Posted: 7/8/2009 10:46 PM
Post subject: The Legend of Dragoon
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PureRok
Joined: 8/24/2008
Posts: 38
Location: Idaho
A few months ago I was working on Legend of Dragoon to see if it would have looked any good as a TAS. The main reason for this was the combat was a little more involved than most other turn-based RPGs. I own the game, but I've never beaten it, so I figured I play around with this. So, I have here a short-ish movie of about 53000 frames. I fight four battles (two unavoidable, and two random). I'll post comments about things that people may want answers to with frame locations of it. Download the movie here (you'll need the NTSC version of the game): http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?4yzmmzm3gmn If anyone wants to encode it, be my guest. I tried once already and I got a bunch out of sync audio. I may try encoding it again, maybe. I've tried encoding it several times, and I just can't get it to work. 0-~1500: Just the opening FMV and the title screen. Nothing exciting. 1547-11000: A lengthy, unskippable FMV. You can fast forward through this without desyncing (I've never had it desync when skipping this). 13314: I repeatedly tap X instead of holding it. For some reason I didn't think I needed to hold it to skip the text. My mistake. ~13900: I mash buttons hoping something can skip this. Can't. ~20200: Still tapping X. >.> ~23900: Finally started holding X instead. This is much faster. 24535: First frame I gain control of Dart. ~24600: I jump the fence pretty close to the first possible frame. ~24900: More dialogue ~26700: First battle. You may notice that frame advance moves forward 3 (!) frames for each advance while in battle. 26810: I hit X more-or-less dead-on. 28510: More dialogue... ~30200: I got the Burn Out for the "boss" fight. 34700: I tried several different ways of manipulating this fight. It turns out that the frame you do something on doesn't matter. The enemies react to what you do on your turn. So, instead of doing the Burn Out first, I slash instead. This keeps him from using his strongest attack on me on his turn. I then use the Burn Out, which I will more than likely use a turbo button on from now on (the horrible 3 frames per advancement is keeping me from getting the best I can on that tapping.). 39570: I understand I can get Star Dust here, but since I don't know what it's used for, and since this was just a short run-through, I didn't bother getting it. 44900: I skip the salesman here. I wanted to find out if I could avoid random battles or not (hint: I can't). 46297: The pause here actually manages to delay the random encounter. 46600: I tried for about a half an hour to avoid this encounter, but no matter what I did, it happened in the exact same amount of steps. No dodging encounters in this game, it seems. 47100: I'm not entirely sure why I didn't flee here. *shrug* 51828: I couldn't avoid this encounter either. I couldn't even delay it to get out of the area. 52653: I delay for enough frames to Flee. The RNG seems to still effect that, at least. I haven't tested for criticals, yet, but I assume it would be possible. So, there you have it. What I've learned so far of how the game would go if it were to be a TAS. It seems that since random encounters aren't completely avoidable that there may need to be some light grinding in order to survive later on. Personally, I don't know if I'll be the one who does the whole game (I really doubt I will), but if this gets anyone else interested in running it then I did well enough. I may keep tinkering with the game off-and-on, but I don't have the patience to optimize something like this. If I were to do a run of it it would most likely be pretty sloppy (pretty much, more of what you see in that movie).
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Posted: 7/9/2009 1:24 AM
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BadPotato
Joined: 1/26/2009
Posts: 558
Location: Canada - Québec
my best advice would be that you keep working to (re)familiarize with the game and just trying to make up a decent route I just test by myself and I feel like your only way to manipulate the radom battle would be to manipulate before going into a "monter aera"... but this is definitly very hard to do it manually. So I think you can go ahead to TAS the game without any pressure, since the game is very long(I even stop playing the game near the beginning of CD2) and the attempt from SeedDemoArchive was unfinished. Honnestly, I think this is very meaningless to trying to make a perfect run of this game at the first try and just waiting for some "brute force" addons stuff, just like the FF7 speedrun, because there no developpement. If you have some problem with kkapture, explain us and we might been able to help you.
Posted: 7/13/2009 2:38 AM
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Lord_Bahamut
Joined: 9/7/2005
Posts: 143
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
The Stardust is needed for a sidequest in the Tower of Flanvel. If you get all fifty of them and give them to some NPC it allows you to access a very strong optional boss.
