Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
I have officially rebooted this project. I have discovered a trick that will allow me to zip right through conversations and such. I have also improved the bronze thief battle using forced dodging. Upon leaving the first guild, I have saved 105 frames (not to mention the trial looks a lot better ;P). I'm also going to be changing my route a bit: some testing has shown that maybe I was wrong about Julia, and that saving her the first opportunity I get isn't such a bad idea after all. Barring any potential setbacks and/or new tricks, I hope to get this out before the end of February.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Please tell us what the trick is.
All of those speech bubbles are
really slow.
On my system, the ROM is:
>sha1sum wizwar3.nes
9c04e7357e5b39cfd9d0a119c52102197b4a1be0 wizwar3.nes
I believe that the full name is:
Wizards & Warriors 3 (U)
but use the SHA1 to be sure.
(So far this ROM has worked with
Ferret Warlord's WIPs.)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
The trick: changing the button you press every frame. It causes every word/line to come in either every frame or every other frame and starts closing the box a few frames after the last line. Very handy. I can't figure out a way to get the first word/line to appear faster, though: it usually comes six frames after the box comes in.
I was wondering what version you were using but forgot to ask. The place I get most of my ROMs doesn't list versions.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
All right, some updates on my progress. First, this happens to be my 100th post! Time to change ye olde avatar.
Second, I have updated the link with my current WIP. I end it on the same frame as I did before, but this time you will notice I am not quite as far "ahead" as I was before. The reason will be obvious as you watch it (or you could read the next paragraph), but I still saved at least 5 seconds. The main improvement came from better conversations, but other improvements, such as better bosses and jumping, helped as well (I am finally satisfied with the second statue guard, thanks to the crowbar deciding to behave). I have also figured out how the ducking momentum thing scubed brought up works: if you are running and you press down and B on the same frame, you will keep your momentum if you release down and B on the same frame before you retract your sword. I managed to use this against the guards.
Third, after some extensive testing, I was wrong about Julia, and it is best to get her as soon as possible. Waiting until I complete the third trial will require a detour on down. The net result is that it would be thirty frames slower than getting her as soon as possible.
Fourth, I believe I have found a place where falling through the floor would be helpful. I think that in order to fall through a floor, you'll have to jump at a corner in the floor at just the right speed and angle. Look at the screen shot here:
Initial tests show that hitting the corner there just right will cause Kuros to shake a bit as though he is trying regain his footing; I believe that I might be able to get it so that he can fall through, allowing me to skip that guy in the corner effectively rendering all knight trials completely moot. I'll see what I can do about it.
Leave any questions, comments and concerns underneath this message. Thank you! <^_^>
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
I like your new graphic.
The text goes noticibly faster.
Also, you put the momentum storage
to good use. After defeating the
"weedy man" you go straight through
the door without missing a beat.
All of the jumping looks tight.
Why does you WIP end in the middle
of the gold thief battle?
It would very very useful to skip
the knight. From the picture, it looks
like if you fell through there, you would
just land underneath or get stuck in the rock.
Or is it not solid inside like SMW?
Good luck on executing the bug.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
If I can get through, I should be able to clear the overhang before falling out of it. To be honest, I don't know how the game will behave if I do fall through; all I know is that when I did, I fell off the bottom of the screen and apparently couldn't move left or right. I don't know if I'll fall right out or if I'll be stuck. I hope I can find out.
Reason I'm "behind": it ends on the same frame, but Julia take a bit more that 12 seconds to rescue. That puts me back a bit right now, but it's faster in the long run.
Edit: And thanks for the comment on the avatar. I thought it would have been fitting. ;P
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Another progress reprt.
To start out, my current WIP, and probably my last one before completion. It ends on frame 36912 (multiples of 3), about a third of the way up the first wizard trial. You'll notice that I went for the long sword; sorry folks, but skipping it seems to be a "Deborah Cliff" glitch right now, so I didn't use it :(. It just wasn't working out for me. Maybe a future run. In fact, I'm not entirely sure it's possible to fall through there. However, there still is hope...
Watch this. I discovered this one while working on my WIP and have managed to replicate it. It tells us a few important things about falling through a floor:
1. You have to hit a corner; this I already knew.
2. Once you're in, you can get out as demonstrated. If you stop the movie as he's jumping, he'll fall off the screen.
3. You'll have to hit the ground near the peak of a small jump.
4. You'll have to be at full speed.
Keeping in mind these last two things, I present to you this diagram:
Start from the right of that dip, jump into it, jump from there onto the platform to the left of Kuros (you must miss the platform Kuros is standing on), and take a tiny hop on through. At first I was trying to get through from where Kuros is standing, but it wasn't working. This plan, though, so far is equally fruitless, but I have managed to solicit some very strange behavior from it (I've had Kuros glide up that slope like an air hockey puck into the barrier). I hope it works there, but for now, I'll just focus on completing this dumb run.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
I played with your jump through a block movie.
It might matter that in the room, you are
jumping against a flat block and outside,
it is a ramp. I was able to duplicate your
jump through block. For the ramp,
I was able to glide on it and land on it twice too,
so there is glitchiness. For how perfect the
jumps need to be, a ramp to ramp jump might
be easier, such as the one right above the
blocker. Their ought to be a way to not
need any knights.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Thing is you don't need to jump off a ramp to get it to work. I first encountered this in the bronze knight statue room where there are no ramps to speak of. I would really like to see it working though.
Right now I've just completed the third trial. Man, I really like how the worm battle turned out :D. It's not as fluent as I would like towards the end, but I keep my assault up on both of them as I can; neither go back into a hole twice. Easily a high point in this run. There's also a game breaking glitch in there: if the worm dies as you are transforming, you will be invisible and can't move. That's why I don't change as soon as possible, as you will see in the completed version.
