Posts for Catastrophe

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Posted: 4/14/2006 8:00 AM
Post subject: Post 3/8
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Catastrophe
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 11/17/2005
Posts: 278
Location: Massachusetts, USA
PLOT NODE 2: Figaro The M-Tek plot battle was a pain because the stupid M-Teks could kill Terra with a !Metal Kick (hit) and Locke had to make an additional attack to finish one of them off because my Edgar was so weak. The timing on Locke's attack determined both the damage that the auto crossbow did and the target of the enemy's next attack. The Figaro Cave was awesome. I got three unmanipulated pre-emptive attacks with no delay! That's all I can ask for on this map. Arrive in Foot Locker, I mean South Figaro. Locke and Edgar equip Sprint Shoes right now because they will both need them for their scenarios. That saves a re-equipping later. I pick up the Hyper Wrist and RunningShoes from the basement now because I know that I'll be skipping Locke's scenario. Also, they'll be useful on Mt. Koltz. The Hyper Wrist boosts Edgar's auto crossbow. Locke is now wearing two pairs of shoes. :P Enjoy the frame advanced chocobo riding! The reason I've won a few battles prior to and on Mt. Koltz is so that my characters have just a little more HP and so that Sabin hits level 10 to learn Suplex. Occasionally I get unlucky and cannot manipulate a pre-emptive attack without opening my subscreen but I keep excellent time anyway. I pick up the hidden Atlas Armlet and give it to Edgar for additional crossbow damage. At frame 99300 I actually catch shadow Vargas with the A button. :) He turns to face me, says nothing, and continues running away. Here is the turn-by-turn for Vargas' battle: Ipooh2 - hits Terra 12 damage, 76 remain Terra - single target Fire Ipooh1 for 196 damage, 164 remain Locke - attack Ipooh1 for 53 damage, 111 remain (critical would not kill it) Vargas - hits Locke for 40 damage Edgar - crossbow both bears, 144/146 damage, Ipooh1 defeated without it getting a turn Locke - attack Ipooh2 for 51 damage, 95 remain Terra - single target fire Ipooh2 for 180 damage, Ipooh2 overkilled by 85 Edgar - hits Terra for 26 damage, 50 remain Vargas uses Gale Cut, Terra takes 49 damage, Terra is at 1 HP Terra uses her desperation attack Riot Blade so fast that the numbers '49' are still showing on her! :P That was the first chance to use a desperation attack that battle. Vargas takes more than his 720 damage (although he actually has 11k HP) and starts the Sabin scene. Because Vargas had *just* used Gale Cut and because Terra went *immediately* afterwards Vargas' ATB is completely empty when Sabin arrives. Sabin uses his plot pummel to end the battle before Vargas even has the chance to use his special !Doom Punch (condemned) and start talking. Since Vargas' special and his taunt waste quite a bit of time, quite a bit of time was saved here. (2,759 frames saved over Jyzero!)
