This thread is for discussion over whether mapping the analog stick to a digital button should be allowed for 120 Star speedruns. Refer to Simply's video below for a high level overview of the issue.

This thread is intended for long form discussion of the merits of banning and not banning the mapping of the analog stick to a button.

You can also refer to the Mario 64 speedrun server as well as this reddit thread for further discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/cr8o0x/i_made_a_video_explaining_the_ongoing_controversy

Low/no content posts will be deleted

I'm in favor of allowing framewalking/re-mappings.

Speedrunning has a history of pushing the limits of what people think is "acceptable" to complete a game more quickly. Take any average non-speedrunner and you'll find it's likely that they hold the belief that any of the tricks/glitches we use in this game are unfair and should be considered cheating. I think these button remaps are the next step in a series of optimizations that speedrunners take to achieve their goal of completing the game as quickly as possible.

The trick itself is not toxic. It doesn't kill runs for stupid reasons, it hasn't blown the game wide open, and I wouldn't say it gatekeeps anyone from the game (emulator players have already had access to this sort of re-mapping, and the time save only matters at very high levels).

There's an argument that this re-mapping is a can of worms that allows more re-mappings to occur for specific angles in the game. Some examples I've heard are the wallkick in Secret of the Haunted Books SS, and the single-jump wallkick in Shoot to the Wild Blue. I don't believe re-mapping buttons to the angles needed on these stars will cause any major advantages/timesaves. Both of them (and some other ones I've tried to think of) still require precise movement during or around the analog angle in question.

Additionally, Cheese's point in the video doesn't sit with me very well. He states that he feels bad because he has spent so much time on JRB cannonless and doesn't want it to go to waste. To me, that's just part of speedrunning at a high level. I guarantee there are several runners who have spent countless hours practicing/optimizing old routes of SSL 100 (one of the 100-coin routes that has changed the most over the years). You spend time learning what's fastest because you want to do the fastest thing available. When something faster comes along, you move to it. That's speedrunning.

It's up to you whether you think this trick is "more exciting" than the previous JRB cannonless strat, but ultimately I think there's nothing wrong with the trick as it's being performed today for the reasons I've stated above.

I am in favor of banning the remapping of a digital input to output an analog input.

As you are all well aware, we do still run on N64 despite main competition having been from countries that have access to proper VC (except big Akki, love u bb).

Firstly, as the SM64 community is currently the largest in the speedrunning community, any decision that we make will inevitably impact the future of other communities. If we were to allow this remapping, then surely other games that run into this issue would be more likely to allow it, which could be much bigger/be more broken in other games.

Secondly, it is an external device GIVING functionality and an advantage. Any advancement within the game either through routing/strats/glitches I am completely for and of course framewalking included. Using a controller with the same functionality as an OEM N64 or Hori controller is not an issue. When you start adding new functions such as this remapping for framewalk, I believe it is infringing on the very core idea of speedrunning.

Lastly, N64 has clearly stuck with people. We are still competing on it, and I'm sure most would agree that it feels the best as it is 100% authentic, original hardware. Being on N64 but throwing in this external equipment seems contradictory.

This isn't something new, this has been known of and the possibility has always been there, but players have never gone for it out of, in my words, honor and appreciation for the sport.

The extreme is hard to see, and is possible to not get pushed much farther than this, but the very principle of it is what doesn't sit right with me.

Not to mention, as competitive speedrunning continues to grow, creating an even larger barrier of entry than there already is seems counterintuitive if we want to get more people in the scene.

At the very least, if it doesn't get banned, there should be something added to the leaderboard to signify the use of this remapping as to not directly compare runs with and without it.

People who aren't speedrunners will always call many things cheating or unfair, but it is clear that even within our own community there are people who find this to be unfair and not in the spirit of speedrunning. As well as many others in the general speedrunning community.

Of course, its not a simple issue and I am looking forward to hear other's thoughts and opinions.

Either way it goes, I will accept it and continue to grow with the community, but a vote is certainly in order.

