The Mystery of the Mole Playing Rough
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- Опубліковано 27 лип 2018
- Why does this mole exist?
日本語： / 1023630883608178688
EarthBound, the 1995 Super Nintendo RPG, has a strange Mole Playing Rough who always appears in the Dusty Dunes Desert. In investigating why this mole always spawns here, we'll cover the Shattered Man death glitch, speedrunning strategies like stutterstepping and Moonside text skip, the control codes that make the SNES game work, and a debug menu programmed for Mother 2's development.
Thanks to ngBurns for creating the spawn graphics; all of them made so far are at imgur.com/a/pROTDiv . The discovery of the Moonside text skip was by sdfg, and discussion and theories about the sunstroke discovery were by TutelarFiber7, ceriam, and many people in the EB Speedrunning community.
If you're interested in these technical details of EarthBound, you may like the online EarthBound Randomizer: earthbound.app .
You can follow me on Twitter / stochaztic , where I post updates to the randomizer, as well as any new discoveries about EarthBound I find. Chat about the randomizer happens at the EB Speedrunning Discord: / discord . - Ігри
Well, that leaves us with the question: why did they make it so the game over screen never appears when the flag is on? It looks to me like there's more that can be researched on the effects and causes... :)
Great video, by the way!
DaVince21 while definitely not confirmed, the general consensus right now is the game treats "unconsciousness" as a status ailment, and doesn't know how to respond when OSS is on and all the kids have this game ending status ailment.
I do have another theory on why this is the case. After a scripted battle, the "battle subsystem" gives the "script subsystem" back a code stating whether the player won or lost the battle, so the script can branch down two different paths depending on the outcome. While this isn't used in the actual game for anything like this, preventing the normal Game Over effect would have allowed for a non-game-over event to occur if you died; for instance, if you lost to the fight outside of the Happy Happy shack, they could have made it so you wake up outside alone with 1 HP, and Paula is locked back in the cabin.
In the actual game, OSS is actually on during this battle; but the script afterwards either makes Pokey do his movement and turns OSS off if you win, or just turns OSS off if you lose to make normal game-over happen. But the potential exists in the code.
I have no real evidence but maybe because OSS is on, Death is counted as a status effect? The game (I assume) checks for the death status of all characters to load the game over effect. Because OSS is off, the game just assumes your party members are dead (with all the properties of being dead, such as no PSI) While also assuming that the party members who entered the fight alive have not changed their condition
My best guess is that it thinks being knocked out is a status condition, because your party members are shown as ghosts on the overworld if they've been knocked out. That'd explain why your whole party is shown as ghosts during the glitch.
well, if you use the debug menu to make everyone in your party unconscious, or remove everyone from your party, a glitchy game over occurs. it seems that with everyone in the party unconscious after a battle, the screen remains black so the textures can be loaded properly for the game over, and OSS prevents the game from allowing statuses to do anything, resulting in a black screen until a new room is loaded.
This man really made a great Earthbound video and said "alright imma head out" and never made anything else.
We need to revive him
He's too busy making stuff for Stephen George. He shows up on Stephen Plays a lot
And plus, he's been working on his project, the EarthBound Randomizer (which I believe started the same year this video released), which had it's 50th update this month, so he's still on the internet, just not on UA-cam at the moment.
Chad Grindset
@@GSoulNight Gigachaz
The 3 moles are actually the same Mole Playing Rough and he's been chasing you the entire time.
Amazing plot twist
He's fucking mad. He got pissed you kept beating him and he's there to kill you every single time, whether it be directly or indirectly.
Mole: B*tch I don't care if you can beat me to a pulp I have a trump card... THE OSS FLAG!
Ness: NUUUUUUUUUUUU
Mole: I have a specific set of skills. Skills I've aquired over a very long career. Of being a 100% enemy. If you don't bump into me again until Deep Darkness, that will be the end of it. But if you don't, I will find you. And I will probably not kill you.
it's a revenge story
This implies that killing moles will give you sunstroke, and that's exactly how it happens in real life.
Wh
It's funny how nature do that
Lol
:V
👁👄👁
"...if they lost to the third strongest mole."
Which one?
Hostius Hostilius the third strongest, obviously. Which other one?
The one that is stronger than the 4th strongest mole,and weaker than the 2nd strongest mole.
