SM64’s Invisible Walls Explained Once and for All

Thanks to the following people:
➤ MasterKush, for providing a tool that helped with the visuals
➤ Fazana, for helping with coding

Timestamps:
0:00:00 Intro
0:01:25 Surface Triangles
0:03:09 Floors
0:04:36 Walls
0:05:57 Ceilings
0:10:48 Out of Bounds
0:15:05 Walls vs Ceilings vs Out of Bounds
0:19:06 Positional Units
0:27:12 Invisible Walls
0:29:45 Cause #1
0:34:26 Cause #2
0:38:29 Cause #3
0:39:21 Cause #4 - Top Down View
0:46:02 Cause #4 - Side View
0:53:48 Cause #4 - First Example
0:56:40 Cause #4 - Why You Only Hit It Sometimes
1:05:38 Cause #4 - Rest of the Examples
1:35:02 Cause #5
1:40:50 Cause #6 - Top Down View
1:44:51 Cause #6 - Side View
1:48:28 Cause #6 - Examples
2:21:45 Cause #7
2:31:56 Invisible Walls on Rotating Objects
2:44:54 Cause #8 - Floor Overshadowing Explanation
2:52:22 Cause #8 - Floor Overshadowing Examples
3:02:32 Cause #8 - Invisible Walls
3:12:52 Cause #8 - Invisible Walls on Objects
3:21:59 Getting Squished Explanation
3:25:22 Getting Squished Examples
3:30:42 Squish Cancel Explanation
3:33:15 Squish Cancel Examples
3:37:03 Outro
3:37:34 Member Events
3:41:25 Finale Introduction
3:42:02 Finale

[pannenkoek]

If you’ve wondered where I’ve been for the past 10 months, it was working day and night on this one video. In other words, I never actually left, I’ve been working on sm64 the whole time. So I didn’t forget about you guys :)

[TJ-Henry-Yoshi]

I'm expecting an entire 10+ minute section of this video dedicated to TTC.

Edit: Having now finished the video, I reflect on just how shallow my expectations were.

This video had some of the funniest one-liners, beautifully heart-tugging moments and accomplishes all of this while being a technical marvel that never stops presenting engaging educational material about one of the most important cultural landmarks of our generation.

People always say "This man could accomplish any world problem and instead he's making videos about Mario 64" and meanwhile I am left here thinking "If this man has all this passion to keep making these beautiful videos in such a creative and entertaining way, why would you ever want to force him to do something else?"

Don't let anyone else tell you what value you should hold to the world, because your work inspires people in more ways than you could ever know.

You have a beautiful soul and at this rate, you have my undying support.

[TriforceWisdom]

Every frame:
1) Take Mario's hat
2) If he's out of bounds, kill him

[CanisInfernus]

It's like the old saying goes; if it's cardinally aligned, you're feeling fine. If the geometry is askew, ceiling hitbox might leak through.

[HexFirelmao]

Streamer: "What just happened??"

Pannen, 12 years later: "This is exactly what happened"

Edit: just wanted to let you know pannen, I of course enjoyed the roller coaster where we talked and looked at invisible walls. Your an awesome teacher and a legend.

[wyn]

so while it requires very specific setup, they did in fact implement mario randomly having a heart attack and dying. truly they thought of everything

[tailgrowth]

The phrase "...causing the ceiling to leak through" is such an amazingly cursed sentenced and it's said like 140 times in this video lmao

[Name_Pendingg]

> take Marios hat
> use it as incentive to complete a task
> when task completed, give Marios hat back

[jolly]

the constrast of pannen calmly explaining invisible walls cutting to speedrunners losing their shit is funny literally every time

[voltdragon]

1:38:30 “Hey, this is the invisible wall I showed in the intro. Remember that? You were so innocent back then. You had no idea how deep this rabbit hole went.” This hits so hard after sitting through more than an hour and a half of technical information on mario 64’s collision systems. I am not the same man I was when I started this video

[Yatsuzume]

This is the kind of video that will irreparably alter the life trajectory of a 16 year old to become an incredible game developer

[ltminion]

Speedrunning intertwines technical mastery and love of gaming with an extremity of depth that embraces the absurd. This video captures that spirit so well. Literally enlightening, the invisible made visible, detailed at a level that boggles the mind that it even would be made and watched by so many. And yet! I want to congratulate you on this masterful work.

[Ledslinger]

The fact that Mario has his hat simultaneously removed and replaced on every single frame of gameplay is fucking wild. The more I hear about the inner workings of this game, the more it sounds like the original dev team was made up of equal parts geniuses and absolute maniacs.

[peppinoandweskerfriendsfor]

It’s so funny how almost every single invisible wall in the game is so carefully accidentally placed in the most inconvenient spots

[kadirbeneathmomoteh]

I'm in awe of the visualization in this video. Making the walls visible, with multiple camera angles, orthographic views, overlays, with programmed camera movements, no wonder this took so long to make. Amazing.

[Zyodl]

the fact that this entire 4 hour video has subtitles is so nice thanks man

[OliBomby]

Construction workers accidentally misaligned a floor tile in my bathroom by one unit so i stubbed my toe really bad

[Ambidextroid]

I find it kind of creepy that if any piece of geometry in any level is just slightly misaligned then it can result in an infinitely tall invisible out of bounds "leakage". Like each level is just a flimsy cardboard diorama with this fatal invisible force trying to force its way through any gaps.

[FishySmith]

27:32 "the term invisible wall has two parts to it, invisible and wall"

insane

[Mortal_Pigeon]

I want to show some of this in a math lecture about speedrunning (some day, when I’m feeling extra motivated to prepare it lol). I think a lot of my students would enjoy it, and your graphics make a lot of these topics really accessible, even if you’re not a mathemagician or a pro gamer/speedrunner. Really cool stuff and I appreciate the hard work that went into it!