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@Daniel, Lord Bahamut
Thank you for watching, Daniel! Two tricks were used to skip boss fights in the setting-up run, Pause menu skip trick and Save anywhere trick:
-Pause menu skip trick
By quickly opening the status menu and leaving it when the screen starts to fade out, you can have just a few frames to move in another direct. If you repeat this again and again, you can get to a checkpoint which would impose you on a boss fight, with keeping the fade-out status. And if the checkpoint sets a flag that determines if the boss was beaten at the same time, you are brought to the previous room and the boss is removed. Guardian and Nizbel 2 were skipped like this.
-Save anywhere trick
A rather simple explanation can be seen here. Yakra, Heckran, Zombor and Mad Imp were skipped with this trick.
Hope this will clear up your question.
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Thank you for your comments!
I'll continue on this since I got enough positive feedbacks for me.
I'm not still sure how it would be treated in the workbench forum. But even if it gets rejected, I don't mind at all, because it's a side project for me after all. The rest part is not hard at all, so I think I'm going to finish and submit it in a few weeks. After that, I'll pick up the test stuff for an any % run.
Phil wrote:
maybe it should be done with both versions so people can give their opinion of which one should be published.
I've considered that, but I just don't feel like setting up a maxed-out data from scratch to see a few seconds improvement, while it is expected that two minutes improvement will be done soon. Yeah, I know I'm lazy, but it makes life easy.
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Sorry for the late reply, mmbossman.
mmbossman wrote:
Any progress on this inichi?
Haven't made any progress in a while, but that doesn't mean that I've given up. In the process of testing, I found another groundbreaking glitch which is available only in a new game+ mode. The glitch was so awesome that I decided to take a rest from the test stuff for an any% run and work on a new game+ run v2.
I'm guessing the new run will be at least 2 minutes faster than the current published run. But the problem is that the glitch only works on the (J) version in a preferable way due to minor changes in coding between (U) and (J).
Since the rules demand:
If there already is a published video, do not use a different ROM than what it uses, unless the new ROM is obviously better, and you can show how it should be compared to the existing movie.
If the situation arises that you do want to use a different ROM than the currently published run, make a post on the forum to make sure the differences between the two are large enough to warrant the change.
Postng a WIP and describing the details of the glitch, I'd like to hear your thoughts on whether the version change will be allowed or not.
First, here is a WIP to Inner Lavos battle.
Smv: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1987486506/chronotrigger_newgame%2Bv2_WIP_inichi.smv
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iekSAg0JqqU
At this point, I'm 4890 frames ahead of the published run. Note that this doesn't mean that I really improved the published run by 4890 frames since (J) usually has less texts than (U), while 1.51 is usually laggier than 1.43. In this movie, I think you will notice that Crono and Marle are capable of dealing with 9999 damage on a critical hit like Ayla's Bronze Fist does. Yeah, that's the core of the glitch that only (J) allows.
Second is the detail of the glitch. Two newly discovered tricks are utilized to pull off and make most of the glitch.
-Loading a "No Data" on the load screen
By pressing A and Up or Down key on the same frame on the load screen, you can access to a data that is shown as "No Data". As with many other SNES games, at first, 96 is stored in all SRAM in Chrono Trigger. So if you use this trick on a never-touched "No data" on a new game+ data selection mode, 96 is stored in various memory addresses, such as for item inventory, character's status, exps, etc, then a new game+ starts. Naturally, that causes lots of strange things to the game.
It should be noted that the trick must be used against a never-touched "No data" and must be selected on a new game+ data selection mode in order to pull off the glitch. For exapmle, if you use the trick against a dirty "No data" on a normal data selection mode, you will only find a deleted data restores (which will be very important for the run though, I'll explain it later). Or, if you use the trick against a dirty "No data" on a new game+ data selection mode, a deleted data will be simply refered for a new game+ setting up. Finally, if you use the trick against a never-touched "No data" on a normal data selection mode, the screen just turns to black and freezes.
All right, here are some glitchy stuff tightly related to the new game+ run.
