Actually, I plan on doing this game, myself, but I will have to test with all 3 pokemon, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, AND Charmander, meaning I have to make 3 separate TASes, and upload/submit the fastest of the three.
Squirtle is much faster. Don't even bother with Charmander or Bulbasaur.
Actually, I plan on doing this game, myself, but I will have to test with all 3 pokemon, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, AND Charmander, meaning I have to make 3 separate TASes, and upload/submit the fastest of the three.
Squirtle is much faster. Don't even bother with Charmander or Bulbasaur.
If you could explain this for me? That would be great, thanks! :)
How can I help you King Dedede?
I need a monster that can help me get Kirby.
That´s what we do best at NME.
You better give it with a money-back guarantee!
Actually, I plan on doing this game, myself, but I will have to test with all 3 pokemon, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, AND Charmander, meaning I have to make 3 separate TASes, and upload/submit the fastest of the three.
Squirtle is much faster. Don't even bother with Charmander or Bulbasaur.
If you could explain this for me? That would be great, thanks! :)
Here is my understanding of why you pick squirtle in rb and in fr/lg.
Bulbasaur:
-You don't get vine whip until level 13 rby/level 10 frlg, which is power 35. This makes Brock's gym an extreme pain to do fast.
-You don't get razor leaf until level 30 rby/level 22 frlg (as Ivysaur), which is power 55. That is a long time to wait for a merely ok move. There aren't really any grass moves to learn from TMs to tide you over.
-More things resist grass than do water: fire, grass, poison, bug, flying, dragon, steel. And when grass is resisted pretty much your only option is physical attacks, but...
-You can't learn Mega Punch or Mega Kick or any fire/ice/lightning attacks. You can at least get Earthquake as Venusaur, but your TM selection is very poor otherwise.
-The only HM you can learn is Cut.
-Later game, there isn't a very good grass attack - what should be the best attack, Solar Beam, is actually very bad due to needing a turn to charge, so it is hard to take advantage of good special/STAB.
-RIP Bulbasaur
Charmander:
-Brock is a huge brick wall for you. No move you can get then is good against Brock's pokemon.
-If you manage to get past Brock, you suck against Misty too (at least now you have Mega Punch and Mega Kick but the water weakness is no fun)
-Flamethrower would be nice, but you can't get it for toooooo long. You can't get Fire Blast for even longer than that.
-RIP Charmander
Finally, Squirtle:
-You get bubble at level 8 rby/level 7 frlg, only power 20 but just in time for Brock's Gym.
-You get water gun at level 15 rby/level 13 frlg, power 40 but you very quickly get an upgrade...
-You can use Bubblebeam after beating Misty, which is power 65. Nice nice.
-Not too many things resist water: water, grass and dragon is the entire list. Grass and dragon you can kick the ass of with ice TMs.
-You can learn Mega Punch and Mega Kick, and later Ice Beam and Blizzard, and as Blastoise grab Earthquake and Fissure.
-If you still need it, you can learn Bite at level 24 rby/level 19 frlg (as Wartortle).
-You can learn Surf and Strength, two mandatory HMs that are also nice moves.
Also, for reference, why the Nidoking route is a thing in Pokemon Yellow (at least in RTA):
-You can get a level 7 nidoran VERY early, and evolve it in Mt. Moon to Nidoking due to the moon stone there
-Nidoking has very good stats overall, better than Nidoqueen's as well (which is why it has to be male)
-Nidoking can learn damn everything: Double Kick, Thrash, Mega Punch, Mega Kick, Horn Drill, Bubblebeam, Ice Beam, Blizzard, Thunderbolt, Thunder, Earthquake, Dig, Fissure, (Flamethrower if it was a TM in rby), Fire Blast, Rock Slide, Surf (how does THAT make sense? It's an awesome mental image but still!), Strength. That's right - Nidoking has TWO different ways of using an OHKO move on you, and can get type advantage on whatever it wants, it has a magical horn you can teach how to shoot ice and lightning and shit. Nidoking is badass.
-Downside: Nidoking has some awful defense type matchups (2x from ground, ice, psychic, water). But everything else Nidoking kicks ass at.
In conclusion:
That reminds me.
There is a "glitchless" TAS of the Japanese version of Pokemon Blue on Nicovideo, using Squirtle and Nidoran♂ line. It avoids the major glitches but still abuses sound overloading glitches (I think you know where this is going) and 1/256 miss. It also uses GB mode instead of SGB. Probably because it is faster.
