Mario, but with Vim controls. Is it playable?
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- čas přidán 27. 06. 2024
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No video game is more iconic than Super Mario Bros.
No text editor is more iconic than Vim.
In today's platform-packed episode of Veronica Explains, I try my hand¹ at playing Super Mario Bros, but using Vim controls - everyone's favorite² terminal text editor - instead of a controller. I'll also talk briefly about the history of Vim and Vi, and show you how to configure the FCEUX emulator to use whatever keys you fancy.
Oh, and before I forget! "Mario" and "Super Mario Bros" are registered trademarks of Nintendo of America.
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¹ pun intended
² citation needed
0:00 Dreaming and scheming about getting better at Vim
0:24 What is Vim, and why are the arrows like that?
2:15 Why would I want to get better at Vim navigation?
3:21 Setting up Mario on Vim mode
5:55 Actually playing Mario with Vim navigation
19:19 What do I think of Mario with Vim controls?
20:36 Ask Veronica- what's the difference between virtualization and emulation?
#linux #mario #nintendo - Věda a technologie
![Evolution of Nintendo [1889-2022]](/img/n.gif)
I love it that you just used Super Mario to lure people into the world of Vim! I use Emacs but largely with evil-mode because I nearly destroyed my hands using the standard Emacs key-bindings on a model-m keyboard. Modal editing can do wonders for your RSI.
We gotta do what we gotta do to make Vim exciting!
man, ctrl-f (right) ctrl-b (left) ctrl-p (up) ctrl-n (down) -- I'm also an emacs user and i find the exercise daunting, but will have to try it ... don't think i'll be able to beat it, though
@@MrJerkbones My left hand cramps spontaneously when I see the keychord ctrl-f
I was genuinely screaming at all the expert dodging and the unfortunate falls! Loved this idea so much, and I think Zelda would be another fun game to play since your movement will be completely different from a 2d side-scroller, gotta work out all different kinds of Vim movements!
vim adventures is one of the ways i got newbies to learn
Veronica: certified gamer
certified vim user
Great video Veronica!!! I gotta say I am on the same boat: I love Vim, but I never got around the "proper" movement keys.
I'll give your methods a try!
PS: For anyone else wondering, there's also "Vim Adventures" a short game with vim controls; however it's not nearly as fun as SMB
A lovely video, yet again. Keep up the good work :)
Love how used Vim for controls, and Vim is just the best editor for me on Linux.
Nice video Veronica.
It brings back memories when I played on the keyboard of my ZX Spectrum (no other choice at the time) with the "Q W E R T" keys. The principle was the same and we had a great time. Thank you for these retro memories...
In the 1980s I played a bunch of Hack and Hunt which made using hjkl second nature. I still play Angband occasionally using hjkl and use vim daily!
I had way more fun than I care to admit watching this video! 🙂 Thanks, Veronica!
Awesome video! This looks like a fun challenge, I’ll have to try it out!
Love the content, bought a "Track-ball person" hoodie for a co-worker because that's awesome. Please keep it up!
Beating Mario in VIM mode...BEST EDUTAINMENT EVER! lol awesome presentation.
Another excellent video. That was a fun watch. Thank you.
Well that was another awesome video. Keep it up!
AmigaForever at 4:10 thank you for your lovely Easter eggs.
This is very funny, because just today i was trying Super Bomberman 3 with vim controls, but i used a two hand setup. It felt actually very natural, but a little weird. Very nice video :)
This was a lot of fun and I'd love to see more stuff like this. I think I'll give it a try too :)
It was fun watching you get more engrossed in the game as time went on. My favourite games are turn based roguelikes such as Brogue and the zombie survival classic Cataclysm - Dark Days Ahead. I think you can get used to most keyboard commands with a few hours of practice. The thing with turn based games is there is no hurry and you can take time to decide to do what you want to do.
Hi Veronica, I am a new subscriber and just happen to be a novice Linux user learning Vim and also a gamer. This has to be one of the best ways to learn Vim's control scheme. There are so many games like this to rebind the keys in and I would have never thought of doing this myself.
It did help, I've done a few other games in a similar way as a test and it does help retrain my muscle memory.
Holy moly!
