Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry no Wonderland (a.k.a. Dragon Warrior Monsters in UK/US, Dragon Quest Monsters in Germany) is a spin off series of the Dragon Quest games, published by Enix Corporation (now known as Square Enix).

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: VBA-rr-svn421
  • Heavy Manipulation of luck
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Made with v1.0 ROM though, works on v1.1 too.

Comments

This run is a 27989 frame (7min46sec) improvement from DonamerDragon's USA version run.: #1727: DonamerDragon's GBC Dragon Warrior Monsters in 38:23.20
The overall points of the improvement:
  • Skip a gate from a previous run
  • Befriended stronger monster to save time in battle
  • Used monsters' skills effectively
  • Better luck manipulation mainly on dungeon creation
  • Japanese text, which is shorter than English text
  • At every dialogue text, by pressing A button at the fastest frame, 0~2 frames are saved than repeated press of A and B.
This game has no useful glitch for TAS.
My encode on niconico: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm17598527 (jp, required account)
Useful analysis of this game: [dead link removed]
While making this TAS, I've been annoyed by frequent freezes of the emulator in dungeon manipulation and continuous desync between luabot and real result in battle. They made the rerecords to 5 million and make me waste several months...

Stage by stage comments

From start to entering the first gate

It is pretty liner. I shortened the dialogue with the farmer boy by pressing B in leaving.

Gate of Beginning (たびだちのとびら)

Required gate. I set the message speed to "8(slowest)". it's known to Japanese DQ RTA/TAS players that "the slowest is the fastest, when we press buttons repeatedly". It also helps for luck manipulation.
No "HP 1 entertainment" at the battle of Healer, because every damage wastes about 30 frames. Befriended the strongest Healer(ホイミスライム) with AT 15. it saves some turns of later battles.

G Class Arena

Practically required. When you cheat money, this class is skip-able. :P Nothing to tell on battle. they are too weak.

Gate of Villager (まちびとのとびら)

Not required gate. I go to gather 100G for D class arena and to befriend Dragon(ドラゴン). I've taken Lib(ほねつきにく) and sold it at the shop of 3F, because it seems to be impossible to collect 100G efficiently in the gate. even if it's possible, it would be slower. to gather 100G, terry needs to pick up 5 gold item, at least. Max 20G there.

Gate of Talisman (まもりのとびら)

Not required gate. Skipped.

D Class Arena

Required arena. Killed Slime, because he will waste 40 frames every turn. It takes a bit longer than previous run, because of the lack of Golem.

Gate of Anger (いかりのとびら)

Required gate. I need to gather 10000G for the next arena. Collected expensive staffs as previous run. the staff and hole manipulation was really a**, it deprived me of crazy amount of precious time.
Befriended Dragon Kid(ドラゴンキッズ), using Herb(やくそう). He was so strong, i assume he saved much time to beat his father, Battle Rex(バトルレックス). lol

S Class Arena

Required arena. Nothing to talk with 1st and 2nd battle. the 3rd battle annoys me so much as DonamerDragon had annoyed 5 years ago. Due to the fool AI, they don't attack Metabble(はぐれメタル), when the other 2 monsters are alive. Metabble casts unavoidable magic every turn, unless we succeeded to cancel magic. Only when Roboster(キラーマシン) attacks before Metabble, Metabble re-thinks what to do and sometimes changes his action. After killing Roboster, my monsters had to kill Metal Drak(メタルドラゴン) while taking unavoidable damage from Metabbles.

Gate of Judgment (かがみのとびら)

I had planned to befriend Servant(まおうのつかい), because he appears in unavoidable battle. but it was turned out that Servant can't do critical hit. so, i abandoned my plan and befriended Mimic(ミミック) as usual.
One more unexpected thing is that, in Japanese v1.0 ROM, one of Servant casts Blizzard at the first turn by 100% and it kills Dragon Kid... So, i had to take Miststaff(まふうじのつえ)to prevent his magics...
Nothing for the other 2 bosses. they were easy to be beaten.

Starry Night Tournament(ほしふりのたいかい)

it was a funny tournament. most of the monsters are easily "defeated" by Defeat(ザラキ)spell of Mimic. There was no fatigue, unlike previous run. ;D

Ending

The current run ends at the weird point. there are some dialogue after the movie end and the long ending credit. my submission is ended at the same point though, i can replace the movie, which is same as the one i posted on niconico, when needed.

Other comments

Possible improvements

  • better luck manipulation. it will need either billions of rerecords or more stable emulator. the random number is so tricky to handle by calculation.
  • the chart can be improved. i have no idea.
  • Giving meats to disobeyed ally may save some time or it may waste.
  • Manipulates the first Slime's AT to 10 may save few seconds. i didn't know it was not a fixed parameter.

ledauphinbenoit: adding YT encode

adelikat: Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.

