Movie Information

Lufia 2 is the sequel of the Lufia 1 game, but actually takes place before that game. Since Lufia 1 was not released in Europe and Australia, Lufia 2 was simply called "Lufia" in those parts. Next to some fresh new graphics and sound, an improved interface and a cheesy storyline, this game introduces the new "IP system". Ikari Points (IP) represent how angry your character is, and allow for some devestating special attacks. These were abused alot in this movie.
The movie was recorded using the USA rom, due to the timing differences between NTSC and PAL. This almost saves half an hour on the total movie length. While the USA rom also introduces an interesting "level 0 glitch", it was not used in this movie.
Recorded using Snes9x 1.43+ improvement9.
Emulator Sync Settings:
  • Use WIP1 Timing - ON
  • Allow Left+Right / Up+Down - OFF
  • Volume Envelope Height Reading - OFF
  • Fake Mute desync workaround - OFF
  • Sync samples with sound CPU - OFF
Movie Goals:
  • Aims for fastest time.
  • Abuses programming errors in the game.
  • Manipulates luck.

Tricks Used:

Hook Trick:
Shooting the hook while standing against a wall has a really short animation, shorter that most other actions including the walking of monsters. This allows you to walk next to mosters while not getting into battle with them, since they're lagging behind. This is also used as a fast method to manipulate luck.
Avoiding Random Encounters:
I suppose you could guess it from watching the movie, but bringing up the menu resets the 'steps taken' memory address which allows you to completely skip every random encounter on the world map.

Luck Manipulation

I could really write a book about this, but I'll try to keep it short.
To determine randomness, the game used 55 pseudorandom numbers. Every time a random number is used, an internal counter increases. When this counter reaches 54, a new set of random numbers are generated through bitwise XOR operations.
In other words, the randomness is completely deterministic. The only way to manipulate luck is through pulling different amount of numbers from the RNG, which translates in the game to bumbing into a wall, grabbing a chest or using a potion/healing spell. I tried to keep these manipulations as subtle as possible, but especially in the first 30 minutes of the run involve heavy luck manipulation which isn't always as subtle looking as it should be.

Tough parts / Flaws

This movie is not perfect. Especially the luck manipulation parts were really random and could probably be improved with a better understand of the RNG. That said, here are a few parts of the movie that could probably be improved:
  • Faster luck manipulation on the Eagle Stone drop in the Lake Cave.
  • Skipping the Hi-Potion chest and possibly the Witch Ring.
  • Not grabbing the Jute Helm in Camu's Tower. (luck manipulation was used to avoid confusion against Amon and Daos)
  • Less healing in the Clown battles, since the next fight against Gades involves the entire party dying anyways.
  • Buying less Ice Balls, Fire Balls, Big Boomers in Bound Kingdom.
  • Not grabbing the Pumpkin Jewel in the Ancient Tower.
  • Better luck manipulation in the three tower near Narvick.
  • More efficient equipment and IP managment in general.

Credits

  • quietkane for starting his Lufia 2 movie and inspiring me.
  • Dragondarch for his route planning on SDA.
  • Everyone else who in some way contributed to this movie.

Final notes

  • I added some savestates for easier movie browsing here.
  • The USA rom introduces a number of glitches, most notably the messed graphics in the Submarine Shrine. Disabling background layer 1 and/or 2 makes the character sprites more visible. Should this movie be published I suppose subtitles should be added for those unfamiliar with the glitches (European, Australian, Japanese players).
  • The credits of this game require the emulator option Hi-Res to be enabled.

