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Posted: 8/28/2006 2:24 AM
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krunkalastic
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 21
I am not ashamed to say that the Shining Force games were probably the games I played most in my entire life. Kudos to you Kobold and I'm looking forward to seeing progress on the run!
Posted: 8/28/2006 5:59 PM
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Shadow_Byrn
Joined: 3/16/2006
Posts: 289
Okay, this is going to be a manipulation NIGHTMARE! The RNG cycles per menu choice, but there seems to be very little that the RNG actually does in a battle, it seems like it is mostly based on character stats with a little random number thrown in for fun. In most cases I've seen, it means the difference between a few points of damage, but sometimes even after a long time of cycling, I still get the same result. The upside is that levels can be manipulated to giving max stats, so if I can get good things out of those then the actual fights shouldn't be too hard to get going in my favor.
I am just a silhouette, a silhouette of a memory of a solitary night .. nothing more.
Posted: 8/28/2006 7:01 PM
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LagDotCom
Joined: 3/7/2006
Posts: 720
Location: UK
Try reading one of the GameFAQs on Shining Force, it mentions the exact formulae for damage, iirc. Like I said, pressing a direction key while you are choosing your target to hit (even if there is only one) moves the RNG on. For the MD version.
Voted NO for NO reason
Posted: 8/29/2006 12:39 AM
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Shadow_Byrn
Joined: 3/16/2006
Posts: 289
Yeah, I've been sniffing FAQs for the past couple of days. It's just going to be very repetitive to find how many times I gotta cycle the RNG before I find the best conditions out of an encounter. Kinda like the Earthbound run.
I am just a silhouette, a silhouette of a memory of a solitary night .. nothing more.
Posted: 8/30/2006 7:06 PM
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Shadow_Byrn
Joined: 3/16/2006
Posts: 289
Update! Frame advanced to the first battle, Ken makes an encounter with a goblin! It takes about 2:30 to get to this point. Now to figure out if I should wipe the enemy out, or just fininsh the fight as quickly as possible! I would like to make a request: I'm good at playing games, but not at programming/reading code stuff soooooo.....if someone who is very good at figuring out what effects what, could they figure out the RNG for me? I know I could just sit there and cycle like 1000 times and try each one, but I really don't have that kind of time. And looking at FF6 and Earthbound runs, both authors found what caused what exactly and those came out pretty good. So...a little help....please?
I am just a silhouette, a silhouette of a memory of a solitary night .. nothing more.
Posted: 8/30/2006 7:30 PM
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LagDotCom
Joined: 3/7/2006
Posts: 720
Location: UK
Figuring out an RNG is very hard work. It requires some tedious mucking about in Assembly. I was going to try and analyse Shining Force's RNG but Gens doesn't have a memory viewer, so it wouldn't be very useful. (I'm doing in-depth work on Pokemon TCG right now)
Voted NO for NO reason
Posted: 8/30/2006 8:31 PM
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Shadow_Byrn
Joined: 3/16/2006
Posts: 289
Yeah, I know. Just wanted to see if there was an expert or something like that kicking around. Thanks though! (gives cookie) I guess I can proceed without it...because initial testing seems to prove that there's only like 4 or 5 possible outcomes to a particular encounter, all found in under 20 cycles. I could be wrong, though, but I don't think so. Because I am never wrong! :) It would be nice to be able to know for certain, though.
I am just a silhouette, a silhouette of a memory of a solitary night .. nothing more.
Posted: 6/22/2007 6:35 PM
(Edited: 5/12/2009 3:50 PM)
Post subject: Shining Force (update: New run, 2:00:25.55)
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DarkKobold
Skilled player (1652)
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
So, I broke Shining Force. The game is now my slave. (ok, so most of the way) I managed to figure out the code for misses and critical hits. So I can now, with 95% accuracy, get whatever I want out of an attack. In fact, Shining force makes this extremely easy. There is one word that consist of two bytes (obviously) the upper being the number of frames in which a button is pressed, and the bottom being a negative summation of the button values, 128 for start, 64 for A, 32 for C, 1 for Up and etc. Now, the game will take this value and spit it through a weird equation, and store it back in the original word. Every time the game wants a random number, it will use this subroutine. Thus, this subroutine gets executed N times before it gets to the value you want. So therefore, you have to trace back N times to get what the controller values need to be at to get your critical or miss. (It should be noted that occasionally one of the frame counters overflows, which causes a different operation to be performed on the word. However, in the frame perfect world, this rarely happens) So, after all that mumbo-jumbo, I realized I may be able to make a Shining Force video, with the following restriction: No damage taken That would be ubsurd for this game. However, just watch http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1422849979/gobmiss.gmv Special thanks to Upthorn for the new utility!
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: 6/23/2007 3:44 AM
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shallow
Joined: 10/16/2006
Posts: 174
Very nice find. I don't know a lot about this game, but I did have a lot of fun playing it. With this new find, it should be relatively quick and easy to make a TAS of this, right? I look forward to it.
Posted: 6/23/2007 7:53 PM
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TomAce
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 4
I've been waiting for a run of this game for a long, long time. Can't wait to see what you do with all this new info!
Posted: 6/23/2007 7:59 PM
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ZeXr0
Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 883
Will you be able to take no damage even with magic, or you can manipulate enemies to attack you instead of using magic ? I hope that you could attack Shining Force 2 :P I would be glad to help you :) I just watched the video, how to you manage to manipulate 6 misses, without having the controls of the characters ?
