Posts for Drenn

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In the interest of having this knowledge in a public place, there's a theoretical new TAS route for Ages involving a pretty awesome japanese-exclusive glitch. I discovered this back in March and was thinking of making at least a LOTAD for it, but never got around to it, so I'll at least post it here so it's known about. After you get the bombs from Queen Ambi, there is one frame where you can move. In the japanese version ONLY, it is possible to use the harp during that one frame. (In other versions you can use other items, but not the harp.) Normally you would only have the Tune of Echoes at this point, so playing the harp would do nothing. However, a TAS can skip the queen ambi cutscene entirely, meaning you can return later - in other words, you can return when you have the Tune of Currents. This would seem meaningless by itself - playing the Tune of Currents in Ambi's Palace merely sends you to Nuun Highlands, an area which you would already have access to. However, it ALSO creates a "return portal". By re-entering this "return portal", you can access ambi's palace before beating dungeon 6 and get the Tune of Ages early! Specifically, the steps you would take are as follows: - Initially skip the Ambi's Palace cutscene by using toilet warp + pitwalking to get bombs from a chest - Play normally until you get the Tune of Currents - Trigger the Ambi's Palace cutscene - Warp into the present during the cutscene as you get bombs - Savewarp back to the past - Enter the cutscene again and complete it normally (necessary because it didn't fully play out the first time) - Go to nuun highlands and use the return portal to get into Ambi's Palace with full control (must use Tune of Echoes otherwise the return portal will disappear) Nitroz has also created a candidate route using this trick, I haven't reviewed it myself but I'll leave it here: https://pastebin.com/JGj6U9qP
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I've just found that it's also possible to skip the boomerang. In the setup shown in my video, the boomerang is required for 2 roosters, and is also used outside onox's castle, so not having the boomerang gives a deficit of 3 objects. Here's how that can be fixed: * Pick up and throw the sign on top of d4, using that to replace the boomerang clink. Then dig twice and have the season blurb on-screen as normal. The timing for this is tight since the season blurb barely stays on-screen long enough. * On the screen with Moosh, dig twice instead of once. This isn't as difficult. * Use the trick I showed in the video to get one extra rooster from the moosh area. All in all, this probably saves around 20 seconds at most. The boomerang only takes a minute to get, and this makes the setup longer. It's obviously worth it for a TAS, but it's rather questionable for an RTA run, since it makes the setup a lot harder.
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Awesome to see this finished, I hope it's accepted. I do see many places that could be improved, I'll come up with a list or something at some point, but of course scopr acknowledged it's not entirely optimal. These improvements consist mostly of movement optimizations and stuff like that, the route itself seems fine aside from getting the expert's ring. Just as Tompa said, nothing too major. I wouldn't encourage you to use the whimsical ring later on, mostly for your sanity's sake, but that's your call. The timesaves aren't reliable since you never know what RNG you'll actually be able to get.
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Pokota wrote:
Any news on Ages?
Afraid not. I'm still doing stuff with this game just... not actual TASing. It's been on the backburner for a pretty ridiculous amount of time, I know.
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Pokota wrote:
Unless there's a major improvement to Any% Seasons that's been found since the last publication, we can probably just use the current Seasons run as the starting point. A thing I need to check is if the Achievement Get rings track across both games or not. Similarly, unid'd rings are stored in memory as either +64 or as the two's complement (don't remember which) but I've long since forgot the address; I'll pull up the Ages Any% this week and scan it. This hybridized file you speak of... how does one obtain the upgrade passwords? To my knowledge the NPCs only spawn in the starting game.
Things like slayed enemies, etc. don't carry over between games. Most of the enemy farming is done in seasons at tarm ruins. When you do the veran warp you get the save and quit prompt you'd normally receive after finishing an unlinked game. This causes npc's from the end of an unlinked game to appear, even on a linked file. Hence, a "hybrid" game. We need to use a link cable to continue to the next seasons playthrough, though. Idk how a tas would handle that unless we somehow "cheat" to see the password, because farore won't show it to us for whatever reason... :P I'm guessing this is all theoretical though, since we're having enough trouble finishing ages any% :P
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You can't do 100% in only 1 game, unless you use premade secrets, which would be kind of lame. Here's my 100% route for reference. Normally it would require 4 playthroughs in total, but the veran warp glitch kind of lets you skip one playthrough. http://pastebin.com/FW50SGuq As for the any% TAS, I haven't been working on it for a while. Scorpianman has decided to give it a try, though he's said he's not sure if he'll have time to finish it.