It is also clearly comprehensive, because over 280K rerecords were used, and the video is full of technical comments about just about everything. A few comments are about how fast each starter is. I translate a few:
- "However, the former run using Squirtle to the very end is slower than this [Nidoran♂] run by over a minute, so making a run that uses Squirtle as the main battler and beating this run is probably very difficult."
- "(It would be a pain to redo everything from the beginning to correct IV values.)"
- "A digression, but when I made a TAS for each of the 3 starters, Squirtle was faster than Charmander, which was much faster than Bulbasaur."
- "In the beginning, Charmander can push through with Ember, but until it learns Fire Blast, being restricted mostly to Ember, it is slower than Squirtle's run. (In a TAS, Slash would be in the way.)"
- "Bulbasaur would be easy in the beginning, but until S.S. Anne, having only Tackle and Vine Whip, it is very difficult to advance. It would be slower than Squirtle's run by over 4 minutes. (Having only Grass attacks makes the last half out of the question.)"
I have translations for just about all the comments in my subtitle file, since I had planned to post a subbed version on Youtube, but I forgot about it for a long time.
Patashu wrote:
-Brock is a huge brick wall for you. No move you can get then is good against Brock's pokemon.
-If you manage to get past Brock, you suck against Misty too (at least now you have Mega Punch and Mega Kick but the water weakness is no fun)
Those are really the least of Charmander's problems. My aforementioned WIP that JTSM was referring to uses Charmander. Both of Brock's Pokemon are 3HKO with Blaze+Ember, and because of Mega Kick and Metal Claw, if you do everything on the Nugget Bridge route first and then fight Misty, you can use Metal Claw to raise Attack, survive Starmie's Water Pulse and then OHKO with Mega Kick. That being said, the Charmander line suffers from having no decent Fire attack move between Ember and Flamethrower. This is most evident on the Nugget Bridge route, and the Rock Tunnel route. Add to that being forced to catch another Pokemon (and to fish for it too) for a Surf slave.
Can someone please explain why we are discussing multiple Pokemon games on this topic specifically for Fire Red and Leaf Green?
How can I help you King Dedede?
I need a monster that can help me get Kirby.
That´s what we do best at NME.
You better give it with a money-back guarantee!
Completion's sake. The reasons why you pick squirtle in RB are almost the same as the reasons in FR/LG. It's not like in HG/SS where instead of picking Totodile you pick Cyndaquil due to being able to access Fire Blast very early (at least for RTA, not sure what TAS would use, still geodude?)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
Zowayix wrote:
What does RTA stand for? I'm guessing RT is Real Time, but what's the A?
Real Time Attack.
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.
I just finished the any% run.
Final time was 1:47:46, 15405 frames slower than japanese version. (japanese version saves a lot due to text). I lost some frames in the Elite 4 because I was doing it very quickly and this is a test run anyway.
I used some strategies that are surely faster than the ones used in the japanese version, for example using rattata in stead of digglett for dig and cut, saving a few critical hits due to better IV, and more.
Now I'd like to start again to see how much I can improve it. I know a few improvements that I can do. These are some of them:
- I want only 2 encounters until Pewter City, and those 2 encounters must happen on Route 1 (second time), or the second one on Route 2. I found there's only one seed that would give you that possibility. However since I have no idea how to manipulate the only chance I have to find it is doing some bruteforce search. I did a search test this morning and after 10000 seeds I couldn't find the seed I want. There's 1/65536 chances of finding that seed so I don't know if I'll be lucky with this. If I can't do it, I'll try getting 3 wild encounters until Pewter City (current test run has 4 w.e.)
- I don't need x sp.atk, torrent can do the job. I can lower my HP after battling Gary at Silph C.O. and mantain my HP low enough until the end. Just have to make sure I have enough HP for Gary's Arcanine (last battle) since it'll use extremespeed, but that's not hard.
- After doing the test run, I know how many items i'll need during the run. Buying 11 items in some cases will save time to buy as soon as possible. In other cases it'll save time to just buy enough items, saving frames in item menu selection.
I just finished the any% run.
Final time was 1:47:46, 15405 frames slower than japanese version. (japanese version saves a lot due to text). I lost some frames in the Elite 4 because I was doing it very quickly and this is a test run anyway.
I used some strategies that are surely faster than the ones used in the japanese version, for example using rattata in stead of digglett for dig and cut, saving a few critical hits due to better IV, and more.
