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Posted: 6/4/2010 1:55 AM
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FionordeQuester
Joined: 3/20/2010
Posts: 126
By the way, guys, how did you manipulate the Slots?
Posted: 6/4/2010 3:10 PM
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Dwedit
He/Him
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 692
Location: Chicago
You don't really need to manipulate them, just regular save states is enough.
Posted: 6/4/2010 6:38 PM
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FionordeQuester
Joined: 3/20/2010
Posts: 126
I don't want to use save states though. Maybe I should phrase it like this. Does the game go out of its way to keep you from getting the Moon crests like it does with the Sun and Star crests?
Posted: 4/30/2011 4:55 AM
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DarkKobold
Skilled player (1652)
Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy
Arcade TASer of 2010 PCE TASer of 2010 Arcade TAS of 2010 Lucky TAS of 2009 Lucky TAS of 2007
Dragon Quest 2 in 39min So, this is a japanese run of Dragon Quest 2, and very well done I might add. I took some notes, and besides the obvious three minutes faster, and faster text, I estimate this run is around 2-3 minutes faster just due to strategy changes. I'm just going to copy my notes here.
    Better Swamp Damage Faster getting mirror of Ra Slower Death in the Tower Takes damage at castle swamp before cloak Girl dies in metal slime battle! Doesn't pick up leaf of world tree Buys either more wings, or healing items. Ozwarg battle, no Ozwargs are summoned. Lack of girl makes the 4 Gremlin fight slower. Metal Babble fight skipped (for now). Dies after moon fragment (no need to save/reset with girl dead). Moon crest after life crest (this appears to be a better route). Fights the Dragon at Lv8 instead of Lv9. After fake village, fights 5 metal babbles, kills 3. Doesn't revive girl for Bazuu fight. Fights Bazuu at level 12 instead of 10, dealing 10-12 dmg per round, instead of 8-10.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Posted: 4/30/2011 4:24 PM
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TheAxeMan
Ambassador, Experienced player (709)
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Very impressive. Extremely good luck manipulation, and that is the key. The whole reason for keeping the princess alive is because it is so difficult to make Malroth miss. A lot of the improvements come from not needing the princess alive at all. There are also a lot of general improvements from better luck manipulation in battles. The enemies all spawn with a random factor in their hp. He gets it low enough to kill the gremlins and ozwargs in one hit. One problem with going solo in the U version is that the slower text makes buying and using medical herbs much slower. The princess healing magic is faster. The swamp damage difference in the beginning got him down to 4 hp instead of 2, but that's enough to die one hit. He gets the mirror of Ra faster by taking less damage in the swamp and more damage in battle. Getting the moon crest after life is also affected by not having princess. That xp was necessary to get her on a high enough level to get surround. Without the princess leaching xp he is able to get to a higher level with less fighting. So really a lot of this hinges on being able to solo Malroth. He does this by dodging Malroth's attacks but another possibility is using light sword to get the same effect as surround. Problem is that it costs a lot of gold. Anyway, thanks for posting this.
Posted: 4/30/2011 4:29 PM
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DarkKobold
Skilled player (1652)
Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy
Arcade TASer of 2010 PCE TASer of 2010 Arcade TAS of 2010 Lucky TAS of 2009 Lucky TAS of 2007
TheAxeMan wrote:
The swamp damage difference in the beginning got him down to 4 hp instead of 2, but that's enough to die one hit.
The only thing I actually noticed was it seem he took a better path - i.e. oscillating on one set of squares, whereas in your movie, you walked too far right, which is distance you had to make up. I didn't notice the HP thing.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Posted: 4/30/2011 11:11 PM
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TheAxeMan
Ambassador, Experienced player (709)
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
In my movie I move north and west. The steps north move me where I want to go, making up for the steps out of the way.
Posted: 5/17/2019 5:00 AM
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TheAxeMan
Ambassador, Experienced player (709)
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
I am thinking about this game again because it would be a nice target for RPG Limit Break next year. Attempting a quick verification with a flash cart, the published run syncs until stepping out after the deathwarp. We hope this is due to some difference in the treatment of the SRAM but deathwarps can be avoided if absolutely necessary. The published run also uses resets (dragon potion save -> reset to get out of cave without losing other party members) but it turns out that a better route doesn't need that. The link just a few posts up (yet many years ago now) is dead. However, that run can be found here: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm14226435 https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm14226494 Other great resources from the speedrunning community: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Iaos-C2tFrUF42zx6d-MkRhywzacAl3QoYjLTi5EFm0/edit#gid=0 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzJTdbx9GMY7TVJHbXhCYlRBTzg/view The glitch to attack twice with Sword of Destruction power level sounds nice but I don't think will work out for a TAS. The falcon sword is necessary to do this and it is just too expensive to acquire. So the 39:42 run uses the Japanese version but I suspect there are few mechanical differences aside from the opening cutscene skip and longer dialog throughout. This does mean there is no chance to match this on the (U) version but we can do quite a bit better than the current run. The main improvements are: - Essentially do the game solo with Midenhall, the first character. This changes the route considerably compared the the current published run. Keeping the princess alive and powered up leads to numerous inefficiencies. The big downside is that this means no surround for the final fight. - Get one more level, ending on 14 instead of 13. The experience route changes quite a bit because of going solo but what it comes down to is taking out more metal babbles. The (J) TAS above gets into a fight with 5 metal babbles in the final dungeon and kills 3 of them. Letting 2 run away is surely intentional as there is a 10% xp bonus for each enemy initially present in the battle past the first. The extra level adds 4 attack, increasing damage on Malroth and cutting the number of battle rounds quite a bit. The level may also factor in dodge rate which becomes important. - Disassemble the RNG and other mechanics more thoroughly. It's definitely possible to do a lot better than the published run. It will have to be in order to get the dodges on Malroth without surround. This looks really smooth in the (J) TAS video but in my testing it was much more difficult to force, hence routing around to get surround on him. Possibly a version difference? If necessary there is an armor that improves dodging. - The main character name determines the other names and also seeds the RNG. If my target is RPGLB I am going to be seeing if I can force a collision so that at least part of the name can be a donation incentive. Not optimal but really cool.