1)Except for some kind of weapons, all characters are able to equip all weapons, helmets, armors and accessories.
There are key defferences on newly equippable weapons between (U) and (J). Here are quick lists.
(U) Bow, Gun, Broadsword, Arm and Scythe
(J) Sword, Gun, Broadsword, Fist and Scythe
So what these differences mean? Well, in short, you can equip all kind of fists including Bronze Fist with all charaters on (J), not on (U). For those of you who are curious as to how come the defferences arise, you might want to check out these addresses: C293A8(U) and C293A5(J), an address that starts deciding whether each item is equippable for a certain character or not. FFFA1B(U) and FFF24F(J), an address that stores a value that loaded and used in that decision on a glitched data.
2) All characters are given only limited techs.
Remaining techs are only 2nd/3rd single/double techs. And there are no way to learn any other techs since none of enemies won't drop TP anymore in a glitched data. The thing is, you can use only six techs as follows in a new game+ run:
-Slash, Lightning, Provoke, Ice, Ice Sword 1 and Ice Sword 2.
3)Ayla loses the ability that automatically equips a certain kind of fist depending on her level.
Normally, Lv96 Ayla should automatically equip a Bronze Fist when you enter a battle. Unfortunately, that ablity is lost in a glitched data. If that ability was remained, I could simply use Deequip trick on Ayla and get two Bronze Fists for Crono and Marle. But it wasn't. I got stuck here for a while, but then I found another killer trick that would easily solve the problem. Here we go!
-Transfering items from one data to the other one.
If you reset the game one frame after you save a data on an exisiting one, only SRAM for item slot is overwritten. As a result of reseting the game in the middle of save processing, a target data is deleted and shown as "No Data". However, as I mentioned above, now that you can access to a "No Data" and retrieve a deleted data, that will be no problem.
Making a glitched data with "No Data" selection trick, getting a Bronze Fist with deequip trick in the non-glitched data, and sending it to the glitched data with this trick, I managed to make a glitched data in which has two Bronze Fists. In my new game+ WIP, that data was loaded in the beginning, and Bronze Fist was equipped with Crono and Marle. 9999 damage is definitely the result of that.
To summarize this, you can reproduce the glitch in (U) as well as (J). But (U) doesn't allow you to equip a Bronze Fist unlike (J). It's a fact that you can use some nice new weapon such as Wonder Shot in (U) as well. However, considering the fight with Inner Lavos that you have to cut off each arm with a single attack without Luminaire and Bronze Fist, it would obviously cost much time than the smooth way that I showed off in my WIP. The glitch might be helpful to save a few seconds in (U), but I suppose it would be almost impossible to shave off two minutes.
Oh, and one thing. For the sake of clearing up doubts on SRAM, I recorded the whole setting up process for the new game + run, starting from clear SRAM. I uploaded the smv on MediaFire instead of Microstorage since the smv size exceeds over its limit. Here it is.
http://www.mediafire.com/?aiiaiiaaaig
(Note: Make sure that your Snes9x 1.51 is v5 or newer. Otherwise it will desync around the savepoint inside Lavos's body. The reason is v4 or less contains a bug that doesn't properly emulates a reset timing in playing back the movie.)
The movie itself wouldn't be entertained at all, even with fast-forward. Because it is over 10 hours and the same battle for leveling up repeats at the same spot for roughly 7 hours. However, if someone were to throw out doubts on SRAM, like SRAM can be hacked or something faked into SRAM, it would work as a good reference.
Please feel free to post your thoughts about the version change or WIP or anything else. As usual, any suggestion would be appericiated. Thanks.
-Some favorable screenshots showing the glitch well:
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL][URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL][URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL][URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]
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Yes, you need a Snes9x v11 or higher to watch the smvs on my previous post without incident.
FractalFusion wrote:
What now is the most powerful boss for which a skip is not known?
Black Tyrano, definitely. High HP, multi-target fire attack and absorbing HP tech, all of which would make the battle annoying and complicated. I'm almost certain that it will be the longest battle in the run and it would be inevitable to heal HP a few times in that battle.