I agree with allowing the mapping, and the trick.

points:

1. if a ban were to be implemented on a map, the ban isn't enforceable

   • since the trick is possible to do without remapping button to analog, it wouldn't be possible to tell whether or not a player is using the remap, unless controller cam and facecam were also required -> you would have to ban the framewalk itself to make the ban enforceable -> then this becomes more or less banning a trick because the community dislikes the trick -> I would argue that hmc blj is both more inconsistent than framewalk (btn remap) and has more impact (bigger timesave)

2. current top times use the strat

   • if we were to ban framewalk, current top times would be affected -> if we were to remove the times, that wouldn't be fair to runners to ban strats retroactively. -> if we were to keep the times, that wouldn't be fair to current runners to try to beat times with strats that aren't currently allowed -> add x seconds: also a bad option since timesave is not uniform, and would also be "guessing" what they would get without the trick.
     • should we add more time for cheese, since he doesn't do instant cannon shot?

counterpoints against common points i see:

1. barrier-to-entry argument
   • this argument states it isnt fair to other runners to purchase hardware for an advantage -> but this happens all the time. purchasing a better controller / steelstick gives the player a significantly larger advantage than this adapter, i would argue. not to mention playing on a crt is a large improvement over a modern tv. -> obviously, noone wants to ban crts or steelsticks. so why is this a point against a cheaper product that enables a <5s timesave?

I want to respond to some points in simply's post/video. - comparing using the adapter to using emu - this one bothers me the most. It isn't the same. a more apt comparison would be using the adapter to switching versions from us to jp. -> timesave us->jp and no adapter -> adapter roughly the same -> also "changing an external variable to get a timesave" -> functionality of the game preserved. emu and vc feel significantly worse than n64, and play extremely different (lag). jp and us have occasional small difference in the strats you can do (bbh ghost hunt). this adapter only changes one star. -> we were also not meant to play out of region carts. the console and cart are even region locked to avoid this. yet everyone does it. - comparison to oot / mm - sm64 angles are too varied between stars to make a button as useful as oot/mm (ok, quickturn is our ess, but still) - barrier to entry -> see (1) - "never meant to be played" argument - this could apply for many stars over the course of a run. - not really an argument. see Appeal to nature - "we have something threatening the very nature of the nintendo 64s intended functionality" ??????? - "the very core of speedrunning is using the intended hardware that any other person would have, and doing your best job with that" - see (1), or modding your n64 to play jp sm64 for timesave.

While I am anti-ban, I also have an argument for banning the mapping, which i will state for completeness: simply mentions in his post he isn't sure of other implications of the trick. I have something I thought of a while back, but it doesn't affect rta really. it affects singlestar. there is one singlestar record a digital controller would be very useful for, which is deep freeze. heres how. -> you map buttons to control stick, camera, and a/b. however you map another button for maximum speedkick forward input. -> you can do a camera setup for this star so you have forward input the full time. do that camera -> complete the star as normal. a good portion of the difficulty in this star comes from having a perfect speedkick (holding control stick completely forward, then back for 1frame, then completely forward again). if you watch atmpas 5"30 (since deleted), he does get a perfect speedkick. which is extremely difficult on a controller, is just 2 frame perfect inputs on a digital pad. signifcantly easier. of course, you still have to have a good ending which is also very hard, but it does provide a substantial advantage.

I cant think of other singlestars where this is applicable.

I'm undecided about what should be done about this, but I'm leaning towards not banning this type of remapping. I think what makes this decision so difficult is that we don't really have any standards to go against, so I'm going to try to put forth some suggested standards here.

The only restrictions in the current ruleset for 120 star console runs deal with the quality of the recording.

[quote=120 rules]Complete the game while collecting every star. No restrictions. All forms of BLJ are allowed. VODs submitted to leaderboards contain the entire run in one segment and must include game audio...[/quote]

Despite this, it's well known that there are some implied restrictions, including the TAS, modified consoles, cartidges or roms, or macros such as the turbo button. I think it's intuitively pretty clear that each of these examples shouldn't be allowed. But why?

Simply above suggests that the criteria might be that things should be banned when they involve external devices that give added functionality and an advantage. This seems to fit with my examples above. But could hori also fit into this category? It has better functionality for throws than OEM controllers and that functionality translates to an advantage. You might point out that hori's just make throws easier and don't actually add any new mechanics, but I think that's technically the same for the a2d mapping. Framewalking is possible on OEM and Hori. The a2d mapping only makes it easier, like a hori makes throws easier. Also what about steel sticks? Being able to play with a 10/10 controller forever probably has a measurable advantage as well. So I think this criteria doesn't work.

