inichi, I'm watching your setup movie and I'm having a hard time following how you're able to skip bosses. A couple of them, like the Guardian and Nizbel 2, are skipped through what looks like multiple trips into the menu to avoid triggering them. Others, like the Mud Imp, seem to be using a bug I missed you setting up that lets you save anywhere. Can we get a little bit of clarification, please?
@Daniel, Lord Bahamut
Thank you for watching, Daniel! Two tricks were used to skip boss fights in the setting-up run, Pause menu skip trick and Save anywhere trick:
-Pause menu skip trick
By quickly opening the status menu and leaving it when the screen starts to fade out, you can have just a few frames to move in another direct. If you repeat this again and again, you can get to a checkpoint which would impose you on a boss fight, with keeping the fade-out status. And if the checkpoint sets a flag that determines if the boss was beaten at the same time, you are brought to the previous room and the boss is removed. Guardian and Nizbel 2 were skipped like this.
-Save anywhere trick
A rather simple explanation can be seen here. Yakra, Heckran, Zombor and Mad Imp were skipped with this trick.
Hope this will clear up your question.
Joined: 11/17/2005
Posts: 278
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Amazing Inichi! Both of those glitches are extremely impressive. I can't wait to see where this takes the game!
-Transfering items from one data to the other one.
If you reset the game one frame after you save a data on an exisiting one, only SRAM for item slot is overwritten. As a result of reseting the game in the middle of save processing, a target data is deleted and shown as "No Data". However, as I mentioned above, now that you can access to a "No Data" and retrieve a deleted data, that will be no problem.
But this one in particular seems interesting. You're intentionally corrupting your SRAM. I don't think I've seen a run yet that attempts to do this. Reset recording was only somewhat recently implemented on the SNES so there are probably a bunch of games worth experimenting with.
The best part about the glitch as it relates to Chrono Trigger is that it looks like the programmers made a solid effort to prevent half-written save files from loading. There is obviously a checksum or a "save in progress" flag in SRAM that allows the game to detect an unfinished save. But just like you do with the skip glitch, you walk right around the problem. The programmers just can't win, even with their system level functions. :P
You're intentionally corrupting your SRAM. I don't think I've seen a run yet that attempts to do this.
Pokemon Yellow (and maybe Green?) TAS also intentionally corrupts SRAM. There might be other examples on 8-bit platforms as well, I just don't know the games well enough.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Alright, I'm doing a test run for this. I just started and I have no clue how to manipulate luck. On hero of the days TAS he says he does the attack on a certain frame or whatever. Can anyone tell me how you do that? That's all I need to know to start this run. Oh and this is probably a general question but how do I get the option to slow down the game speed on my snes emulator? I have the option on my vba.
Hit the frame advance key, which is \. To hit a key on a specific frame, hold down the key and hit frame advance once for each frame you want the key pressed on.
This page will help you get started with some generic tips on movie making.
adelikat wrote:
It started off fairly tame, but as more balls entered the picture it sure got a lot more entertaining.
Alright, I'm doing a test run for this. I just started and I have no clue how to manipulate luck.
It's very difficult to manipulate luck. All battle luck is controlled by a single byte value which only increases when an attack is made, no matter how much time passes. I can't describe it, but inichi can.
Think of it as a severely non-volatile RNG that only throws values when it needs to. I hate these types of RNGs.
Hi, ShmoeBeast95. I'm glad to see you are interested in making Chrono Trigger TAS.
ShmoeBeast95 wrote:
Alright, I'm doing a test run for this. I just started and I have no clue how to manipulate luck.
All right. Then let's get started with critical hit manipulation since it's easier to explain and grasp than enemy's behavior one.
-Critical hit mechanics
When a battle starts, $7EB3E6 has the same value with $7E29AD. Every time the party member attacks with his/her weapon, a value that corresponds to $7EB3E6 is taken from a random number table.
Here is the random number table.