As for the extra leveling up, I don't think it would be necessary. Yakra and Heckran don't have much EXP in the first place. Naturally, there are not many chances that party's level is greatly affected by skipping those bosses. Of course, I'll test to figure it out considering all the possibilities.
XkyRauh wrote:
If you tag the fourth one (I think?) you engage five of them in a fight--dispatch them for a good fast chunk of experience, exit back the way you came (upper right) and re-enter for a pretty swift treadmill.
It is possible to fight six of them at one time in your way. And, yes. As you said, it is a very good place for leveling up. I remember I once had a silly idea to climb up Death Peak without the first Poyozo Doll and level up there. Needless to say, all attempts just failed, and now leveling up itself is going to disappear from the run with the discovery of the instant kill glitch and Lavos shell skip trick. How ironic!
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I've found that "Save anywhere trick" on GameFAQs is also available with the pause menu abuse. For those who doesn't know what Save anywhere trick is, it is a trick to allow you to save the game literally anywhere. And the effect never disappears unless you enter a room with a savepoint. In Chrono Trigger, an event check point has usually only 16 pixels wide. That means you can skip some unavoidable cutscenes and battles if you manage to go beyond a check point and save the game before you lose control.
Here are all the result I got:
Yakra skipHeckran skipZombor skip v2 & Tata skip
Also, here is a performance showing how to make it available Save anywhere trick at the End of Time. It would be about 500 frames slower than usual, but it's necessary to perform the trick at Zenan Bridge and Denadoro Mountains as above.
I think you may need further explanation about Tata skip. Actually, there are a few points where two different landforms share the same coordinates in the game. And apparently the game saves only what coordinates are, not which landform Crono is. So, if you save/load the game on such a point, Crono will be located at one predeterminded landform regardless of which landform he was at. Very fortunately, it is always upper landform that Crono is located in such cases at Denadoro Mountains.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.
Also, Here is a detailed explanation about Lavos Shell skip trick. First of all, here are two facts that makes it possible to skip Lavos Shell:
1) In trying to warp to A.D.1999, if you somehow open the menu just before the fade-out starts, then the coordinates that Crono will appear at in 1999 are totally the same with where he was at the End of Time.
2) If that x-coordinate is the same with the Lavos' hole x-coordinate (which is 8) and that y-coordinate is the same with or below the Lavos' hole y-coordinate (which is 8), then the game immediately sends him into Lavos Shell.
The thing is, you can directly access the inside of Shell Lavos if you manage to open the menu at (8,8 or any less) at the End of Time right before the fade-out starts. Of course it is out of the question in a normal manner. First, you lose control of your character as soon as you examine the backet. Second, (8,8 or any less) is outside the moveable area. To solve the problem, I took the help of another two gates, Bangor Dome gate and Tyran Fortless gate.
Bangor Dome gate was used to change the direction that Crono flies to, and to get close to the needed position. Also, because Bangor Dome gate is the most left below gate out of nine gates, unlike the other gates, a line segment between the backet and the position Crono flies to contains the upper right corner of the gate floor, a moveable area, of course. This is of great importance after you regain control.
Tyran Fortless gate was used to regain control and occur the second flying action. If you choose "yes" just before Crono starts flying, you can open the menu again. And if you change your party's order twice in that condition, Crono gets out of flying and you can control Crono again. As I said above, the line Crono fly along contains the moveable area. So if you restore the control on that area, you can have Crono run around as usual.
If the other two characters finishes flying, Crono takes the second flying action. Very fortunately, a line segment between the bottom left corner and the position Crono flies to contains (8,8or7). And the fade-out starts when Crono passes on (8,8or7). So I simply moved Crono to the bottom left before he started flying again and opened the menu on a certain timing. Crono appeared at the same coordinates with Lavos' hole and Lavos Shell skip was possible.
Also, I think the other gates proably wouldn't play the Tyran Fortless gate's role well since all the gate message is generally shown in order of priority no matter how you examine them. And it is only the Tyran Fortless message that is always shown after the Bangor Dome message.
I myself have not exactly grasped the detail yet. So the explanation may be redundant and arbitrary.. But I hope the explanation will clear up some confusion.
