It's a visual representation of the damage bonus/penalty you'd get in the near future (right of the red line) and some time in the past (left of the red line), which fluctuates between 5 levels. You could get the same information using RAM watch, but I found doing bitwise AND operations in my head to be quite tiresome.
At this point in the game, I think being level 3 or 4 would be a reasonable guess. But that wouldn't really matter since you can kill the spikes in one shot anyway.
It's really nice to see some planning and stuff for this game, especially Gunty's lua scripts looks pretty damn interesting and helpful ;)
I've finished this game several times because of the great story, level grinding etc. so you better complete this run in the future before I do something really horrible!
Talking about helpful Lua scripts; this one could help a lot when optimizing movement/corner boosting:
Link to video
Regarding a long term planning issue: BonePins
The SDA run uses BonePins in the following places to save time:
Sylvain Castle after the basement switch
Beruga's Lab after the first switch
Neotokio Sewers after getting the Starstone
Storkolm after getting Hero Pike/Armor
An additional 24 seconds can be saved by using BonePins in the following locations:
Mermaid Tower after getting the Engagement ring
Mu after getting the EnbuPike
Of course 2 additional Magirocks would need to be collected. Luckily, this trick allows you to use a GrassPin to regain 4 Magirocks without having to go through the lengthy magic animation. Together with the Magirock found in Zue on the screen left of Altar 2 (which is the fastest obtainable one I think), this should yield enough Magirocks to buy the required amount of BonePins.
If anyone has more ideas for using BonePins to save time: please share! :)
I would really like to see a complete run for this game.
As far as I have seen until now, no one has considered the following things yet
- All the videos I have seen here ignore all non-mandatory enemies (except when grinding). If there are enemies on your way that take less than one second of extra time to defeat, it might good idea to do so. For each section, you must calculate if the extra time it takes to kill the enemies is less than the time you need in the next grinding session. (Example If one hubble ball in tower one gives 2 exp and it takes 6 extra frames to kill it, this equals 2*60/6 = 20exp/s, that would be better than leveling at the parasite which only gives ~13exp/s.) For the same reason, it might be a good idea to use some magic rings or pins to kill large groups of enemies if you're too weak to kill them otherwise. Even if it doesn't save time in the end, it will make the run more exiting, so that might count as speed / entertainment tradeoff.
- You can use at least one death warp. When you die, you're teleported back to the last spot where you saved. For example save when you're in Freedom, and die when you are in Storkolm for the second time (should be easy because you won't waste time to improve defense). It takes ~1 minute to teleport and walk to Freedom, saving in Freedom (and leaving afterwards) takes ~20 seconds, so it will be worth it.
Joined: 3/2/2010
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c49Tvx7EwdA
This appears to be a new glitch, and it should save some time.
Note: not my find, I just saw this on another forum and figured I'd post it here.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2795
Location: Northern California
I'm alive and still kinda maybe working on this!
I don't have nearly as much time to work on long-term projects like this, but I'm still interested in doing the run, so I'm thinking of turning this into a collaborative effort. Would anyone be interested in working together on a movie?
(Example: If one hubble ball in tower one gives 2 exp and it takes 6 extra frames to kill it, this equals 2*60/6 = 20exp/s, that would be better than leveling at the parasite which only gives ~13exp/s.)
The calculation's a little off. I'd say it takes closer to 10 frames to kill an enemy with Slicer (offhand estimation), and the game runs at 50FPS, as I'm sticking to the (E) version due to English dialogue, though that might change due to the FPS issue, since (J) runs at NTSC and there's no (U) version. The calculation is actually closer to 2*50/10 = 10exp/s.
Later on it's more worth it to kill stray enemies, though for the early game they don't give enough to matter.
I also am pretty much interested in this run, but there are still some things I'd like to know
Which version will be used for the run ? As far as I can see, no descision has been made. Or I missed something, hehe
What's going to happen with the STR potions, since there are only 4 in the entire game ? You can get these at Grecliff, Louran, Sylvain Castle and somewhere in Alaska.
Do we actually have to get the one in Alaska ? Sounds a bit strange to me, cause we never have something to do there and I don't think that this single potion really matters. But feel free to prove me wrong ;)
Also I noticed one thing. The KungFuGi you can buy at Yonkou is supposed to give +8 STR, which sounds pretty good and it costs 1220, so we could skip the EnbuPike with this armor, though I have no idea if we can afford that, because we have to save up 6600 for the RedArmor from Mosque. Would that even make sense to get the armor in the run ? It's some time ago that I played this game and I have no idea, when we are able to get this armor
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2795
Location: Northern California
HawkE wrote:
Which version will be used for the run ? As far as I can see, no descision has been made. Or I missed something, hehe
Likely the (E) version, since English text is preferred. I'm considering switching to the (J) version due to it running in NTSC, although I doubt that's a good enough reason to switch over.
HawkE wrote:
What's going to happen with the STR potions, since there are only 4 in the entire game ? You can get these at Grecliff, Louran, Sylvain Castle and somewhere in Alaska.
Do we actually have to get the one in Alaska ? Sounds a bit strange to me, cause we never have something to do there and I don't think that this single potion really matters. But feel free to prove me wrong ;)
Gunty said earlier in the thread that getting all four STR potions would save 90 seconds overall, so the current plan is to get them all.