At every jump over a pit I was on edge :D
Well done! :)
I have officially declared this video as the one I watch with my nachos
Awesome!!! :) this must be some sort of new record =)
Entertaining video Veronica. I use VIM but on my Mac and there is even a VI type editor that come with Watcom C that I have used for FreeDOS development. On a side note, back at a previous job we had a trainer come in to teach a Solaris class, we used VI to edit files. But a friend of mine, who took the class, didn't want to mess with VI so he copied the text and pasted it in to notepad to edit and then pasted it back into VI.
Wow, I’m actually really impressed at those plays.
Nice playthrough, though I'd suggest moving your hand one key to the right, so the index finger is pressing J. That eliminates extensive usage of a pinky and lets other, stronger fingers do the hard work. Also it's closer to the classic arrow keys (index finger for left, middle for up, ring for right), and also your hand would stay in home position, which is jkl; for qwerty, so it's easier to return to movement keys after some typing. Happy vim-ing!
surprised nobody else commented on this! this is what really helped me get used to hjkl, wish this was more common advice in general.
I was going to comment to give the same advice; I'm glad I found yours because you worded it better than I would. I must add that I failed to master the hjkl keys for years until I got into touch typing. Once I learned that my right hand should rest on the jkl; keys, I immediately understood why I was struggling with the vim motion keys. Definitely using the index finger for both 'h' and 'j', and using the middle and ring fingers for 'k' and 'l', feels way more comfortable!
Very nice. I've not even beat SMB without using either an actual NES console and controller, a NES controller with USB adapter, or a USB NES-style controller. When I do something like MAME, USB arcade controller panel, or Atari 2600 a 2600-style joystick. As someone who has dabbled in programming and long loved video games (and coincidentally [jk algorithmically but still serendipitously nonetheless) I found your channel. Now I want to go right to vim and fire up SMB myself haha.
I caught your video on Commodore 64 connecting to the BBS that I really enjoyed seeing it come alive again. While I did not have that model growing up, I did have a Tandy Color Computer (CoCo), also branded as Radio Shack's Color TRS-80, which ran on Microsoft Color BASIC by default. Unfortunately, while I no longer have that computer which was a lot of fun, I have used emulation in recent years and now I want to try to get the CoCo emulator to connect to a BBS. BBS > 2023 internet! 😁
Veronica's like a cool tech godmother I never knew I needed.
Surely, the only vimcam in cyberspace. Of all the cams to be found online, this is my fave
Wonderful video! A few years ago I challenged myself to work on the hjkl controls. It took some time, but feel pretty comfortable with it. I have made the mistake using Vim controls in Windoze Notepad. I guess it's like dreaming in a foreign language.
WHAAAAT! Never thought about this. As a vi user since my old Dec Alpha days, this is probably the coolest thing I've seen using vi controls :D. Great video
Great Mario Video Veronica 🙂
You and I are probably about the same age; I grew up on Super Mario Bros. I've seen many attempts to beat it in interesting ways, but never with Vim controls. Nice job!
"Minnesota Mom sounds" had me cracking up. I've seen some people recommend Nethack for learning vi/vim movement keys, but my first and favorite Rogue-like was Epyx's Rogue port for DOS so I got used to numpad movement. Anywho (I need to get my "anywho" fix in), it would be fun to see you do turn based game like Dragon Warrior, or Final Fantasy. Or maybe a hybrid adventure game/shooter like The Guardian Legend.
Nethack does really teach some great Vim practices. Not just cursor control, but also concepts like count and motions. Also, glad to see you're not sleeping on Guardian Legend. What a cool, kinda spooky game.
Action Retro brought me here and I wasn't disappointed. Thanks for your Content
Yay! Thank you for watching! He's great and I've enjoyed his videos for some time now! :)
excelent video!!! really liked the format including the highlights at the end! I would like to listen to your music instead of mario's, that would be great!
thanks for the excelent videos!
This was such a fun video! Would be super fun to see how a vim/vim-esque control scheme would translate to modern games lol
nethack has vi keys
You should start with your index finger on the J key . This is the proper 'home row' position and before you build too much muscle memory you need to correct that. Moving left then becomes a left dart with your index finger. I love the idea of the training using the game but the hand position was freaking me a bit as a Vi/Vim user for decades.
I love your content so please don't take this as a criticism, just a word of advice from and old guy who's been there. :)
I was here to write the exact same comment. Thanks!
Super Mario Bros. was the first game I ever speed run. Long before I even knew speedrunning was a thing. Super Mario Bros. is always something that gives me a special nostalgic feeling. This is an awesome way to teach yourself how to be more efficient, I'm going to have to try this myself.