To Vykan12: I uploaded my test tas avi on Megaupload.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=E0P9SKAY
I was not sure Megaupload was the right place and image quality isn't good at all. But if you have troble watching the smv again, you may want to try to downroad it from there.
To Saturn: Thank you Saturn.:) But I honestly think sub 2 hours will be still far from realistic, even with Lavos shell skip trick and all the above new skip trick. My current target times is to break 2:15. I'm doing everything I can in order to accomplish that goal.
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I've finally managed to skip the whole Lavos Shell battles entirely. Here it is.
Lavos Shell skip
I think this trick would easily shave off 15 minutes from the run, and would save me from the tadious work such as developing a new strategy for each Lavos Shell form.
Also some of you might think that Lavos Shell had already beaten before the movie was recorded, since you can see there is a hole on Lavos Shell's face. However, that Lavos with the hole is located there whether he's beaten or not. Actually, even the Lavos Shell apperance cutscene has not happened in the game yet, which would be easily confirmed by going back to the End of time using the near gate, and going to A.D.1999 again via the bucket.
Oh, just so you know, I decided to stick to 1.43 for a while, although I said I would switch to 1.51. The reason is I found 1.51 contains a graphic bug issue like this, which frequently happens when loading a save state and frustrates me so much, it seems it doesn't cause desync though.
I'll probably post the detail about the trick later, but in short, I made Crono appear at the same coordinate with where Lavo Shell's mouth is. This is the reason why the screen immediately changes right after Lavos Shell appears. Anyway I hope you enjoy it!
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Awesome job, Mister!
I'm highly impressed that you achieved lots of improvement over the cancelled one other than -1 trick here and there. Especially, the SDH improvement is amazing. I never thought it would be possible to fly through that stair without turning around at all.
Your input animation is also nice. And I really liked your style, like, inputting a key to only one instrument first, then adding a new one stage by stage.
Thank you for making this TAS, which gave me a big smile! And I'm looking forward your next project.
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It would be slower because the Volt Bite animation takes about 300 frames longer than the Falcon Hit one. Even so it would be slightly faster if two Falcon Hits and one Volt Bite can be replaced with two Volt Bites. However I only did 10528 damage to Tyrano which has 10500 HP in that battle. So if you did that replacement, it would be really impossible to beat Tyrano until he sets out the fire, which causes the serious delay, really.
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Maybe, one is done by Magus's hit. And the other is done by Gayser's effect. Gayser is Magus's technique which causes HP gradually down during the battle. But I may be wrong, so I'll check it out.
[edit] I just checked the smv and couldn't find any Crono's HP down other than by Magus's attack and Gayser's effect. So I guess you saw his HP was decreased by 1 with Gayser's effect just after Magus attacked him, and thought that as Crono's HP went down twice by Magus's hit.
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Ah I guess I've got it wrong with your question, due to my lack of English skills. Sorry for the confusion. There is no way to open the sealed door on the first visit to the future with the skip trick and any other currently known glitchs. Therefore, it is absolutely necesarry to normally advance the plot and charge the Pendant in Zeal Palace to get Epoch. That's a shame.
BTW, we posted on exactly the same time.:)
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ZeXr0 wrote:
I'm watching the WIP, but for me it freeze in truce cayon, and you can only advance by FastFowarding, is it normal ?
No it isn't normal. Is it the first visit there in my test TAS WIP or other times? I passed through Truce Canyon seven times in my TAS. So it might be helpful for us to look into the cause of freezing with the info about when the freeze happens out of the seven visits.
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Saturn wrote:
Maybe inichi can clear us up further
Called up. :) Sorry, I provided false or misleading information in the earlier deequip trick explanation. I'll try to fix it:
-About the Magic Attack increase
If you deequip either armor or helm, his Magic Attack value is increased by 10, if you deequip both, it's increased by 20. Although you can't visually confirm these gains in the status screen, these values are actually added to the same address that Magic Attack value is stored in when a battle starts. (FYR, 7E5E66 is one for 1st character.) Also the trick doesn't allow Magic Attack to exceed 99, the limited value for Magic Attack, just as some accessory boosting Magic Power such as Magic Ring has no effect on a maxed character. So for the new game + case in which Crono's Magic Power is already 99, magic damage remain unchanged with the deequip trick.
