I've (already) got an update about that third red jewel. Using the miraculously great Memory Watching of Snes9x (can't thank you enough, Nitsuja!), I've come up with some results / ideas.
I have investigated on what Acmlm has suggested, which is that the values from $7E0410 to $7E041F hold the key to the fisherman's position. The big news is, I have found a way to "manipulate" this.
First of, $7E041F acts as a counter, which increments by 1 every few frames. The amount of frames between each increment varies, and there's no way to find out how much frames there are gonna be in the next "window of opportunity".
The test results from Acmlm showed that if you entered a room when the "counter" was at 52, at the time you exit the building, the fisherman is going to be at the "jewel position".
This is great. I mean, I now know how to "manipulate" the fisherman to the jewel position. I only need to enter the secret cave when $7E041F = 52. Simple, huh? Yes it is.
Bad news is, it's a long long time to wait before the counter reaches 52.
Good news is, I found a house where the counter goes up by 1 when you enter, and goes up by 5 when you exit.
Therefore, I'm going to use that house to "manipulate" the counter into going up faster than normal, and then rush to the cave to enter at 52. That, or something else. Anyways, you'll see in my first official WIP for the 100% Illusion of Gaia TAS.
It's coming guys ... it's coming ... Progress has been made, and there are no more obstacles in my way for completing this TAS.
I'll keep you posted, and will of course post WIPs the same way I posted WIPs of the any% TAS. I estimate a first WIP in the next 2 to 3 days, if not tonight.
I know I'm reviving an old thread, but I came across the new version of Snes9x, once again updated by the Mighty Nitsuja. This time, he incorporated Memory Watching ...
As you all probably know, the only reason Illusion of Gaia 100% isn't done yet is because of the damn fisherman which holds the third red jewel. But now, thanks to Memory Watching, I could get to manipulate him in a better way, if only I knew "his address".
Therefore, I'm asking you guys for help. I'm not the best at finding memory locations, and I know some of you can do it in a matter of minutes. I'm asking any of you if you could find me the memory location which defines where the fisherman is. He has 3 different positions.
If I could get that information, then I could finally get started with this project. The finder of the memory address will receive a Wookie Life-Debt from me, but since I'm not a Wookie I'll simply put your name in the "Thanks to" list at the bottom of the description of the TAS.
As the author of the Illusion of Gaia TAS, I want to personnaly congratulate you on completing the first game of the 3-game series!
All there is left now is Terranigma... let's hope someone will put some time in this one too. This way, the whole "series" of games will be TASed! That would be awesome!
Once again, thank you, and congratulations!
P.S.: I'm going to watch this tonight and vote right after I'm finished.
Just for making all the SNES, N64, GBA (I don't have the list ... but those are the ones that come to my mind right now) emulators do what they do today, Nitsuja deserves the Ninja status.
Without his improvements to Snes9x, we wouldn't have that many great TASes around here. Without his improvements to the N64 emulator, well ... we wouldn't have N64 runs at all.
I consider THAT, ninja material.
Why are there such huge differences in the times in the "Footrace with Koopa the Quick" star? Don't you have to wait for Koopa to get up the mountain before you get the star, thus making it almost trivial to get the lowest theoretically possible time? That's what I thought, at least... apparently not.
On the first footrace, Koopa will adjust it's speed according to yours. What this means is that the faster you reach the top, the faster Koopa will reach the top too. If you wander around near the begginning of the race, Koopa will be slow as hell, to give you some time to "catch up".
That first race is designed to be easy. Koopa tries to help you win by slowing down if you're slow.
I guess you get the picture :)
I confirm this was the video I did. This is the fastest time possible for the first track.
The trick is NOT in the various stunts you make. The uniracer has a top speed, it won't go any faster than this, so whatever tricks you make, the speed will always be the same (as long as you keep doing tricks, that is).
The trick to get that 25.07 instead of 25.08 was to find a way to end the track with the uniracer as far to the right of the screen as possible. I managed to do this by missing a stunt or two. You'll understand when you watch the movie.
Thanks Nitsuja!
Hmm.. yeah sorry, my bad.
My router was reset recently, and I forgot to re-redirect the ports for the web server! :D Sorry for that.
I deleted the movies for Uniracers from my site anyways. Even if they were still there, I doubt you would have learned anything, since I only did the first race. It was fairly normal, nothing special ...
What I would suggest you is to try it for yourself. Try to get the time I mentionned that I got earlier in this thread, and when you do get it, you will have learned everything that I learned from that game.
I didn't do much with it really. You're better off on your own than waiting for someone who has my movie.
Don't the guidelines state that in FPS games or any games that involve shooting, no shots should be shot that are un-necessary?
This would mean that yes, you should only shoot to kill. There shouldn't be any missed shots, unless it is for charging a later shot (like in Megaman games).
Hope this helps!
P.S.: I don't think your avatar is offensive. I find it to be quite funny!
I voted yes.
At first I didn't think a TAS of that game would be interesting at all ... but when I watched it, I found myself to be very entertained! I liked it a lot! It's fast paced, and there's a lot of CPU-pwnage!
Since when are tool-assisted time attacks segmented??
In my opinion, runs made here should always be runs of the full game, not parts of it. That's the main point of interest I think.
If there's a voting of some sort on the subject "Should this run be segmented or single-segment?", then I vote single-segment.