I think better criteria we could use would be to ask the following:

1. Does it change the game so much that it's an entirely different game?
2. Does it make it so something else is actually playing the game for you?

I think modified consoles and cartridges fail to number 1, TAS and macros fail to number 2, and horis and steal sticks pass both. So it sort of fits.

So when we look at mapping the analog stick to a button, it's pretty clear that it passes number 1. I think you can probably make arguments for number 2, but I'm not convinced that it fails here. Inputs are mapped 1 to 1. You still have to press all the buttons. You're still playing the game.

I'm not sold on any of this so tell me why this is dumb.

Lastly, I wanted to address a few of the other concerns I've heard either here, on reddit or in the discord.

1. Allowing this will open a can of worms for future large time saves: I'm not convinced that there are any other applications to this kind of remapping that would gain any significant advantage. Any of the examples I've seen so far would require remapping to a non-cardinal direction (which as far as I know can't be done on raphnet, and could only be done on a boxx) to get a slight advantage at saving a few frames at the cost of likely being MUCH more difficult to execute the rest of the star (e.g. saving some angle for a certain single star, or mapping an ess position for speedkicks (not even sure how you would actually be able to actually execute on this one)). Or it's instances that don't give much of an advantage at all compared to a stick (e.g. bowser throws).
2. Allowing this will impact other communities' decisions: I think the takeaway other communities should get from whatever is decided here is the same takeaway we got from other communities like OOT. When there's a large split in the communities opinion on what the rules should be, put it up for discussion and make a decision afterwards, not that remapping should or shouldn't be banned in their games to be consistent with sm64.

"At the very least, if it doesn't get banned, there should be something added to the leaderboard to signify the use of this remapping as to not directly compare runs with and without it." (Simply). I actually suggested this on YouTube already, and I will elaborate why I think that a filterable variable is both critical and enough. Variables like this currently exist for whether the game was played on a US or a JP N64, and whether the footage was good enough to properly verify the run. Other games have filters for whether the run used DLCs, Amiibos, whether they took breaks in an extremely long run (all BotW), what patch they used (e.g. Celeste), or even for specific glitches like one in Anno 1404 that gets rid of some of the game's downtime and annoying trivial mouseclicks, but also mutes the game's audio for the runner - overall a large variety of things can be indicated by a filterable variable.

Why is it critical? Because the remap does provide a material advantage that costs money (unless you do it on Emulator, but the Emulator board should just follow what we do with the N64 board, isn't really a variation of the intended equipment for playing the game (unlike say Joycons for Super Mario Odyssey, which can be used besides or on top of the Pro Controller for a formerly optimal strat in Lake Kingdom and a few other theoretical strats), and is an inherently different way of how certain inputs are made (digital instead of analog) that was never intended for any official release of the game. All of those points coming together make me think that having no indication or separation available at all wouldn't be fair towards runners who stick to the official and established SM64 speedrunning gear.

Why is it enough? Because once you have a variable like this in place, anyone can either select to filter for only runs without this remapping, or the filter is even set to hide runs with the remapping by default (depending on how the mods choose to set it up). We see from Siglemic and the active part of the top 5 that the remapping isn't something that too obviously compromises the idea of speedrunning the original game (which itself hasn't been modified) without macros or TAS too heavily. Especially with buy-ins like the N64 and the Hori controller already in use, we see that while this speedrun can be performed casually or even for good stream fame without heavy expenses, the top of the board are able and willing to invest into additional purchases and compete on the level where the times accomplishable are the lowest, as long as an input is an input and the game itself is SM64 on N64. With a filter in place, anyone who doesn't agree with this mindset can filter out those runs and be competitive with the rest. Another thing to note is that players on Emulator have easy and free access to this option of mapping a digital to an analog input, and many romhacks of SM64 are probably made with digital directional inputs in mind (though of course not SM64 itself).

