Isn’t one of the reasons it’s argued that it could be a cosmic ray that in millions of automated run-throughs, they haven’t been able to reproduce it? That is: Something extremely unlikely, and quite possibly non-deterministic (i.e not a software bug) clearly happened.
Also, I believe they pinpointed that there was exactly one bit-flip. I’m not disagreeing that a bit flip caused by a cosmic ray is astronomically unlikely, but it’s not unprecedented either. It does happen, though rarely, and I have yet to see a more convincing explanation for what we saw in that speed run.
It could be cosmic ray. The fact is we don’t know. It’s just speaking in terms of probability, it’s a lot more likely that this is an N64 bug.
It’s not like we don’t know what a hardware exploit can do on the N64. For example, you can skip an area in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time by pulling part of the cartridge out while the game is running.
Tool-assisted Speedruns (TASes, the automated run you mentioned) are mostly run on emulators. If this an N64 hardware bug, it may even be specific to that speedrunner’s N64. That’s why a TASer actually bought the N64 from this speedrunner to study it lol
I think there is more evidence pointing to it being the runner’s cartridge or N64 having a hardware fault that caused it to happen. If I’m remembering correctly the runner said they had to frequently reset their runs because their game would crash for no specific reason, and they would reinsert or adjust the cartridge to get it working again.
The chance of it being caused by cosmic ray is astronomically small. It’s way more likely that this was caused by some unknown N64 hardware glitch
Isn’t one of the reasons it’s argued that it could be a cosmic ray that in millions of automated run-throughs, they haven’t been able to reproduce it? That is: Something extremely unlikely, and quite possibly non-deterministic (i.e not a software bug) clearly happened.
Also, I believe they pinpointed that there was exactly one bit-flip. I’m not disagreeing that a bit flip caused by a cosmic ray is astronomically unlikely, but it’s not unprecedented either. It does happen, though rarely, and I have yet to see a more convincing explanation for what we saw in that speed run.
It could be cosmic ray. The fact is we don’t know. It’s just speaking in terms of probability, it’s a lot more likely that this is an N64 bug.
It’s not like we don’t know what a hardware exploit can do on the N64. For example, you can skip an area in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time by pulling part of the cartridge out while the game is running.
Tool-assisted Speedruns (TASes, the automated run you mentioned) are mostly run on emulators. If this an N64 hardware bug, it may even be specific to that speedrunner’s N64. That’s why a TASer actually bought the N64 from this speedrunner to study it lol
I think there is more evidence pointing to it being the runner’s cartridge or N64 having a hardware fault that caused it to happen. If I’m remembering correctly the runner said they had to frequently reset their runs because their game would crash for no specific reason, and they would reinsert or adjust the cartridge to get it working again.