Post subject: Final Fantasy X and XII
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I did a bit of testing and research, and it appears the RNG is completely sequential for both these games. Unfortunately, it seems like a TAS would, at best, match a RTS, given that there is little to no variability.
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Patashu
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Why is that the final fantasy games continue to use such primitive RNGs? As recent as FF8 it was just a sequence of 256 bytes. ?_?
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Patashu wrote:
Why is that the final fantasy games continue to use such primitive RNGs? As recent as FF8 it was just a sequence of 256 bytes. ?_?
My guess is that 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' They probably have the same group of programmers from game to game. Additionally, When you are playing 'normally', you don't really notice that the RNG only has 256 states. But yeah, it seems pretty simplistic.
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Just in case anyone picks this thread up on search: The combat RNG for FFXII is fully understood (however, not everything that calls it is). It's very easy to force chest contents (in fact, it can easily be accomplished in realtime) but hard to force combat results, because there's nothing you can control very well in realtime that "burns" RNs. As far as the "simplicity" comment goes, it has a period of 10^6000 (MT19937).
Joined: 4/7/2013
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A couple months ago I decided to look for skips in Final Fantasy 10 basically as a "what if" and I managed to figure out a way of interrupting triggers with npc dialogue; so far a bunch of glitches and skips have been found: - Mi'ihen Highroad Shelinda cutscene skip - Jyscal Sphere cutscene skip (thanks to Caracarn for trying it on console) Here is a recent one that came about from this fooling around I did on a stream (thanks goes to Tomo): - Guadosalam - Thunder Plains tutorial skip and Tomo's original video that shows some funny out of bounds stuff near the end. and here is a big one that saves a bunch of time by skipping Djose temple, as well as skipping Ixion (meaning you don't have to fight him at the end of the game), but it was very hard to achieve without limiting pcsx2 to about 33% speed since you need the perfect angle for Lucil to push you into the trigger AND talk to priest along the way: - Djose Temple Skip Most of these skips involve finding ways of moving and talking at the same time into a trigger, so the text the npc you're using to interrupt the trigger/cutscene can be cancelled during it, making you able to walk around during it (and interact with other triggers/events). In some instances you can even push npcs around within the cutscene. If you leave the text up from an npc it will rapidly skip through any dialogue that is going on and if the npcs had voice lines they will also not play, and after the cutscene you'll be able to walk around with a dialogue box open and cancel it/leave it open during other triggers. It doesn't have to create text to enable this to occur, just interrupt the trigger in a way that allows Tidus to move after it ends. Another oddity is that mucking around with triggers in some areas can cause what is known as the audio glitch to occur; this can be seen in the Jyscal Sphere cutscene skip video. It also can happen at the Mi'ihen Highroad Agency (if you like your ears i'd recommend at least turning down your volume). You can even duplicate the audio glitch multiple times, because triggers do not expire if you leave the area. It probably occurs from 2 sounds trying to play at the same time. There are more glitches than the ones I listed here but I do not have videos of most of them individually, since I usually find the glitches live on my twitch stream, but I have alot of recordings still from January to now @ www.twitch.tv/eekcast. Mi'ihen highroad has these glitches on basically every single screen up to the Agency, then inside the Agency and again right at the end of the highroad, though they're really only useful before the agency since the loading zone at the end doesn't actually exist until after the Seymour cutscene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe2gSRXr6Ps - no loading zone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ima0ofSjFo - softlocking the game Unrelated to FFX but this also happens on Final Fantasy X-2 as well, with this minor skip I found: http://www.twitch.tv/eekcast/c/1918011 It works slightly differently in FFX-2, since there are text boxes, and I haven't really experimented enough with it on that game to figure out much. Finding a way to reliably interrupt triggers in this game would basically completely break it but I am not sure it is possible, and also due to PCSX2 not being designed for TAS'ing (and I am not very good at it). I can't seem to pull off this glitch in areas where it'd save 5 minutes in some cases and maybe even up to 2 hours in a specific area, since the NPCs involved are seemingly BARELY out of range of the trigger I want to interrupt, usually within 1 - 2 steps of movement... It would be cool to see what other people can find with these new tricks, as I am sure there is other stuff you can do, like possibly load 2 areas at the exact same time, or even figure out this theoretical Macalania to Calm Lands skip I've been looking at which would skip all events from Macalania Temple to Home + Bevelle. Hopefully this is helpful information for people who want to use it. also Tidus can super slide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYH-AB0-ZwU&t=24s
Joined: 4/30/2013
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Hi I found this by googling ffx tas. http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm17418397 http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm17941915 Maybe someone finds this interesting. I'd really like to watch a run of this game.
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Guess that guy didn't know you can press Select to reduce the first cutscene down by about 2 minutes. Either way, this does seem interesting
Post subject: Re: Final Fantasy X and XII
Joined: 4/10/2013
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Location: Seattle
DarkKobold wrote:
Unfortunately, it seems like a TAS would, at best, match a RTS, given that there is little to no variability.
Actually, in the case of FF12, RNG can be pushed forward by having a character hit themselves or cure themselves, or by letting enemies take certain actions that do not target the player. Lots of combat randomness is based on character position, too, and that can be manipulated to force outcomes. Having a party member around just to advance RNG in certain sections would allow for some degree of manipulation of chest outcomes, enemy drops, combos, character stat growth, etc. In a lot of circumstances, the RTA route uses Balthier as dead weight. In the TAS, a player could manipulate luck by having Balthier hit himself or cure himself an arbitrary number of times while Basch runs across an area - if the desired outcome is not given by that manipulation, you could rerecord and have him hit himself a different number of times. The main advantage of an FF12 TAS would be the ability to menu in active mode the whole game, negating the need to set gambits. Manipulating AI targeting could also remove the need to obtain Decoy. If blocking could also be manipulated, a lot of gil could be saved by having Vaan/Basch equip Main Gauches and Ice Shields to block attacks to save potions. Manipulating rare steals could also be a way to make extra cash or even get some good equipment. Optimizing Jelly and Dustia grinding for money seems hellaciously difficult, though. I'm looking at the current RTA record here to see what it does differently from the outdated segmented run. I notice that it licenses Traveller on Basch to quickly nuke Cid 1's Rooks, which is a smart little strat.
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Someone just posted up a new WIP of FFX, ending at the point where Rikku appears and joins Tidus in the Klikk boss fight. Link to video I haven't been following following along with time records, but this is looking pretty good.
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Chest boxes in Omega Ruins and Blitzball's rewards seem to be manipulated by the same RNG, though I don't know the address. It changes by lightning in Thunder Plains even in the house, waiting outside of the house in Thunder Plains, and resetting Blitzball's data.