2 questions remain from my side: Should the runs with the remapping be shown or hidden by default? Hiding those runs by default would be a big step in discouraging the use of this technology as the personal best runs wouldn't be obvious to the eye. Showing them might actually encourage the trick outside of the part of the community that considers this modification not legitimate. I don't have a strong feeling one way or the other here. And: How do we handle this issue in tournaments? Even though being in line with the board would be intuitively appealing, I would find it the most fair towards lower budget runners if this could be banned in tournaments like the 45 star invitational unless optionally if in a specific matchup both players agreed to use it. Another option would be a 5-8 second penalty for using it, as the framewalk might save 5-8 seconds on average. I'd like to hear more feedback on that.

A big point that also affects my suggestion warrants a reply: "1) if a ban were to be implemented on a map, the ban isn't enforceable

• since the trick is possible to do without remapping button to analog, it wouldn't be possible to tell whether or not a player is using the remap, unless controller cam and facecam were also required" - IR

Since this specific framewalk is very hard to perform without remapping (though you can practice by walking up to the penguin in Cool, Cool Mountain), I deem it unlikely that this would be popular for full-game 120 star and 45 star runs, and so I don't see a reason to give framewalking runners the benefit of the doubt here. Ways to support a potential claim that you are framewalking using the original N64 or the Hori controller would include:

• A controller cam
• Holding your controller into your facecam
• An input display. If there is a single frame of a joystick input that should be impossible with just digital inputs, that heavily supports your claim that you did it on an analog joystick. You can amplify this by spinning or twitching the joystick during the ledgegrab, the box break (US), or the star dance, introducing way more directions than you can possibly add to different buttons on the controllers in question
• An in-depth analysis of your high-resolution and framedropless footage showing that you must have held a variety of directions, specifically more than possible on console. With experienced secondary verifiers that the verifiers could reach out to (e.g. TASers), you could do this on the jump off the pillar if the runner holds any non-cardinal direction If you can't verify that you did the run without the remapping, you would simply submit your run as using the remapping. That wouldn't be cheating, as it is never more honorable to use the remapping than not to.

Greetings my friends!

Framewalking is a touchy strat not because of the nature of the trick, but how many top runners are doing it. I believe that the trick itself is a neat way to save a few seconds and get more runs going. This being said, mapping an analog signal to a digital one (ie. A control stick which has a spectrum of outputs to an “A” button which has only two outputs) should not be allowed. This is because it changes the nature of the way the game is meant to be controlled. Mario is meant to be moved with a joystick on N64, as it allows him to flow at various speeds from place to place.

The solution? Learn framewalking the way droz did, by using a joystick controller like an OES or Hori (or Gamecube if you’ve had too much to drink). This will take hours of grinding, but isn’t that what Speedrunning is all about? After all, our dad Allan had to do that to learn the other JRB CLESS method, so its only fair.

In conclusion, my vote is to ban remapping of analog signals to digital for any SM64 category/star, NOT to ban framewalking with a traditional analog stick.

My opinion should not matter since I am a scrub runner, but I gave it anyway for thoughts.

Night all, and God Bless my friends!

I believe that taking away the element of skill due to hardware changes just to save time is an overall negative direction for this to go. People don't choose to play on VC to save those seconds and I can't see why choosing to use an adapter that lets you press a button to get perfect analog inputs would be acceptable.

The star's skill has gone, whether it be lining up a cannon shot fast or doing cannonless. The skill required is no longer there because of a hardware change.

If you want to framewalk, feel free to do it with your stick. If you are skillful enough, you will save that time. That's how it should be.

Analog to digital (A2D) inputs should be banned

Players (including myself) should not have to buy some 3rd party adapter to gain an ‘easy’ time advantage that otherwise wouldn’t be significantly more difficult. Entry to the game should not be made more difficult, even if it’s currently only top players buying it.

Having access to analog (even if just cardinal directions) has more benefits than making frame-walking rta viable.

Allowing A2D is pretty significant for finding new strats. Having access to static 100 values would make it so you can turn angle-dependent tricks to a tricks that only depend on pressing the button at the correct frame. A2D will be a more integral part of the run when it eventually gets incorporated into other movement/trick options. I believe this would make quick turns much easier as well as insta-sideflips and speedkicks that are fully optimized.

I believe this is a significant change to Mario, since Mario speedrunning began A2D hasn’t been popularly used by players, and I believe it’s not that it’s a new topic, but runners in the back of their mind decided not to do it because it would make it not competitively fair as opponents would then have to get the same tools and it would significantly change the speedrun.