I saw another website taking about getting better about vim and one of the things they brought up is that h and l shouldn't be a concern long-term as the more you improve on vim, the need to move left and right via those keys should be lessened significantly.
Nice gameplay Veronica 😁✌️
Every word of this video carries immense importance.
Very nice video!
That was awesome… When I learned HJKL, I was told that J is to jump down a line, and K was for klimb [sp] up a line, with the H and L just to the left and right.
Hello Veronica. First of all congratulations for your channel. I really love watching these videos, maybe because my first printer was a dot matrix one. Not only for this reason, I'm sure.
Now, you use a model M. Do you miss the Super key? Do you have a work around?
Thank you. All the best.
Sérgio from Portugal.
Hello, I just discovered your channel and I love the content, greetings from Mexico City :)
Hello! Thank you for watching! :)
@@VeronicaExplains :)
Peak Veronica Edutainment! Please do DK next!
Brilliant!!! DK would be fantastic- one of my favorites and a great use of hjkl!
The NES got beaten too xD !
I love your channel by the way soooo much
Those runs made me so stressed tho xD !
This is actually a brilliant idea, I want to go do this but with Balloon Fight on the NES
Is Veronica a Cobol dev? That's more impressive, for sure :O I won't image a person like Veronica as a Cobol Dev, that's impressive. Veronica rules!
VIM users: I'm trying to learn the original keybindings in mario.
Emacs users: I'm playing within emacs flight simulator while emulating windows 10 through lisp.
What a fun video!
13:09 i legit thought she was gonna get flagpole glitch with vim controls for a second there
Well done!
Thank You ! , I am glad that i am following you🥰
this is so cool!
This is fabulous! At first I thought it was sort of VIM macro hack that plays Mario with ASCII graphics or something...lol...Just like the macros included with the VIM distro (Towers of Hanoi, Life, etc). This video is way cooler than that :). I've been using VI (and clones) since the Earth cooled, so I'd right at home playing Mario with VIM keys -- Imagine trying with Emacs keys?...lol. Oddly enough, whenever I do my own custom key mappings in games, I would always use the (now common "WASD" keys).
What did you use to download the ROM from the original cartridge? I have a ton of NES games, but I'm not sure my console is still viable.
today I learned that the very first time I beat Resident Evil 4 on a gamecube emulator, I did it with VIM controls (just bound the home row keys to the various buttons and thumbstick directions)
Love your videos especially as a fellow Linux user.
22:22 Is this a remake of the classic After Dark flying toasters screensaver? I can still remember when I first saw it on a Win 3.1 system in the early 90s.
Super Mario Bros. is one of my favorite classic Nintendo games!
I found the DUCK HUNT cropping amusing.
Hey, Mario now got a new quest: become a test subject for Aperture Science! Play mari0 then. In case you don't know it... it's Mario with portals and some typical Aperture puzzles - lots of fun!
Neat idea!
Idea for the next game: You should consider a top down game, like zelda. Navigating a character in a 2d top down perspective could be an interesting analog for the cursor in vim.
Another idea:
I won't be surprised if there are some games written in vimscript using the HJKL scheme for movement, checking them out could be an interesting video.
another intresting top down game would be pokemon
This was legit a nail biter. Also super eerie seeing Mario without the music.
As a daily vim user, who is also a dvorak user, I sometimes forget that hjkl is meant to be right hand home row navigation
Amazing Veronica🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩
That T-shirt! Yum! 😍😍😍
Absolutely loved this experiment! Would you like to try Sonic 3 with Vim controls?
Your reactions are really the reactions of anyone trying vim. If you substitute "Mario" for "typing", "physics" for "computer" and "music" for "mouse" this is really funny. "I'm usually quite good at typing... it's just weird without the mouse... it just feels wrong... I'm not setting any speed records today... this is normally how I type... ooohh not that fast I'm having regrets... it's definitely harder, it's strange... up, up, delete, there we go, I'm pretty fast at deleting usually, there we go, pheew done it... I'm getting better with the spacebar... nooooo!!! this is gonna cost me!!! ok 3 more lines, I'm gonna do it, oooohhhh... this is so weird... it's like the whole computer went weird... can I exit vim? can I do it??... NOOOOO!!! I have to be super careful to save this, I'm gonna need it!! Godamn... there we go... I don't like typing in vim, typing in vim is very strange... ok, come on come on, can I exit? I just exited vim!!!" 😂 "now you might be wondering, why would anyone actually wanna type in vim?" 😂
This was fun! I'll admit, when you asked what game you should play next one that came to mind was Silver Surfer 😅 but I wouldn't wish that on anyone even with the normal NES controller. Maybe the original Legend of Zelda would be a better choice. 😃
Celeste in Vim sounds like fun to try more complex keybinds (and you don't have to cut the music to show off)
Swimming in vim is very strange くコ:彡
Looking back, the way I learned vim controls was with rogue-like games such as nethack
You are insane. I love it.
