Posts for TheAxeMan

Posted: 9/8/2005 4:47 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Yes! I'm really itching to see this...

Posted: 9/8/2005 4:46 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Ferret Warlord wrote:

From what I recall you can't manipulate battles at all. This is because the seed is set at the beginning of the battle and all subsequent actions will be based on it.

After a little random testing (didn't count frames, just used savestates to see if the outcome is the same every turn) I don't think this is true. However, I also don't think that the variables re-randomize every frame, it may only be about every second or more. This is bad, but workable, particularly because it looks like if you hit the button immediately, the outcome is the same as the previous turn. So perhaps you'll have a long pause in the beginning of each battle, then each turn will go quickly. If you still want to do this run, you should figure out how this works before worrying about any of the other details. Oh, and be prepared for a lot of studying on every detail of the game, filling in gaps with your own research and testing. As well as most likely having to do at least a partial test run. But hey, when you can crack a big-time RPG like this, the result is pretty cool.

Posted: 9/7/2005 11:09 PM

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TheAxeMan

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Good luck with this one! Right off, you should experiment to see how much manipulation is possible in battle. Can you change what the enemy does each turn, or cause him to miss? Can you get a crit on your hit everytime? If you can't manipulate battles very well, then you are screwed because it takes waaaay too long to levelup in this game. I suspect that some enemies may be scripted to use magic or special abilities at certain times, which is a potential killer. I don't doubt that you will be able to avoid most fights, which would really make this a good game for a TAS, assuming you can win the fights that you have to do. Most likely the main factor for choosing your character will be whichever apprentice has the highest attack at low levels, since you'll probably only be killing bosses. That suggests Lux and Wilme, however, I wouldn't rule out Kamil or Olvan. It might be possible to scrape together money for weapons if you can totally ignore armor and most items, and there might be some you can pick up. If you can't control enemy actions, then Lejes mirror spell could be useful, I forget if there's an item to duplicate it. The stat bonuses from levelups and items can be manipulated, and you should get the max power every time. Even playing through this game normally you really have to do this with some characters. Are the starting stats always the same or can you get those higher?

Posted: 9/5/2005 11:52 PM

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TheAxeMan

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Well, I don't take the fourth fighter for his durability, but more for his damage per gold efficiency. The silver sword is very important to my strategy, and if you check my first pass, you can see I need every last gold piece for it. So 100 gold for a spell is just not worth it. My next run pushes the money management for this to the extreme, as will be revealed when I submit. ;)

Posted: 9/2/2005 7:25 PM

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TheAxeMan

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That is interesting. I wonder if you could have one player knee the other across the water while jumping in, and then he catches up when he comes back to life.

Posted: 9/2/2005 7:02 PM

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TheAxeMan

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Thank you, Paulygon, now I'm at least as excited as Inzult! That info on the encounter steps is actually extremely useful to me. It fits with some phenomenon I had observed--the steps to next encounter being different in dungeon vs outer world. In particular, there are times when you can enter a dungeon one step before you would get an outer world battle, and then walk quite aways into the dungeon before you actually get a battle. I had also noticed that in some cases, 1 outer world step = 1 dungeon step = 1 ship step. The significance is that in theory, I could use this information to avoid encounters in some areas and get encounters in others (when I want to advance the encounter list.) This also explains how Mookish got ahead in the encounter list--the counter hit a number between the sea and outer world threshold, I was on land, and he was at sea. I just finished Ice Cave, about 1:40 ahead of before. I'm going to finish the run I'm working on and submit it, but armed with that new info, I may be able to do even better. How do keep I the bats out of my way? It's pretty simple actually, the NPC movement will change if you enter the area on a different frame. It also changes if you bump into one of them. So all you have to do is wait one frame before taking the stairs to Earth Cave B3, for example, and the bats' movement will be different. You can also pass by one bat, bump into him for one frame, and it will change his next movements as well as the movements of all the other bats. Then it's just a matter of finding out which tweaks will keep them out of your way. In most cases I only needed to wait or bump for one frame and it's almost impossible to tell when played back full speed. For example, in the test run, watch when I go into Melmond. I bump into one townsperson, making Dr. Unne walk towards me.