Disadvantages Difficult to verify that A2D was used. -- I don’t think this is a huge problem. A2D can’t be used in blatantly obvious places. Runs already have frame-walking. -- I don’t think the fact that some current top times use the framewalking matters, I don’t think they should be invalidated. Using framewalking saves little time. The fact that framewalking has been used in a few top player’s personal bests should be not considered when deciding whether A2D should be banned. If A2D were to be banned it should be now before more runs use this A2D.

Besides these disadvantages, I don’t see advantages on why A2D should be allowed.

Additionally, if it isn’t banned, then I also don’t think there should be a filter to separate runs. I think this would only separate the leaderboard, and would make the world records feel less significant as you have to consider whether they used A2D or not and people would have differing opinions on what the ‘true wr’ is.

After further discussions with other members of the community, I'm not longer in favor of allowing remapping/framewalking. Here's a breakdown of my original post and why I've changed my mind:

Speedrunning has a history of pushing the limits of what people think is "acceptable" to complete a game more quickly. Take any average non-speedrunner and you'll find it's likely that they hold the belief that any of the tricks/glitches we use in this game are unfair and should be considered cheating. I think these button remaps are the next step in a series of optimizations that speedrunners take to achieve their goal of completing the game as quickly as possible.

The first part of this paragraph is true, and the second part will be true if the remapping is ultimately allowed. However, the series of optimizations that speedrunners should take to beat the game quickly should involve themselves entirely inside the game. It's unfair to have a gameplay advantage stem from modified external hardware.

The trick itself is not toxic. It doesn't kill runs for stupid reasons, it hasn't blown the game wide open, and I wouldn't say it gatekeeps anyone from the game (emulator players have already had access to this sort of re-mapping, and the time save only matters at very high levels). There's an argument that this re-mapping is a can of worms that allows more re-mappings to occur for specific angles in the game. Some examples I've heard are the wallkick in Secret of the Haunted Books SS, and the single-jump wallkick in Shoot to the Wild Blue. I don't believe re-mapping buttons to the angles needed on these stars will cause any major advantages/timesaves. Both of them (and some other ones I've tried to think of) still require precise movement during or around the analog angle in question.

These two paragraphs aim to say that it's just one little trick and it won't cause much harm. It's true that remapping is currently only being used for one trick. I also still believe that there aren't a ton (if any) other timesaves that will stem from allowing remapping. However, a single small timesave being affected by external hardware isn't a reason to allow it. We can still use our best judgment at the smallest level of the game to ensure a fair and fun speedrun. This is especially true for the moderators of this community, who have devoted a huge amount of their personal time to fostering this community and its rules.

Additionally, Cheese's point in the video doesn't sit with me very well. He states that he feels bad because he has spent so much time on JRB cannonless and doesn't want it to go to waste. To me, that's just part of speedrunning at a high level. I guarantee there are several runners who have spent countless hours practicing/optimizing old routes of SSL 100 (one of the 100-coin routes that has changed the most over the years). You spend time learning what's fastest because you want to do the fastest thing available. When something faster comes along, you move to it. That's speedrunning.

This is still a poor argument, but I don't think Cheese was necessarily using it as one. He was just stating how he feels about missing out on a cool strat that he spent time perfecting. As far as I know, Cheese is neutral on the ban, and his time spent on learning some cool movement won't affect a vote he would make.

It's up to you whether you think this trick is "more exciting" than the previous JRB cannonless strat, but ultimately I think there's nothing wrong with the trick as it's being performed today for the reasons I've stated above.

For the reasons I've broken down above, I think it's best if this remapping is banned.

A few more points that I've heard involve worries about accessibility within the community (which is super important to me), as well as other potentially valid remapping situations. Considering those, I'm proposing the following rules change: Re-mapping is allowed in SM64, with the following restrictions:

• The re-mapping scheme at the beginning of the run must remain for the entirety of the run. That is, a runner using a controller that maps buttons to analog inputs (e.g. Boxx) must use a controller with that re-mapping scheme for the duration of the run.
  • Swapping controllers to ones with the same re-mapping scheme (for example, swapping from OEM N64 to Hori Mini Pad) is acceptable.
• There cannot be two inputs mapped to the same output. For example, you cannot have two buttons that send the ‘A’ button to the console, nor can you have both an analog stick and a button that sends an analog direction.