Also that means, each magic damage gain with the trick should always be fixed regardless of his level, of course except for an extremely high level that Magic Power is more than 79. To take Dark Matter as an exapmle, as long as Magus's Magic Power is less than 80, damage gain when you deequip his armor and helm would always be 300 or something as Floogal described, though I haven't tested it on my own.
-About the Magic Defence
Please forget the magic damage decrease rate I stated earlier, which is a hell of false. Here is the right decrease rate, I beleive.
If you deequip either armor or helm, magic damage excluding Fire and non-element reduces to 4/19, if you deequip both, they reduce to 2/17(4/34). If a magic element is the same with his/her own element, the damage decrease rate is like this: 1/4(5/20) and 1/7(5/35).
You can also confirm it, watching 7E5E6C - 7E5E6F, in which valuable of magic resitence is stored. They are correspond with Lightning, Shadow, Water and Fire in order and are used in each magic damage calculation.
-About the version differences
I wrote that the de-equip trick only works in the English version, but it was totally wrong. The trick doesn't increase Magic attack at all in the Japanese version. However it surely works on Magic Defence and it reduces even Fire damage as well as the other three elements. I have no idea why such difference happen.
hero of the day wrote:
Can the pause menu skip trick be used to gain access to the epoch early on, kinda like how he unlocked the pyramid with the swallow in it early?
Yes. You can skip the first unavoidable and unescapeable battle and the first conversation between the little frogs in Sewer Access with the skip trick. Here.
I think the skip trick would save about 15 seconds there. The Epoch room cutscenes are also skippable. Here.
But, the frame gain there would be so small because it takes somewhat long to reach the back of Epoch and to wait until the sealed door opens. I think the trick would save only 2-3 seconds there.
However, I think I won't probably push the storyline that far. My current plan is just tell the woman to plant the tree in Zeal Palace in the 1st visit then immediately return back to 600 A.D. and head to Sunken Desert. The 12000 B.C. gate is still available at that point. So it would be at least 3 minutes faster than the usual way, sitting through the looong cutscenes, fighting Golem and going to 600 A.D. via the Mystic mountain gate, I guess.
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Thank you for the feedback guys.
I appreciate you offering me to submit the test run but I'm afraid I can't do that. Though, I must admit, I was tempted to do it a little. :p
The main reason is the fact that it contains an obvious improvement here and there regardless of using the skip trick and the instant kill glitch. Perhaps, as you said, it may already have enough quality to meet TASVideos' standards. However, I just can't motivate me to submit a run which is improvable by almost 30 seconds.
In addition, I don't think we need a separate category for CT any% run. To separate the category, I think it would be necesarry to find a new glitch which allows you to skip almost all boss fights and cutscenes like Zelda LttP run does. Of course, that's just my opinion, though.
moozoh wrote:
Anyway, any ideas on the target time for a fully glitched TAS? Something like 2:30 seems about right.
Maybe, 2:30 - 2:35. But, I'm always wrong about that. So, yeah. :)
@mmbossman
Thank you for the suggestion. I can see your point of view, but, I won't submit the testrun on the ground that I mentioned above.
#3 is probably what I'm most concerned about now. We all TASers have a real life and we don't know what is going to happen to us even in the next days. I only hope I won't lose the motivation for CT TAS until I finish the final run...
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Thank you for your comments.
BoltR wrote:
Would this work in every fight, or is this a special case? orz
Those two fights are the only cases that the glitch can be used in an any% run because it requires an Elixir, the Green Dream and an enemy who has certain amount of HP to properly perform the glitch. Here is an overview of the glitch.