Posted: 9/1/2005 9:07 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Thanks, that explanation of levelups seems to fit with everything I've seen. I was proceeding pretty well, over a minute ahead of before, but changes in the encounters are throwing me off. This is very annoying, as it's really the most important consideration in this run. In particular, two shadow battles in a row are really bad, since one of them will have to be enemies strike first. I can take some hits if I have to, but it wastes time and looks bad. Even if I can fix this, I'm wondering if there will be some change ahead which will throw things off? After my last run, I had a pretty specific plan as to where I'd like to be in the encounter list, but unless I can learn more about how the steps are determined, this might turn into a more iterative process. One theory is that perhaps the area each fight takes place in affects the steps to the next encounter somehow. Anyway, I worked my way up past Sarda and back into Earth Cave. I'll probably see how things work out a little further, but I think I'm too far behind on encounters, I'll have to go back and redo a few things. Luckily I've figured out a process which should make this a bit easier. As far as positives, I've mastered manipulating the NPC movement, so I won't have any bats in my way this time.

Posted: 8/30/2005 9:45 PM

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TheAxeMan

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26.3, almost up there with feitclub

Posted: 8/30/2005 7:46 PM

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TheAxeMan

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I've started the final run, and am a little past Astos. Compared to my posted test, I'm about 46 sec ahead. My best guess now is that I'll finish at about an hour 14 min. The party is four fighters because everyone else sucks. So far there have been quite a few changes, but only one will probably be a big surprise (and I'll leave it that way for now.) Stat gains on levelup don't manipulate very easily, so I wasn't able to get luck on level 2 or 5. Fortunately, this isn't a big deal, I'm running just as easily as before (in my test run I got luck on 2 but not 5.) I've noticed a bug which hurts in a timeattack, but will probably never affect normal play (unless you're going for a low-level solo run...) There is a limit of one levelup per battle. If you go into your status after this, the experience for next level will show some high number due to an overflow somewhere. You'll get the levelup after the next battle you fight. I'm not fully sure how this will affect me, but it definitely does mean that in some cases I get screwed out of a levelup unless I take on an extra fight. I wonder if it's possible to lose any experience this way? As far as the mystery of encounter steps, I'm still not sure exactly where the steps come from, but I've converged on something that puts me where I want to be.

Posted: 8/27/2005 12:03 AM

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TheAxeMan

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If the fights are going to get long, have you thought about putting Ragnar in? It should be very easy to make him fight every time, and you're pretty good at getting those crits. I don't see any disadvantage, just an extra hit for your side in each round. Also, can Taloon wiggle his finger and confuse a boss? If so, could you manipulate a critical self-hit? This would be pretty cool. Also, I don't know if you've thought about this at all, but one way to get weapons for your characters in Chapter 5 is to get them with Taloon in Chapter 3. After filling the order, Taloon could meet some more enemies for easy Broadsword drops, which the hero and Ragnar can use. This won't cover Taloon, but he could buy a Sword of Malice in Mintos, which you have to go through anyway. If you don't have the money, you could have Taloon get some more drops before the end of chapter 3 and sell them. Or just have Ragnar trade his sword to Taloon for a Broadsword, though this would leave you weaponless for Balzack v1. Getting 6 medals for a sword of Miracles seems like it will take too long, but Broadsword and Sword of Malice are decent weapons you can get very easily. Finally, how sure are we that all insta-kills are out? Beat spell, probably, but what about the Poison Needle? Brey or Mara would become your most powerful attacker.

Posted: 8/26/2005 9:51 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Ok, I have a pretty good idea how my next version will look now. However, there is a wildcard in that the steps to next encounter don't always seem to be constant, and there's no explanation why in some cases. I've found some cases where particular squares don't advance the counter, but in other places encounters happen with more or fewer steps for seemingly no reason. Unless I can figure this out, I'll just have to work with what I can get.

Posted: 8/25/2005 10:56 PM

Post subject: Elemental altars in Final Fantasy

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TheAxeMan

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Say, I noticed in my Final Fantasy run when I step on an altar that lights an orb I don't get the usual visual effect. There's supposed to be a large block of grayish light that comes out when you do this. Do I have some setting wrong or is this a limit of FCEU?

Posted: 8/25/2005 4:25 PM

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TheAxeMan

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Here's an update on some things I've learned in my testings: The 2-4 shadow fights in Marsh cave are always enemy strikes first. However, it's not too terribly tough to manipulate two shadows which both miss. With three or more there always seems to be a hit though. Since it's the first fight in the cave and I need to advance the encounter list, I might just move the encounter out of the cave, saving a few seconds. I may have use for the save/load trick, but it doesn't save an amazing amount of time, maybe 20-30 sec. I would avoid all the zombull fights and have a pretty similar flow through the TOF. Coincidentally, this also puts WarMech on the path. Blue D can be sped up pretty well by taking a couple hits, so I don't think I'll bother with wizard staff. The WzVampire/ZombieD combo can definitely be run from, it's just the all-ZombieD groups that can't.

