Why, exactly, does RTA ban improperly opening the disc cover and/or inappropriate disc swaps? To my knowledge the only useful things you can do with it are cutscene shuffling and regen extension. And regen extension slows battles to a crawl so it's not really useful for speed.
To me, opening the disc tray in any non-intended situation falls under the same category of glitches as cartridge tilting. It's not something I want to see in a TAS.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Joined: 9/12/2014
Posts: 541
Location: Waterford, MI
Off the top of my head:
Jesse skip: run up to the guards and straight out and back in
Aeris skip: after sleeping the night at her place, and you leave to the midgar outskirts, you can skip the trigger with her catching you in front of that entrance if that makes sense.
Picture skip in kalm, forgot how this is executed, but you can look it up.
Stinger skip, get a random battle at the same step you touch the web. Should be easy in tas.
Weapon cutscene skip, again, forgot how this is done. You do it when controlling barret in that junon scene. It’s on xerokynos channel.
Midgar skip: after beating diamond weapon, when the cutscene goes to reeve on the phone, hold down+right+run and you will reach hojo
Not sure.
I managed to clip pretty far into the guard to a place that seems close to the video made by Tsunamods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2OkvM6bmZo
but despite trying for quite some time and many inputs combinations, Cloud stays at the same place.
So I think it's possible but I missed something.
I was just able to do it after about an hour of attempts and his explanation kind of sucks. After the part in the video where he just wiggles around, making all the crap he says about aligning with the guard and walking south into him pointless, I just started running into the corner to the right of the guard and mashing the run button and trying to change Clouds position by a pixel or two by trying to run back out for about a frame or two. You'll see sometimes you are able to move a pixel or two more when the run button is pressed or if you move back into and out of the corner.
It's finicky, for sure... but I got it on PSX, through bizhawk.
<i>A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.</i>
Do you happen to have a movie recorded so we can analyze what to do ?
I just tried for quite some time again, and while I can slightly change my X position, the Y position on the image is as far as I managed to go.
I was not recording when I first did it, honestly didn't expect to actually get it. Recorded a bit tonight, though it's my first time using Bizhawk for that so I'm not terribly familiar with configuring settings to sync or anything, and I was not able to get it again.
I got quite a lot further along than your picture but just have to go to seep and can't finish it tonight... work, ugh. If I grabbed the right files maybe what I did will help until I have a chance to do it again.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ju4klf2imuutli/State.rar?dl=0
<i>A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.</i>
Don't worry. I don't have time either to check tonight but you're indeed way further.
I couldn't get past Y=184 and you're at 189 on this savestate. I will investigate this tommorrow. Thanks.
@Reeve: Can that be done on PSX, or is that a PC-exclusive skip?
Sorry for the late response, man. I'm only a fan of the game and had this stuff pointed to me by a friend and decided to post it here. In the forum the description of the video points to the guy says something about having tried it only in the pc and nobody posted about getting it on PSX, which doesn't mean it's not possible.
Wren just said he managed to get it on Bizhawk, so it seems possible on PSX, but maybe it needs different inputs/aproach for it to work.
Hopefully he can get it again recorded so the secret behind this can be revealed and even realtime runners could benefit from it.
Here ya go, got it again. ^_^
https://www.dropbox.com/s/861q1o6sp3dnvvj/Final%20Fantasy%20VII%20%28USA%29%20%28Disc%201%29.bk2?dl=0
So, my only guess is the direction Cloud is facing changes his hitbox or at least the way the game determines his next coordinate after moving. It took me 20 minutes to get to where I was last time... took 3 hours to go 1 more space, which I managed by running down right to get halfway between the positions you could get by just using the d-pad. After that moving up left and then instantly back down/right or down right seems to shuffle you along the hitbox of the guard at an angle that normally is impossible to move.
Or at least that's how it "felt" while doing it in real time.
<i>A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.</i>
Can't play your bkm file, unfortunately.
Did you do the skip in realtime?
Also, did you proceed to do the skip from the position you had in your savestate you posted yesterday before going to sleep?
Also, which adresses do you guys use for x and y position?
Can't play your bkm file, unfortunately.
Did you do the skip in realtime?
Also, did you proceed to do the skip from the position you had in your savestate you posted yesterday before going to sleep?
Also, which adresses do you guys use for x and y position?
Is your Bizhawk up to date? Recorded that on 2.2.2, which is a little out of date I believe. They used bkm extension awhile ago, but now they are using bk2... it's also possible I need to include more files like I did last time. I'd need some clarification on that but it sounds like you are running Bizhawk 1.7.2 or lower.
As for the skip, yeah I did it in real time. I'm not a TASer at heart. I just love FF7 and have a mild interest in sequence breaks. I used savestates to sort of feel out the hit boxes and such, but by and large it seemed easier to do quick movements without the input delay or timing difference of slowing the emulator down. Like I said, not a TASer lol.