natt: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Posts: 14856
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3570: tetora_X's GBC Dragon Warrior Monsters in 30:36.72
Post subject: Re: #3570: tetora_X's GBC Dragon Warrior Monsters in 30:36.72
Skilled player (1705)
Joined: 9/17/2009
Posts: 4952
Location: ̶C̶a̶n̶a̶d̶a̶ "Kanatah"
Rerecord Count wrote:
5425978
Wow!
TASVideoAgent wrote:
While making this TAS, I've been annoyed by frequent freezes of the emulator in dungeon manipulation and continuous desync between luabot and real result in battle. They made the rerecords to 5 million and make me waste several months...
This problem has been reported by other people too. Anyway, I'm going to watch this run later to see the 07:46.48 improvement.
Joined: 8/29/2005
Posts: 148
Location: Dayton, OH
Uh, is there a typo with the re-records? 5.4 million would be a new world record. I'm working on a YouTube encode, but won't do it until I know the correct number.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11264
Location: RU
Bot's rerecords shouldn't be accounted. Current Megaman 1 has also some millions of rerecords provided by botting. But only real rerecords were left finally.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Player (161)
Joined: 4/14/2012
Posts: 25
Location: Japan
ledauphinbenoit wrote:
Uh, is there a typo with the re-records? 5.4 million would be a new world record. I'm working on a YouTube encode, but won't do it until I know the correct number.
nope, it's not typo. but majority (more than 90%) of the rerecords are done by bot. it took really tons of times and rerecords to find fastest in every attacks in battle.
feos wrote:
Bot's rerecords shouldn't be accounted. Current Megaman 1 has also some millions of rerecords provided by botting. But only real rerecords were left finally.
Yeah. A problem is that there is no way to know the precise amount of the real rerecords.
Joined: 8/29/2005
Posts: 148
Location: Dayton, OH
Ok, well I will go ahead and just use (unknown) for subtitles which is what is done for TASEditor movies.
mklip2001
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2224
Location: Georgia, USA
Since I don't know Japanese, I found this a little less entertaining than the current run because I couldn't see what kinds of attacks the enemies were trying. However, the fact that you've skipped more of the game and fought faster far overshadows the entertainment hit. This time, all your battles finished before the music looped, for instance. Very nice going, and congratulations on such an impressive first submitted run!
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Player (161)
Joined: 4/14/2012
Posts: 25
Location: Japan
ledauphinbenoit wrote:
Ok, well I will go ahead and just use (unknown) for subtitles which is what is done for TASEditor movies.
thx for the encode!
mklip2001 wrote:
Since I don't know Japanese, I found this a little less entertaining than the current run because I couldn't see what kinds of attacks the enemies were trying. However, the fact that you've skipped more of the game and fought faster far overshadows the entertainment hit. This time, all your battles finished before the music looped, for instance. Very nice going, and congratulations on such an impressive first submitted run!
thanks for the appreciation. :)
Player (208)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US
My face when I see this run:
Player (161)
Joined: 4/14/2012
Posts: 25
Location: Japan
Kirkq wrote:
My face when I see this run:
lolz
Editor, Emulator Coder, Site Developer
Joined: 5/11/2011
Posts: 1108
Location: Murka
syncs on vba-rr 23.5 svn421
  File: Dragon Quest Monsters - Terry no Wonderland (Japan).gbc
CRC-32: 4702c4f1
   MD4: 9b92e2376919012776d20c3c11c0997a
   MD5: 5254ea1935c43057358d2efba26c60c8
 SHA-1: eebaf3d553bb915340e64cb85022eb8344ddf1b0
Player (161)
Joined: 4/14/2012
Posts: 25
Location: Japan
Suggested Screenshot: Frame 24881 (The hole, a meat and Terry are next to each other) Frame 35395 (D class arena, crazily under-leveled. inspired from the screenshot of current run) Frame 90314 (S class arena monsters are killed by Defeat magic) Frame 94669 (A monster of the last battle are killed by Defeat magic)
TheKDX7
He/Him
Player (115)
Joined: 7/9/2011
Posts: 392
Location: Switzerland
tetora_X wrote:
Suggested Screenshot: Frame 24881 (The hole, a meat and Terry are next to each other) Frame 35395 (D class arena, crazily under-leveled. inspired from the screenshot of current run) Frame 90314 (S class arena monsters are killed by Defeat magic) Frame 94669 (A monster of the last battle are killed by Defeat magic)
First screenshot
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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Posts: 14856
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2031] GBC Dragon Warrior Monsters (Japan) by tetora_X in 30:36.72
Noxxa
They/Them
Moderator, Expert player (4137)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
Shouldn't the rerecord count of this TAS be brought to 0, because the bot rerecords are typically discounted because they mess with the Movie Statistics, and the real amount of rerecords isn't known?
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Player (143)
Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 31
Location: Japan
Mothrayas wrote:
Shouldn't the rerecord count of this TAS be brought to 0, because the bot rerecords are typically discounted because they mess with the Movie Statistics, and the real amount of rerecords isn't known?
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=293901#293901
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
The precedent set by the Rockman movie is that only human rerecords should count towards the final count, how many human rerecords went into this movie? Does anyone know? The authors of the Rockman run had a good idea about how many rerecords were done by bot and how many were done by hand, and they cared about the distinction. This author doesn't, and didn't keep track, which is fine. The rerecord count is not used in any process on the site, not considered during judging, and only really used for meaningless statistics. The rerecord count doesn't matter.
Isn't this final decision about that argument ? Or was this his personal opinion?