I still find myself seeing some difficulty in justifying dpad-style inputs over arbitrary a2d inputs, as both are equally unintended ways of sending inputs to the game. You could maybe say it has a traditional aspect, similar to how the SMM2 Super Expert speedrun only has 6 levels (like the first one) rather than a full screen, and it would feel reasonable, but it still has that slight notion of feeling too arbitrary for the main board to me to allow e.g. (100,0) but not (20,14)

I agree that my initial suggestion, a filterable variable, would run the risk of separating the board. Maybe this could be mitigated by hiding runs with the variable by default (which would now be my strong preference over showing them by default), but some risk of some separation would still remain, and the runnerbase might potentially even become toxic about never getting over this discussion (idk, maybe?). As a result, I am no longer really in favour of even a hidden-by-default filter.

minikori suggested another possible rule for this that would effectively keep a2d off the top of the board - one where you could only either use analog or digital inputs for the joystick. I approve of this as it would improve accessibility (to run the game at all) for the Emulator subcategory, and I don't see it being competitive and thus problematic for full-game. For singlestars, however, you might still have to filter or ban a2d

To me, it has a big impact that SM64 was never intended to receive joystick inputs from a dpad. In contrast, most romhacks are designed for emulators, where it has always been quite normal to at least have access to a2d. As a result, romhacks allow a2d inputs for framewalks like in Star Road's course 8, while the main game has a good reason not to

A few inputs from an anonymous WR holder in the romhack community:

• It's only 5 seconds. It doesn't buy you a WR or a good placement to purchase an extra controller so it's not really that worth to go for. Way more effective would be to get better at the game to save more than 5 seconds through skill

• If the community wanted to ban a glitch that saves time, they'd be banning BLJs

• If the community wanted to restrict the pool of input devices, they'd be banning the Hori controller

• We already have a clear distinction between what type of inputs are valid and what are not. Anything that is a prerecorded sequence of more than 1 input is not allowed. Anything that is just 1 input if you make 1 physical input is currently allowed

• Framewalking is possible either way, so it's really just QoL

• This discussion is stupid

I am against banning a2d mapping for a few reasons.

1 - Framewalking is fun, it’s a simple reason and while not the strongest argument, it is a valid point I think. Framewalking makes JRB a lot more enjoyable to go through because I think the gameplay is more fun and interesting than the cannon, but it also gives the star more consistency. (cannons drool)

2 - It's not giving people a significant advantage.

(general usage) a2d mapping for general usage as of right now is pretty bad. There are a lot of people who are throwing out extreme hypothetical abuses for it, but I think it’s jumping the gun to ban something on a hypothetical, I want to see proof of concept first. I have tried to apply it in multiple areas myself where I thought it might be good, but it turns out it’s just impractical to hop between the analog and the d-pad (which is where I mapped a2d) for the physical reasons of moving your thumb off one and on the other, it doesn’t flow well. Its clunky and the inconsistency of physically moving your thumb between them is throwing off any setups I had in mind.

(framewalking) With that out of the way a2d mappings advantage as of right now is framewalking, it makes it stupidly easy to do. I didn’t even need to practice it, it just works. Yes this is an advantage over someone whos just using an OEM controller. However it only saves 5 seconds and that’s if you get lucky with the speed boost, realistically more like 3 seconds. This kind of timesave is chump change in 120 star, even at a top level. This will not affect anyone’s ability to compete and banning a2d will only lower accessibility to the game if anyone wants to play on alternative control styles for whatever reason.

3 - I strongly dislike banning insignificant things. I’m a believer in seeing things in shades of gray, I dont think this issue should be handled in a black and white perspective. As of right now the advantage of a2d is very small, the shade of gray is not very dark at all. I do not want to see the rules changed for something so small, I think the less rules the better, as long as its still a fair playing ground and not stupid. I think rules should be minimalistic with as few lines as they can afford to. If a future comes where a2d gives more advantage than it does now, then thats the time we should be talking about banning it, I do think the conversation about it is healthy, but banning it now would be jumping the gun in my opinion. I personally doubt the time where a2d will be a significant advantage will ever come, so I am against the banning of a2d for now.