This guy are sick.
Posted: 7/13/2009 2:59 AM
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PureRok
Joined: 8/24/2008
Posts: 38
Location: Idaho
Daniel, Lord Bahamut wrote:
The Stardust is needed for a sidequest in the Tower of Flanvel. If you get all fifty of them and give them to some NPC it allows you to access a very strong optional boss.
Ah, so I made the right choice of skipping it.
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Posted: 5/26/2011 6:02 AM
(Edited: 5/27/2011 11:15 PM)
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exileut
Joined: 2/15/2009
Posts: 329
There seems to be less interest in this than the FF runs... but it's still made by squaresoft! .pjm file about 27 minutes in: http://www.mediafire.com/?042wssmtv5zg11z Encode down a few posts. More progress and an actual exciting (hopefully) boss battle coming up.
Working on: Legend of Legaia, Vagrant Story
Posted: 5/26/2011 2:31 PM
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Edmund
Joined: 12/16/2010
Posts: 18
I like it, I don't know much about TASing but I do know a bit about this game so hopefully I can contribute with something. This game has the worst horses I've ever seen btw, they look horrible!
I'm not a girl, not yet a woman.
Posted: 5/27/2011 10:55 PM
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exileut
Joined: 2/15/2009
Posts: 329
New Part 1 http://youtu.be/bAOyDwuXEy0 Part 2 http://youtu.be/_x0AivG8dbk Part 3 http://youtu.be/AHTB1_UZEzE Part 4 http://youtu.be/weWnwIlxvsg Part 5 http://youtu.be/i5ul7I3Phu4 Magic does 2 damage on every enemy in the prison thus isn't used(Except Shana on the boss fight). Double Slash is used throughout because it can't be countered. Volcano only does 1 more damage and takes two or three times as many frames to use. Enemies die in the same amount of turns regardless of the addition used. The first thing to do is find ram addresses and game mechanics. For instance, in Omnicent's disc 1 run he uses Charm Potions to reset his random encounter timer(Shown as a colored arrow above character.) This isn't shown on the world map but there are still random encounters there. After timing this I find it is faster. The inventory limit is 32 items. How many do I buy? Can I use these on the world map as well? There are no random encounters in the prison segment. The game is completely turn based so the only way I have found to change an enemies attack pattern is to use a different command myself. No waiting for rng frames to come up. I'm trying to contact Omnicent to do some route planning but his youtube run was done 3 years ago. I can't locate him. More progress to come Tuesday. I'll work on the boss to see how many of each item I need. (Healing Potions, Spark Nets) The runs/walkthroughs I've seen say you need to kill all 4 of the bosses henchmen before the boss himself. I would like to test this next. Edmund let me know if you are interested in contributing through route planning/Game Mechanics. All I'm going on now is Gamefaqs and Omnicent's disc 1 playthrough.
Working on: Legend of Legaia, Vagrant Story
Posted: 5/28/2011 4:27 AM
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DarkKobold
Skilled player (1637)
Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy
Arcade TASer of 2010 PCE TASer of 2010 Arcade TAS of 2010 Lucky TAS of 2009 Lucky TAS of 2007
exileut wrote:
New Part 1 http://youtu.be/bAOyDwuXEy0 Part 2 http://youtu.be/_x0AivG8dbk Part 3 http://youtu.be/AHTB1_UZEzE Part 4 http://youtu.be/weWnwIlxvsg Part 5 http://youtu.be/i5ul7I3Phu4 Magic does 2 damage on every enemy in the prison thus isn't used(Except Shana on the boss fight). Double Slash is used throughout because it can't be countered. Volcano only does 1 more damage and takes two or three times as many frames to use. Enemies die in the same amount of turns regardless of the addition used. The first thing to do is find ram addresses and game mechanics. For instance, in Omnicent's disc 1 run he uses Charm Potions to reset his random encounter timer(Shown as a colored arrow above character.) This isn't shown on the world map but there are still random encounters there. After timing this I find it is faster. The inventory limit is 32 items. How many do I buy? Can I use these on the world map as well? There are no random encounters in the prison segment. The game is completely turn based so the only way I have found to change an enemies attack pattern is to use a different command myself. No waiting for rng frames to come up. I'm trying to contact Omnicent to do some route planning but his youtube run was done 3 years ago. I can't locate him. More progress to come Tuesday. I'll work on the boss to see how many of each item I need. (Healing Potions, Spark Nets) The runs/walkthroughs I've seen say you need to kill all 4 of the bosses henchmen before the boss himself. I would like to test this next. Edmund let me know if you are interested in contributing through route planning/Game Mechanics. All I'm going on now is Gamefaqs and Omnicent's disc 1 playthrough.