HawkE wrote:
Also I noticed one thing. The KungFuGi you can buy at Yonkou is supposed to give +8 STR, which sounds pretty good and it costs 1220, so we could skip the EnbuPike with this armor, though I have no idea if we can afford that, because we have to save up 6600 for the RedArmor from Mosque. Would that even make sense to get the armor in the run ? It's some time ago that I played this game and I have no idea, when we are able to get this armor
It's possible that it would save time, though testing is required to see if the time taken to get the money would be negated by the time saved by the extra STR. I've TASed the beginning of this game so many times that I've forgotten what happens later on, so I can't really make an educated guess.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
I'd say go with the (E) version. The improvement from running in NTSC is not particularly interesting IMO, and there's a lot of text to read throughout the game.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I'd say go with the (E) version. The improvement from running in NTSC is not particularly interesting IMO, and there's a lot of text to read throughout the game.
Samsara and Gunty: Has anything happened to this TAS?
I haven't spent much time on it, besides some minor route-planning research.
While I enjoy the long-term planning of this game, I never really planned on making an actual TAS. The manual movement optimization and luck manipulation are too labor intensive for my taste.
Joined: 3/2/2010
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I really enjoyed your demonstration videos, If you change your mind and I have time I might be able to help with the movement optimization if it's somewhat trivial in this game (I at least used to be really good at path planning).
Advanced luck manipulation is however still over my head when it comes to TASing.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2795
Location: Northern California
Warepire wrote:
Samsara and Gunty: Has anything happened to this TAS?
Too much happening in my life, pretty much lost almost all of my motivation to work on anything. I'd really like for discussion and planning to keep going in case I either get my motivation back or someone else decides to pick things up.
I did a VERY quick testrun on the (J) version a few months back, I've since lost the file but from what I remember it was 30 seconds ahead of my old WIP within the first two minutes of the game.
About the movement optimization: D-boosting, oddly enough, makes it slightly easier since it rewards more linear movement, but it's still not exactly trivial by any means. I'd say a vast number of re-records across the various WIPs were for movement optimization alone, and while I can't speak for the other authors I can definitely say that most of mine were figuring out the fastest way to move across certain rooms.
Nitrodon posted the RNG values earlier in the thread, so the luck manipulation isn't actually all that bad, it's just another mind-numbing process to make sure everything goes the way you want it to.[/code]
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Link to video
Sup,
to all the guys who want to TAS Terranigma, here are some Glitches and Time Savers you could use in the TAS.
Please take a look at those glitches because some of them may have big potential but werent executed right.
I hope this Video is some kind of insperation for you guys to keep on going with the TAS to figure new stuff out.
(This Video is only about Chapter 1 Glitches)
Joined: 3/2/2010
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Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
That's a very interesting compilation video, I only knew of the pot skip for this chapter.
If you recorded an smv, please upload that as well, here: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/
It might easier to understand a few of the glitches if we can see the input you did to execute them.
unfortunately I didnt record the glitches but if you have any questions how i pulled them of feel free to ask me here or at Skype "lemonsda" (without ")
Joined: 11/13/2006
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Location: Northern California
Those are awesome, they'll be great once I start the run back up!
I'm waiting until TAStudio is up to par for BizHawk before I start working on the run again, mostly because it would make movement (and specifically refining movement) a hell of a lot easier on me, and for a run of this length I'm definitely going to want to keep as much frustration out of it as possible.
With that said, the run is most likely going to be on the (J) version. The (E) version, while having an option for English, is ultimately far slower due to running at PAL speed, alongside having slower text in general. Since most of the game is plot, it'd ultimately be more entertaining to speed up the plot as much as possible to get back to the action.
I'll provide English subtitles from the (E) version alongside the run, but that's still far, far off in the future. All I need to do is remember that I said I'd do it.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Awesome that you pick up the game again! I'm speedrunning this game for quite a while and found some other stuff that could be usefull for a TAS.
Do you have Skype? If yes feel free to add me, my name on Skype is lemonsda
So... I did a full TAS... kind of
Link to videohttp://www19.zippyshare.com/v/50989227/file.html
It's a Theory TAS with the current routechanges and tricks that got discovered over the past months. It ended up with a time of 3h35m36s (Pressing the start button and killing gaia).
One of the biggest route changes was the GreClif Boss grind and Louran that saves a huge amount of time. It has some tricks in it that can only be done in a real TAS like fast climb or corner jumping.
This TTas was performed on the Snes9x 1.51 v7 and the name of the rom was Tenchi Souzou (J) [h1C] (I don't know if you can play that file on other rom versions or snes9x versions)
So... if you have any questions about the route or anything that is going on there, just ask in this thread.
Lemon[/video]
YAY, finally we do actually have a TAS of Terranigma. Great! Now we can analyze this one, and find more time-savers, and test other strategies for grinding.
One of my ideas is to use a death-warp at some point. For example, this might avoid one boat trip, and crossing the desert for the second time. It needs some set-up time save, enter an area with enemies, die. It might be worth it.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
That was a very nice route test TAS Lemon. I liked how much more spread out the grinding has become.
One question: You lost the hell of time when leveling during the Parasite boss fight, is this time-loss something that can be avoided in an optimized TAS? It looks kinda bad when a TAS misses a split with 40+ seconds when I assume the splits are based on a real-time run.
You can avoid that in a real TAS Ware. I just dont know how to read ROM data, otherwise that fight would have looked diffrent.
Also what I didnt know, in order to get the Ginseng to heal Fyda, you only need to Girl in the INN first, then talk to the left guy, right guy, left guy and Fyda. In the TAS I did that wrong so make sure to don't do this in a real one.
