I actually used the Berserker alot on boses in my 8-segmented unassisted 100% run, which was done a year before hero did his any% TAS here. I think he mentioned to get this idea with the Berserker from my run at first.
Did you ever! Then you are a really leading pioneer in CT run. Robo's perfect Crisis Arm strategies sound fascinating, so I'll probably watch your 100 % run within a few days, hoping to get some hints for my any% run like Hero did it. Thanks for the link.
Yeah, I played CT alot in the past ~10 years and have a wide knowledge of this game when it comes to 100% runs. I'm glad you are interested in that run, inichi, and hope it will help you finding new strategies for your any% TAS as well. :-)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
Yeah, I do think it was Saturn's excellent videos that lead me to using the beserker. I was searching all over the internet to find strategies and stuff for my run, and his movies were full of good info.
I'm curious as to the progress of this run. Any word?
Sorry for the delay. Magus's castle was much more troublesome than I had assumed, but that was almost done. Within a few days, I'm going to release my test run WIP from the start to Magus battle, including some new timesavers and a newly-found cool trick which only exists in the English version. As for the new trick, that is REALLY useful. Please let me explain about the detail.
First off, you'll need to take off armors and helms of your characters, using a deequip trick. Even if you are done with that in the Japanese version, nothing changes, while, in the English version, that will double your character's magic damage, and also that will cut about 90 % off enemy's magic damage except for Fire and Non-Elemental. Needless to say, that saves a ton of time for almost all the battles, especially for boss battles that magic is heavily used such as Heckeran and Magus.
I'd reckon this trick would shave off at least 6 minutes, perhaps more. I've seen many controversy whether to use (J) or (E) happening here and there. However, at least in Chrono Trigger, we don't need any more such discussion, since now the English version is definitely the best choice in terms of both time and entertainment.
All boss were beaten incredibly faster than usual, and some of them were improved on the minute time scale.
Just wait until you see it.
[edit]
I think I should introduce a new trick that Roydy, a Japanese speed runner of Chrono Trigger, found a while ago. That makes one enemy disappear from the screen on the first battle in Magus's Castle.
here
It's important to note that it's very hard to pull off this trick even with tool-assisted, but he did it on console. Also, you can see the Rocket Roll damage is boosted than usual. That's obivously a result of using the deequip trick.
Oh my god, I can't wait for the WIP, inichi!
Your new trick reminds me on my Secret of Evermore discovery to boost attack and defense by deequipping ammo as well. Except that I never thought it would be possible in CT. What you describe is really marvelous and absolutely unexpected once again. Bravo.
Thanks Saturn.
The deequip trick itself is a well known trick which is posted on some Japanese CT sites. However, I've never considered using it until recently, since I thought it's just a waste of time, though it has actually an amazing effect as I described.
So non-equipment is the strongest equipment in Chrono Trigger (U). what a game:)
*Struggles to wait patiently*
This de-equip trick, can it be used throughout the game, or just at certain points?
Good job for avoiding the first enemy in Magus house by the way. Every little helps ;)
This de-equip trick, can it be used throughout the game, or just at certain points?
To pull off the trick, it is required that you don't have any extra armor and helm that a charcter you use the trick can equip. That is, once you use the trick, you never use it unless you sell the extra armor and helm or equip the non-equippd character with them. So, some equipment management will be necessary to properly use it.
I just made a demo so that you can see how the trick works.
here
Sorry it took so long. As I've promised, now I release my test run WIP from begining to Magus battle. Here it is.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/604092559/inichi_chronotrigger_testrun_WIP.smv
To correctly play the movie, you need a Snes9x featuring reset-recording. I think improvement 11 would be fine. Also, as you probably see, this movie is completely different from WIPs that I posted in last Autumn. The reason is that new findings were so many that I felt a strong need to redo the run from the scrach to be of practical use when making the final run.
-Some time comparison
At the end of Magus battle, my test run is 79719 frames or about 22 minutes and 9 seconds faster than Hero of the Day's run, and also approximately 16 minutes faster than my console run on SDA on the in-game clock.
I'd say it won't be long before the next WIP is coming since now the most difficult part is over, and it will be far easier to make the remaining part. I hope I won't get lazy about the run:)
Enjoy.
SaxxonPike wrote:
That de-equip trick... are you planning to use it more than once?
Yeah. The trick makes it possible to pull off massive magic damage and extremely high magic defence, both of which are impossible to get in normal play. So it would be a waste not to use it more than once. I'm planning to use it a few times at different places, ignoring some time consumption.