The one that’s roughly in the middle
(Screams in confusion)
The one you fight after the strongest mole, the second strongest mole, the fourth-strongest mole, and the fifth strongest mole. He is truly the third strongest mole.
They're the other 3rd strongest moles.
Ryan Hernandez no they’re the second and first
Well, the Mondo Mole is probably the 2nd strongest mole and the moles from the gold mine are actually the number 1 moles.
the mole is an egg
Ryan Hernandez they are the strongest moles in the game
4th strongest mole
The true Third Strongest Mole.
No, it is the strongest mole
THINK ABOUT IT.
The No. 3 Moles are all tied as the strongest moles. The Sanctuary Guardian in Happy Happy Village is the second strongest, therefore, THIS IS THE THIRD STRONGEST MOLE.
Or seventh, if we’re counting all five of the No. 3 moles. >_>
Wow. I assumed the moles existed just to be a quirky funny Earthbound thing. I love that they actually serve an under the hood purpose!
I have played through a few times and they never stood out to me haha
they add mobs for the lols, like the depressed yellow man or rocklobster in mother3
@@Kevinilos He is named Negative Man
Yeah. Thought it was just a cute little mole, but the magic mole lets you have sunstroke. YaAAaaaaAaaaaAAAAAy!!! Sunstroke! It’s fascinating.
@@Kevinilos There's no enemy called The Depressed Yellow Man.
I love how game devs sometimes fix issues with games like this.
"there is a glitch with the game over, we need to go through the whole code to fix it.
Or we just place a mole there ." XD
No I think it was more like
"I want them to be able to explore in the desert before this point without getting sunstroke."
"Well, let's use the OSS flag."
"Ok, but we need them to be able to fight the other enemies."
"Hmm...a textbox would be weird. What about a battle?"
This is one of my favorite games and I never even thought twice about this mole. Great video!
yooo whang
Hi Whang!
Based Whang
I've wondered about it. Just never thought I'd ever get an answer.
Holy shit! It's Whang!
This theory is further proven by the deep darkness being right next to that one Mole Playing Rough.
If I had to guess, sunstroke probably occurred on the beach at some point, and was cut.
Introbulus That would make sense. Have you seen what happens when you get a status ailment like sunstroke or a cold and get that "health is critical" text box while you're on a flight of stairs, much like the stairs in Summers? It glitches to the point where you can walk off the map.
Havent played in a while sorry, what event occurs in Deep Darkness that is related to this?
If you watch the video through, you'll notice that they mention taking damage in the Deep Darkness - that would be what I'm referring to. Adding a Mole Playing Rough there guarantees that there'll be an enemy encounter to re-trigger proper map-side effects.
Ah yes I was distracted when watching that section of the video. Thanks/
A little fun fact that I discovered way back in the day: At the beginning of Deep Darkness, there's a very tiny spot near some plants where you'll play the sweating animation if you stand there, but I have never been able to get sunstroke from it before. I get the impression that maybe it's a remnant of an earlier version of that area?
"everything else in the desert is 10%"
*Literally the next spawn point is a 90% magic butterfly*
Now I Can Cheat My Way To Level 60 Before Fighting The Mani Mani Statue.
@@datpoyo4900 Stop Typing Like This It's Obnoxious
@@knox1392 it's been 2 months,and i trying to stop typing like that
@First Name Done
@@datpoyo4900 Dat poyo i like you
FUN FACT: When walking horizontally, there is a programming error in the game that causes it to use spawns from a column of spawn plates that is shifted one row too high.
This allows you to instantly despawn the mole spawned by the 100% plate in dusty dune.
Instead of going around the top of the drugstore, walk left down the road until you're past the "drugs" sign, make sure you're on the close to the top edge of the road, then walk past the sign and up. The mole will often get spawned in too early and instantly get despawned due to being too far off-screen.
Honestly, this is an amazingly detailed and comprehensive video. Feels very natural too. Like someone who's been doing this kind of content for years. Fantastic job.
People eat up interesting little facts like this, so keep it up!
Ayyy I love your content and I didn’t expect to see you here!
*_DID YOU DO THE SUPERGUARD_*
@@dislikeablemelon9991 False, UA-cam is dumb and downvotes do nothing.
Can confirm, I use RPG maker all the time and so this bit was very interesting!