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Been a while since the last update. I think I burned myself out a few months ago, but I'm going to give it another shot now. Partly the problem was that I kept "resetting". In fact I've restarted for a 3rd time for 2 reasons: firstly bizhawk 1.8 has non-messed-up frame timing. Secondly a new trick was found with veran warp which lets us skip some of veran's textboxes, but in order to set it up, I must let the seed satchel fall on the left side of the screen when I talk to the maku tree. I'm up to the end of the maku path now. It's going relatively quickly since I'm using the same rng seeds so far. I think I'll post a "WIP 1.5" once I'm done the first dungeon. Though it'll probably be almost the same as what you've seen already :P
Post subject: Re: 4th Text Warp
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DecafGrub47393 wrote:
There is a location for a potential text-warp in Mermaid's Cave. It is in the room with the Scent Seed key. Using this text warp will take you across the chasm, saving 3 to 5 seconds.
Text warping doesn't work that way, it's not like screenwarping in link's awakening. It has no affect on normal screen transitions, as far as I'm aware - it's only for building exits.
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Pokota wrote:
Name the specific palette you want and I will use it. Currently testing for sync on the lastest BizHawk release.
"GBA" please :)
SBD wrote:
Nice job implementing the subpixel manipulation. In some places you can also move diagonally into a wall to save time later on, like after unequipping the shovel or when you regain control when you search for the fairies.
Since getting the pegasus seeds I've been more conscious of this, since subpixels affect all movement, you can actually overshoot the pixel you want sometimes.
Right after that there's a part where you have to change back and forth between two screens. In that case you can make it so on every screen you move diagonally for only 3 frames and move one pixel vertically every frame. You can get corner boosts when moving diagonally into NPCs. I don't know if you knew that, some of the boosts look a bit odd but not sure if it lost time.
I've been doing corner boosts by walking directly into NPC's at the corner, it moves me 1 unit in both directions without affecting subpixels. I think I got a "double" boost on one of the workers that was moving towards me. Is it better to walk diagonally into them?
As Tompa said, damage boosts are always nice especially while you're killing stuff. Not getting a damage boost off the guay the first time looks a bit ugly. He was going the wrong way for that but I guess you could have manipulated him into moving down?
In the beginning I wasn't quite warmed up to the idea of damage boosts, I guess. By the time I thought of doing that for the crow, I would have had to rework the RNG at the start of the dungeon to make it work :(
35 kills is almost too many. In D2 you have to kill 3 enemies, you're pretty much guaranteed to kill 3 Stalfos with one bomb and there's a lot of Keese and Ropes along the way. So maybe you could cut out some slower kills like the Like-Like. Although I guess that helped manipulating the Goron Dancing since the pattern you got was indeed really nice.
I wasn't really interested in killing that like-like, but it did allow me to get that dance pattern, which was worth it. It was tricky because I had to manipulate the dance right after manipulating the like-like... I somehow hadn't thought of killing the shrouded stalfos with a bomb. But, they don't count as kills if they fall into the holes. It doesn't seem realistic to get all 3.
In Maku Road you shouldn't have moved diagonally before pushing the last block.
I noticed that after rewatching it yesterday :(
In D1 when you push that thing that changes colours it moves faster when you are at the middle of it when you start pushing. When a key drops from the ceiling I believe it spawns relative to the camera position so it drops faster when the camera is lower on the screen. I don't think you had enough time to do it here with the manipulation you got. Just a thing to keep in mind for the future. After the miniboss you can kill the 3rd Stalfos with an Ember Seed while slashing the sword. That's faster and you also get a 5 rupee drop. The boss fight is slower than in this WIP: User movie #12996165641066198
Hmm. I believe I lost a few frames because of the direction he moved in, but I noticed that you did 2 slashes and a spin attack, while I did slash spin-attack slash. I'm not sure if that matters, I didn't experiment with that.
You can pick up the Essence a little faster by walking on the side and moving towards the middle when you're close to it. That way it reaches you faster in the cutscene. It is really weird that you can only pick it up every 4th frame in this emulator version. Might have something to do with the new frame timing. After getting the Pegasus Seeds it's faster to go down rather than right.
Good to know.