Fighting games, especially those with combos, sounds next to impossible in vim keybindings... :o
I've been a vi user so long ('89? earlier?) that I had no conscious memory of what these keys do. I had to pop up vim and move around while watching my hand to see which keys I was hitting. I found that instead of 'l', I'll often just use the space bar to move forward a character.
Buying T-shirts for the coworkers. Thanks for the great content.
Since we normally type with hands resting on the home row and index fingers on F and j, I don't have my 4 fingers on my right hand on hjkl to move around but you do. Do you normally do this or press h and j with index?
It make me think to Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy. A good way to become ambidextrous when using the non-dominant hand.
Like others have said. This was good fun!
I got pretty comfortable with hjkl from playing roguelikes on a laptop keyboard, particularly Caves of Qud and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
Yeah, nethack comes to mind too. I guess the concept is now officially so old it's new.
12:30 40th anniversary version needs random purple Minnesotas flying at you (RPM's?). Also, TIL the term "warp pipes".
Next video; trying to beat (exit) Vim with Mario controls ;p
This was awesome, albeit stressful to watch haha.
Despite saying that you’re not a speed runner, it’s entirely possible that you hold the world record for a full playthrough of SMB using VIM controls!
One can only hope! :)
Haha I already use vim controls for Supertux :P
People from Minnesota have such good diction.
That was genuinely fun watching you have fun!
ʘ‿ʘ
Indeed the Vi movement keys are on the home row, but they are one step left from the home position. I touch type, and refuse to move my hand to an unnatural position. In addition to that, *ed* is the standard editor!
I've got QMK firmware on my keyboard, and you'd better believe I've got a layer with the arrows mapped to hjkl to use vi navigation for everything.
veronica this was sweet video 😂
Really fun idea. Wonder if you can replace wasd with hjkl in other games and they'd still be as fun or stressful as Mario
A lot of my IT friends switched to vim, because keeping your hand on hjkl hurt their hands less than constantly switching to arrow keys. :) Also You can get shorter keyboards wihich support that kind of positioning and allow for easier mouse grabbing when You do need it. I've found using hjkl very awkward on large keyboards with keypads :)
If your friends want everything at their disposal from homerow, wait til they discover the wonder of the IBM TrackPoint.
I played the NES on the computer in the late 90s at school back when emulation was just starting out. I would use the keyboard to play Super Mario Bros but never in VIM mode.
Time to try Mario with the right hand and Zelda with the left at the same time.
20:40 KVM / xHYVE are both virtualizations; in which can benefit from running the emulator qemu...
that was fun
Regular people: "How do I exit VIM?"
VIM users: "Can I use VIM keybindings to play videogames 🤔"
Edit: Next let's do Doom with VIM controls. just to confuse the Doom Emacs people into clicking the video lol
As a southpaw (lefty) I use the cursor keys for movement in most games. The problem is that most of the other keys are clustered around to wasd keys and there are less keys around the cursor key. I may look into changing things to use the vim keys
Lefty squad!
i will probably never learn vim.. i don't think i'll benefit that much from it but i liked this video :)
i actually used a similar controlmethod for the first descent game.. everyone else strafed with z and x and had forward and backward in all sorts of places.. (this was before wasd was common) but i got a tip from a friend and started using z for left x for back c for forward and v for right.. like hjkl but in a different place..
i think i need to learn angband in rogue keyset.. .. have a nice day.
i never really learned how to type the "proper way" by keeping your hands at the home row so i continue to use the arrow keys. but something i never understood is, if the right hand's home row is "jkl;", why hjkl?
I've been playing this game since I was in diapers and I'm only now discovering where some of these hidden 1ups are lmao