For your reference, here are all points that I used the de-equip trick in my test run:
Before Yakra battle, at Melchior's Hut, before Nizbel battle, before Flea battle, and after Slash battle.
Great job, inichi! Couple questions:
1) How exactly do you perform the de-equip glitch? I saw your first demo of this and still wasn't sure what was going on.
2) Why reset before Guardian (and Masamune), is it to reset the critical hit tables?
Awesome testrun, inichi!
I really like how many of the smart tricks you use to save even slight amount of frames. Good examples are the Trial, where you intentionally let Crono be guilty to save a few additional dialogues at the supervisor. I'm also glad to see that my theory to sometime collect Power Tabs despite a small delay is still worth to speed up the future fights a bit due to stronger hits.
Your new boss strategies were also very good. Especially the Slash fight kicked ass, beating him with the last character standing. The de-equip trick is simply amazing. I was very surprised to see that Magus' killer attack "Dark Matter" only did ridiculous ~40 HP damage instead of 400. I bet you will save alot of leveling up time before Lavos if the defense will be like that at his fight.
The only thing I wonder is, why didn't you use Robo during the Reptite fight right after you visit 65000000 B.C. the first time, to kill them all with one single Laser Spin attack? Not using him there required you one more round in both battles, which is a time loss of a few seconds. Any reasons for this?
Other than that the run seems flawless and very well optimized. Good luck with the later quests, and I'm looking forward to see more crazy boss strategies and especially what completion time you will manage to get.
Tristal:
I'm not sure, but I think the key to make the de-equip trick work is to quick-switch between characters with the L or R button when in the menu, and in the same time open the equip window to somehow fool the engine and allow it to equip nothing on a character. But there is probably more to consider than that, so let's see what inichi can tell about it.
I just watched the test run, and it was much better than I thought would be possible. I especially liked the fact that you never needed to heal in battle.
Saturn:
Having Robo in the active party would add a few seconds of dialogue when Ayla joins.
Ahh, that could be it. Especially the delay when Ayla checks him from all sides wondering why he looks different.
Deeeeeep planning = inichi. Always forget that. ;-)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
This new wip is simply superb :D I can't believe how much time that new trick saves.
It almost seems like the characters are strong enough at this point to simply take on lavos right now. If dark matter does such little damage, Lavos' magic based attacks are sure to do very little also. Is this feasible, or much higher levels must be gained before challenging lavos?
In anticipation of what is obviously going to be one of the most impressive expositions of TAS-kickery we'll see this year, I've written a Lua script, the purpose of which is to show interesting information during the movie.
It displays the HP of the enemies underneath their sprites, along with their ATB meters... the ATBs don't seem to be a "real" representation of enemy behavior in some cases, and so are a bit wonky at times.
I'm open to suggestions for more features.
Rock on, Inichi! :)
Joined: 11/9/2007
Posts: 375
Location: Varberg, Sweden
Ok, this would be quite rude to the viewers but wouldn't you gain time by naming all the characters the empty string, that is - no letter at all? It would save frames in loads of dialogboxes, right? This is however very easy to spot so I guess it can have been thought about before, but wasn't wanted perhaps.
Ok, this would be quite rude to the viewers but wouldn't you gain time by naming all the characters the empty string, that is - no letter at all? It would save frames in loads of dialogboxes, right? This is however very easy to spot so I guess it can have been thought about before, but wasn't wanted perhaps.
A lot of games don't let you give empty strings as names, if not all of them.
Or if you mean shorten the name string in any possible way, then one could give each character a one-letter name.
Ok, this would be quite rude to the viewers but wouldn't you gain time by naming all the characters the empty string, that is - no letter at all? It would save frames in loads of dialogboxes, right? This is however very easy to spot so I guess it can have been thought about before, but wasn't wanted perhaps.
This is the case if the text scrolls letter by letter. Can't remember how Chrono Trigger does it, but a game like Lufia 2 where it's letter by letter, this would save tons of frames throughout the entire movie. This is unlike FF2 where the scroll is line by line (and you would have to go around and find the guy to talk to, to change your name anyway), where it's much less worth it, if at all worth it.
I have to disagree with Saturn's sentiment about it looking stupid. Dialogue is passed by so quickly in a TAS that no one will care. And everyone who would watch the TAS would know all the charactors names and not be confused. Anyone new who might watch the TAS just because wouldn't know the difference.
I'm sciencing as fast as I can !