It doesn't seem like there is much manipulation to do - it all seems pretty straight forward. Also, those attacks take forever, for dealing all of 5 damage.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Posted: 5/30/2011 11:05 PM
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exileut
Joined: 2/15/2009
Posts: 329
Any work on this is postponed due to emulation problems.
Working on: Legend of Legaia, Vagrant Story
Posted: 3/9/2013 6:58 AM
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Tarzandan
Joined: 3/8/2013
Posts: 1
Location: Canada
I have a question regarding "100% completion". Does all additions maxed level 5 (80/99 or 99/99), all characters maxed level 60 and dragoon level 5 count?
The Legend of Dragoon TAS Status: Gathering Data/Testing Route
Posted: 8/23/2015 5:23 AM
(Edited: 9/18/2015 1:37 AM)
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
Because I'm talented at making good life decisions and a 11 hour TAS seems like one of those. Especially given I've actually run this in realtime and already have a headstart on a route. Link to video Still working on routing out how a TAS route would differ from RTA. Can obviously take little to no healing items, freeing up inventory slots for things that can save time like carrying burnouts to The Last Kraken. Might even be able to skip a shopping trip here or there to save some extra time. This video has a bunch of mistakes (we're talking missed frames) and a few more optimizations to make via being stubborn with manipulating fights, but I'm not being super thorough since I want to test things and plan out how the route will be different. Around 13m10s is a very silly menu. (There's no delay in shop menus, so I can buy 13 charm potions in under half a second.) Also found out 266% is the highest you can get unless you throw the item on the perfect frame which allows 268% to be possible. If you mash above 220% it takes the same number of frames to mash to 268% but if you throw a lower damage item, it saves frames to stop. Charm potions are amazing because they stop all encounters, and even in the RTA route, I was close to having no random encounters in the entire run. With extra item slots from less healing items, this might be possible now. Charm potions also make lesser enemies ignore you for 3 turns in combat, which is used to save quite a bit of time in the guard fights in Hellena. Missing double strikes with Dart and having Lavitz finish with a harpoon saves ~72 frames over finishing double strikes. Using the charm potion on the first guard fight with Dart fighting alone saves almost 2 seconds versus perfect encounter RNG. This game was designed to be played with a dpad, there is no analog movement, only 8 directional movement. Because of this, the physics of running through rooms is very odd. If you hit a sharp slant on a wall but keep running into it, many times it will forcibly push you sideways at a high speed to maintain your current velocity in the direction you're travelling. This means you can save frames in almost every room by running into slanted surfaces. As far as I can tell, the only way to manipulate turn order in combat is by wasting frames before the combat, but doing it immediately before combat doesn't seem to affect it. Results are inconsistent so far. This will make manipulating boss fights like Fruegel a royal pain. edit: Entering any sub menu also advances RNG. Missing double strike by hitting it early or late is no difference in frames. Current plan for Fruegel: -All 3 characters to take a turn killing both of his guards followed by Fruegel's turn coming immediately after. --This will cause him to summon the next two guards immediately -Shana then should get a double turn, throwing an item at each guard. Killing one and leaving the other at 1 hp -Surviving guard takes a turn and uses the power up so Fruegel can't -Dart kill guard with 1 hp by missing a double slash. -Kill Fruegel as fast as possible, hopefully by him only using turns to throw rocks as it's the fastest animation. -If possible, get Lavitz killed so Shana levels up.
Posted: 8/23/2015 4:09 PM
Post subject: Good first WIP! Will the final run be sub 8 hours? :)
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dwangoAC
Moderator, Senior Ambassador, Experienced player (898)
Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1007
Exotic platforms TASer of 2015 Exotic platforms TASer of 2013
Raelcun wrote:
Because I'm talented at making good life decisions and a 11 hour TAS seems like one of those.