Holy shit, Fatguy, you're still alive
Wow, I've always wondered why that specific mole was there, but never would have guessed that game over glitch had anything to do with it! This game is like, what over 20 years old, and people are STILL making discoveries about it? That's amazing!
This was really informative, thank you!
wow great job man! I learned so much!
Shesez hi. :D
Heyo dude
169 likes lol
Why does this sound sarcastic?
@@thebulbamachine4789 fr 💀
I assumed at one point that the mole existed to give you extra finances in case you're lacking some. This is actually a lot deeper and even explains one of the more perplexing glitches in the game.
I'm all ears for that explanation, if you wouldn't mind
+Daniel López
You mean my assumption regarding the mole? Well, some parts in the game require money. Since the only effective way to earn money is defeating monsters, then it makes sense to keep a weak monster nearby for grinding purposes. Otherwise, if your party is not in peak performance, then challenging stronger beasts is not recommended.
@@e-mananimates2274 Interesting idea.
Why does the mole exist?
_unsightly things such as moles are common occurrences on the human skin, and should not be worried about_
Unsightly my ass....
First we have to talk about parallel universes.
Please become the Pannenkoek2012 of EarthBound.
I volunteer to be the TJ ""Henry" of Chaz
@@horesfan400 If that /is/ your real name.
I meant I should be his sort of rival.
That was the joke; in his Watch For Rolling Rocks video, Pannenkoek made an "if that really IS your real name" joke about TJ because of the suspicious quotes around "Henry".
SalThePiplup Build up exp for 12 hours
The mole’s secret?
6.022x10^23
Nice one.
This joke constantly makes me laugh.
Took me a bit to get it
NEEEEEEEERD
That was seriously a pretty good joke though, I loved it.
This crippled me.
this guy really said "imma drop a banger of an earthbound video" and just disappeared right after
Since its taking too long, there is only 1 conclusion left. It will DEFINETLY be an absolute banger!
_how to get rid of moles?_
...
*MULTI BOTTLE ROCKET*
(0_0 ) works every time.
Multi bottle rocket is better than any attack
2000 so much damage
@@Fenyx_Birb imo super bazooka is better. it has splash damage
Limitations and creative workarounds in older cart based games is something I love seeing picked apart, since it's such a fascinating topic. You did a great job breaking down the hows and whys of the surface game play, on top of the coding back end.
If you haven't seen it, then, you should look into how they got a voiced OP in _Tales of Phantasia_ . The SF/SNES actually _couldn't_ play it, so they just broke it up into dozens of tiny sound bites, and _reprogrammed the sound processor to stream audio from the ROM_ because hardware limitations are for chumps.
They then went on to make one of the only... I think it was two games that needed special hardware in the cart because they were too big for the SNES/SF to handle, because limit breaking should never be limited to fictional characters.
great video :D I always wondered about that mole. The joke with my friends was "That mole must have had one hell of a plan." since its brave enough to attack your team at that point.
*SPOILER*
The mole was also contacted by someone from the future and was on his own mission to stop Giygas when he encountered some children in the desert. Both parties attacked, and sadly for the mole his adventure ended here.
I've always wondered about this, I always assumed it was just a running gag the developers made but your theory on it sounds pretty precise.
it pains me so much this youtuber dropped a single video of this high quality and hasn't been seen since...
Wherever you are, I hope youre doing ok and doing what you love
Don't worry, he's been seen plenty!
Chaz is a good friend of StephenPlays/StephenVlog and he pops up constantly. He works with Stephen and even Chuggaaconroy on some projects, and he also created the Earthbound Randomizer!
@@OctoberDoesArt THANK YOU I didn't know any of this!! While I'd love to see more videos from him I'm much happier knowing he's still doing the things that interest him ;u;
damn this is like some pannenkoek2012 shit right here
I like it
Bitch Lasagna explanation?
They both explain stuff about the code of video games.
You can't press A only half!
Carol Taylor both go into code with extreme depth in nintendo games pre 2000’s to explain something that no one asked about in an entertaining fashion.
I think the Apple of Enlightenment is Apple Kid
I think I heard somewhere that the apple of enlightenment was an ancient machine that predicted the future, and Gigue (Gigue? Gyigue???) took it apart to make it into the devil's machine.
It’s giygue in Japan.