Anyway, while we're at it, I've done some routing for the rest of the game: In order for the Whimsical Ring to be worth it, it would have to save more than 1000 frames from D4 onwards. I'm not sure if that is possible. Here's an example for the boss fight in D6: User movie #16540268996119658 The jump before Cheval's grave can be made without a bomb boost with really good subpixels. Visiting the Ember Seed tree before or after Rafton costs only 150 frames so it's worth it for the later warp. In the Tokey shop getting the Power Bracelet first saves an equip which should be more than the feather saves in the meantime. There's a different route for D3 that theonly0 came up with: After destroying the second crystal you get the key where you have to kill the two Moldorms. Then you enter the Miniboss fight from the wrong side. After that you step in the warp, get the Seed Shooter and destroy the remaining crystals. Then you deathwarp, get the Bosskey and finish the dungeon. According to my timing this was 132 frames faster than the RTA route. In D6 the key on the right side is faster to get because you can just savewarp (or deathwarp) instead of having to backtrack.
Thanks a lot for this :) Looks like I have my work cut out for me :P
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Tompa wrote:
The first thing I noticed was that you could have killed the gels slightly faster in the Maku Road. A few possible damage boosts, such as after the first key in D1. There is a faster way of lightning the torches to get the Bracelets, as seen here in SL's old WIP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXtWUfPixw&feature=player_detailpage#t=129. I believe it saves like 2-3 frames or so. Or maybe you didn't do it because of RNG stuff? I noticed that was the reason you didn't slash before entering the Maku Road. Except for those, it looks pretty nice!
I'd watched swordless's TAS, but somehow I couldn't figure out how that would be faster. Turns out I wasn't standing close enough to the torch. Ah well... maybe I could splice it in, but that hasn't gone so well for me in the past. How is it that I could've killed the gels faster?
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I have a new WIP up to the start of dungeon 2. I hope I didn't make too many mistakes :P don't be afraid to criticize though. Like I said I redid it from scratch, unfortunately I didn't save as much time as I'd hoped (22 frames entering d1), but I'll take it. I managed to kill 29 enemies between planting the 2nd seed and finishing d1, and that number went up to 35 by the time I entered d2. That leaves 5 enemies to kill in dungeon 2, easy. I opted to not get the whimsical ring. If I was doing all the dungeons I'd probably get either that or the power ring L2 from the advance shop. As it is, it would have to save some time in D6 to be really worth it, which I'm not confident that it will (because of the extra trip to the ring shop). Oh and Pokota, if you kindly decide to encode this one, please use the GBA palettes :P
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Well, this explains a thing or 2. I could not understand why, randomly, my inputs were sometimes delayed by one frame after certain screen transitions or menuing (both of which disable the LCD temporarily). When this happens, it also tends to break some of my scripts which do certain inputs for me (mostly text mashing). I can work around this, but I would probably revert to bizhawk 1.6 for my next TASing project.
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So, here's something interesting. I managed to recreate the Veran Warp glitch in the japanese version of Ages, in real time, using a weaker form of sockfolder's arbitrary code setup. It's kinda ridiculous for RTA, though. Here's the highlight. I don't know how to call the credits directly, and I might not have been able to anyway, since I could only run a very small amount of code. Veran Warp was just a matter of overwriting 2 bytes. In any case, I'm going to stick with the US version, since I don't want to run the risk of having a full minute of staring at the map screen in the TAS...
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I found a (pretty much) TAS-only trick when I was running this game. When you're falling down to the final boss room, if you pause the game one frame before nightmare's textbox appears, something will happen. 99% of the time, the game softlocks. Of course, that's what happened to me :( but rarely, the game just continues without showing nightmare's textbox. So that can shave off several seconds from the any% TAS. As far as I know it's RNG whether this happens. edit: oh, well it looks like it doesn't appear anyway in any%, for some reason. Nevermind I guess :P
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That's pretty much what my test run did, correct? Aside from the whimsical ring. It's not likely to be worth it. We'd have to bump into maple, and add a second trip to the ring shop, just so we can... 3 cycle the d2 miniboss? idk what else you'd use it for. Edit: technically I guess we could buy it from the advance shop. It could save time with the d6 bosses, which would require a separate trip than if it were used in dungeon 2. Still not sure if it's worth it.