Normally, when a character with the Green Dream is defeated, he automatically revives. However, sometimes, (perhaps, when some RNG condtions are satisfied) he falls down once again and gets up. If that happens, the game temporarily considers him as dead, and if the other two chatacters are really dead at that point, he becomes unable to use any item on himself. Instead, he is able to use an item on enemies! And if you use an Elixir on an enemy and the sum of its current HP and the amount of HP heal is more than 32768(0x8000), that cause overflow and does instant kill. In an any % run, Inner Lavos(20000) and Lavos Core(30000) are only enemies who meet those conditions. Therefore, the glitch is only available in those two battles.
dave_dfwm wrote:
This glitch would save more than just 7 minutes. Think of all the time it saves you from leveling up!! Although I forget, where do you get the GreenDream?
Yes, you're right. An improvement done by the glitch would easily go beyond mere 7 minutes. Like Saturn, I guess 20 + minutes improvement is almost promised. But, to be on the safe side, I personally think it's still too early to say any leveling up isn't necesarry now. As usual, some test will be needed to make it clear.
As for the Green Dream, You remember correctly. I never had the Green Dream in my test TAS. The thing is, the smv was not directly taken from the test TAS. Sorry for the confusion.
@SaxxonPike
Thank you for watching my test TAS. I'm really glad you liked it!
Regarding the movement, even though it may look sloppy, actually almost all extra movments have purposes to save a few frames. That is, in Chrono Trigger, just because you talk to a person as fast as possible doesn't mean it gives the best result. Here is one typical example.
In this movie, instead of talking to Frog as fast as possible, I go a long way round and talk to Frog. It seems slower at first, but it ends up faster after all, since when Crono opens the chest, Marle and Lucca already stand very close to the position where they'll walk to at the beginning of the Masamune cutscene. This is a very useful technique in CT and you can apply it to entering some unavoidable battles as well. Hope this cleared up your question.
Also, due to my laziness, I had not started the final recording yet. So following the discovery of the new glitch, I've taken some time and ponderd over how to work on the run from now. And I just reversed my earlier decision and made a decision:
I will use the skip trick in the final run.
Some people may blame for my inconsistencies. But the situtaion has changed since I made the earlier decision. Unlike six months ago, now I already finished one full CT any% TAS, although it's a test TAS, you can see pretty good strategies for skippable bosses are packaged in it. So, to be quite honest, now I find myself leaning toward making a CT TAS with curretnly known all tricks and glitches in order to push the game to the limit.
Under these circumstances, I have no choice but to put off starting the final recording in the meanwhile because I have to test lots of different strategies for almost all boss battles at lower level. Especially, each Lavos form fights would be very troublesome and it would take long to reach to the optimal strategy since I'm totally new to fight them with less techs and around level 15-20.
Hopefully I'll finish all the test stuff and really start the final recording in this year. Again, thank you for the patience. And I'd really like to say sorry for all the people who has been looking forward to see a TAS without the skip trick.
As usual, any feedback would be much appreciated.
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Everybody, I've found a new instant kill glitch!
I just made a quick demo of Inner-lavos and Core battles featuring the glitch, which are about 7 minutes faster than ones in my test TAS.
Here
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Saturn wrote:
Btw, do you think this new Lavos strategy would be possible on console as well, or is the timing between your hits too critical in this case? Skipping Fiona's quest would allow for a pretty big improvement over your current SDA run after all.
It would be very difficult if not impossible. The biggest problem is that it is necessary to set the battle speed 1 in order to get the first action before Lavos's initial Doors of doom. Even a skillful player would have trouble dealing with the speed 1 in the Inner-Lavos battle because it would almost always require you to input a key as fast as possible.
I'm not sure if I'll try to improve it in the future, but if I have a chance to do, I'll certainly skip Fiona's quest. And if someone is interesting in it, I'd probably suggest he/her give it a try as well, especially since it's a HUGE timesaver.
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dartht33bagger wrote:
I just watched your trick and it would be slower really. It wouldn't allow for the boost through the normal route which saves more times than that one corner. If you saved up 2 boosts you could do that in one lap, but then the other laps would be slower, so it wouldn't really help all that much.
Well, it is really faster than the normal route and would be helpful for any Mute City run. Here are my quick demos for comparison.