Posted: 1/11/2020 7:03 PM
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TheAxeMan
Ambassador, Experienced player (709)
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Deathless test run with new strats from that J TAS At 48:30 this is about 2 minutes slower than the TAS on the site. Basically because the new strats don't quite make up for everything we need to go through for the deathless no reset limitations. Still, we can probably get a minute or so better here. When dwango and I tried console verifying it desynced at the deathwarp. So if we don't die or reset can we finish a run? Not verified yet but we do have the run. What is verified is that the strats from the Japanese version TAS that we only see in that Niconico video do work. However I need to do some more work on reverse engineering the RNG and encounters to get it to work more smoothly. It feels like that video lines things up more easily than I was able to. The toughest one to get was a 5 metal babble fight. Left it in to show it is possible. If it is really that hard to line up then it may actually be better to do 2 fights with 2 metal babbles each. There aren't many version differences except for a little extra experience from some fights. When I actually got into this I realized it was going to be a lot easier than before because way back then it was done on FCEU with no lag counter or lua. Lua is really nice here, letting me line up lower probabilities in battle much more easily. Meanwhile the lag counter works with other scripts I have to optimize movement and menuing easily. More notes: * In Cannock we get four wings by selling our copper sword instead of dropping it and selling some lottery tickets. This takes so long that it's only slightly faster than just dealing with not having enough wings. * When you talk to a king or someone else who saves your game you can choose not to save your game. This saves a little time here because it sets your warp point. If you die you get revived at the last place you actually saved though. * Since we don't die we can get the princess before the tower. The Mirror of Ra is a pretty good walk so it was faster to save and then get it so we can use wings. * The hero needs to be alone when he finishes the metal slime so he doesn't share xp. We can weaken them in the swamp and have the slime use fireball but it's faster to kill off at least one of them in the swamp. Since the princess starts out with higher hp we can't line up both of them dying at the same time just from swamp damage. Prince heals the main character so he doesn't die and also is ready for more damage later since he will never die. * Since we aren't using deathwarps we need more wings and some medical herbs. We'll have to use the ghosted characters as item mules. Ghosts can't use items so they need to be transferred to the main character to be used. * One-shotting the Ozwargs is pretty tight. We need low hp on them and high damage crits. * For the four gremlin fight we get a lucky setup with lower hp gremlins and a preemptive attack. One gremlin has a little higher hp and needs a higher crit but everything works out. * One change I noticed later is that we could get some wings in Tuhn instead of Wellgarth to cut down on transfers. * The Sea Cave is for sure the most annoying place for our deathless limitation. The lava actually only does one damage (swamps do 2) so one medical herb is enough. * We revive the princess to use her healing powers. The leaf is not far out of the way. We save tons of time with Healmore compared to each medical herb that would otherwise need to be bought, transferred and used. Plus the princess can use some wings to avoid more transfers. * After some analysis it looks like it is actually going to be better to get just the crest in the first dip and then Erdrick's armor when we go through. * It shouldn't be necessary to top off the hero's hp, this was just to see if it would be useful. * The 5 metal babbles and nothing else fight is really rare. I bet I can get it more easily once I figure out how encounters work but for now it took a pretty long wait. It's entirely possible that 2 fights with 2 metal babbles each will be better. 3 metal babbles is also possible but not enough xp on its own because of the multiple monster xp bonus. Anyway, we let surround work because it speeds up the later uses against us. * The J TAS gets a crit and a normal attack (likely because crits add a little animation time) on Hargon but this is really pushing things. Hargon has slightly lower hp than the other endgame bosses but you would have to get at the bottom of that range and the top of your hit range plus get a preemptive. Instead I just crit twice. * Malroth goes down in 18 hits for me just like the J TAS. In theory if we could get more 11s and 12s we could do as few as 16 rounds. But it's not worth the time it would take to set up. So first we need to verify that this syncs through, submissions are coming up fast. Then I'll figure out the mechanics we need to know. Also want to see how the RNG is generated from the name to see if we can force a collision. Could be tricky but we'll find out. Of course sometime I want to make a clean version with deaths for this site but so much other stuff to do.
Posted: 8/18/2021 3:26 PM
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TaoTao
Experienced player (941)
Joined: 9/18/2008
Posts: 153
Location: Japan
Edit: Never mind. This cheat seems to be known at least in 2014: https://cah4e3.shedevr.org.ru/cheatsbase_d.php#452 I found a new(?) cheat on Japanese version. If you die at a certain point, and escape from requiem screen holding 2-player A button, you can increment message wait value ($062C). If you started with message speed "slow", message wait value goes from 0xFF to 0, and battle messages will be displayed without wait. (movie, encode) I confirmed that (U) version also has the same cheat code (PRG $04:$9A58). I have no idea what this code intends. And I think this cheat may have some side effects, because the program often assumes that message wait value is valid.
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