Posted: 4/14/2006 7:58 AM
Post subject: Post 2/8
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Catastrophe
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 11/17/2005
Posts: 278
Location: Massachusetts, USA
PLOT NODE 1: Narshe I start off just like Jyzero and clear the first three scripted battles almost identically. I may have saved one frame on the config screen as well. I seem to have lost my frame comparisons for the first 3 battles but I remember reaching Whelk just a hair quicker or later than Jyzero and then beating Whelk much faster. I remember in Jyzero's thread he said that he tried his hardest and could not defeat Whelk without the little bugger retreating and wasting 15 seconds. Well, I remember doing it once by accident on the console. Back then I had no idea how I did it and it was very rewarding to finally be able to figure this out! When Whelk dies in my run $7E3DC8 has incremented to over 40 but his "Gruuu..." message is supposed to occur when it reaches just 10! So what happened? Check out Whelk in FF3usME. The battle is implemented as two monsters. The 'head' monster has a boring script that randomly does one of the following each turn: battle, battle, !slime (slow). His battle is the fastest action that he take and it does a meaningless amount of damage. The head also has a 100% chance to drop me a potion and waste a couple frames. The 'shell' monster is much more interesting. It takes no offensive action and it's script is programmed show and hide the head monster every 10-count. So if somehow I could stop the shell from taking it's turn then that script will not run! But, not only do I lack any nifty abilities at this stage of the game, the shell is immune to everything anyway. A hacked pre-emptive attack isn't enough time for me to defeat Whelk, either. My damage options are enumeratable: a 550 damage missle from Terra and a 125 damage beam from each of the two soldiers. There are really no other choices. So I need either 6 perfect attacks of 2 missiles and 4 beams or 3 imperfect missles and any beam to do the 1600 damage that I need to do. How do I get those turns? It turns out that the ATB gauges are stupid when the battle mode is set to wait. These are the facts. The ATB gauges will increase during animations though the battle timer at $7E3A3F will not. The ATB gauges will NOT increase while my cursor is 'hiding' in a menu. If an animation plays while I have a menu open then the ATB gauges will NOT increase. The RNI (Random Number Index) does increment even while I am in a menu. (Which is the only way to manipulate luck mid-attack in this game.) Manipulating the initial ATB values for myself and Whelk is not enough to ensure that he never hides. I have to manipulate my animations such that my gauges are always filling while his are stalled during all other times. This is the play by play: Terra - 565 damage missile, holds the menu Vicks - 132 damage fire beam, holds the menu Wedge - 122 damage ice beam, lets go of the menu so Terra and Vicks can refill Vicks - 126 damage bolt beam, holds the menu just a bit Terra - 544 damage missile, lets go of the menu so Wedge and the Head can go head - punches the guy in the mech suit, very effective Wedge - 126 damage ice beam, 1615 total damage, -15 overkill The shell never got a turn even though it was very much due for one. I used one other trick that I call cutting someone off. Basically whenever a queue of actions forms the player has the opportunity to act next when the computer does not. This happens because you can enter commands during animations while the computer waits for the animation to finish! So during the head's attack animation the shell's ATB fills up before Wedge's ATB. However, I enter Wedge's command ASAP during this animation. The computer puts Wedge next in the action queue. Then the animation finishes and the shell inserts itself next into the queue. Wedge's action takes place, kills the head, the head removes both monsters from the battle, I win. :) I use turbo-A for most of the dialog in this game but early on I was frame advancing the dialogue to get it all frame perfect. There is a 50% chance to save 1 frame on each dialog box. I wanted to do this game right and be frame perfect like the famous platformers so I did it. But once I reached Figaro Castle I realized how unrealistic it is for a human to save that half-frame on each dialog box. Maybe next movie I'll write a BlahBlahBot. During the moogle battle I use Mog's group. Mog needs to learn snare. Someone has to kill the Marshall and no other team has an interesting reason to participate. Not only is snare an instant KO it also has the rare ability of preventing the target's counter attack. Too bad Mog won't join untill after Doom is acquired, oh well. Notice how I mock the awful collision detection on those chumps. I save 1,970 frames over Jyzero by abusing this. You can't clip though them like NPCs unfortunately. The monsters here technically aren't NPCs - they're moving event tiles. The Marshall battle was a severe pain. All 16 battle seeds resulted in either the Marshall going first and using !Net (stop) on Mog or I would have to wait a very long time for my critical hits. I had no choice but to let one of the Lobos make an attack. Jyzero's battle was faster by the length of that enemy attack animation (120 frames) but I had to let it go. At this time I did not know that a subscreen access of a certain length could get the random seed 'stuck' on new intervals of 4. I could've used that to fix my battle seed problem here but I don't think that a subscreen access + delay is much faster than 120 frames anyway. Maybe this was optimal for my circumstances after all? Run to Figaro, fly through the dialog boxes.