______________________________________
<adelikat> once more balls enter the picture, everything gets a lot more entertraining
<adelikat> mmmmm yummy penises
1) How exactly do you perform the de-equip glitch? I saw your first demo of this and still wasn't sure what was going on.
2) Why reset before Guardian (and Masamune), is it to reset the critical hit tables?
1)All right, I'll write down precisely about what was going on behind the trick. If you press R and ^ or L and v at the same frame on the equipment screen, it comes about that the previous character's equipment is remained on the left section. Under this condition, you can call on the left screen even when you don't have extra equipment, which enables to equip a character with nothing.
2) Exactly. As for the Guardian battle, Crono uses only three crits without the reset. To make matters worse, He will attack the Guardian at the beginning of the battle and trigger a counter-attack. There is no way to maniuplate it, which means you wouldn't use Berserker strategy and would lose a ton of time there unless you don't use save/reset before the battle.
The same goes to Masamune. If you enter the battle without the reset, Crono never get a crit on the first battle. Also, This reset is really helpful for getting probably the best RNG for Flea and Slash battle without another reset.
Saturn wrote:
The only thing I wonder is, why didn't you use Robo during the Reptite fight right after you visit 65000000 B.C. the first time, to kill them all with one single Laser Spin attack?
It's just as Nitrodon said. If Robo are in the party, Ayla walks around Robo in a circular path and extra dialogue happens. It causes the serious delay, about 950 frames or so, while it is at most 300 frames that you will lose on the two battles without Robo. So it will be optimal not to use Robo on those battles.
Hero of the Day wrote:
It almost seems like the characters are strong enough at this point to simply take on lavos right now. If dark matter does such little damage, Lavos' magic based attacks are sure to do very little also. Is this feasible, or much higher levels must be gained before challenging lavos?
Well, serious leveling up would be still necessary. The most reason is that the trick only works on Lightning, Water, and Shadow for some reason. As you can see, Door of Dome is based on non-elemental, very unfortunately. That means Lavos' attack will do four digit damage and sweep out your party as usual even if you use the de-equip trick. So I'm almost certain it is inedivable to continue soooo boring repetitive battles at Tyrano Lair for about 30 minutes. Sigh.
Dromiceius wrote:
I've written a Lua script, the purpose of which is to show interesting information during the movie.
That's awesome! I've tried out your script and found it could make the run very informative. Thanks a lot.
By the way, I just found an invalid enemie's Hp appears at Arris Dome Rafters if you press the down key there. Here are scripts to fix the problem, I'm not sure this is the right solution though.
local location = memory.readbyte(0x7e0100)
if location == 221 then enemies[3] = 0 end
Regarding the characters naming, Yes, it's true that it would save a lot of time from the whole run if you give all charaters one character name. But, to be quite honest, I don't really feel the need to do that. It's based on the same reason that I didn't choose using the Japanese version just because it has less texts. I remember seeing Earthbound run used the real names as well. So I don't think this is a weird case for RPG run at least. Of course, it's just my opinion, and I can see that Deign's statement also made sense. I may consider using it to achive lowest frame counts if I decided to make the skip-trick run for the future, but never this time.
And Aglar, you don't really have to feel rude or whatever at all. Any suggestion about the run is always appreciated.:)
That's awesome! I've tried out your script and found it could make the run very informative. Thanks a lot.
By the way, I just found an invalid enemie's Hp appears at Arris Dome Rafters if you press the down key there. Here are scripts to fix the problem, I'm not sure this is the right solution though.
Thanks. :)
I just had to move the "overlap check" into the drawing code. It should do the Right Thing at all times now.
The script is updated.
Dromiceius,
I was going to post earlier, decided against it thinking nobody would care, but maybe one or two will.
I updated your script before your fix (about ~10min after your release) to fix the enemy info appearing near the top of the screen, as well as to make the ATB go from left->right like the character ones do, and resize to fit properly.
You can get it here.
It seems to work 100% through the speedrun, but may still have bugs (like what inichi described). This is my first time playing with Lua, as I am a Simpl+/Netlinx programmer by trade, and a PHP and C programmer by hobby :) It's only a few lines for a fix, though. Hopefully the ATB thing will be more visually useful, anyway.
Ha! Yeah, it didn't really occur to me that the ATB was reversed. I realized after seeing your changes to the code that I could make the ATB go left to right, and remove "barlen" entirely. Ever the efficiency nazi, I also trimmed a few things.
It's probably not perfect, but the mouse thing is fixed this time. :D
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.
