Since you can only duplicate items you already have, it probably won't allow you to fight Lavos any sooner, because you still need the GreenDream to use the quick kill glitch with the Elixir. Having 99 attack- and magic power won't suffice alone, as Lavos would have enough time to use his fatal attacks like the "Obstacle" that will confuse and kill you shortly after that, unless you have something to protect your status, which is again only available after Fiona's quest (Vigil Hat and Sight Cap).
Joined: 4/2/2008
Posts: 103
Location: The Netherlands
Saturn wrote:
as Lavos would have enough time to use his fatal attacks like the "Obstacle" that will confuse and kill you shortly after that, unless you have something to protect your status, which is again only available after Fiona's quest (Vigil Hat and Sight Cap).
What about Magus' Amulet? You get that before Fiona's quest, right? (and with this glitch you could easily get plenty of them) Ech, my memory is a bit fuzzy on this, it's been a while since I played Chrono Trigger.
Yes, Magus' Amulet does the job too, but as the name already says, you can only get it after Magus joins you / fights you the 2nd time after the flood in 12000 BC. Fiona's quest can be done much earlier than that though, so it's not an option.
Joined: 11/17/2005
Posts: 278
Location: Massachusetts, USA
I think I see it:
1) The game has a clean battery, 99 tonics, and 1 tab.
2) Save this game into slots 1 and 2.
3) Exchange the tonics and the tab.
now:
4) Save over slot 2, but reset on a certain frame before the save finishes.
5) Load slot 1. Notice that slot 2 is broken. (Obviously.)
6) Save over slot 2 again, but again intentionally end the save early.
7) Glitch to load the broken slot 2.
You'll have the items from step 2 and the quantities from step 6, right? The game keeps a list of 255 item IDs, followed by a matching list of quantities for each slot. At step 6, you're cutting it off early enough that it only writes the first list and not the second?
I wish these tricks worked on other games. After replicating the save+reset trick on Chrono Trigger I attempted it on as many other classic Squaresoft games as I could. No luck at all. Even FF4 was secure and that game is old. CT is newer, but maybe it was programmed from scratch? The only reason this works is because you can load a broken save. I can perform steps 1-6 in any game with a battery, but the key step is step 7.
I'm surprised that these tricks work with frame advance. When I did FF6 I noticed that if I reset on frames 0 or 1, the save would be canceled. Frame 2 would write an incomplete save file. But by frame 3 the save would be complete. There's no room to manipulate the timing of the reset button in there. CT does seem to have some space. But maybe if inichi had access to some sort of "reset right as this instruction reaches the processor" command then he could have more accurate control over how many bytes are saved. So forget items, maybe he'd able to move event flags or the party's location between two save files?
it seems like this raises the issue of whether emulators should potentially be programmed to be able to reset between frames. is this possible on a physical console? I'm assuming that resetting sends an interrupt to the CPU, in which case it seems that such an interrupt could occur on any cycle.
I'll be honest - I'm not too fond of the reset tricks, either, for this very reason. With typical frame-by-frame input, if the emulator is accurate, a movie could possibly be replayed on a real console. But the reset tricks? Hitting the reset button on my real console likely won't result in the same exact sequence, due to instruction timing rather than frame timing. That's quite a few orders of magnitude difference. And with this much difference, it's not just tool-assisted - it's tool-only. Or am I wrong?
Still, it's neat to see what can be done when these games load corrupt data.
Well, you could also raise an issue that some (all) movies can't be reproduced on the real consoles because their emulation isn't 100.00% perfect (it really isn't). Alternatively, you could ignore that and simply enjoy the movies.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Wow. I've been away from this forum for several months... and I've missed a shedload! Don't you have TAS'er of the Year Award yet Inichi?? ;)
Let's hope you can put the item duplication trick to good use. Great find mate.
Well, you could also raise an issue that some (all) movies can't be reproduced on the real consoles because their emulation isn't 100.00% perfect (it really isn't). Alternatively, you could ignore that and simply enjoy the movies.
This does bother me, actually. SNES emulation is very close to 100% hardware accuracy. Anyone up to building an inputfile player that controls a real console to fix any remaining bugs? =)
I enjoy the movies, and do find tricks like the one inichi brought up interesting. Of course, input files are closely tied to the emulator codebase used - I understand this. But I thought the main point of the TAS was to play the game, and break it under conventional methods - that is to say, with things the game is expecting to see such as keypad input, and not necessarily by doing things that the game does not expect to see, such as a CPU reset. I guess it could also be argued, however, that the game does have checks for this, but they're obviously being bypassed, as in this case, an invalid savefile is being loaded.
The scope of a TAS isn't written like that anywhere though, so maybe my interpretation is just wrong...
In any case, whether or not I think it should be done, all the cases where I've seen CPU reset have been interesting thus far, and worth watching.
Joined: 4/2/2008
Posts: 103
Location: The Netherlands
True wrote:
This does bother me, actually. SNES emulation is very close to 100% hardware accuracy. Anyone up to building an inputfile player that controls a real console to fix any remaining bugs? =)
You could try building an inputfile player into bsnes ...
http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/bsnes/errata lists the only known bugs in bsnes' core emulation (i.e. not involving special chips). Unfortunately bsnes' lack of save states (other features could be added, but save states are more-or-less impossible due to the way it's designed) make it unsuitable for TASing.
It's only because of emulators intentionally avoiding core randomness (to help with reproducing and fixing bugs, netplay, movie playback, etc) that TASing is possible.
actually, it's possible to record that randomness in the movie file. but yeah.
I think that this discussion should be moved to the Snes9x forum.
Corrupted savegame, maybe that would be possible...but dubious. Perhaps if you somehow managed to buffer-overflow to the down-stairs from Crono's room destination and change it to the last Dream Team room. :D
[/levity and jokes]
I just beat Chrono Trigger last night, and I was wondering...would there be any interest in an "All Quests" run? I might be interested in giving that a shot. If I do, I would argue that it should be a "Newgame+" run to cut down on the length of it.
Yes, I would interested on an All Quest.
Does it mean you would play all games at Millennial Fair at least one time? And get the second cat there.
And a New Game+ is good enough for that I think.
Last TAS finished: Final Fantasy Adventure (4.0 Warp Glitch Run)
WIP in the moment: Tail Gator (GB)
Matty