Heh - I make those kinds of.. er.. "good" life decisions regularly myself. :) I watched the encode. I'm not particularly familiar with this game but it strikes me as a classic JRPG albeit with an interesting reticule mechanic in battle sequences. I know you still have some frames you want to go back to save but overall this looks good. Thanks for the slanted walls explanation - before I read your notes I was wondering why you took such a strange route through the village. I don't know if I'd watch 11 hours of this game myself (judging by my inability to get through [1835] PSX Final Fantasy VIII by DarkKobold in 8:08:32.98 without fast forwarding I'd say the odds are slim :) but hopefully you can find some glitches or other sequence breaks to bring the time down. As long as you don't tire of optimizing battles I'm sure you'll be able to make an enjoyable run that you can be proud of. Can you please upload your next movie file WIP to userstorage? I think I may like to follow along. Keep up the great work!
I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
Posted: 8/23/2015 9:34 PM
Post subject: Probably won't be sub 8 hours...
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
dwangoAC wrote:
Can you please upload your next movie file WIP to userstorage? I think I may like to follow along. Keep up the great work!
Completely forgot, I went ahead and uploaded that bk2 to storage. Slanted walls always made me curious because of situations like 13m50s. So I actually managed to test it out once I started TASing it. That particular wall doesn't work if you hit it too far to the left because you'll get trapped into a corner, but you can see see how holding straight down shoots Dart right very quickly. As for bugs and glitches I've still never found anything useful, but that's mostly just dealing with things in realtime. I've come close to breaking some things in realtime only to find frustrating invisible walls barring my way. (Like the time I managed to force the character's hitbox through a guard's who was blocking the way until a story trigger was met only to hit a wall behind him.) So I'll be playing around with some of that stuff in the TAS to see if I can make it work. I do know that there is one huge glitch that can be abused greatly for a "new game+" run, but that would take a large amount of time to set up a file for it since it involves save corruption with saving over a file at the end of the game and resetting the console so you start the game with extra items and armor. The big thing about that glitch is you keep all the key items in your inventory, and a lot of the time story progression is tied to key items so you can skip large sections of the game like that. I'm finding this game remarkably difficult to toy with the RNG. It seems to not advance in combat due to many factors which will make getting enemies to do exactly what I want them to do, more difficult, but easier once I get further into the game, hopefully. Using additions affects them as opposed to guarding, or tossing an item. I haven't found any sequence of inputs that affects it yet beyond that, during battle, but missing an addition versus completing it also affects it, so I might wind up attacking enemies instead of guarding and missing additions on different hits of the combo to mess with RNG later on in the run. I'm probably going to have to actually attempt to find the RNG addresses since I'm finding messing with the RNG so difficult, but right now I'm focusing on other things.
Posted: 8/26/2015 6:32 AM
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
Part 2 until the end of Hellena Link to video The single guard fight is easy, Lavitz and Dart need to both go first. Found out that in the triple guard fights that it's not possible for me to keep them from getting a turn, so a single turn is all I aim for. Basically Lavitz is too slow, and even when he acts first, by the time you're on the third guard, he will act after the last remaining enemy. If charm potions lasted 4 turns this wouldn't be a problem, but three turns it is. I tried all sorts of in battle manipulation to stop this from happening, but nothing worked. His speed is simply too slow. Trying to manipulate both of the triple guard fights was a pain since there's only text between the two fights and I can't manipulate RNG between the two fights. Instead, I managed, via going into the menu to get a favorable RNG pattern by making the guard spawn next to me and detect me, which then changed the RNG to a good pattern. Movement in the partial spiral staircase leading up to the walkways was a huge pain as the walls are in very weird places. More hilariously fast menuing. I found out that RNG advances from being idle in certain menus but not others, but it advances very slowly and unpredictably. In some cases, it changed in 3 frames, others took another 20 to change. Eventually, by using one potion (which saves time anyway) I was able to get the RNG pattern I wanted for Fruegel by wasting 36 frames in the menu. Battle RNG is weird. You can affect what enemies do, and even turn order inside of combat, but the RNG for every character's first turn is set in advance. So in order to make sure I got all 3 first turns and Fruegel acted immediately after, I had to manipulate that RNG in advance, while