I've also managed to break into some walls using the levitation staff, but I fail to see any use at this point. It seems very, I dunno, specialized, but definately easier to pull off.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
I'm going to redo part of the worm battle for I have found a way to get an extra hit in on the second one before he retreats underground. This will save a good deal of time in many ways.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
I am currently half way through the secret passage to Malkil. I originally thought I would be using the thief more often here, but the transformation takes so long it hasn't been worth it yet, so I've stuck with the wizard the entire time.
The dragon isn't quite as fluent as I would like, but I managed as best I could. The way they had the dragon move around throws off the aiming. At least I made several shots in the dark.
Here's hoping Malkil goes down quickly. That rat fink is so cheap in normal play >:(.
I'm predicting approximately 18 minutes. Shame this game suffers from some very bad design flaws.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
>Shame this game suffers from some very bad
>design flaws.
The real shame is that there aren't more
good, exploitable flaws.
Good luck on Malkil. Make sure that
he doesn't get off the edge of the screen.
Yeah, for the passage you pretty much
have to use Wizard 3. That is annoying.
i have searched the topic titles in NES forums for the words "wizards" "warriors" and only found one thread.
this game is one i owned many years ago and is still, today, a blast to play.
lol, it was 2am ._." don't mind me, i have no idea how anyone would improve any of the tas's at this site... im constantly amazed when new revisions of tas's come out.
Actually, it is possible to save some time (maybe a second or two) by improving the jump as Kuros enters the third wizard guild. He needs some leftward momentum as he's entering the door, and he'll make it to the top of the steps in one jump.
It is possible to jump right below the top of a platform to fall through it. There was a movie demonstrating it. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get it to work consistently. That should allow easier access to the lower cave area.
A little update on this one.
I tried figuring out why the boss dies in Dacicus' glitch, here is what I have so far.
A subroutine at $A87B is being called which has some function in keeping track of fireballs.
At the point the glitch occurs, fireball 1 (y value at $033D) has y-value 79 (#$4F)
This makes a check fail comparing to #$50.
At this point is where things get strange:
Register Y currently has a value related to Kuros' position on the screen.
For no discernible reason, the code proceeds to use this register to store #$C0.
The corresponding RAM address is $0435.
Now, $0435 is the location of Mikail's current attack pattern. It ranges from 0-5. The game performs a check later on to check what pattern he is in, if it can't find a match (which it can't since it is set to #$C0) the fight ends.
This explains why the fight ends, but not the graphical glitches.
I'm not sure of the possibilities to do thing with this glitch outside this particular fight.
EDIT:
with some more analysis, it seems that block of code is specific to Mikail's room. The game checks a RAM address ($006B) that carries the current room designation, in this case it is 5. When it is 5 is the only time this block of code is called.
As a side note, the game does another special check if the current room is 1. I so far have not found any room with such a designation, although it might be worth looking into further.
Actually, it is possible to save some time (maybe a second or two) by improving the jump as Kuros enters the third wizard guild. He needs some leftward momentum as he's entering the door, and he'll make it to the top of the steps in one jump.
I implemented this, it saves about 30 frames total.
scubed wrote:
It is possible to jump right below the top of a platform to fall through it. There was a movie demonstrating it. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get it to work consistently. That should allow easier access to the lower cave area.
Not sure what this is, I'll have to keep looking into it.
I also figured out what room 1 is, it is the top of the tower. The special code in $A87B is written to keep Kuros from jumping to the left to reach the second level knights guild, so nothing special happening there.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Alyosha wrote:
I'm not sure of the possibilities to do thing with this glitch outside this particular fight.
I remember Dacicus talking about how he had some weirds things going during the dragon fight using this bug.
Alyosha wrote:
scubed wrote:
It is possible to jump right below the top of a platform to fall through it. There was a movie demonstrating it. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get it to work consistently. That should allow easier access to the lower cave area.
Not sure what this is, I'll have to keep looking into it.
More than likely, he's talking about how you can fall through some solid platforms by hitting their top corners just right. I wasn't able to work it to my advantage for my run, although there were a few places it actually got in the way (I fell through the pedastal for the bronze wizard statue, or the ledge leading to the third princess, for instance).
The best place to use this would be to somehow bypass that one monster leading to the lower caves, thereby allowing one to skip the level one knight. I couldn't get anything to happen, probably because of that sloped ledge there.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Thanks for clarifying that.
The code that causes the final boss fight to end is only called in that particular room, so if anything strange is happening with the dragon it is a different cause altogether.
I experimented a bit, the only things I have deduced is that the moving platforms don't move until you land on them. You can also land on the neck of the currently active dragon head.
However you can't transform on the dragon, so you can't go through the fight without landing on them sadly to test.
I did notice that it is slgihtly faster to transform after getting the purple crystal instead of before, because it kills all your momentum after you pick it up. Implementing this saved 5 frames.
Still looking into that falling through platforms glitch.
Initial tests show that hitting the corner there just right will cause Kuros to shake a bit as though he is trying regain his footing; I believe that I might be able to get it so that he can fall through, allowing me to skip that guy in the corner effectively rendering all knight trials completely moot. I'll see what I can do about it.
Leave any questions, comments and concerns underneath this message. Thank you! <^_^>
Start from the right of that dip, jump into it, jump from there onto the platform to the left of Kuros (you must miss the platform Kuros is standing on), and take a tiny hop on through. At first I was trying to get through from where Kuros is standing, but it wasn't working. This plan, though, so far is equally fruitless, but I have managed to solicit some very strange behavior from it (I've had Kuros glide up that slope like an air hockey puck into the barrier). I hope it works there, but for now, I'll just focus on completing this dumb run.