--- x0 x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7 x8 x9 xA xB xC xD xE xF
0x B1 CA EE 6C 5A 71 2E 55 D6 00 CC 99 90 6B 7D EB
1x 4F A0 07 AC DF 8A 56 9E F1 9A 63 75 11 91 A3 B8
2x 94 73 F7 54 D9 6E 72 C0 F4 80 DE B9 BB 8D 66 26
3x D0 36 E1 E9 70 DC CD 2F 4A 67 5D D2 60 B5 9D 7F
4x 45 37 50 44 78 04 19 2C EF FD 64 81 03 DA 95 4C
5x 7A 0B AD 1F BA DD 3E F9 D7 1A 29 F8 18 B3 20 F6
6x D1 5E 34 92 7B 24 43 88 97 D4 0F 35 AA 83 68 27
7x A8 D5 BE FA 14 31 AF 10 0D D8 6A CE 23 61 F3 3D
8x A4 08 33 E3 A9 38 E6 93 1D 1C F0 0E 87 59 65 82
9x BC FF FE 7E 8F C1 1E F5 CB 49 02 32 09 C4 8E C6
Ax 2B 40 A7 17 76 3B 16 2A C8 FB B2 58 A5 15 AE 25
Bx CF 46 C7 48 B4 0A 3F C9 06 85 51 89 62 4D 12 8C
Cx EA A2 98 4B 79 6F 5C 47 30 1B E7 C5 22 9C E8 96
Dx 3A E4 7C E0 69 A1 B7 05 39 74 01 9F BD C3 84 FC
Ex 77 86 13 4E BF F2 53 5B ED 21 8B 6D C2 41 B6 DB
Fx 3C D3 28 EC 2D E2 9B A6 42 52 57 5F E5 AB B0 0C
Each weapon is given a certain value as a critical hit rate. For example, Crono's Slasher is 10, Frog's Masamune is 23. A critical hit happens when that value is less than or equal to the last two digit of the value taken from the random number table. Also, $7EB3E6 is incremented by 1 every weapon attack.
Suppose now $7EB3E6 contains $01, and you have Crono with the Slasher attack several times. Let's see how it goes:
1st attack: $CA -> 202 ->2
2 is less than 10, so Crono's attack is always a critical hit. $7EB3E6 is incremented by 1 and contains $02.
2nd attack: $EE -> 238 -> 38
38 is bigger than 10, so Crono's attack is always a normal hit. $7EB3E6 is incremented by 1 and contains $03.
3rd attack: $6C -> 108 -> 8
8 is less than 10, so Crono's attack is always a critical hit. $7EB3E6 is incremented by 1 and contains $04.
...
This goes on forever. Nothing other than a weapon attack increases the RNG. The thing is, it is impossible to get a critical hit for every attack in Chrono Trigger. If you mainly use a character who has a higher critical hit rate in a battle, you can increase a number of critical hits. Although this is a useful technique for almost every battle, I don't want to call it luck manipulation. To me, it's just following the fate of critical hits in a better way.
-Critical hit manipulation
So the only way to manipulate critical hit is to change a starting value in $7EB3E6. That is to say, to change a value in $7E29AD because, as I said earlier, $7EB3E6 always contains the same value with $7E29AD at the start. As you can see in the table, all the values are listed in a random order. That means, if you get a starting value with lots of values that promise a critical hit behind (e.g. $2E), you can increase a chance of a critical hit for the next battle.
There are two ways to affect $7E29AD:
1) Load a data on a different timing.
When you load a data, it contains the same value with $7E0D00. $7E0D00 is incremented continually when the game waits for the next frame, so this is the most promising way to manipulate critical luck. It costs at least 400 frames to save and load the game, and it can be used in only limited places unless you use Save Anywhere trick. However, You can get any starting RNG for the next battle with this method.
2) Use a different strategy in the previous battle.
When a battle finishes, it contains the same value with $7E0026. As with $7EB3E6, $7E0026 has the same value with $7E29AD at the beginning of a battle, and it is incremented every attack in a more flexible way. That means you can change the final value in $7E0026 by changing actions, which leads to a different starting RNG and a critical order in the next battle. Unlike the first method, this is rather hard to deal with because changing actions has little effect on the final result. However, it usually takes less time than saving and loading. Sometimes you will find it useful.
To sum up, all the critical hit manipulations are done not in a battle but before the battle in Chrono Trigger.
Enemy's behavior manipulation is basically the same with critical hit one, but is more complicated. I think I will post some texts on it in the future. For the time being, I suggest you keep a watch on $7E0026, $7E29AD and $7EB3E6, and you can see how they works and how they are terrible for TAS:) Oh and one thing. As a reference, you might want to watch my Chrono Trigger test TAS, which misses some known glitch, but still contains some good boss strategies in it.
Hope this clear up your question to some extent. Good luck on your run.
Almost forgot. I'll be submitting the new game+ run in a few days. Actually I finished it two days ago. But sadly, I'm not a good writer, especially in English. So please give me a few days to write up submission texts:)
Excellent information you got there inichi. Thank you. It will definitely be of use for other TASer who want to make a run of this great game.
inichi wrote:
As a reference, you might want to watch my Chrono Trigger test TAS, which misses some known glitch, but still contains some good boss strategies in it.
If I may ask, do you mean you found even faster boss strategies in the meantime than in this testrun of yours? I was really impressed by them, so it would be hard to imagine they are still improvable.
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Yeah, actually the only thing that makes me come down here to the SNES thread is when I see there's a new post by Inichi.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
If I may ask, do you mean you found even faster boss strategies in the meantime than in this testrun of yours?
