At your current rate I reckon 1hr46m maybe :D
I'm not a TAS'er but I followed the old topics of Garland in GFAQ's and also made some suggestions in the SDA forum in the past 2 years about Midgar strategies (it is a fairly big chunk of the game, around 1/4 of it!)
Excellent work so far, antd, and I was wondering if you are trying any of these out:
*luck manipulation of the elevator in ShinraHQ 1st visit
*alternate date sequence (would picking someone other than aeris turn out to be quicker in terms of text/dialogue? and owuld it be more entertaining in your view?)
*running across the marsh where the midgar zolom is (can be done without chocobo or save resets)
*using tifa to fight emerald weapon to boost ap+exp for the final battle
*in garland's run he used a lot of grenades for midgar but would you be able to completely remove any need for going into the shop and buying these thanks to manipulating critical hits/deathblows? more gil and possible strat changes later on this way ;)
I know only of a great Gold Saucer skip
when Cloud goes with Barret.
It's pretty easy to date Barret by pushing his sympathy-points.
This could skip a few minutes.
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
For the Shinra HQ lift, i think the fastest way is to get 1 or 2 battles. I forgot what the lowest amount of battles is. It's written in an FAQ somewhere.
I'll test all the possible date scenarios and go with whatever is fastest.
There's no need to fight emerald weapon. EXP will probably not be a problem.
Grenades are a must unless a new method of manipulating critical hits is found. They are fast and high damaging. Criticals are slow, weak and manipulating them wastes a lot of time. Around 3 seconds was wasted in manipulating critical hits on Guard Scorpion alone.
Shopping takes 12 seconds. Add another 13 or so seconds to that because of Aeris' garden.
I'll test all the possible date scenarios and go with whatever is fastest.
Woah. Does that mean you have to maintain three (or four with yuffie) save states at all times during your TAS development until you get to the date scene? I can't imagine it would be easy to try to go back and hex edit in the key choices.
One of the triggers is part of the route anyway, which is a bonus (going straight into the ShinRa HQ as opposed to the scenic route). However it also means you have to talk to his AVALANCHE buddies a bit (would only take 30-40seconds out of the run tops in 7th Heaven and the train sections).
Leaving Midgar you have to pick a new party anyway you'd only waste a split second in a TAS doing that, you have to pick Red XIII and Barret to trigger another date point for Barret. After this point there's a couple of places you are meant to have him in your party or talk to him but they do not gravely affect the overall time.
I'm just thinking though, say pessimisticly if you waste 2 minutes as opposed to the optimal time before the date scene to trigger Barret as your date, would the bits he skips save more than 2 minutes?
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Well, you can work it out using the Date Mechanics FAQ.
I think the time difference in the actual date scene is around 1 minute 20 seconds. I don't have the exact figure yet. The time difference comes from the Event Square play
In the normal speedrun, it's faster not to date Barret. I'm not planning to.
edit: i wrote 2min instead of 1min
just went a little youtube-browsing, seems like dating Barret only skips the theatre scene, which took sda's speedrun around 1:20.
there's also a different dialog between those two:
- no need to drag cloud out of his room
- one more line before entering the gondola
(the first part of the gondola seems to be timed to the FMV)
- more talk later in the gondola
- fewer words before going back
that's a few seconds difference at most, so 1:20 looks like a good estimate.
also, the affection values change more than just the date:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/130791/2385
After the Date
--------------
Aeris will automatically join your party when you're preparing to go to the
Temple of the Ancients. The other party member will be chosen out of
whoever has the highest Affection out of Tifa, Yuffie and Barret, with Tifa
having highest priority in ties and Barret having the lowest.
Before the Crater
-----------------
Right after the Midgar Raid, there will eventually be a scene when Tifa and
Cloud are alone, spending a night just outside the Highwind. If Tifa's
Affection is 50 or more, the dialogue between them will be slightly different
and reflect the greater affection.
no idea if the first one matters - if you need tifa in your party, dating barret could hurt.
The second one sounds like a tiny time-saver, but I don't know how much time could be saved.
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04t_06NysAA
Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6cboBUhm48
The emulator seems to have trouble with this game. Sometimes after defeating a boss you immediately enter the boss fight again. I have not found a way to stop this. This never happens on the console.
It seems quite random though. The GS boss fight also had this problem when I was testing possible strats, but I was using a separate PXM so it did not matter.
EDIT:
It seems the newest version of PCSXrr now has LUA scripting built-in. With LUA scripts I could start again and improve my time.
Anyone with Lua experience want to help?
At the moment, I need a brute force thing which can find critical hits. It can just look at the amount of HP the attack takes?
And something else which can find when back-attacks are possible (pre-emptive battles). Just has to look for 255 value on the ATB address?
I have all the memory addresses for the above and I know how they work.
can't you avoid the battle on your way out?
why did you jump off the train late? by doing this you have to walk down way more screens
you should try hacking the ram for address which causes the boss fight to repeat itself
can't you avoid the battle on your way out?
why did you jump off the train late? by doing this you have to walk down way more screens
you should try hacking the ram for address which causes the boss fight to repeat itself
Jumping off the train at the earliest point is faster, since if you jump off later you have a long conversation between Jessie, Barret, Tifa and Cloud before the jump. Also you need to wait in the mid-point of the train before the timer restarts. And since you can avoid all encounters in the part before entering the hole, it does turn out faster.
visit my collage of profanity http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7346
Milestones:
100,000 frames
10,000 re-records
Update:
Air buster defeated
Next:
Aeris