Posted: 6/23/2007 9:59 PM
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Dwedit
He/Him
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 692
Location: Chicago
Shining Force 2 has counterattacks, if that game could be manipulated the same way, then the enemies would become suicidal.
Posted: 6/23/2007 10:01 PM
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ZeXr0
Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 883
That would be great :P Anyway that will be the run that I'll follow greatly :P You have all my support !!!
Posted: 6/23/2007 11:03 PM
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Mechuyael
Joined: 2/1/2007
Posts: 245
Location: Israel
It'll be great to see one of the Shining Force games TAS'd, especially seeing as when I was a kid I played SF2 on my Megadrive for monthes upon monthes, but because of a bug it had I couldn't get the Acheiles(sp?) Sword. For some reason it wouldn't let me use that wooden circle or whatever it was on the tree. I tried to exact revenge with an emulator, but I never managed to get past the chess battle.
Posted: 6/23/2007 11:56 PM
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ZeXr0
Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 883
I just played throught SF2 two weeks ago on my nintendo DS. It was fun, I didn't remember most of the speech, and I end up with an usual team, pretty different from the one I was using when I was a child. But I was like Mechuyael, I was playing this game month after month.
Posted: 6/24/2007 2:08 AM
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Twisted_Eye
He/Him
Active player (398)
Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 632
Location: Seattle, WA
Oh dear sweet heavens, if you can get this technique to work on Shining Force 2 I will gladly TAS it with haste, it's one of my favorite RPGs and is VERY deserving of a run of this level of ass-kickingness
Posted: 6/27/2007 2:03 AM
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DarkKobold
Skilled player (1652)
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
Ok, up through the first chapter. Sorry to any fans of Khris :) http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/875075296/Shining%20Force%20%28U%29%20%5B%21%5D.gmv
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: 6/27/2007 3:48 AM
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Sticky
Joined: 2/26/2007
Posts: 1365
Location: Minnesota
Is it possible to affect the stats gained at level up? Although not necessary (sp) it may be interesting to have the main character's stats maxed out... Edit: Oh, yeah, good job on the 2nd WIP ;P
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Posted: 6/28/2007 7:50 PM
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ZeXr0
Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 883
I don't remember if it's possible but I think that Hans always won the same amount of attack on the same level ? Is it manipulable like shining force 2
Posted: 6/29/2007 1:00 AM
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DarkKobold
Skilled player (1652)
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
That is my current question. Level ups seem to be somewhat set. I really would love every level up to be manipulated to max Attack, max Speed, zero Defense, zero HP. So, I'm up to chapter 3, but considering possibly restarting. Two battles past the first chapter are "kill all enemies" which becomes quite cumbersome, since I only have 2 force members. I think it will require one complete time attack for anyone to get really interested in the speed of this game. Other fun stuff: I've determined that I have a very slight chance of achieving double criticals. Strangely, it starts happening quite frequently :) After my first run gets published, I'll probably publish the tools, to allow competition to beat my time.
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: 6/29/2007 1:36 AM
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upthorn
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Active player (391)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
Sega TAS of 2011 Sega TAS of 2010 Sega TAS of 2008 Sega TASer of 2007
This WIP is looking pretty good so far, but have you considered that it may be faster in some places to kill more enemies, so that CPU turns will take less time?
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Posted: 6/29/2007 6:27 AM
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xoinx
Former player
Joined: 9/20/2006
Posts: 287
Location: Singapore
Just one thing about playing the movie... delete the SRAM(.srm) before opening any movie file to ensure the movie syncs. I wasn't aware of this earlier and wasted quite a bit of time getting the new movie file to work. Maybe an option should be added to the load movie window to allow the viewer to playback with a clean SRAM... Anyway, about the WIP, it's interesting though tedious to watch, especially through the enemies' turn. That may hurt the entertainment value quite a bit
Truncated wrote:
Truncated is the most fiendish instrument of torture ever devised to bedevil the days of man. -- xoinx
Posted: 6/29/2007 4:23 PM
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ZeXr0
Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 883
Is it me, or the luck is affected by the key you press when enemy is moving ? Also in the third battle I think that May could have killed a couple of enemies to reduce the number of turns taken by the computer, instead of advancing in fury with Max. I think it would have reduce the number of turns. Also you should have killed Kris sooner, because she took quite some turns. And that took times
Posted: 6/30/2007 7:19 AM
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DarkKobold
Skilled player (1652)
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
ZeXro: Yes, there are many things that effect randomness, but the number one, and single most easy to control, is using the controller. Essentially, each frame, you can change the value by 0 to 255, just depending on what buttons you push. I can go into more specific detail if you want. Upthorn: I've considered it, but the problem is that you'd have to wait a whole extra round for each attack that slows you down. In battle 3, Mae is mainly used so Max doesn't get surrounded, and can continue on without fighting. Xoinx: That is a real concern of mine. The run is boring, and even I have trouble watching it. There is no "wow" moments like a normal TAS.
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: 6/30/2007 7:31 AM
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Dromiceius
Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332
DarkKobold wrote:
Xoinx: That is a real concern of mine. The run is boring, and even I have trouble watching it. There is no "wow" moments like a normal TAS.
Regarding that, don't you think a TAS of SF2 (J) would be more interesting? It has luck manipulation AND counter attacks, which would make it much more satisfying to watch, IMO.
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