Post subject: I'm having trouble grasping RNG manipulation in Pokemon Blue
Joined: 9/2/2014
Posts: 2
Hey, I'm new to TASing, and I decided to try my hand at Pokemon Blue. I have what I think is a half-decent plan for my route, however I'm not expecting to break any records. Despite the tutorials on the site, however, I'm having trouble with manipulation. I managed to get IVs for my starter that I was moderately happy with, but I'm not certain I did it right as I did a lot of fidgeting around and looking at other TASes, it doesn't seem like so much fidgeting is happening. As soon as I got into the rival battle, I can't tell if what I'm doing is making any difference as I can't seem to land a critical hit and every hit I land is dealing 3 damage (although the damage value sometimes shows 4 damage for one frame, but switches permanently to 3 by the next). I also can't find any information on gen 1 manipulation anywhere else. Could I get a point in the right direction about how I'm supposed to be doing this? For clarity, the page I was using for most, if not all of my information, is linked below. http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/GBx/Pokemon.html
Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4023
The RNG in pokemon gen 1 uses how many CPU cycles have elapsed since the previous frame. This can be a higher or lower number if literally ANYTHING is changed, like: -Pressing a button, when and what -holding a button, when and what -letting go of a button, when and what -literally any piece of code running or not or running differently as a result of the input (TAS) so far being different What MrWint does is define a particular result he wants and has a bot brute-force random combinations of button presses (there are lots of frames during which buttons can be pressed without slowing down the intended input of the run, so there's lots of opportunity to manipulate any RNG you want while waiting ideally 0 frames) until it gets the result he wants fast. That's why his pokemon TASes always have millions upon millions of rerecords - they're bot rerecords.
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Joined: 9/2/2014
Posts: 2
That's interesting, I'll take a look at one of his runs in Bizhawk right now and watch his inputs. I guess it's as simple as trying over and over again with different button combinations, then. Are there any particular values I should watch for crits to make it easier, or just the try, try again method?