everything else could be done in the battle. Battle RNG is affected by a lot of strange things. Extraneous inputs don't do anything, but every time an attack item does a different amount of damage, it changes things very slightly. Completing an addition properly vs missing it also affects it, but depending on which attack of the chain you miss on different things happen. For this reason, we use Volcano. Volcano if you hit 2 times and miss the third does 5 damage and the first two guards have 12 health. This means I can save some time by not finishing Volcano and do exactly 12 damage to that guard with a Harpoon from Lavitz while also setting up favorable RNG with the attack item. I wasted some time mashing the first attack item to 214% to affect the RNG favorably so that only one enemy would get a turn and it was Fruegel's fastest animation by far. As mentioned above, though, each step up in damage affects the RNG, so by mashing to here, we get basically the perfect fight which saves far more time than used mashing the item. Dart throws an attack item at the second elite warden and doesn't kill it because this manipulates the AI by leaving it at 4 health. The enemy party has a single use item called Power Up. Power up doubles all outgoing damage and halves all incoming damage. If Fruegel goes past a certain HP threshhold he will immediately use it. However, if one guard is dead, and the other is low health, he will use it on his turn instead, leaving us free to kill Fruegel very quickly. The damage down rounds down, so instead of doing 7 damage, Lavitz does 3 and leaves the guard at one health, sadly requiring us to finish him with a single hit from Dart. Next portion will go through the cave until the entrance of Bale. I want to try and break a trigger in Bale to save a large amount of time. edit: Also found out that the guard at the bottom of the ladder doesn't detect you by jumping down. It's only triggered by movement, so we jump down and doing the menu before he turns around because it looks cooler. Leaving the text box open in the bridge scene doesn't actually save or waste any frames, just thought it was more amusing to leave it open.
Posted: 8/26/2015 11:19 PM
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
Well, it looks like it's time to start over. I was aware that something I chose to do early on might result in me needing to do this, but since I was mostly just playing with the game, testing its bounds, and trying to figure out how muhc I could break certain things, I was fine with TASing out the start. I'm going to keep playing through on this file, just to test more things like the trigger I want to break in Bale. But we're only about 30 minutes in and I tested a lot of what I wanted to test.
Posted: 8/27/2015 6:57 AM
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Mastania
He/Him
Joined: 5/30/2009
Posts: 135
Location: Top of the pops
Do you intend to keep Shana/Miranda as the main magic thrower for the course of the game? I think that would be the right call, she gets the highest MAT by a fair margin and Meru's party-wide healing probably won't be as important in a TAS. I suppose dual-magic or dual-physical users might even be worth it in some cases, provided they don't steal too much exp from the end party. There's a very useful guide up on GameFAQs containing enemy and character info, if you haven't looked at it yet (link). I'd been wondering if it wouldn't be worthwhile to fight the Polter Armor at some point for the Soul Eater + some exp, but according to this Loner Knights have a chance to drop it without the detour. In that case I'd be very surprised if the boost it gives Dart doesn't save time, even if only because of how long that final battle is.
Waddle Waggle Wattle
Posted: 8/27/2015 7:24 AM
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
Mastania wrote:
Do you intend to keep Shana/Miranda as the main magic thrower for the course of the game? I think that would be the right call,
No, we should only be around level 30 by the end of the game, so her magic stat won't pass Meru's at that point, even if we had her in the party the entire time. Shana/Miranda's MAT stat starts low but gets better gains than everyone else. This means by the middle of the game (level wise) she's still behind even Rose who starts high and gains slowly. Plus on top of that, Meru is faster and gets more turns.
Meru's party-wide healing probably won't be as important in a TAS.
Dragoon form is very slow in general and is going to be avoided whenever possible. Before the final boss the only dragoon form you should see is on The Grand Jewel fight as you can use it manipulate his AI into not healing for 1350 when he hits red arrow.
I suppose dual-magic or dual-physical users might even be worth it in some cases, provided they don't steal too much exp from the end party.
Dual magic until we get Haschel most likely, though, I'll have to test out keeping Rose in the party even then. In general, magic items do more damage per the amount of frames used than physical attacks and in a TAS where I won't need healing items, I can carry a lot more of them than I did in the RTA route. Haschel might be the way to go just because of the final boss and he does a large amount of damage when low health with his best weapon.