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SBD wrote:
This looks really good for a first attempt. However, there's some minor issues. Triggering the custcene where Impa examines the stone from below like it is done here is 6 frames faster than your method. You can also manipulate your subpixels to save a few frames here and there. For example, when you push the stone, you can hold up for a little longer, which gives you a better subpixel state for walking up. There's also corner-boosting where you can move into an NPC at a specific pixel and you get pushed one pixel to the side. You do this at some places but not everywhere you could. Now this is obviously really minor stuff so it is up to you if you want to go through the tedious work to get this run super-optimised but if you want to, you can compare parts of your run with my WIP to see where you lose frames. I think the only outright mistake in it (apart from the routing) is when I walk back to the stairs after getting the Graveyard Key. I only tried falling into the right hole but taking the left one makes the camera move less so that's pretty smart. About the enemy kills: From what I remember it is possible to get 6 kills on the Miniboss without losing any time and 9 by losing ~20 frames. You really shouldn't have to farm more than that if you concentrate on killing a lot of enemies along the way (like the crow just before D1). About the rupees: I'd say you need two more big blue rupees after the first one. You should be able to get one while retrieving Ricky's gloves. Now if I were you, I'd skip the second one you got and instead get one at the time portal just before D3. There's no guarantee that you'll get one there but I think you should be able to juggle soft and hard resets on Crescent Island to make it work.
I should've watched your WIP earlier, bizhawk 1.4 is just really slow on my laptop. Well, come to think of it, there's another disadvantage to getting that 2nd rupee, which is that I can't equip my satchel during the transition from leaving the maku tree screen. It saves half a second because of the way palette transitions work. I see you didn't do that in your old WIP, it's like nobody knows about that trick :/ Alright well, I think tokay will be a pain, but I'll cut out that 2nd rupee. I'll try to incorporate those optimizations also.
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Here's a WIP up to the start of d1. I'm not doing d1 yet since I need to plan my kills, but feedback would be nice, so I'm sharing it now. Technically, yoll graveyard isn't "final", as I'll probably edit in some slashes to get the RNG I want in the dungeon. I managed to get 2 big blue rupees before unequipping the shovel, one of which was spent right away. I still need 1 more. Unfortunately maku path isn't quite as optimal as it could have been, but I think it's worth it, since I'll probably save an equip later on. Btw, the d1 miniboss will be great for farming kills, as it looks like it will be necessary to an extent. Oh, and I'd recommend changing the palette settings so it doesn't look washed out from being in GBA mode.
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Pokota wrote:
I figured manipulating something else played into it, I just wasn't sure if it was luck-manipulating something else or if it had something specific to do with the rings. Pitwalking in the Gasha Seed room will depend on if the bridge is placed right where it needs to be when you first get to the ledge. Incidentally (as I can't run Bizhawk on my laptop due to rendering shenanigans), what was the ring from Past Lynna?
idk, probably something useless like the octo ring.
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It may be slightly faster to pitwalk in the gasha seed room, I just haven't tried it. We need to get 2 rings, because the first ring you get is always bad. You can't get a tier 4 ring from your first gasha tree.
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Pokota wrote:
You need to have at least two tiles of walkable space at both the entry point and the exit point, otherwise you'll just fall into a pit. The reason is that you're switching back and forth between tiles as you pitwalk, which makes the game try to pull you into the other pit. If there's an obstruction to where there's a pit of width 1 you can't fool the game into trying to pull you into the other pit because there is no other pit. EDIT: I'm a complete newbie at setting up Bizhawk; when I tried to play back that file I got this: EDIT2: Never mind, I was using an interim build instead of the official release. Doy. EDIT3: And as it turns out, Bizhawk's Ram Watch and VBA-RR's Ram Watch show different values for the addresses I gave earlier, so it's back to the salt mines for me. At least I have a workable test case for finding Monster 0 HP ^^;....
It's simple to convert if you understand memory domains. In fact, if you set bizhawk to use the "System Bus" under "Memory Domains", the addresses will match. Though I'd recommend using the WRAM memory domain when dealing with memory in the Cxxx-Dxxx region. Simply subtract C000 from your VBA address to convert it to a WRAM-domain Bizhawk address.
