Post subject: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky
DyllonStej
He/Him
Experienced player (525)
Joined: 6/6/2016
Posts: 32
I'm not even sure if a TAS of this game would be even reasonable to do, given how long it is with all of its un-skippable cutscenes and stuff. But, if Blue Rescue Team has an active page, I don't see why the Explorers series can't. The IRL Speedrunning community for this game isn't that large either, but they do have dedicated strategies for stuff like choosing your own Pokemon and Partner, alongside some routing. I don't know how much of it can be improved with TAS or not, however, and if TAS-Only routes can be feasible. After doing some test TASing with the Title Screen and all, I found an interesting quirk: When the game is still loading up to the "New Game" menu, you can change the artwork that appears in the background by pressing the DS's buttons; most likely RNG related. It's purely cosmetic, but I think that's an interesting thing that they'd implement.
Check out my main channel and contact me here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCngaLL0QDbsAGYj7zsB8o_Q
Skilled player (1703)
Joined: 9/17/2009
Posts: 4952
Location: ̶C̶a̶n̶a̶d̶a̶ "Kanatah"
I would be interested in seeing a run of this game. Can you post some routes/tricks for this game here?
DyllonStej
He/Him
Experienced player (525)
Joined: 6/6/2016
Posts: 32
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZVuOfirN-yFArkkHW_8mpR6qB_6R0kNe9laTuU-myFc/edit?usp=sharing This was the most recent guide I could find from the IRL speedruns (Courtesy of http://www.speedrun.com/pmdsky/guides) I suppose most of the routing is the same, aside from in the dungeons themselves. Generally, the RNG is the most improvable and abusable thing, given that it can be modified by button inputs. The RNG handles a frightening amount of things in the game, from the dungeon layouts, to the questions of the Personality Quiz, all the way down to which Partner Pokemon appear in which rows when you go to choose your partner. I believe the RNG Address is located at 0x020AEF2C, given that it changes randomly every frame. It's 2 Bytes, with a maximum value of FFFF (65,535). It also has the same starting value (348C, or 13452 in decimal) when starting the game from reset, even when the DS's time is different, in my testing.
Check out my main channel and contact me here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCngaLL0QDbsAGYj7zsB8o_Q