I'd been wondering if it wouldn't be worthwhile to fight the Polter Armor at some point for the Soul Eater + some exp, but according to this Loner Knights have a chance to drop it without the detour. In that case I'd be very surprised if the boost it gives Dart doesn't save time, even if only because of how long that final battle is.
That's something I have to test in the TAS, in real time it's faster to stick with the Fairy Sword so he can go Divine Dragoon more often in the final fight. In a TAS, I might stick a Soul Eater) manipulated from psyche bombing a loner knight (you won't need to mash it to kill it) on him and not dragoon at all. The final boss is a really big question mark right now for me, and I'm sort of routing ahead of where I'm TASing to figure out what the plan is, because then I need to re-route the game backwards from that fight because of how long it is. Hopefully with the inventory space saved from not having healing items, I can just take a ton of attack items into the final dungeon and utterly destroy him. One big thing is to see if I can manipulate only single target attacks from Melbu and have him miss the character wearing the Magical Greaves repeatedly since it gives evasion. If I can do that, then I can just carry a lot of attack items, no healing and just go ham.
Posted: 8/31/2015 5:45 AM
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
Finally caught back up to where I was. Not going to bother with a WIP video because it's basically the same minus a few very small things. Changes: -I pick up the burn out in the chest on the first screen. (+3-4 seconds. Didn't time it. ) -I sell all of my healing potions except one at the first vendor trip for extra gold -I buy an extra burn out from the vendor and 1 more charm potion (~3/4th of a second on the entire shopping trip) -I couldn't manipulate the double guard fight to be perfect like the last one without wasting more time manipulating it. As a result, I take one extra hit from the guards. (+2 seconds) -I buy 2 extra spark nets from the vendor in the prison. (+4 frames) -I take an extra attack during the Fruegel fight. (~3 seconds) -- I couldn't manipulate a perfect fight on Fruegel again, no matter how I tried. The perfect starting order came up very rarely within the time frame and the RNG advances very slowly prior to the fight. I wound up with 3 similar patterns with slightly different times. I took the one that I thought was more entertaining. I should have the Prairie and Cave segment leading up to Bale done soon. The Prairie is very straight forward and the boss in the Cave is much easier to manipulate. The reason why I did the inventory changes is because having 2 more spark nets saves about a minute on the Cave boss, and carrying 3 burn outs to disc 2 will save even more than that on Lenus. Testing of some later routes shows that I'll have the inventory space to do that with no problems. It's worth noting that the time saved from enemies attacking you vs having them skip a turn with a charm potion active is very deceptive. It looks like it wastes a lot more time than it does because even when an enemy skips their turn, the game will stop and take about 100 frames to actually make them skip their turn. This is as annoying as it sounds, but means taking an extra hit, as long as it's a fast animation doesn't waste a large amount of time.
Posted: 9/1/2015 7:44 AM
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
Part 3 is done, I included up to the end of the Bale shopping trip because the next section is going to be a lot less talk talk and a lot more fighting. Link to video The Prairie is pretty straight forward. Early on in the game is the only time you'll see me using menu delay to extend the time until a random encounter until possibly much later in the game. This is a basic RPG trick, open the menu and you have a grace period after the menu is closed before you can get into an encounter. When used in the right spots, you can extend an encounter very far using this. In the cave in particular, this is very useful because when you ride the waterslide or jump across the rocks, your encounter threat is still increasing, even though you cannot enter a fight. This means if I charm potion before either of those, I'll get back to red arrow very fast and basically waste a charm potion, so I menu delay both of these screens and use the CP later. This means that I have exactly enough CPs to get to Bale without an encounter as well, a nice bonus. I pick up a Total Vanishing in the Prairie and in the Cave as well. These items will instantly kill any minor enemy. In