Now I'd like to start again to see how much I can improve it. I know a few improvements that I can do. These are some of them:
- I want only 2 encounters until Pewter City, and those 2 encounters must happen on Route 1 (second time), or the second one on Route 2. I found there's only one seed that would give you that possibility (as I said, its 00004AD3). However since I have no idea how to manipulate the only chance I have to find it is doing some bruteforce search. I did a search test this morning and after 10000 seeds I couldn't find the seed I want. There's 1/65536 chances of finding that seed so I don't know if I'll be lucky with this. If I can't do it, I'll try getting 3 wild encounters until Pewter City (current test run has 4 w.e.)
- I don't need x sp.atk, torrent can do the job. I can lower my HP after battling Gary at Silph C.O. and mantain my HP low enough until the end. Just have to make sure I have enough HP for Gary's Arcanine (last battle) since it'll use extremespeed, but that's not hard.
- After doing the test run, I know how many items i'll need during the run. Buying 11 items in some cases will save time to buy as soon as possible. In other cases it'll save time to just buy enough items, saving frames in item menu selection.
Wow! Can you post the file so i can see it? What was the in-game time at?
Wow! Can you post the file so i can see it? What was the in-game time at?
In-game time (according to hall of fame debut) is 1:43:54.
I've been testing with seeds, and trying to figure out how to get that seed that would give me only 2 encounters until Pewter City.
I found that the seed I want is 0000A97D. This way I get 4AD331AF on the first RNG address, and 00004AD3 on 2nd RNG address (00004AD3 is the value i want to get just 2 encounters). I tried bruteforce searching, but yeah, internal loadstating and savestating with lua doesn't work properly. (I tried it, found the seed, but then desynced when replaying the movie).
I won't be able to figure out how that seed is being generated, so my only idea was doing a bruteforce search. So I would like to know if there's any other way to do it. If there isn't, I guess I'll stick with 3-4 wild encounters in the end, but I want to keep trying this.
EDIT: vbm file of the test run: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/532642281/PokemonFireRed%20-%20mkdasher.vbm
Emulator: VBA-RR v23.6 svn461
ROM: 1636 - Pokemon - Fire Red Version (U)
Real time clock enabled, and Flash 128k.
As I said, the test run has obvious mistakes, such as buying x sp atk and not using them (I didn't know I wouldnt need them until I finish the run).
Wow! Can you post the file so i can see it? What was the in-game time at?
I will later. In-game time (according to hall of fame debut) is 1:43:5x (can't remember last digit, but I erased the savestates already so I would have to replay the full movie to check it).
I've been testing with seeds, and trying to figure out how to get that seed that would give me only 2 encounters until Pewter City.
I found that the seed I want is 0000A97D. This way I get 4AD331AF on the first RNG address, and 00004AD3 on 2nd RNG address (00004AD3 is the value i want to get just 2 encounters). I tried bruteforce searching, but yeah, internal loadstating and savestating with lua doesn't work properly. (I tried it, found the seed, but then desynced when replaying the movie).
I won't be able to figure out how that seed is being generated, so my only idea was doing a bruteforce search. So I would like to know if there's any other way to do it. If there isn't, I guess I'll stick with 3-4 wild encounters in the end, but I want to keep trying this.
EDIT: vbm file of the test run: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/532642281/PokemonFireRed%20-%20mkdasher.vbm
Emulator: VBA-RR v23.6 svn461
ROM: 1636 - Pokemon - Fire Red Version (U)
Real time clock enabled, and Flash 128k.
As I said, the test run has obvious mistakes, such as buying x sp atk and not using them (I didn't know I wouldnt need them until I finish the run).
That's pretty good! I give props to you because i tried to make a TAS of this game as well. I stopped because i couldn't figure out how to manipulate seeds to get the pokemon I wanted. (I'm also not very familiar with scripts). I can't wait to see the improved version! How much time do you think you could save?
[quote="mkdasher"That's pretty good! I give props to you because i tried to make a TAS of this game as well. I stopped because i couldn't figure out how to manipulate seeds to get the pokemon I wanted. (I'm also not very familiar with scripts). I can't wait to see the improved version! How much time do you think you could save?
Not really sure how much I can save. More than 20 secs at least, but I don't know. Most of the improvements I can do are very small. Of course finding a new route or something could increase that number.
if JP version is faster, why aren’t you using it? there’s no rule about having to use the English version anymore
If the only difference is the amount of text, the JP version isn't faster. Differences in text due to language don't count towards the time or the purpose of comparing runs.