@@The_Autism0 Giygue was an early translation of it. Older fans like me and I presume him grew up on the EBZ version of Mother so we're more used to the older, "bad" translations. Honesty I can't see his name as anything other than Giygue at this point.
The Apple of Enlightenment is explicitely called a prophecy-telling machine in the original Japanese, according to Legends of Localization.
The mole used play rough
*Its super effective*
Ryaquaza 1 pokemon reference
Ya think
Your ★Giratina profile pic over Ryaquaza name really bugs me
Best part: (9:33) "So while we are unlikely to ever have confirmation that our mole friend exists for this reason, there is pretty solid evidence that this little guy was specifically put here to belatedly bring the joy of dying of heat in the desert to us all. Thanks, Mole Playing Rough."
* Said while giving a Multi Bottle Rocket to Jeff using the debug menu specifically to defeat the Mole Playing Rough *
Your theory sounds pretty solid. I noticed that the moles can also run away from you which means that although they weren't able to predict speed runners skipping the essential one, they perhaps didn't account for players who may possibly be overpowered at those points (although if the other moles were integrated fully this may have been picked up in playtesting.
Well, even with the moles running away from the player, it's likely that most players would run up behind it for an easy instant win, especially if they're grind-happy enough to be that over-leveled.
this is legitimately one of my favorite videos on youtube of all time
Well, who would've thought those Moles actually had a purpose? I thought the devs just forgot them or misplaced them. Great video, it was an interesting watch!
J-D Thunder me too.
I thought the mole was a glitch.
Or maybe, they used the glitch to fix the glitch.
I absolutely love the little tricks like this employed in older games
It's certainly not often that I learn something new when watching a video about Earthbound, but well done on this man! You earned another subscriber!
HOW IS THIS NOT THE NUMBER ONE COMMENT SINCE YOU ARE POPULAR WITH THE COMMUNTIY
This guy dropped a great video, then bounced. What a legend
Mr. Resetti’s little brother
Nintendo seems to have an obsession with secret moles
Like the one on paper Mario
Chaz, if you’re still
With us. Thank you and I hope you’re all right
super interesting breakdown and very well made, great video dude! an awesome 1:00am watch lol
0:57 when he said, "To answer that question" I almost thought he was going to say, "we need to talk about parallel universes."
Yes, they are our wives.
I just like the idea that it’s a gag that the mole playing rough just shows up no matter how outclassed he is
Really interesting video! I appreciate that you brought something new to Earthbound analysis and talked about something that I think I and other players had probably never thought about before! It's so cool to think that you could understand the game design backward by studying the methods it employed in the placement of the mole.
The need for your earthbound videos is massive.
This was interesting af
Thanks for the interesting video Chaz
>Makes 3 earthbound vids
>decides to make a banger 10 minute video on the mole playing rough
>leaves
>refuses to elaborate
To make things weirder, it says this channel was created in 2011, but all four videos were uploaded in the span of a month and a half in 2018.
We’ll be in Onett soon.
But seriously, I love that you’re making more EB content. This discovery is awesome!
"Thanks, Mole Playing Rough!"
*MPR gets fucking obliterated by a multi bottle rocket*
That's an odd way of thanking him.
Fainting is the ultimate status effect in Pokemon has never rang clearer
You did a really great job on this video!
I honestly didn't expect a literal answer to the question when I clicked this video. Very well done.
Oh that's it, I definitely need to look into how to decompile SNES games.
proven: moles are bad for your skin
I've watched this video every year since I first saw it, and not even because I actively look for it in a routine either. UA-cam just says "hey heres that earthbound mole video again" and I just go "yeah this is a good video i enjoy" and watch it. I feel like that speaks to how well edited it is without being too much thrown at once, especially since I've never played Earthbound and have only seen bits and pieces over the years. Anyways, yeah this is a good video i enjoy
I watch it every now and again but I go out and look for it. It is a pretty good video. Thank you friend.
I love videos like this. You have got to have some serious dedication to trawl through the code of a game just to work out why a mole attacks you in the desert. I really hope you make more videos like this.
This channel could have been so good.
Chugga was right. This video is awesome!
I just realized this is Chaz from stephenvlog. Neat
Odd that they didn't solve this by putting a hotspot or a bunch of "doors" (PK Hack speak) that trigger a script that just turns the OSS back off. Maybe they just liked moles. Some moles can live in the desert, after all.