Yeah. Dragon Tank will be at least 400 frames faster than the test one due to far better critical hit luck manipulation. Magus battle will be also improvable by 30 frames or something by swithcing some attacks. However, some boss battles definitely will be slower than the test ones. That's because I will skip many bosses, eliminate all the leveling up, and thus I have to face with non-skippable bosses with much weaker party members.
ShmoeBeast95 wrote:
Just wondering but inichi, on your speedrun did you just kept restarting until you got a good battle?
Yes. But, not to get a good battle but to get the best battle. :)
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
Yeah, actually the only thing that makes me come down here to the SNES thread is when I see there's a new post by Inichi.
Thanks. Now that I've submitted the new game+ run, I'll try to update the status of the any% run more often from now on.
Watching now. Thanks, inichi. Test runs I've seen from you have already been extremely high caliber - I'm only barely prepared to be blown away by your new submission.
Saturn, I am having trouble loading your Chrono Trigger 100% movie. Here's what I've done. I've downloaded the chrono trigger rom. I downloaded both parts and put them in the same folder as the rom. I changed the chrono trigger rom name to chrono_t.smc and I changed all the segments of the movie's names to chrono_t.zmv, chrono_t.zm1 etc.
For some reason whenever I try to open ZSNES it doesn't do anything, so I always just click on the chrono trigger rom and open it with zsnes and it works fine. But when I go to misc and try to play a movie nothing happens. Sorry, I'm used to snes9x, so I'm probably doing something dumb but you probably know what to do.
Yeah. Dragon Tank will be at least 400 frames faster than the test one due to far better critical hit luck manipulation. Magus battle will be also improvable by 30 frames or something by swithcing some attacks.
Wow. Never expected such a huge improvement possibility in the Dragon Tank battle. Just crazy.
ShmoeBeast95:
I have no idea why you can't start ZSNES directly, but I guess it's probably because you tried the old ZSNES v0.989c DOS version, which was recommended to watch the movie. And if that was the case, then it's likely you couldn't open the movies because of sound problems (sound MUST work, otherwise the movie won't open in any case), which is common with newer systems when trying to use DOS. Of course the error can also be caused by not opening ZSNES directly, not through the ROM. You could try to fix the sound in this version by using a little program called VDMSound. Simply install it, then right click on ZSNES.exe and chose "Run with VDMSound".
If that doesn't help, the best I can suggest you is to try the alternate Windows version of ZSNES v1.000 (available for download in the ZSNES section). It playbacks at least the last 7 segments correctly (first one desyncs at Dragon Tank battle), but at least the emulator runs fine on newer systems, and doesn't require any sound fixes as well.
Everybody, I've found a freaking awesome glitch!! That's an item duplication glitch. Yes, you can multiply any items, including tabs, as much as you want in Chrono Trigger. A huge timesaver, off course. Here it is.
SMV: It seems Microstorage is temporarily dead, so I used MediaFire instead.
YoutubeNote: Make sure that your Snes9x 1.51 is 5 or newer version before playing the movie; otherwise, the glitch won't be reproduced properly and it will desync in the end.
I'll probably add a further explanation on the glitch later.
That's a really impressive glitch. Considering the sort of pointer error that seems to be exposed here, I wouldn't be surprised if the same trick could duplicate characters, or other things in the SRAM. Have you tried, Inichi?
Everybody, I've found a freaking awesome glitch!! That's an item duplication glitch. Yes, you can multiply any items, including tabs, as much as you want in Chrono Trigger. A huge timesaver, off course. Here it is.
SMV: It seems Microstorage is temporarily dead, so I used MediaFire instead.
YoutubeNote: Make sure that your Snes9x 1.51 is 5 or newer version before playing the movie; otherwise, the glitch won't be reproduced properly and it will desync in the end.
I'll probably add a further explanation on the glitch later.
Oh my GOD! Is there anything left in this poor game that the almighty inichi can't break??
This immediately allows to cut down the game completion time massively and lets you skip ALL leveling up from now on. Totally crazy, I'm just speechless.
Now comes the question whether it's still worth to use the boss skip trick, even on a normal any% run. Although it probably would still be slightly faster in the end, the run will miss the total boss-pwnage you can from now on show with the 99 attack- and magic values, finishing them in a couple of seconds anyway. I would totally go for the boss fights with this crazy discovery now, since it would make the run so much more entertaining (bosses are one of the best things CT has to offer), no matter whether it would be slightly slower or not.
Did you make a decision on this yet, inichi?
WOW that's awesome. I don't get what you did but hey you got 99 power tabs :)
Now all you need to do to beat the early bosses is see how many power tabs crono needs to kill them in 1 hit!
