[tialaramex]

This video also explains what a 0.5 A press ("Half A-press") is and why they care.

Because Mario64 doesn't care about releases, the runners don't distinguish releases, you can always choose not to release A and so if you're doing this run (fewest A presses) you would only ever release in order to press A again. In a live setting commentators might briefly explain what a 0.5 A "means" but without this explanation to head off questions you'd likely have about why they care.

[dfxm12]

Because Mario64 doesn't care about releases, the runners don't distinguish releases, you can always choose not to release A and so if you're doing this run (fewest A presses) you would only ever release in order to press A again

Just reading this, it doesn't make sense to someone not familiar with the game why you wouldn't only hold A the last time you press it. It also has to be noted that holding A makes Mario do different things from not holding A.

[Kwpolska]

To be more precise, the game sometimes expects you to press A, but sometimes it's enough for A to be held for the action to happen. You can press A and not release in the first case, so that the second one can leech off it.

[hoherd]

> Because Mario64 doesn't care about releases

Is that really true though? If it cares about holding, such as in gliding in the air, then it necessarily cares about not holding, such as being in the air but not gliding, and the way to transition from being in the air gliding to being in the air not gliding is to release.

Is that wrong? I've only ever played M64 for like 5 minutes, but it's been on my list and I keep urging my children to get into it as a way for me to find the time to get into it too.

[hn92726819]

I could see how this could be confusing. SM64 does distinguish between before a release and after a release, so technically the game itself doesn't care. I think what they were trying to say is that there really isn't any benefit in speedrunning the game to keep track of releasing (and this can be confirmed in the video too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A&t=105).

I think it's possible that if the next level requires .5 a presses but, for example, you are falling with a wing cap in the current level, you have to decide between bumping that half a press into a full a press or losing time when falling with the wing cap. I just don't think it's a common case though because you could use a different route where the held A won't affect you. It looks like in the A Button Challenge (ABC), there are only 5 half a presses: https://ukikipedia.net/wiki/A_Button_Challenge

[charcircuit]

It does care about releases. In order to jump for a second time you need to release it first.

0.5 is really about the idea of having an A press span multiple levels.

[tialaramex]

> In order to jump for a second time you need to release it first.

Is that true? Mechanically it's true, but I don't know whether the game code actually knows this is true. It depends whether the N64, and the SM64 code specifically, tracks the button state and the events separately.

Compare the situation with Left + Right in TAS Mario 1. The TAS has no problem telling a console that both left and right are pressed, but obviously a real human player cannot press both directions, they're opposites. Nevertheless this does "work" in the game and so although no-right-plus-left is an interesting benchmark to compare against RTA where live human players couldn't do the trick, the TAS records allow both pressed at once.

[Waterluvian]

keydown + keyup = keypress

On the surface, yeah, it’s immediately like, “what the heck is 0.5?” But it’s just semantics.

[hn92726819]

Did you watch the intro? It's more than semantics. It doesn't come from (key down+key up)/2, it comes from the fact it counts as 0 in a full game run, and 1 in isolation. He even specifically says "as for the release, there are no cases where that's useful or important" (paraphrased).