the RTA route, these can be used to take out a very unpredictable enemy to make the encounter more safe. In the TAS, I plan on carrying these to the end of disc 2 to kill the magician bogeys as they are very annoying enemies with lots of health, high defenses, and just soak up a large amount of time in a required fight on the Phantom Ship. I should be able to get 3 of these before that encounter and kill all 3 of them before they get a turn. I open the chest with the bandana in it, even though it's basic equipment, because it lets me move the sallet from Lavitz to Dart. The sallet is a piece of headgear that increases magic attack by a good margin, making Dart do a good amount of damage throwing attack items until we get Rose who outstrips him by far. This is used in Urobolus to ensure we kill the boss before his third turn and save a large amount of time, but will also be very useful in Hoax. Urobolus was far easier to manipulate than Fruegel for mutltiple reasons. It's only one enemy, for one, so the turn order is much easier to find a favorable pattern, and also the RNG in this battle advances much faster than the Fruegel fight. I'm somewhat convinced Fruegel was supposed to be a secondary tutorial boss as his RNG advances very slowly and creates a more predictable attack pattern. From this point onwards, the bosses RNG advances at a much faster rate which is actually preferable for me since in most instances, delaying 2 frames before the fight will change the RNG. I had to delay 6 frames before Urobolus to get this pattern, the miss was a nice bonus but doesn't save any time. Bale is basically just cutscenes, but I skip going to the weapon shop and buying the upgraded armor for Dart because I don't need it with putting the Knight Shield on him. He'll have enough defense until I can manipulate Plate Armor from Greham which is an armor that you normally can't buy until Disc 3. The item shop trip at the end is yet another display of shopping menu hilarity. I buy 12 spear frosts used to kill the next 3 bosses and some of the encounters in Hoax as well as have one extra for the arena fight in Lohan. The 3 Meteor Falls can be used to take out Greham and Feyrbrand very fast when mashed to 268%. Progress when I hit Lohan will slow down as I need to plan out exactly how much inventory space I have extra through disc 2 so I can see how many wind attack items I can carry to the Grand Jewel fight. Normally I could carry a bunch, but with the extra items I'm already carrying, and the high number of items needed for the trip to the Bandit hideout, I might not be able to carry many. Even being able to carry 2 or 3 should allow me to skip his heal without having to resort to slow Dragoon animations, though. I'm still behind the RTA run at this point due to loading times, but I'm still confident I can pass it up even given the loading differences.
Posted: 9/3/2015 11:34 PM
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
Edit: Spike pointed out to me that testing Bios was a useless endeavor. Oops. Either way, still planning things out. Once I get Disc 2 and 3 preliminary routes figured out, I can go through with the rest of Disc 1 and have a finished product for that. I'm getting pretty good at TASing the first 30 minutes of the game by now too from all this testing.
Posted: 9/21/2015 7:33 AM
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
I'm still working on this. Just been in and out of the hospital recently, which is part of why I got started into TASing, I can put time into it in smaller chunks when this kind of stuff happens. I finished planning out Disc 2 which means I know what I need to buy in Lohan in Disc 1. So, I'm planning on going through the rest of Disc 1 and then figuring out what my plan is for Melbu Frahma which will put a large hold on progress as he's the final boss that takes 40+ minutes in RTA. Currently Disc 1 with the slow progress from medical issues is about 30 minutes in and working on RNG manipulation (again) for the first real boss. After that, it will speed up significantly, but I'm a good 45 seconds or so ahead of the WIP posted previously.
Posted: 9/23/2015 8:58 PM
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
So I've done this before, even on this door, but never managed to wedge Dart so far into the wall going through a doorway. Makes me wonder if there's other places where I could use this to save time or skip a trigger. There aren't many places where an npc is blocking something which is the first thing that comes to mind. Edit: Officially over a minute ahead of the WIP, and passed the RTA run.