I know this isn't excatly what you mean, but a door entrance to the desert would have been pretty funny.
Because of the way earthbound was coded, it was way way way easier and saved on space to just plunk a nonescapable encounter that already contained the trigger flag in your path
Yeah, but I've hacked the game and I know a good amount about how it works. An additional hotspot (which is just a straight line) would have done the trick quite easily and taken up very little space as well. Now that I think about it, it may have been done by someone who didn't know about hotspots, or it could have been a last-minute fix directly to ROM data. What I'm saying is this points to the development/build process being much more convoluted than I'd realized (though I did know that Iwata-san had to sort of redo the entire project).
The Mystery of this Video! Why is it recommended every other month?!
Dude, this video was really good. I'd love to see more like this!
Great digging into Mr. Mole Playing Rough! Also love how you celebrated him at the end of the vid!
Well, that leaves us with one real question: what would happen if gaygas is defeated with only attack damage keeping the oss off ??
Fucking "Gaygas" though.
i'm dying lmaoooooooo
"Gaygas" aside, there was a glitch where you could do this in the GBA port of Mother 2. All it did was give you 1 exp and then play the end mostly normal. So it's probably the same for the SNES version.
Sebastian Estenssoro
*_GaYgAs_*
Gaygas
this guy made 10 minutes long video on ONE weirdly placed enemy... i wonder how close we are for this to be standard time to ANYTHING game-related
I love this game and this video grabbed my attention instantly cause I figured it was just EarthBound goofiness so I didn't understand where 10 minutes of content could come from this. I was not expecting such an awesome, in-depth, and precisely explained video put together so well. Amazing job!
This is fascinating. I love this kind of UA-cam content. Thanks for making this!
Was anybody sent by Emile to watch this?
@TheButterGolum Same.
Kira _ meesa.
yeet
Yes
Yep
Damn this guy made one really high quality video that got pretty decent views and then disappeared.
I wonder if it would have been that much more difficult to instead place some kind of hit box covering the choke point. Not saying they where lazy or anything, I too have done things like this to save time when coding a game or app.
Brentinitis LPs I see your point, but this is a very old game with a problematic development, so either they didn't have the tools at the time or their constraints forced them to use these types of solutions since they could be easier to debug and playtest than an event flag.
Earthbound has what I can only describe as freaky monster programming. Most of the stuff that happens in the game is controlled via the text box system. It uses the text system's control codes for just about EVERYTHING, which is part of why the game has only been officially translated into two languages. Perhaps they used a battle because it was the only easy way to change flags.
Holy shit, that's a terrible way to code a game. I mean, they must have had their reasons, but... wow.
It was almost certainly a limitation at the time, or a limitation of the engine itself. If I recall, it was Satoru Iwata who made the game work at all - so it's probably a trick used to save space.
Actually that would make a lot of sense - if the combat system *and* dialogue system both shared the exact same code, that would be an incredibly significant save on cartridge space.
Introbulus So THAT’S how they crammed so much content in a SNES cartridge. I was wondering how that system could handle such a massive world, songs with acoustic audio samples, and all the visuals for the Giygas fight.
Believe it or not, this kind of game engine coding is still prevalent in today's modern gaming, and some games still use these kinds of tricks to get games to behave a certain way.
World of Warcraft, 'classic' specifically, used a similar technique to trigger quest completion. Almost every single quest completion trigger was actually dependent on the death of a single invisible rabbit. This rabbit could not be seen, targeted, and had no ability to move, nor did it make any sounds when it died.
This was the mechanism used because there was only two triggers to determine the completion (or progression) of a quest: item acquisition (picking something up), or the death of something. This functionality worked well when dealing with things like kill quests or fetch quests, but what about escort quests? Or "put X item in Y location"?
Invisible rabbits worked as the triggers for these things, an escorted NPC's proximity to the rabbit would kill the rabbit, thus making the trigger for the quest completion to trigger (as it quantifies as the 'kill' needed to make the quest complete), and the player would get the notification in their quest log that they'd completed the escort quest.
Another interesting purpose these rabbits have is that they are often used as spell casters in order to make certain raid boss encounters work, or work as a kind of controlled particle effect within a boss encounter to make the fights more flashy.