Normal boost use Y position:3758.164
New boost use Y position:3808.188
Again, note that the new trick demo isn't fully optimized.
As you can see, the new boost use is almost exactly 50 pixels ahead of the normal one. In F-zero, your car goes exactly 9 pixels at the speed of 478km/h. That means, 5-6 frames would be saved for each lap with the new boost use. As far as the final lap goes, the normal one would be probably a few pixels faster since you'll cross the goal line in the middle of boosting if you use the boost just before the goal. So, I have to admit the 20 frames improvement that I mentioned may have been slightly over-estimated. Even so, I'd say 15 frames gain is already well assured.
Please believe me. It may seem slower at first glance, but it would be definitely faster in the end.
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Finally, it's done.
Click
The in-game clock says 2 hours, 59 minutes and 55 seconds at the final imput, which is roughly 34 minitues faster than my console run on SDA. Real completion time is 3 hours, 13 minutes and 35 seconds, which is about 1 hours, 7 minutes and 36 seconds faster than Hero's run. The most important key factor for improvement is I've managed to completely skip Fiona's Shrine, which made it possible to shave a couple of minutes off from the run.
Also here is some savestates.
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=d362026766e7762d8c9e7c56ba37815ffc11e086d8234507
State 0 is at the end of Magus battle, 1 is at the end of a series of 81 battles to gain EXPs and TPs at Tyrano Lair, and 2 is just before Shell Lavos battle. Download them depending on the situation to smoothly watch the run.
And yes, it's about time to get down the serious final recording. As I said earlier, I'll be using Snes9x 1.51 for the final recording. The reason why I'll use 1.51 is because it seems 1.51's movie timing is more accurate than 1.43. I've heard 1.51 has the false timing problem on some game. However, at least in Chrono Trigger, I think it's safe to say that 1.51 is more reliable one. To cite a simple example, if you watch the OP demo on 1.43, You can see the movie timing gets faster than the real console timing little by little, and become far from the real timing in the end. That's horrible. On the other hand, I can't tell the difference between console and 1.51. That means, it would be exteremly difficult or almost impossible to beat the test run's time for the final recording since the test run is already pretty well made, but which wouldn't bother me one bit.
Strategically, the final run will be almost the same with the test run. However, the level of optimization will be higher and some fun stuff will be add in, like, imitation back walking/running, camera abuse in the bike race and so on, all of which I intentionally overlooked in the test run. I hope I'll finish the run by the end of this summer. Thank you for the patience. And as usual, any suggestion and imput will be appreciated.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(48)
Joined: 3/11/2007
Posts: 94
Location: Japan
Found a new boost usage in Mute City 1.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1327049532/MC1_new_boost_usage.smv
Please keep in mind my demo is not optimized at all. I'd say this new usage would shave off at least 20 frames or 0.3 seconds in total. (In F-Zero, in-game clock moves forward 0.03 seconds per 2 frames.) So now it is really possible to break the 1:58 barrier on even GP mode.
Go for it!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(48)
Joined: 3/11/2007
Posts: 94
Location: Japan
I had a chance to make a Mute City 1 TAS on practice mode until the 2nd lap a while ago, which is 0.26 sec faster than Saturn's current published movie at that point. Here is WIP.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1265717432/fzero_mutecity1_inichi.smv
On the 2nd lap, you can see a new boost trick which increases your machine's average speed a little, putting on/taking off the brake on certain timing. Other than that, I did tight pixel/subpixel optimization to the whole section. Even though it is improveable, I'm sure it would work as a good reference for Dartht33bagger or any other's run.
Also, the run is currently put on hold, since my top priority is Chrono Trigger run. Once I finish CT, I'll probably pick it up again.
@dartht33bagger
Watched your TAS. First of all, you should use Master class instead of Expert class. On master class, all rival car increase the speed compared to expert mode, so you can take advantage of it to bounce other cars and boost your speed. Master class appears only when you beat any league on Expert class, which means it is necesarry to use SRAM. I think that will be allowed in this case since Master class is most difficult level and would certainly contribute to the improvement of your record.