As for the savestates... I didn't use any of those specifically but I think at least one, if not all of them would work. As long as Cloud can get that halfway position I think you can gain ground. Hell, it's possible that movement can be used elsewhere guards prevent a screen transition.
EDIT: Just loaded up my savestate 3 and did it again from there. Hold run, down and right and notice the position Cloud is standing in; he should be in an odd position that will wiggle if you let go of run. From that position let go of everything and flick up and left at the same time to move Cloud just one pixel. Hold run and try to move down and right at the same time, if you don't move tap run once or twice and you should see Cloud stutter forward a pixel. At that point savestate and repeat the process to clip through the guard. If it doesn't work try one of the other savestates if any of them looks like Cloud is further south. Those steps should let you through fairly easily.
<i>A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.</i>
It worked.
From savestate 3 just tap up + left with frame advance till Cloud moves 1 step, then tap it again in same direction for another step... Then hold run and press and hold down + right. Cloud will go straight to the bottom right, release run and Cloud will move the rest of the way, then just press the run button for him to enter the next screen.
In realtime I just had to gentle tap up + right, hold run and then press and hold down + right.
The problem here will be to quickly get in that position from savestate 3. I managed to do it just once, but maybe now that I got this I can do it all the way.
Edit: Couldn't get to much to the bottom, unfortunatelly, so I could only do the skip starting from your savestate.
I'm not familiar with the whole game, but if this trick can be used to bypass any guard which would lead to more sequence breakes, it would definitely be awesome
Edit 2: Ok, testing it with memory watch is much easier. I only found the Y position address, but it helped me to get the trick quite a few times. I could not get everytime I wanted because it seems to also be related to X position and I don't know the address.
What you want to do is to get Cloud inside the guard in the right around position 64715 (I could clip inside the guard in lower positions, but due to not knowing Cloud's X position it was hard to test and I could not get it to work, also I was more focused in position 64715 since I got this one to work for me).
After that you have to find the earliest possible position that allows you to hold down + right + run. If the position is right Cloud will go straight to around position 64690 or close to this. For some reason the inputs I posted only works around position 64693 or 64694 iirc (maybe others) so get in that position by walking for 1 frame up or up + left before doing the two steps up left and then just hold run + down + right to bypass the guards.
If anyone can post the X position address it'd be very helpful. Maybe I can find a better way for it to work.
Ok, just reading Lil_Gecko post I realized the numbers he has for Y position are different from what I have, though the numbers I have still seem to work and probably combining them with the real numbers for Y and X position will make the trick consistent.
Wasn't home the last few days so I haven't look it up.
I used 0x114464 for X
and 0x114468 for Y
they are probably not the right addresses but they seem to move along with Cloud in this particular spot.
EDIT : Just managed to go through too.
I will try to record a movie from Savestate.
EDIT 2 :
Movie : http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/48712653946185093
Encode : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXgubZ7lRAI
Everytime you clip a little bit vertically, you should go up and left to make your X position more to the left. The X position is actually the most important ! The more you are inside the guard horizontally, the further you clip vertically.
After a little bit you'll clip.
If optimized, should just take a few seconds.
It seems the secret for this stuff to work is in the subpixels. I just managed to do it by sinking Cloud from X 172, Y 179 straight down and just needed a few more moves for him to go through.
Do you have the adresses for Y and X subpixels?
Edit: Take a look how I play around. with X position before going for the right spot. Thing is I tried again from same spot after running around and it didn't work the same way.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/48713575134713468
I'll try to look but I think you'll have better luck with someone that knows assembler than me :p
From what I can tell to go to at least 187 vertically you need to start from 179, anything after it will not make you go far enough.
Once you've reached this point it's pretty easy though.
I'll see if I can optimize it.
EDIT : X 172 Y 179 seems like the spot to start indeed.
Edit: Take a look how I play around. with X position before going for the right spot. Thing is I tried again from same spot after running around and it didn't work the same way.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/48713575134713468
Haven't found the subpixels addresses but you'll notice if you just press Up that after a few frames your X position changes. So this means Cloud doesn't exactly move along the Y line and there is indeed subpixels.
The correct starting point seems to be 172;179 with unknown subpixels.
From this point you can go to Y = 187-188
Then Up+Left until Y = 185 (going Up+Left then Down+Right might be needed to find the correct X)
Once you are in Y=185 with the correct X and subpixels, going Down+Right will clip.
Only thing I found untill now is and adress that increases by 3 while walking diagonally and 4 while walking vertically or horizontally. This number is kinda inside the X or Y full position and the X and Y changes every 3. For example the X position 172 has the values 27, 28 or 29 inside it. When the value goes to 30, 31 or 32 the X position changes to 173. Below are the adresses I'm talking about:
X Unknown: 138264
Y Unknown: 138268
Take a look and see if you can figure out something.
It's possible that these 3 digits inside of every full position helps something, but maybe there's more to find to know for sure how this work.
So I think it's possible but I missed something.