At any rate, I find this kind of stuff very interesting, and very much enjoyed the video!
interesting
That mole cracks me up every time.
Thanks for being one of the few UA-cam's that covers earthbound. You channel deserves more love!
Old games are so... cobbled together =)
Very interesting. I never even really thought about the mole until now. At least I don't have to wonder.
I thought this was going to be something really idiotic until you started getting into the hex editor. So glad I stayed for the whole thing! I think your theory is absolutely 100% on the money. I'd be very surprised if there was any other true explanation! Very nicely done. One of my fav things to do when playing Earthbound in an emulator is to see how many silly things I can break by using the "walk through all" cheat and circumventing event flags.
I want to try and recreate the glitches in the video. Can someone tell me which mole is the 3rd strongest?
serene.velocity
The one that’s weaker than the second but stronger than the fourth. He’s in the same cave as the other four, though.
I found this diagram useful in determining which one is the third strongest.
earthboundcentral.com/2015/10/the-third-strongest-mole-theory/
Extremely well thought out and researched
After you pay the theater owner in Twoson and the background music changes to the Runaway Five's theme, all enemies are disabled until you board the band's bus to go to Threed. During this time, you can go fight the boss in the cave behind Happy Happy Village.
If you lost the battle to that boss, would the Game Over glitch be triggered, or is the OSS flag not set at that point?
I know it's late, but the Game Over glitch is triggered
Really like this in-depth look at a glitch which, even though i knew about it, didn't really seem to go much deeper than 'dying after beating the final boss'. lots of information packed into a video, short and sweet. keep up the good work, man!
he's truly the third strongest
I enjoyed this thoroughly, Chaz! Very interesting.
I love this. Wow peeking behind the scenes a little bit. Awesome job!
Really enjoyed this video, super well made and informative! Would be really interested in seeing more videos on EarthBound minutiae.
In that case, why didn't they place a 100% spawn square for an enemy more adapted to the player's level? Or just an unavoidable map trigger that simply toggles the flag off?
It comes across almost as if they discovered a bug (i.e. broken game overs on scripted encounters) rather late on in testing, used the mole spawns as a placeholder to test whether it fixed the bug, but then forgot to replace them with a more permanent solution before the game was completed.
Interesting video, but why is the mole in deep darkness there? It could be because of the boat ride, but you said yourself that you’ll be strong enough to instantly kill it, so it’d probably be running away from you anyway, and you wouldn’t have to fight it. You could also say there’s not enough room to get to the monkeys without fighting the mole, but it’s not like you have to talk to the monkeys anyway. And there isn’t a scripted battle up there either. This isn’t supposed to sound rude, I’m just curious because I don’t remember you mentioning it (maybe I just missed something idk)
My theory is that those other two moles were useful in development, and were just never removed. I suspect they were from a part of the game before running away was coded in for the very reason you mention. There's a lot of unique, complicated events on the Deep Darkness ledge from a programming perspective, and the Sky Runner cutscene is complex as well. Thus, I can see a developer just quickly adding the mole to the spawn map to fix a quick bug, and never removing it later.
oh hey this is a pretty cool video, can't wait to check out his other videos like this!
...
oh, damn.
Fascinating stuff, man! Very clever. Amazing what things people are still finding out.
Great video. Your work is impeccable, and you've won me with evidence and reason. Really well done.
I have legit been wondering about this for years. Thanks for shining some light on the matter!
"thanks mole playing rough!"
blasts mole with multi bottle rocket
Man you explain better than anyone I've ever heard good job! Love your videos!
Fascinating, thank you for your hard work. I'm always impressed about how much we continue to learn about this game.
one of the best vids on the whole site, if you still around i need more of this
Where how this is recommended to me after watching Chuggaa’s video.
Interesting and actually easy to follow. One of my favorite games. Well done.
Honestly when I saw the mole in summers I immediately defeated it and then felt bad about it as I realized it was just chilling on the beach and I assaulted it
This video is really good. I hope you can make more videos, man.
Game Dev 1: "We can't make the player get sunstroke in the desert because the OSS is on!"
Game Dev 2: "M o l e ."
You, good sir, get a follow for this. Many people would probably find this video useless... However, from a design standpoint, nothing is more intriguing that the why of a bug or glitch/exploit rather than the how. Thanks for this.