Posts for Hyperresonance

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Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
Clockworks are used to get that jiggy in RTA runs. We do prison compound on the second trip to Mayahem Temple and shoot a clockwork from the water pool in that area.
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
Thanks for the info Tompa! I'll look into that more when I get back from work. Yeah it is unfortunately impossible to get the expert's ring from Maple. Maple only drops up to tier 3 rings and the expert's ring is tier 4. The only gasha location that drops it before tokay island is yoll graveyard. This FAQ here http://www.gamefaqs.com/gbc/472313-the-legend-of-zelda-oracle-of-ages/faqs/67302 has all the information you need to know about rings and stuff. The reason we need to get the ring from the second tree is that link has a "tree level". You initially start at tree level 0 and when you cut down your first tree, it levels up to 1. The expert's ring will only drop if your tree level is 1. Additionally, 40 kills are required for the gasha nut to appear. My idea is that we collect our first gasha seed from the farmer in the past right before collecting the shovel and planting it immediately, and then manipulating a gasha seed and potion from maple for right after level 1 and then planting that in the graveyard on the way out. The only problem is that these nuts require a LOT of kills, more than we normally would get, but the expert's ring saves so much time that it is absolutely worth it. So the hardest part would be farming as many kills as quickly as possible while trying not to go out of our way too much.
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
I figured I would post here to see if anyone was still interested in working on the ages TAS and to document some new findings recently discovered by theonly0 and one of his viewers (can't remember the name for the life of me, but he found that the expert ring could destroy crystals). If there is still interest in TASing this I would most certainly be willing to help. I don't know enough about TASing to lead the project though but I know some things. The tokay island trading sequence is now partially skippable. If you manipulate the expert ring from a gasha tree before you go to the island and equip it, you can punch the crystals blocking your way and get the sword back before the shovel. You can then make your way over to the trade store where the game assumes you have the shovel already and lets you trade for one of the items. You can then go back and collect the real shovel and trade it in for the other item. This skips having to make 2 trips through the cave to where the harp is located. This also technically lets you skip scent seeds, as they are only required to trade for your items in the shop, but this would require us to do a slower key in level 6. However, theonly0 discovered that there is a bush in level 3 that drops scent seeds even if they aren't already in your inventory. To note, these would be used to get the key in level 6 where you use scent seeds to kill the enemies behind the blocks and make them fall in the pits. These new discoveries save around 3 minutes or so, and this is a rough estimate not based off of perfect text mashing. Another neat thing about the expert ring is that when you have it equipped each punch does a spin attack of damage. This can be abused to one cycle the mini boss in level 3, the boss of level 4, and absolutely wreck veran. The catch is that you need to get this ring from a gasha tree, and it is impossible to get this ring on the first tree you cut down, so it must be manipulated from the second tree. TAS would make this trivial however, and theonly0 was able to manipulate it on emulator in real time using memory addresses. Also, there are "tiers" of rings levels one through five, and certain gasha spots can only yield certain "tiers" of rings. The expert ring is in tier 4 and thankfully, the yoll graveyard gasha spot can yield tier 4 rings, which makes this skip possible. I will create a pastebin with a general route for the TAS based on the new findings after I rewatch theonly0's past broadcast.
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
Thanks for posting those. These videos are really nice because after watching them I know I can manipulate the overworld so I never get encounters and I don't need to buy holy bottles. I wasn't sure if it was possible to go really long distances without having an overworld monster rush you. Also their method for pushing blocks in the tower of mana with the mirrors in the large room is optimal. The one I thought of that we have been using in RTA is not so that's nice to know.
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
That's essentially what you do but there's technicalities to it. The highest DPS party would be Genis, Colette, Regal, Presea (or Zelos maybe, with 4 person inputs. I will have to test this). Genis you want to have him randomize off an instant meteor storm (for most battles). Regal has an infinite combo crescent moon, eagle rage, healer, guard repeat. This is the highest dps in the game sans incredibly good meteor luck. Colette has toss hammer poison and then para ball spam (Poison does 1.6% of boss hp per second). Presea in RTA NG+ runs we have in the party because she increases Regal's stats due to EX skills, and macro rising punishment with her. But Zelos super lightning blade spam may outdps Presea with 4 person input. The only problem with this is that the boss will tech down after taking so many techs in a short period of time (like when hit by Lloyd's beast skill). During this they take 90% reduced damage. Genis' absolute techs the enemy back up which is a strategy I will use. Other than that I will have to experiment with how fast I can kill the boss without having this become a problem. The good thing is poison is still effective during tech down so I can use that to my advantage as well. Although 4 person battling will be somewhat of a pain with 4 inputs, it will help make things simpler in the long run because I don't have to set strategies and I can spell cancel spam skills with anyone with the capability instead of macroing people.
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
Yeah I can see why he changed his mind. 4 player completely eliminates macroing and having to set strategies. It also eliminates a lot of decision making. Battles simply go much faster too. I've watched the Japanese player's run so far and I already see some timesavers that are not NG+ exclusive as well. After my exam on Monday I am going to start putting some good work into this. If you know how, could you explain how I would do 4 player mode on dolphin? I'm still sort of new to this emulator. Thanks a lot.