As for the run itself, well, that's not bad at all, especially considering it took only a week since you first encounterd the game. However, this is hard for me to say, but some skillful player can easily beat your time without tool-assist.
Watch this guy's Mute City 3 performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vds-q8v4BFE
Mute City 3 course has totally the same length with Mute City 1, but it is more challenging course because some of the course significiantly narrows and lots of traps are newly allowcated. Despite such bad conditions, he beats it 1:58.99, which is about 1.3 sec faster than your TAS. I think you, at least, can beat this record. Also I'd say it is very possible to beat the current Mute City WR on even GP mode, though it would require a ton of re-recorded.
Sorry if it sounded rude. I just wanted to be of your help and I'm also one of them who are very looking forward to your run. I'll keep up with your progress. Good Luck.
By the way, for you are interested in, here is a Lua script I used in making my TAS. Because I have only limited experienced in these things, the code writing is very poor, but it really worked for me. I hope someone would make it polish.
local position
local position2
local direction
local speed
gui.transparency(0)
while true do
-- Read the machine's coordinate.
local x = memory.readword(0x7e0b90)
local subx = memory.readbyte(0x7e0ba1)
local y = memory.readword(0x7e0b70)
local suby = memory.readbyte(0x7e0b81)
position = string.format("X=%04d.%03d Y=%04d.%03d",x,subx,y,suby)
-- Render image
gui.text(0,0,position)
--Transform the coordinate and read it, which will be useful for a straight line extending diagonally.
local x2 = math.floor(math.abs((256*x+subx-256*y-suby)/364))
local subx2 = 256*(math.abs((256*x+subx-256*y-suby)/364) - x2)
local y2 = math.floor((256*x+subx+256*y+suby)/364)
local suby2 = 256*((256*x+subx+256*y+suby)/364 - y2)
position2 = string.format("x=%04d.%03d y=%04d.%03d",x2,subx2,y2,suby2)
-- Render image
gui.text(0,9,position2)
--Read the machine's speed and render image.
speed = string.format("Speed:%04d",memory.readword(0x7e0b20))
gui.text(176,0,speed)
--Read the machine's direction and render image.
direction = string.format("Dir:%03d.%03d",memory.readbyte(0x7e0bd1),memory.readbyte(0x7e0bd0))
gui.text(168,9,direction)
snes9x.frameadvance()
end
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(48)
Joined: 3/11/2007
Posts: 94
Location: Japan
hero of the day wrote:
as suggested by mz, here is a script which will automatically advance the text (press A) in the dialog box on the very first frame. It sure beats the hell out of frame advancing through each dialog or using the turbo buttons like I did in my run \o/
Wow, that's a nice idea, Mz and Hero. Why I never thought of that. Yes, it would really save my real life \o/ But it may be a bit risky to leave all the A imputs to this script since 7e0129 sometimes changes the value a frame or two slower than the expected timing. (e.g. end of time)
7e0134, which you showd me when I started making the current TAS, is not also reliable for a similar reason. And one thing, there seems to be a minor problem with the script which forces you to stop for one frame every time you open a chest or talk to someone while running.
Other than that, the concept is really nice. So I think I'll probably give it a twist and use it in my run. Thanks.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(48)
Joined: 3/11/2007
Posts: 94
Location: Japan
Thanks for the work, Dromecius and True! I just tried out your scripts and it's pretty good. The Rat room problem is now just all right, and ATB extending from left to right would be more user-freindly than the opposite. Also, I just found a very minor problem in True's script. when a battle starts, an invalid enemy's HP appears at the upper left for mere 3 frames. Of course, because that's just for a moment, I don't think it's anything serious.
Dromiceius wrote:
Apropos, Inichi, do you have any interest in writing a "director's commentary" to be added as subtitles in the movie? It's relatively simple to code, but the subtitles themselves could be laborious to write.
That's interesting. One thing I come up with is to add information for parts which are too fast to catch up with by the human's eye. For example, it would be nice to provide infomation about what are bought , sold and equipped at any shop with subtitles. For now, I may try to write something using your script. Thanks.
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