Should we ban framewalking as a whole? No. I can personally framewalk relatively well both with a hori and an original N64 controller, and if I wasn't done with this game, I would probably practice it more and get consistent. On the other hand, the use of adapters, I will leave others to decide. It's not like ESS adapters in OOT where it grants a MASSIVE advantage, here it only saves what, 12 seconds over using the cannon? And not a huge amount over cannonless (but cannonless is very difficult, to be fair). In terms of using adapters, I'm staying on the fence for now. But if someone pulls it off in runs with a controller (possibly by switching to a hori like some do for Bowser fights) then I think it should be allowed, and if it were to be banned. Only mapping analong to digital input should be banned. Since most of the time, mods should be able to tell the difference between framewalking using an adapter an framewalking with an analog stick.

Let's pinpoint the issue:

Should the Mario 64 speedrun community allow an external source, which is altering the way the game plays, in their N64-console speedruns?

What if this exact same thing was done with a GameShark? Would that be allowed? If not, why not?

My opinion and a counter to the the point that the use of an adapter is currently relatively minor is that if we blur the lines now then it becomes harder to clear them up later. What if just one more trick is found and requires the same adapter. Do you allow it or ban it? Do you split the categories, retroactively grandfathering historic world records?

I say be long sighted with this and draw a line in the sand now before it becomes harder much later on.

@Anthopants A gameshark modifies the game's software itself, this remapping only modifies where the game receives its inputs from.

A valid and popular stance is that that shouldn't be modified either, but currently the line seems to be drawn between causing just one versus several inputs with one physical action. It is definitely more authentic than gameshark as you are running the unmodified game, something that even TAS also prides itself of.

I heard that we shouldn't jump the gun on banning this modification. But allowing it doesn't really feel less like jumping the gun to me. Unfortunately, this discussion is only happening after many top runners have already taken initiative and run 120 star with the modification so now we're here for the cleanup. I see banning the remapping (and of course allowing the trick on controller, see above for verifyability ideas) as the conservative option here as the remapping is new and atypical enough to warrant the option of a ban, and I see allowing it as the novelty that could even be in the position of jumping the gun - and this gun has already been jumped before @simply made his Video

One person said they don't feel comfortable quickturning with the dpad as it is unfamiliar extra movement of the thumb. That would probably get better with practice. A question I have though, if you can remap to the dpad of the original n64 controller, why do you want to use a boxx or a gamecube controller at all?

@IwerSonsch I agree with you, my GameShark example doesn't really work. My mistake.

If we're talking about one button press being remapped to another button press; that's fine. In the case of remapping the analog stick to a single button press, that is a different story. The analog stick is not a button. It does not function like a button. Let's say Mario can move at 3 different speeds when you hold up, if you convert this to a button then Mario can now move at 1 speed. If we convert the 3 speeds to 3 buttons then you would be making 3 buttons 1 button.

My example once again, doesn't really work because an analog stick is not a button. The problem is usually from the direction of turning one button press and mapping it to 2 buttons to give an advantage. This is more the opposite, this is more like a macro, taking multiple buttons and converting it into one.

I think one button for one button is fine. Multiple buttons to one button is not okay. One button to multiple buttons is not okay. Converting analog to digital is not okay (since, to make it easier to understand, it's basically multiple buttons to one button.)

In my mind there are only two questions:

1. Should an outside source be allowed to change the way the game plays (in this context)
2. Should analog to digital be allowed (converting a range of movement to a single button, basically a macro)

By one input for one input, I don't mean how many possibilities for inputs are being represented by one button. I mean how many inputs are being executed with one button press. If that is one input (e.g. 100,0 on the joystick), and some inputs just can't be executed anymore, then that's currently allowed because it is one input being caused by one input.

Even if you went in the opposite direction and remapped both the L and the A button to cause an A press, each of those buttons would still cause 1 A press, meaning it's still 1 input for 1 input and that remapping would not be a macro. If we allow a2d with the result of two possible ways to input forward on the joystick, a second A button would be a natural thing to allow as well. If you don't want that, probably restrict the a2d remapping in a significant way, e.g. like @minikori suggested