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
Thanks for posting those. I hadn't really considered doing 4 player mode although I knew it was an option. After seeing it in action it looks pretty cool and I think I will do that in my run now.
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
My intention from the beginning was to avoid using emulation bugs and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a problem. Thanks for the informative reply Patashu. That's the way I saw it as well with the reproducible terminology. I'm just going to continue TASing the game with full range of the joystick. I'd rather this topic be actually more about Tales of Symphonia.
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
Well I was under the impression (because of the rules of the site) that the run must be reproducible on console. I thought that the faster running speed would in a way invalidate that. But if people don't care then I will just continue the TAS without regards to that. I was trying to go along with the standard rules and wasn't sure if an exception would apply. It also doesn't make sense to me to have a run significantly faster because of the increased range on the joystick. ToS has faulty programming that doesn't limit running speed at any point which is why I asked people to shed light on the situation. But if that's the way you guys do things here then so be it I guess.
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
Ah yeah that's the wording I was looking for. GreenMittenz told me about that and I forgot the reason. The problem is that even when I only extend the input to the edge of the little circle thing on the TAS input, my characters still run faster. So I need to figure out the coordinate to emulate console running speed properly. I tried it out and it seems to be roughly 80% of the distance to the edge of the circle but I will need to test it more to be certain. Thanks for the input Rachel
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
Post subject: Tales Of Symphonia
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (195)
Joined: 8/10/2013
Posts: 161
Since recently I have peaked interest in speedrunning this game. Some new skips and small timesavers were found and the WR for RTA has been cut down to 6:40:20 by GreenMittenz. His sum of best splits add up to around a low 6:33 or high 6:32 I believe (I have no idea yet but I think TAS can sub 6 hours). I intend to work on and complete a TAS of this game for NG+, although I don't know if I will ever submit here. I just want to get the word out that this is being worked on and if people would like to join and contribute that would be cool too. PM me if you are interested. The two reasons I have for not submitting are such: The rules of this site require NG+ runs to have a recorded run of the set up file used starting from NG which would take around 40 hours of time to set up and record and then a ridiculous amount of time to upload. I don't really want to do that. The other issue is that dolphin emulates running speed in this game incorrectly so your avatar in towns and dungeons runs faster than normal. From a naked eye it SEEMS as though running in towns without personal on Lloyd is roughly the same as console with personal on Lloyd but I can't be sure. This problem is also seen with third party controllers (I have a madcatz where I run a lot faster). If anyone could shed some light on this that would be cool. What I will do for the TAS probably is leave personal off of Lloyd and leave nothing in its place to make it more similar to console runs. So unless I can correct running speed and people don't care about a 40 hour set up video then I probably won't submit but I still want to push this game to its limits. There's a lot of potential for time to be saved despite the game being decently long. (From the RTA start which is right after the grade screen up to leaving the school I have already saved roughly 21~22 seconds over the fastest RTA time (although about 1 extra second was saved due to the faster movement). This includes the skill set up menu for Lloyd, Colette, and Genis. You can see this in the video below in my google doc). The major idea with "skips" in this game is overlapping cutscenes. If you enter a battle at the same time a cutscene starts and you run from the battle you can bypass line triggers that block your path. This lets you skip Ymir Forest in its entirety. You can also skip the second sheena battle in the wind temple with this trick (TAS can save roughly 10 seconds with it but is frame perfect so not realistic in RTA). There are also a few places where when the game displays the town name when you first enter, you can run a few pixels and talk to someone nearby, cancel their text and keep running instead of waiting for the name of the town to disappear. As this is a NG+ run, a HUGE amount of planning goes into this. Many small things such as cooking, affection, and the amount of skills in your menu saves good chunks of time. I am creating a google doc with detailed notes on the run (still a work in progress as routing is still being done) and I also detail a little bit about TASing as well as I post this on my stream where not everyone knows the ins and outs of TASing. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jS8Uwd7khCOWLPoUPt_MnqNUXQ6PFOYjV1nuBN5vxDU/ There is a small WIP in the google doc as well although it was mostly created by me for practice (Input buffering in menus sometimes doesn't like to cooperate). The set up file used in the WIP is not going to be the one used in the final TAS because small timesavers have been found and I am waiting for GreenMittenz to finish the set up file on his Wii and upload it for me as I do not have a means of doing so. I can't wait to start TASing the battles, but I am still learning how RNG manipulation in this game works too. To manipulate starting stats, I had to wait around 2.3 seconds on the title screen before the words "newgame" and "continute" appear (literally the only way I was able to figure this out was through hours and hours of close watch of the memory values during the intro. Starting stats are not changed in the memory until the kratos narration starts but the RNG seed is set way earlier). Thanks for reading. I wanted to get the word out about this and to see if anyone was interested, although submission to this site may not happen. Cheers!
Projects: Banjo-Kazooie Any% with FFM
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