Mario's position as well as how speed works. I also present several examples to give a sense of scale.

[anueutsuho]

"I can run fast"
"How fast?"
"31.5"
"31.5 what?"
"Speed."

[DarcOfTheShadows]

1:51 "T-this hole! It was made for me!"

[bobstayoffthegrass]

With the assumption that Mario is 155cm tall based on the life-sized Mario statue that stands at that height, I found that one unit is 0.96273291925 centimeters. Long story short, using the speeds provided, I found that Mario's running speed is about 20.34 miles per hour. Bruh

I know Usain Bolt can go faster than that, but that's still pretty fast, especially considering that Mario can actually corner at that speed, which I doubt Bolt can do.

[Wingcapman]

This is not only useful about how Mario works and what you can do with his hitbox and distance, it's actually really useful for creating custom Super Mario 64 levels for the custom Super Mario 64 community. Nice! Thanks for sharing. :)

[NIMPAK]

Mario's hitbox is the golden proportion, that's kinda neat.

[jummysgamecorner]

If the units are centimeters, Mario's height would be fairly realistic (161 cm / 5'3" hitbox or 144 cm / 4'9" model). It'd also make his running speed 9.65 m/s (34 kph / 21mph). In comparison, Usain Bolt can run at 12.9 m/s (45 kph / 28 mph)

[IbisScarlet]

Why am I subscribed to this channel when even he explains I don't understand *ANYTHING* but still watch it?!

[herewegosupermario]

There was an annotation at 0:15 that said:

I realized I forgot to explain how angles work in this video. In a circle, there are 65536 angle units, spanning from 0 to 65535. In terms of the X/Z axes, the angle spectrum starts at Z+ and goes counterclockwise. Thus:
Z+ = angle 0
X+ = angle 16384
Z- = angle 32768
X- = angle 49152

[juliab]

i never thought that i'd hear "mario's terminal velocity" ever

[Kebabrulle]

No wonder Mario's proportions are 1:1, 44. He only eats spaghetti and cake...

[tiltedtesseract]

Now we know how big the game is compared to itself, but not necessarily how it compares to reality. There aren't any obvious cues in the scenery or anything, but there is something constant we can work with: gravity.

Gravity in SM64 is calculated as -4 units per frame squared. We can convert this to meters per second squared, because we know how many frames there are in a second, and we know the acceleration due to gravity on earth (-9.81 m/s^2). I think it's safe to say the game takes place on earth or some variation of it... Anyhow, when we plug in the numbers...

-4 u/f^2 = -120 (u/f)/s = -3600 u/s^2 = -9.81 m/s^2
3600 u = 9.81 m = 9810 mm
36 u = 98.1 mm
1 u = 2.725 mm = 0.107 in

...We can ascertain one unit to be roughly equivalent to three millimeters, or about a tenth of an inch. Sounds about right! Now that we know how big a unit is in real-world measurements, we can figure out all kinds of fun things:

-Mario is absurdly short at 39.2 cm / 15.5 inches tall (or 43.9 cm / 17 in, if you use his collision height)
-But he can jump up to 67.5 inches, which is taller than a lot of people, and over four times his own height
-He can also jump across a gap of 13 feet and 8 inches, which is impressive even ignoring his short stature
-He runs at 2.6 m/s / 8.5 ft/s, or 9.4 km/h / 5.8 mph... a bit slower than the average person
-However, Mario is capable of _diving_ at 4 m/s / 13.5 ft/s, or 14.4 km/h / 9.2 mph, which is actually a bit faster than average
-He falls at about 6.1 m/s / 20 ft/s / 22 km/h / 13.6 mph, which is way slower than it ought to be (a normal person falls over 8 times faster)

Of course, if you base your unit off of some other measurement, you'll surely get different results, but gravity is a pretty good constant for physically "realistic" numbers that look right... At any rate, one thing's for sure: conventional physics don't apply in videogame land.

Also, now that we know the conversion factor, tell me if anyone finds something interesting in one of pannen's other videos!

[juliewinchester]

I don't know why I did, but I literally did the math for how big a map is on horizontal axes(if I could find out if there's a vertical limit, that would help very nicely), and it's approximately 6.1432393 acres(24860.8074 square meters).
To put that in perspective, if the normal house in a city area is approximately 1/4 an acre, that means you could fit approximately 24 accurately sized houses in a Mario 64 level.
Neat.

[ZeroGDucks]

Yet another lesson in Super Mario Sixtyfourology :)

[Catonator]

I'm fairly sure Mario's hitbox is 160 units tall, and the height of ceilings is checked with an <= operator, so he can't enter holes exactly his height.

[scorpion.]

Is gravity slower with the long jump? What is it? And how much is gravity when holding A with the wings on (and its terminal velocity)?

[dmas]

The 1 unit == centimeter theory seems to be quite popular.

Mario Height: 1.4 meters
Running speed: 9.45 m/s OR 34 kph
Long Jump speed: 14.7 m/s OR 52.9 kph
Jump velocity: 12.6 m/s OR 45.3 kph
Jump height: 2.42 meters
Gravity: 36 m/s OR 129.6 kph (~ 3.6 times normal)
Terminal velocity: 22.5 m/s OR 81 kph (~ 19% normal)

But, a few programs/games use 70u/m measurement. By that logic:

Mario Height: 2 meters
Running speed: 13.5 m/s OR 48.6 kph
Long Jump speed: 21 m/s OR 75.6 kph
Jump velocity: 18 m/s OR 64.8 kph
Jump height: 3.45 meters
Gravity: 51.4 m/s OR 185.1 kph
Terminal velocity: 32.1 m/s OR 115.7 kph

Either way, while I'm taking aspirin, can we all agree that Mario is an ungodly athlete? Because I don't think I could run as fast or jump as high as the cm example if I trained my whole life for it.

[birdsniffingthefloor]

When I was younger, I used to believe that doing a ground pound would decrease Mario's terminal velocity / have him fall faster. One thing that my brother and I used to do for hours was attempt to see Mario hit or stand on the ground past the death barrier.

[Grimeaper]

Just realized how handy this could be for those making Mario games on Unreal. I may have to recheck this once I get Unreal in my blood.

[moocowpong]

If we assume that Mario 64 gravity is equal to earth gravity (not the only reasonable assumption!), then a unit works out to about a quarter centimeter (0.27 centimeters). This makes Mario about 1' 3" tall (hitbox 1' 5") and puts his triple jump at 5' 7" high. A course can be a little over 44 meters or 146 feet across.

[darkychao]

So, I've been wondering, are there PUs that are above/below the normal level that are just impossible to get to? Or are the only PUs that exist to the north/south/east/west.