I would not be interested in watching 20 different segments of this game, one by one, to see a full run. Not at all. TASes play from start to end. Always.
Once again, that's my personnal opinion. Feel free to disagree.
These were my two cents.
I discovered a "trick" while playing the game normally.
In Deep Darkness (the swamp place), you should use PSI Teleport A to move. It goes really really fast through the place. It definetly copes for the frames "lost" with the wipeout animation.
Those were my two cents.
For the last one, I think it's the "drawer" in which the cash is held in a cashing machine. (This is probably not said correctly ... I'll blame the fact that I'm a French Canadian for this)
Edit: Weird thing is that it doesn't list "till" as a verb, which is what Zurreco says... That's probably a mistake from that dictionary.
So be it.
I will start working on Illusion of Gaia (U) [!] 100% TAS as soon as I have time for it. Hope you guys will like it. I will do as I always did: post updates after big places (bosses or big dungeons) to get feedback, read feedback, correct a few things, and then go on.
This is the begginning of a huge project, and I already see the first problem: getting the third red jewel (the fisherman).
If people would be interested in a 100% run of Illusion of Gaia, then I would do it ...
100% would mean collecting all Red Jewels and all items (herbs, flute songs, etc...) and would also mean getting 100% of the HP bar (in the any% run, I missed 3 HP at the end). 100% would also mean doing the secret dungeon.
100% would NOT mean killing all the enemies everywhere. Why? Because when you kill a boss, you get all the upgrades you missed before that boss.
If you would be interested, I would do it ... that would be something for me to do...
Are you guys interested in this?
But I think its interesting maybe someone, that there should be a special Section for those movies, or as add for the complete runs.
... I don't think it would be interesting ...
That would bring some kind of competition for only those secret stages, and it would only make it more complicated for Bisqwit and the encoders.
You can complete that secret stage if you want, but I don't want that to be added in the SNES section under my movie ...
Also, how much did you figure out about manipulating battles? And can enemies be manipulated to not appear easily?
Manipulating events in a battle is fairly easy, although sometimes it can be pretty time-consuming. And it you don't have the patience to, it can really become a pain in the a**.
You can view examples of what I've found out in the last WIP I put on the web. Basically, if the events don't happen as you want them to, move the cursor in the battle menu before attacking. Move twice, three times, four times, five times, six times, etc... until you get the results you want (or something that is "satisfying" enough). Sometimes you can't get anything good ... in which cases you go either for maximum damage from you or minimum damage from the enemy. You'll understand everything about that when watching what I've done.
As for manipulating the appearing enemies, I haven't found anything good, except that it all depends on the frame you enter the "spawning zone". Finding that spawning zone is nearly impossible, so the best way to manipulate enemies is by taking different paths to get there. As an example, in the first few fights, you'll see I take a very weird path. That was because I manipulated the next enemy to be a runaway dog.
Oh and as for leveling up, what you get at level up can somewhat be manipulated. At each level up, only some stats will grow, and which stats will grow cannot be manipulated. The only thing you can manipulate is how much you get in each growing stat, and it's not that easy to do. Basically, it works the same as for normal fighting. On the last blow (the one before level up), don't move in the menu and kill the last enemy, note what stats grew up and how much. Load savestate, Move twice, kill, note what grew and how much. Load savestats, Move three times, kill, note what grew up and how much, etc.. etc.. etc..
What I normally did was to try up to 20 battle menu moves, and then I picked the one that gave the most stats OR the one that gave the most offense (because that's what you should mainly want to grow up)
There's only one problem: I never played Soul Blazer. Not even once. I'm currently playing through Terranigma though .. I'll see if I want to TAS it after I'm finished playing with it...
I don't see the point of doing this ... it's just a robot controlling a dead frog ...
You would have the same result by putting a robot in front of a webcam and allowing the users on Internet to control that robot ...
That is so useless ...
I really don't know ... I'll take a few days (weeks?) off, and then figure out which game I might try TASing.
I will probably pick between these games:
- Harvest Moon (very unlikely, since it's REALLY repetitive and has no "precise" goal)
- Krusty's Super Fun House (unlikely)
- Simpsons, The - Bart's Nightmare
- Soul Blazer (unlikely, since I never played this game before)
- Super Widget (I played that game a lot as a kid...)
- Terranigma (unlikely, since I never played this game before)
- Uniracers (unlikely because it's a racing game ... lots of expectations that would be hard to match)
- Virtual Bart
Soul Blazer and Terranigma would probably get a lot of votes, if this was a poll, simply because these are the two other games in the trilogy in which is also Illusion of Gaia.
Virtual Bart might be a good one, since it's not too complicated. Bart's Nightmare seems to be a better choice though. Super Widget is also a good one, since I know that game really good and I played through it a lot of times.
I really don't know which one I'll TAS after my "time off". I could also take some suggestions from ou guys: e-mail me your suggestions at halamantariel AT hotmail DOT com.
Uhh .. bad news guys ...
I don't have the patience to do that game, at all. I really like to play that game, and I feel like beating it one more time, but ... not in a TAS.
TASing that game is too much work for me. Manipulating each and every round of every single fight is just too much. I can't do it.
So ... that's it ... I'm giving up on this one. I don't have the patience to do it.
If someone else wants to do it, though, I'd be glad to help (tell what I've learn, tips and tricks, etc...).
Good luck to anyone who wants to take this one, and sorry for letting the fans of this game down, but I just can't do it.