The Japanese version does have some minor glitches that the North American version doesn't have. I'm not sure exactly what they are (I've never played the JP version before) but it could be worth checking out just to see if any other possible improvements could be made exclusively on the JP version.
if JP version is faster, why aren’t you using it? there’s no rule about having to use the English version anymore
If the only difference is the amount of text, the JP version isn't faster. Differences in text due to language don't count towards the time or the purpose of comparing runs.
we’re not comparing any run, I’m not saying if he makes a run on the English version then someone can obsolete it simply by replaying it on JP version, I’m telling him to use the JP version to have a final time that’s shorter, while obviously improving all the other things to obsolete the older run (is there even an older run?)
what you’re saying goes against the meaning of having removed the English version rule
What I'm saying is that there's no particular reason, based on the rules, to prefer either version if there are no version-specific glitches that save time. There's not a reason to pick the English version in particular, but there's also not a reason to pick the Japanese version in particular. So it would be down to what the TASer preferred.
yeah I’m telling him he should prefer using the JP version (talked to him and he said he won’t)
btw there’s a difference, RNG, but it’s kind of impossible to say whether the RNG would be more favorable in the JP version or the English version
why haven’t people figured out the wild encounter RNG? I’d expect a game like Pokémon to have every single thing known, seeing how popular it is
it’d be sad to see a TAS that doesn’t understand it
Basically it's because most people trying to break Pokémon are trying to get perfect Pokémon on an already completed file, where you'd have access to Sweet Scent for forcing encounters and Repel for preventing them. There are a lot of people trying to break Pokémon, but most of them aren't doing so from the perspective of speedrunning.
(Also, I think natures of NPC trainers' Pokémon differ between [J] and [U], although I'm not 100% sure on that. That could conceivably make a difference.)
The Japanese version does have some minor glitches that the North American version doesn't have. I'm not sure exactly what they are (I've never played the JP version before) but it could be worth checking out just to see if any other possible improvements could be made exclusively on the JP version.
Where did you get this info from? I've never heard of any language-exclusive glitches in FR/LG.
Okay, I think I'm not getting anywhere, so I will probably redo the run by using the same seed I used for the test run (4 wild encounters). Trying to figure out how the seed is generated is very complex for me.
Also, because of lua savestating not working, I can't really do any kind of test, and it's impossible that I can find a 1/65536 RNG manually. If someone knows any other way to do it I'd gladly listen to it.
Didn't you mention that if you couldn't pull off 2 encounters, you'd try for 3? I might have misinterpreted something, but I think you said that the 2-encounter seed was the 1/65536 brute force search. A 3-encounter seed might be easier to find, so you won't have to resort to 4 encounters.
Didn't you mention that if you couldn't pull off 2 encounters, you'd try for 3? I might have misinterpreted something, but I think you said that the 2-encounter seed was the 1/65536 brute force search. A 3-encounter seed might be easier to find, so you won't have to resort to 4 encounters.
Actually I don't think I'll try redoing the run for now, I would really want to get that 2 encounters, but there's no way I can do it myself at the moment.
Getting 3 encounters is quite hard as well. Easier than finding the other one, but still would take a while to find it manually (I can't search it with another way).
I guess that doing a 2nd round TAS would avoid this problem, so I could try doing this category. In fact I've started trying to manipulate wild encounters, and some route ideas.
I was trying to figure out how the game determines if a pokemon is holding an item, since maybe it'd be a good idea to catch a Chansey that has a lucky egg.
The item holded is determined when the screen is fully black, after the pokemon has been determined. There's a frame that has 6 RNG cycles, the RNG of that frame determines the item (if RNG mod 100 is between 44 and 94, you get the 50% chance item, and if RNG mod 100 >= 95, you get the rare item).
Now the problem is, before that, there's a frame that has a high random of RNG cycles (the frame where the pokemon is determined), so at the moment I can't really know if a pokemon is holding an item until the screen is black. Not sure if the number of RNG cycles can be determined as well.
mkdasher, I suppose you were planning to do the any% as well? I was planning to do it at one point but I've been delaying so much, so you can do the any% if you like.
If you ever need to manipulate things like max critical hit in battle, you can abuse the help screen (L or R). You can even use it to split the critical determination from the max damage determination if you call the help screen right between them.
By the way, the Japanese version also cuts out the one-second delay at the beginning of each battle when it says what Pokemon the opponent is sending out.
mkdasher wrote:
Now the problem is, before that, there's a frame that has a high random of RNG cycles (the frame where the pokemon is determined), so at the moment I can't really know if a pokemon is holding an item until the screen is black. Not sure if the number of RNG cycles can be determined as well.
I think there is a formula for how many RNG cycles it uses, but I'm not sure if VBlank interferes with it in Fire Red.