Posted: 8/24/2005 9:24 PM

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TheAxeMan

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Ok, watched it all and it looks great. I love this game, but I have to agree that it doesn't translate as well to a timeattack as others. The door trick on that site needed the treasure map, which isn't picked up until chapter 5. To kill off Cristo, you could either use the battle for the earrings or just put him in the party against Keeleon and have Keeleon nail him. I hadn't thought about travel doors, but maybe after you get final key there might be one you could use. There are a few other things I thought I'd mention. You sail right by the Royal Crypt, and you have your 3 hardcore party members. Why not mosey in and whup a metal babble or three, which I think you can get in one fight. The extra levels would really help on Keeleon, and also on Balzack and Bakor, coming up. In particular, Taloon could use a lot more strength since he doesn't have much of a weapon. Since you have to walk around so much, would it be worthwhile to get six small medals for a sword of miracles for him? Talking to the king will take some time, but I think you can do this without a whole lot of extra movement. You'll be near his castle to get the zenithian armor anyway. Another thing, for 500 of your 2000 coin prize you can get a wizard ring, which will cover your MP for the rest of the game. May or may not be worthwhile though, depending on how much you actually need it and how easy it is to hit inns when you need to. I forget, does Santeem show up on the return list in chapter 5? If so, you should step in as you travel by it towards Keeleon.

Posted: 8/23/2005 8:45 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Yeah, I've also wondered if a playaround-type run would also be interesting, seeing as how an optimal timeattack will be very minimalistic. You could go for lowest levels or pick some insane party, like all white and black mages. Then show off as many glitches as possible, talk to the invisible man, make Chaos run, whatever. My posted run doesn't use the save/load trick, but I have tested it and it seems to work. Basically, the idea is to save game, emulate a power cycle (not just reset), and then load the saved game. At first I wasn't sure if it would record, but it does. I don't know of any runs that actually do this, I might be the first. The game starts up pretty quickly, so not much time is lost, and the encounter sequence resets to the beginning. One manifestation of this is the well-known kyzoku trick: if you load your game and immediately go out to sea, the first fight (and the third) will be against kyzokus. Just save after this, turn the power off and back on, and you can repeat as much as you want. As part of my planning, I'm going to redo the end of the test run to see if this trick will be helpful. I'll use a cabin after the waterfall to avoid the ZomBull fights on the way to Leifen. However, this doesn't save that much time, since I whup the ZomBulls pretty easily. It's definitely worthwhile if I can still get a decent sequence through the Temple of Fiends though. The current sequence lets me get through with only three fights and a few extra steps (which could be tweaked out of Gurgu, but I digress.) It looks like I might still save time this way, but there are enough variables that I really have to play through to find out.

Posted: 8/23/2005 4:16 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Perhaps he should check out the codec info: http://tasvideos.org/CodecProblems.html Works fine for me too, that was very interesting, Bisqwit.

Posted: 8/23/2005 3:43 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Well, the distance between encounters follows a set pattern, just like the enemy group, so this should be the same. However, some steps count more towards your next encounter. According to the FAQ, the ratio is 6:5:2 for outside:inside:ship (off this topic, the ship is over 3x faster than walking, so in real time, the fastest way to advance the encounter list is to sail around on the ship.) There are certain squares that don't count towards an encounter, for example, the grasslands in front of Coneria. You can see in the beginning how I take some extra steps around the forest and actually walk further than Mookish before the first fight--my second fight is in the temple rather than outside. You can also see this effect in dungeon doorways, try pacing in and out of a door and see how many steps it takes for your next fight. So at some point, Mookish walks over terrain that doesn't count towards encounters which I missed. I wouldn't rule out some sort of glitch here either, perhaps there are sea squares that count the same as land? Who knows, I was just wondering if anyone noticed and could tell me how this happened.

Posted: 8/23/2005 2:42 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Yeah, I'm doing lots of planning and things are lookin good. Unfortunately there's nowhere near 17 more minutes to take out, but if I get really lucky there's hope for a run under 70 minutes. Avoiding forced fights will save time, but because I beat them quickly anyway, it's not that much time. Looking through the encounters, I'm pretty sure I can take out the gas dragon fight, which is too bad in a way as it's one of the toughest enemy groups in the game. I have a couple more radical ideas which I'll leave as a surprise, but even if it all works out I'll still be well over an hour. One thing I need to figure out is how I fall behind Mookish on encounters around the visit to Dwarf cave. I should be ahead because he picked up some extra treasure in Marsh cave and walked around Elfland instead of through. Yet he gets ahead in fights near Dwarf Cave, then blows his lead by sailing around on the ship to avoid a shadow fight. Does anyone see how this happened?