Bisqwit: Accepting, and processing for publication. Congratulations.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15661
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1438: Gunty's SNES Lufia II - Rise of the Sinistrals in 3:03:12.78
Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332
Around 385000, you used a bomb to clear some wall vines... couldn't you have just slashed that?
Player (199)
Joined: 12/3/2006
Posts: 151
Actually, behing the vines is a wall that needs to be bombed three times in order to break. The first bomb both clears the vines and weakens the wall once. So slashing the vines first isn't needed (and slower).
Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332
Ah. Cool. It looks pretty solid. I've always felt this game was ideal for TASing. It's fast-paced; the battles are quick, well planned, and seldom repetitive as one would expect from a 3-hour RPG movie. ...And it's fun figuring out how the puzzles work as they're being solved. :) Yes vote.
Bp_
Joined: 11/30/2005
Posts: 81
Location: Quebec
I can't watch it now bu tI really hope ppl vote yes for this great game. =] Gj
Player (66)
Joined: 3/29/2005
Posts: 229
Location: The boonies.
Mother -censored-... I guess that's what I get for going AWOL for so long. Just tell me... did you ever figure out how the Cave worked?
If life were an RPG, I'd be an NPC.
Player (199)
Joined: 12/3/2006
Posts: 151
I have found out a great deal about the randomness in the game, but I'm afraid I haven't found a way to explain the time dependand randomness of the Ancient Cave yet. But the thing that kinda discouraged me from trying is the fact that the weapons from the Ancient Cave aren't even that good. Mostly due to their 'hit all enemies with element X' IP attacks. So I'm not sure if it'd be worth. While you're here I again want to thank you for starting your movie way back then. It really inpired me :).
Player (66)
Joined: 3/29/2005
Posts: 229
Location: The boonies.
Heh. Think nothing of it. I enjoyed working on it; I only regret that I got so caught up with trying to figure out the damn Cave. It's at least nice to see that some of the techniques I developed survived into subsequent work. And it's cool that someone's finally finished a run of the game; it's long overdue, and unfortunately I'm at least partially to blame for that.
If life were an RPG, I'd be an NPC.
jaysmad
Other
Experienced player (934)
Joined: 12/1/2006
Posts: 629
Location: Mom's
Cant wait to watch this Gunty! I followed the Lufia Topic from the start just waiting for a run of this to be published. I'm a big RPG fan but i wouldnt TAS one, for the same reason as many... Its freakin long. But Lufia II is an awesome game and will surely be fun to watch. 8) You have 90% chance of getting a yes vote from me. ;)
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Does "Improvement 9" bring sync differences to the emulator? Because this movie desyncs at about 4:54 in my official 1.43 version of snes9x. Instead of cutting the plants, the hero tries to cut a cliff which he bumped into.
Player (199)
Joined: 12/3/2006
Posts: 151
Bisqwit: It shouldn't, unless you're using the non-WIP version of Snes9x 1.43. If I recall correctly the official Snes9x 1.43 version does not have the "Use WIP1 Timing" option. That one is only available to the 1.43 WIP version, either modified by nitsuja or not.
Joined: 11/16/2006
Posts: 66
Yes vote from me, I thought it was excellent. All the puzzles and movements look really tight and very interesting to watch them be solved so easily. I shudder at the use of in battle attack items (very valuable in TASes though, I know), and you seemed to do a great job in there. For the first time I don't have any questions about the TAS either. I would also like to point out that even though this is a TAS the plot of the game is still, for the most part, in tact. I was going to bring up the Level 0 glitch but then I noticed you mentioned it so obviously you avoided it on purpose.
Player (71)
Joined: 8/13/2004
Posts: 205
Awesome, I'll watch this tonight, vote later. Love this game.
Player (71)
Joined: 8/13/2004
Posts: 205
Admittedly, I had to fast forward pretty much everything but the dungeons, but that's what I really wanted to see anyway. Yes vote.
Player (66)
Joined: 3/29/2005
Posts: 229
Location: The boonies.
Well, I can see a few little things here and there that could be improved (e.g: healing the party while the menu's brought up to avoid overworld battles only to use a healing tile before the next combat is entered anyway) but overall I doubt it totals more than a second on the final time so it's no biggie. It's a good run; much cleaner than the one I left behind so long ago, and probably more thoroughly planned. I'm impressed with how quickly the first "real" Gades and Idura battles went. I realized belatedly that the Undead Ring would've helped my run, but I didn't realize it would've made that much of a difference. And Idura... well, that was just sweet. (Though I have no clue why you grabbed the Fire Ring if all it was for was the ATK increase. Did it really make the battle go faster?) Yes vote. I think it can still be improved, but the run itself is clean so it should be published. Edit: After looking over your list of future improvements I notice you mention buying fewer Ice/Fire Balls. Did you simply not use every one you purchased? If so, you can HexEdit that out; the only desync issues it causes are the order of items in the menu, which can be edited to whatever needs to be correct. As far as I was able to tell the number of items in your inventory had no effect on luck manipulation at all.