Posted: 9/28/2015 5:18 PM
Post subject: Part 1
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Raelcun
Player (57)
Joined: 8/22/2015
Posts: 73
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/25806830997574423 Link to video Updated run through Bale. Notes on the run up to this point: 7:15 Arrive at Seles. -Skip the burnout in the chest. 12:35 Arrive at the forest. -Sell all healing potions except one -Buy two burnouts and 9 charm potions These burnouts will be used in disc 2 and I planned out my inventory for the entire disc to make sure I have enough space to carry them that far without giving up other slots. 14:30 Hellena Using a charm potion on the first guard fight makes him skip all of his turns. With this being only dart and against one guard, this saves just shy of 3 seconds. When fighting the triple guard fights with Lavitz, using charm potions on both actually loses about 5 seconds per fight over the perfect turn order. The pair of fights was trickier to manipulate and the only way I could manipulate the second fight was by wasting frames in the battle before Lavitz takes his turn. We waited just over 2 seconds in order to skip an extra guard attack which saved 96 frames overall. Waiting for 10 frames outside of the doorway that leads to the merchant lines up the starting RNG for the fight so that all of my characters go first. -Buy 11 Spark Nets 30:00 Boss fight (Fruegel) During the fight, I wait 33 frames before throwing the first item because this manipulates Fruegel to use his fastest attack. (Saves 123 frames over the slower one) and it avoids makes the guard not counter attack Dart. (120 frames) 34:15 Prairie This is basically a gigantic cutscene. Visiting the river first and then the tree before going into the cabin saves some backtracking. I pick up the Total Vanishing to instantly kill an enemy with a large amount of health in a forced encounter in Disc 2. Normally it would require throwing 3 attack items in order to kill it and the fight has 3 of them. I will be obtaining three of these items in Disc 1 and early Disc 2 in order to deal with them. I sit on the stool to heal because it's faster than healing with the fireflies in the cave, since that triggers a small cutscene. 42:52 Limestone Cave Taking the slide leads to the better sword for Dart and also avoids gaining any encounter threat. I side track for the second Total Vanishing here, this is the furthest I'll go out of the way for one out of the three. I skip the chest with a charm potion since I have enough that I don't need an extra. I open the chest with a bandana so I can remove the Sallet from Lavitz and give it to Dart. The Sallet gives a pretty decent bonus to magic attack stat, meaning that with this on Dart does as much damage as Shana, and will also be useful for the fights in Hoax. While equipping the Sallet to Dart, I give him the Knight's Shield accessory which gives him a boost in defense to compensate for his low armor after Bale, and the better sword. 45:50 Boss Fight (Urobolus) This fellow has 280 Health. I only had to wait 6 frames before initiating the battle to get the RNG I wanted and did not have to waste any frames in battle to get him to use his bite both times he attacked. Lavitz does 8 damage by missing his addition, 11 by completing it. Shana and Dart do a combined total of 257 damage leaving Lavitz to deal 23 damage by himself which requires three attacks anyway, so having him miss saves nearly 10 seconds. 50:10 World Map outside of Bale Using two healing potions in the menu while using a charm potion saves time over having to use an inn. There is no automatic heal between now and the fights at Hoax and I will be skipping buying armor for Dart so the healing is necessary. Bale I skip going into the weapon shop because a weapon upgrade for Shana is useless and I will be skipping buying the armor for Dart. I already have a sallet on dart from the chest which is faster than buying one from the shop anyway. Dart will be wearing the Knight's Shield until Hoax when he gets the Power Wrist which shores up his defenses through all the fights there. Later, when I fight Greham, I will manipulate the Plate Armor to drop which is an armor normally only available in Disc 3 and that will boost Dart's defenses to absurd levels. I buy items from the item shop on the way out of town because when leaving the screen with Lavitz's house it puts you right next to the door which minimizes extra steps. Item Shop 59:15 (Because it's amusing) -Sell extra armor and accessories. -Buy 12 Spear Frosts -Buy 3 Meteor Falls -Buy 7 Charm Potions All of this will be used in the upcoming bosses except 1 spear frost which we are saving for the Arena. I've saved an additional 44 seconds over the RTA just in the town of Bale. Also take note most of my rerecords for testing are going into a separate file and we're approaching 25,000 at this point. Even then, I still used 300 just on movement through the town.
Posted: 7/28/2018 9:41 AM
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NhatNM
He/Him
Experienced player (705)
Joined: 6/17/2009
Posts: 600
Location: Vietnam
Here's my sample way warp to debug room. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/48770942657910814 Link to video But I'm stucking at must beat game without join any battle (characters data having error, can't win). Tested on both J and U version. Someone try find a best way for this problem. Thanks!
A man come from Vietnam My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NhatNM/playlists
Posted: 7/30/2018 3:45 PM
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NhatNM
He/Him
Experienced player (705)
Joined: 6/17/2009
Posts: 600
Location: Vietnam
found other glitch can steal everything from other file save. With tthis glitch will help me fix characters error. Now is easy time. I need someone help me make a good file save for easy beat final bosses (something like as TAS NG+, need othet file save to boost). I have no time to play :(
A man come from Vietnam My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NhatNM/playlists