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Use ram watch on link's coordinates, at 0x100D and 0x100B. Also 0x100C and 0x100A for x and y subpixels. Helped me a lot :) Though, sometimes, there's a frame of lag before a directional button updates his coordinates, which makes pitwalking more confusing. Pausing and unpausing gets rid of the lag, but idk what causes it... it might have something to do with going through time. Anyway, I've finished my little route test. It's not optimized of course, though I did try to be optimal in the very beginning, while learning the ropes. It clocks at 1 hour 33 minutes. Some notes about it: - I didn't use GBA mode for the gasha seed in the advance shop, which I'll do for the real thing. - I forgot to visit the ember tree in Lynna! Well, this is what tests are for. I'm supposed to use it to get to ambi's palace. Surprisingly though, it's only several seconds slower to swim there. I'll need to time how long it takes to visit the tree. - I will, of course, use "A" as the filename in the real thing. - Exactly 2048 rerecords :O Also, the veran warp behaved differently than it would in an RTA run. The main difference was the sprites. The "old man" sprite replaced the cursor, I don't think I've ever seen that in an RTA run... and also the portal sprite was corrupted in a different way than usual. It still works, I just find it interesting.
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Pokota wrote:
The Tasty Meat and everything after the moustache is out of the way enough for it to be worth skipping, yeah, but there's a couple of disadvantages to using the Expert's Ring that may make a difference entertainment-wise: range and compatability. The Sword gives you the range to attack at an earlier frame, and can be used in conjunction with other items/rings. The Expert Ring can (as far as I know) only be used when nothing is equipped to the buttons and by nature precludes wearing other rings - and since items get used a lot more in Ages than in Seasons, that could mean a lot of menu-switching In short, I agree with you, I just don't like that fact that I do. Still, getting the Noble Sword hinges on whether or not Patch accepts that you have the Broken Sword before L4 is opened up, so it may be a moot argument either way we go. EDIT: Scent Seeds. Is there a way to get them before L6 without planting the Scent Seedling? If there is, it's faster to get the Scent Seed Key in Present Mermaid's Cave than the Switch Hook key by several room transitions and an item switch.
Yep, the respawning bushes in d3 are bugged. They always have a chance of dropping scent seeds, even if you never got them from the tree. So we can use them in d6 and for the guard skip in ambi's palace.
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Pokota wrote:
Huh, I'd forgotten that rings were tiered. And now to jump topics again: It's theoretically possible to have the entire trading sequence completed by the time you make the first journey up to Patch's Hideaway, since you can pitwalk to the Old Zora Hermit's cave and you'll have gale seeds by that point anyway, mitigating some of the backtrackery. However, it may be entirely possible that Patch won't recognize that you have the broken sword until you've returned the repaired Tuni Nut. I'll test this and report results. EDIT: It may be unnecessary, as the Expert Ring's punch deals 4 damage anyway.
The trading sequence is just too long... I can't imagine the noble sword would make up the time it takes to get it. In particular, getting the tasty meat will waste a ton of time, due to the expert's ring skip.
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Pokota wrote:
Password Abuse only works in a linked game anyway, which is when the Red Ring would be viable for Ages. For a non-linked game the Green Ring would be viable since it's something you can acquire with sufficient luck manipulation. Each room has a Monster 0; their HP is at address 0000D0A9 and as far as I can see bosses take the Monster 0 spot. I'll post if I find contradictory results. An unboosted Wooden Sword deals 2 HP damage with each hit.
The green ring really isn't viable without password abuse... there are only 2 gasha spots which can give it to you, neither of which are convenient in the slightest... one of which is only accessible in a linked game... I can't imagine it would save all that much time, either. We already have the expert's ring, which does a spin-attack's worth of damage, useful for certain bosses. Thx for the address though :)
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Pokota wrote:
I didn't know GBA mode was kosher for a GBC TAS. I'm assuming that a Linked Game TAS would be a different beast entirely? The Red Ring is (supposed to be) earned in Seasons for killing the four golden beasts so it's probably better to assume it's unavailable for an Ages-first arc. The Green Ring might be more beneficial since it can be generated legit in either game, reduces the time spent fighting bosses, and allows for more damage boosting. Not to the same degree as the specialized Red and Blue rings, but the potential is there.
I don't see much of a problem with GBA mode, it's just a simple flag the game checks for. It doesn't use any extra hardware or anything. As for a linked game, though, I feel like it would be taking the easy way out if we just coded in all the rings we need... though I'm not sure if that's what you're suggesting. Doesn't sit well with me at least. I mean, I'm down for a normal linked game TAS that doesn't abuse passwords... but if we end up calling the credits, it would be kind of pointless :P