Posted: 4/14/2006 7:57 AM
Post subject: Final Fantasy 6
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Catastrophe
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 11/17/2005
Posts: 278
Location: Massachusetts, USA
No, you're not seeing double. :) There is another FF6 run in progress. My original plan was to post my first WIP after the World of Balance. I was going to do this to prove to myself that I was serious about making the run, since this is an easy run to be overwhelmed by. That way I'd be able to quit at anytime without worrying about being known as that lurker who quit his first run. The start of the WOR is about 70% through my planned route so it makes a good no-turning-back point. Currently, my run is at what I think is 50% - just about to tackle the mine cart ride after the MTRF. The WIP is at DeHackEd #966 and here is a YSI of 20 bookmarks and my other WIPs. (The size is 2.55MB compressed but the .smv files expand to much bigger than that!) The game clock is just shy of 2 hours in this WIP. But since Erim is starting a run now I'd feel like a bastard if I was this far along and I didn't help. But I'm still hoping to be the first to submit a run for this game. At first I thought that no FF6 TAS could ever be accepted because of length of the game so a quality submission was all I wanted. But then I saw CT and SoM. And Chrono Trigger has that ugly level-Magus-up loop. If that is acceptable then FF6 is no problem. But this game is still much longer with the cinematics. I wanted to make a new thread because this isn't Jyzero's run, it's my run. There's no point in having a thread where pages 1-14 are in response to the thread creator, pages 15-16 are off topic, and page 17 marks the start of a new run from scratch. Thank you Jyzero for the memory address $7E00BE and for the WIP for me compare myself against up until the Returner's Hideout. I wouldn't have worked on the beginning of the game quite as hard as I did if it weren't for your run. Also, thank you everyone who participated in the pre-emptive attack discussion. I tested those independently and rediscovered exactly the same thing. I was hoping for a more reliable way to cause them to happen but sadly nothing was found. Even a code that locked $BE to a certain number would only work on certain formations. Before I talk about the run itself, just a few more things, bullet-point style, because those are faster to type and easier to read: * I started this run in November. * This run beat's Jyzero's run by 4192 frames up until the point where his run ends. * I have one rule for this run: it must be under 4 hours. Any longer than that is too long to be interesting. * Bugs. Check. * The entire movie was frame advanced. Every frame. Even the turbo A scenes. * No character of mine ever dies in combat. * I wanted to summon Shiva against Ifrit, but it was severely disadvantegous to do so. :( * I'm going to attempt the sketch glitch during the boss fight against the Air Force. * Vanish-Doom will be used but there actually aren't many places for me to use it. * FlameEater will be OHKOed. He has 8000 HP and vanish-doom requires two hits. ;) * This movie has crazy TAS Music Video potential! * I've done several test runs and I do additional re-test runs for each plot node using my lastest WIP as I reach them. * I don't just manipulate luck, I've got the RNG mapped out on my desktop. I can fast-foward to the next desperation attack and know how much damage it will do in advance. (When $BE = A5 the most powerful desperation attack occurs.) Watch the Dadaluma battle and the #024 battle! * Nitsuja - v9 - MEMORY WATCH! - YES! YES! :D :D I only just found it two weeks ago and I don't know how I ever played without it! Well, I do know. I used to cheat the interface and use crtl-A to bring up my latest search. :X CONSTANTLY * Thank you Terii Senshi for your algorithm's FAQ. Who would've ever thought that a OHKO on Ultros #2 was ever possible? * Thank you Master ZED for all the bugs and compiled information. Mimic-Joker Doom is the only solution for the tiers. * Thank you Assassin17 for posting commented assembly code on the Internet. Why can't I use my desperation attack? OH! The attacker must not have muddle or vanish status, $7E3A3E must be greater than 767, and $BE[0..255] must evaluate to 0-15 inclusive. No memory searching, just an answer right there from the code itself! * I love hacking games! ^_^ Not because I cheat, but because I'm interested in the technical and logical side of the games. I love to enter game states that the designers never intended and go exploring. * I LOVE THIS GAME TO DEATH AND KNOW IT INSIDE OUT BACKWARDS FOWARDS UPSIDE DOWN ROT-13 ENCODED! ^_^ So much in fact, that I'm planning a walk-though-walls run for the distant future just to show off how fragile and robust the game is at the same time. * I've been keeping a journal as I TAS this game. Next post...
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