If life were an RPG, I'd be an NPC.
Player (199)
Joined: 12/3/2006
Posts: 151
At the end of the game I think I have 30'ish Ice Balls and 10 Fire Balls left. This is because I wanted to make sure that I had plenty for every boss weak against Ice and Fire, so I had a strong alternate attack to manipulate luck. Unfortunately, I noticed (too late) that using Ice Balls or Fire Balls pull the exact same number of numbers from RNG as attacking normally, which especially later on typically does more damage. At this point I tried hexing the part where I bought them, but it turned out to be slower because of all the frame I had to add to synchronise it. Edit: to clarify, the desynchronising was due to random lag frames, so getting the items in the correct order again would lead to even more lost time. The Fire ring was grabbed to increase the damage of Fire magic used against the Rogue Flower and the White Dragons (both vulnerable to fire). Also, something I hadn't planned, but the 10 ATP from did turn out to make a (several seconds) difference on the Sinistral battles. In fact, if only one person had 1 less ATP during the fight with Daos, I would've needed to heal in the last round :p.
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
See no reason why this shouldn't be published. The puzzles actually do a good job of breaking up the action.
Player (66)
Joined: 3/29/2005
Posts: 229
Location: The boonies.
Gunty wrote:
At this point I tried hexing the part where I bought them, but it turned out to be slower because of all the frame I had to add to synchronise it. Edit: to clarify, the desynchronising was due to random lag frames, so getting the items in the correct order again would lead to even more lost time.
That's weird. It never gave me any trouble at all. Maybe that's from the US version as opposed to the PAL one.
If life were an RPG, I'd be an NPC.
Player (199)
Joined: 12/3/2006
Posts: 151
That would make sense, after all the NTSC rom plays all animations faster so the CPU would have a harder time keeping up.
Joined: 11/30/2004
Posts: 83
Location: Basement
Wait... so the forces of evil held off for a couple years so that the hero could have a kid with some chick who joined him in scaling a couple towers... I'll finish watching this later, but I can't promise I'll understand it.
Former player
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1286
Location: Finland
Oh man, this just reminds me of how much I love this game. The ending is the best EVER. Great run, too. I never knew you could get through it with no unnecessary fights.
Player (199)
Joined: 12/3/2006
Posts: 151
Haha, I agree. During the last part of my TAS I think I finished the game about 10 times just for fun, and the ending never got old :). AceOfShades: That part is explained in the dialogue with Iris in the Northern Lighthouse (accessable from savestate 4 from the file I posted). It actually makes sense.. somewhat.
Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 275
Well, I completely ruined the plot of the game for myself. It's cool though, because I probably wouldn't have gotten to it for another few months or so. Very well played run. The fights were rather impressive — moreso because you can't just opt to dodge every attack and counter with random Kill All attack — and the puzzles were interesting to watch being solved. Yes vote from me.
Former player
Joined: 8/17/2004
Posts: 377
Yes vote from me, it's always nice to see long RPGs done quick. Relatively speaking. It's a pity that the game seemed incomplete. The infamous Duel Blade Shrine, for example, with its glitchy graphics. It seems very odd something like that would be overlooked. (Let's not forget '3y Kingdom, but that's more an oversight in the script translation, I'd think) The game was QUITE buggy, if I recall, I remember the Lv 0 glitch myself. One question, though, would it have been worth it to pick up one of the Capsule monsters? Perhaps they could have helped with randomization in battles, or absorbed a few hits? Or are they totally not worth it in a run?
Player (66)
Joined: 3/29/2005
Posts: 229
Location: The boonies.
Spoony_Bard wrote:
One question, though, would it have been worth it to pick up one of the Capsule monsters? Perhaps they could have helped with randomization in battles, or absorbed a few hits? Or are they totally not worth it in a run?
There's no expedient way to get any of them to rank up, so it's highly unlikely that they're worth the time. The only feasible use for them I ever saw was as another target, but eventually boss battles become less about making sure you survive the shots and more making sure you can squeeze as much IP out of them as possible, so even that's very limited in use. At least that was my take on it. I dunno what DragonDarch said about it.
If life were an RPG, I'd be an NPC.