Posted: 8/22/2005 10:23 PM

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TheAxeMan

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Hmm, despite this being well done, the game may be too obscure to generate any interest. Hopefully more people will see the fun in this unique little game.

Posted: 8/22/2005 6:55 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Ok, I've finished this tale rather hastily because I want to start over and do everything perfect. For anyone interested in seeing this through: http://home.comcast.net/~f_amoroso/FinalFantasy-TheAxeManv0.2.fcm So I take back what I said about healing. With some HP to spare I'm able to take on some fights in TOF, and let's face it, there's no way to get through there without mixing it up a few times. I finished in 1:17:07, which is over 13 minutes faster than the published version. With some more optimizations I believe at least a couple more minutes are possible. For reference, I have 13 fewer random encounters than Mookish, but throughout the entire way I end up fighting out 2 more battles than he does. He avoids all the wizards, but I have two wizards fights each in Earth cave and Ice cave. We each take on one fight in Sea shrine, but he takes on a whole gang of sahags while I pick on two ghosts. Going to Lefein, I only have two ZomBull fights to his three. In the TOF I have four fights to his five. Also, my enemy groups are all perfectly minimized and my fights are faster. I can take out at least a couple of these, maybe more. There should probably be only minor changes to the encounter list up through the Sea Shrine, but I may experiment with saving and loading after that, as long as I can find a good order in TOF. Also, I'm gonna try and pick up both the flame sword and wizard staff. Wizard staff solely for Blue D, flame sword mostly for Kraken, but it will get some other use too. If I had to pick out the key planning point for a run on this game, it's definitely the Sea Shrine. Finding a good encounter sequence for it is a major bitch. TOF is worse on forced fights, but at that point there is a great equalizer in hand...

Posted: 8/19/2005 3:20 PM

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TheAxeMan

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What I got were cabins, and this was so I can reset the encounter sequence by saving and power cycling. If I do end up doing this I might work out picking them up as treasure next time around, but for now this is faster than going into Coneria just to go to the inn, like Mookish did. I'm hoping I'll be able to finish without taking any more damage--remember I'm not wearing armor so most enemies will kill me pretty easily, 1 HP is almost as good as 100.

Posted: 8/19/2005 9:17 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Another update: http://home.comcast.net/~f_amoroso/FinalFantasy-TheAxeManv0.2.fcm Over ten minutes ahead of the published run...

Posted: 8/18/2005 5:00 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Bisqwits and gravy, mmm-mmm...

Posted: 8/18/2005 2:50 AM

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TheAxeMan

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You can definitely sail to Stancia, but you have to navigate through some shoals and walk around a bit to get in. It may be faster to use the balloon though. Also casino can get you the metal babble shield, the armor is in the shop in Endor. Not sure how much you can sell the metal babble shield for, but probably a lot. I forget what best payout is, but there is a joker so you can get five of a kind. If you can manipulate the prize in the tunnel you'll get some coins. Double or nothing game will be easier to manipulate than the actual hand dealt though. Not sure how much money you'll need, why not just get all your weapons from manipulated drops? Hmm, according to the gamefaqs monster treasure list, good swords will be tough to get on drops, but you can get the stiletto earrings pretty easily.

Posted: 8/18/2005 2:30 AM

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TheAxeMan

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Adelikat, the first Kraken has only the INK ability, and he uses it 1/4 of the time, according to the gamefaqs masterminds. Even if this works, it will just give "dark" status, which is meaningless due to a bug. Getting around Sahag and Water fights may be a matter of finding the right spot to power cycle. If I obtain a house or cabin earlier, I can put this spot anywhere between leaving ice cave and entering Onrac, and I can also vary by doing the waterfall first or second. I don't see any point to picking up the Elf Castle treasures. It's quite a walk from the Prince's room and nothing in there is that great. I'd sooner beat down an extra enemy. Having HP on Lich wouldn't actually speed up the fight that much. Randomization pauses aren't very long and I could have beaten him in four turns. The only reason I didn't was so I could manipulate the shadows in the next battle. This actually doesn't cost me a lot of time, each turn of battle only takes a few seconds when it's one on one. I'd say at this point the only fights I'd like to improve are the Marsh cave wizards and Astos. Edit: Wait a minute, I could easily go toe to toe with some pretty nasty enemies if I pick up the opal bracelet. This will probably be a desperation thing, but the opal bracelet is attractive because it only reduces my evade by one point while absorbing quite a bit of damage. Probably worth considering, depending on the enemy sequence.