For the record, there are already many other GB/GBC emulators that support the link cable. This might be why the VBAlink guys never got around to supporting the old interface.
Joined: 4/21/2005
Posts: 32
Location: Georgia, USA
Tilus wrote:
- Body Slam (Found on SS Anne, replaces Mega Punch) <- Huh!?!! Okay, maybe this makes sense from a real time timeattack perspective, since it has "perfect" accuracy compared to Mega Punch's 85%, but is definitely not worth it in a TAS (only 5 more power, and has 5 less PP)
Well, Body Slam also has a 30% chance of inflicting paralysis, but I'm not sure that would be useful enough to incorporate into the TAS.
Nice to see you're looking to improve the run. It was fairly impressive to start with, so it'll be fun watching you trying to speed it up.
Tilus wrote:
- Mega Punch (picked up in Mt. Moon, replaces Tackle) <- I cannot believe I overlooked this; an 80 power Normal move this early in the game!? This will save massive amounts of time on the Nugget Bridge gauntlet, and is probably worth redoing the run just by itself
You get 15 PP of this, right? If you use it immediately, will you have enough to carry you through Nugget Bridge in one go?
Tilus wrote:
- Body Slam (Found on SS Anne, replaces Mega Punch) <- Huh!?!! Okay, maybe this makes sense from a real time timeattack perspective, since it has "perfect" accuracy compared to Mega Punch's 85%, but is definitely not worth it in a TAS (only 5 more power, and has 5 less PP)
Definitely not worth it. One of the great advantages of the TAS over the conventional speedrun. ^_^
Tilus wrote:
- Blizzard (picked up in Pokemon Mansion, replaces Ice Beam) <- Hmm.. very doubtful this is worth it. Might merit some research, however.
How often did Ice Beam fail to OHKO its target? Combine that with the fact that Blizzard only has 5 PP, and I can't see that it's even a question.
Tilus wrote:
- Fissure (won from Giovanni, replaces Earthquake) <- This is really the one decision that has bothered me about my run before I ran into this walkthrough, I'll definitely have to test it out.
Blastoise isn't very fast. How many items would it take for him to be able to take out Lorelai's crew? Still probably faster than grabbing Machoke.
Tilus wrote:
This probably is enough to get me to do the run over again.. if I do, I'll start back up on it shortly (which likely means I'm going to leave FF4 to someone who better knows what they're doing).. I might want to do a bit more investigation into this guy's strategy before I officially start again, though.
It's too bad that you're dropping FF4, though. I'm sure Phil will do a great job, but I'd rather see the SNES version than the GBA.
Even taking into account that this is the Japanese version and is very likely as much as 15 minutes faster than the American version, that's a tad close for comfort, and wonder if there's some tricks the author used in that run that I didn't use in mine.
Well, I just improved my Pokemon Red run to 2:19, and I can make at least three minutes of improvements before reading this. Anyways, 1:59 could be done if Japanese text is really that much faster, without any big change to route.
I also have one improvement that you didn't use in your run. When your about to fight Erika, you have to vs one trainer first. You followed the route I did in my old run, and vs'd the trainer with 3 pokemon. Well, if you follow the wall to the left, and enter from the left side, you can vs a trainer with only one pokemon (the egg one). Anyways, it falls to a single ice beam, so it's definitely faster. The only disadvantage is that you lose some experience. So, this should save you 30 or so seconds, unless I'm overlooking something.
Mega Punch (picked up in Mt. Moon, replaces Tackle) <- I cannot believe I overlooked this; an 80 power Normal move this early in the game!? This will save massive amounts of time on the Nugget Bridge gauntlet, and is probably worth redoing the run just by itself
This would save a good amount of time. I usually have to fight two random battles in Mt. Moon, so I can get bite before I vs the trainer with two oddish's (before Bill). With Mega Punch, I could skip those battles and I could finish a few battles a little bit faster.
I also didn't use Abra to teleport around, which could save a good amount of time. Hmm, sub 2:15 may be possible for a normal speedrun.
Anyways, I hope my wee bit advice helps you. Good luck with your new run, well, a TAS doesn't really need luck. :)
Thanks, any little bit helps.
Anyways, over the past couple of days I've looked back over the published run to get a better idea of how much time some of these new discoveries will be.
I'm not worried at all about running out of Mega Punches while going through the Nugget Bridge gauntlet - I would be replacing Tail Whip (a move I don't use at all in the run) to make room for Mega Punch, and I actually don't fight very many enemies I don't one hit with other moves. I didn't do any exact calculations, but should I not have enough Mega Punches to cover all the enemies I two hit in the actual run (or if I run into an enemy I *still* can't one hit even with Mega Punch), Water Gun (or even Bubblebeam, see below) would handle things.
Of course, with Mega Punch at my disposal, I would also have good reason to go with the strategy of beating Gym 2 the moment I first step foot in Cerulean City, especially with having plenty of spare Mega Punches at my disposal after coming down Mt. Moon, and delaying my first Pokecenter visit until after I finish this Gym. This also gives me Bubblebeam to help save turns against the second Rival fight and the Nugget Bridge gauntlet, and also removes the entire second trip back and forth between Cerulean and Vermilion (as I would be able to enter Gym 3 immediately after getting off the SS Anne), finally making my route through that section of the game clean and elegant.
Mega Punch does seem to have one single drawback - I would be able to survive on keeping Mega Punch around, having it eat up the unneeded move slot in Squirtle's movelist (I would thus have Dig replace Tackle, and Bite replace Bubble), through pretty much the entire duration of Mega Punch's usefulness, and up until I obtain Ice Beam. At this point, I would need to drop one of either Mega Punch or Bite for Ice Beam. While Mega Punch is 20 points more powerful, Bite allows me to save time by causing the enemy to flinch and not attack at all. I don't believe there's any time where that 20 points of damage is going to allow me to defeat an enemy quicker, especially before I pick up Strength (which will replace whatever I didn't pick anyways), so chances are I'll lose Mega Punch and continue on from that point as I had in the previous run.
Now, as for the other potential route change options.. those being Blizzard and Fissure..
I'm going to definitely say no to Blizzard; I can count on one hand the potential number of turns Blizzard can save over Ice Beam (most are against Gyaradoses), and the amount of time it takes to just learn[/i] Blizzard offsets much of it - going out of my way to obtain the necessary TM will likely erase the remainder of the gain.
I'm still heavily debating over Fissure.. sure Blastoise in general is slower compared to Onix, but the Blastoise in the run is both higher in level and has been boosted due to the large amounts of effort EXP it's obtained, so not only is it faster at the start of the Elite 4 than Onix, but it's also likely I will need only one or maybe even no speed up items at all to get Blastoise faster than Lorelei's Pokemon (so that Fissure can work). Removing the need to capture an Onix also saves time, and since I'll need to bring an Ether to restore it afterwards to hit other Pokemon, I can use it later on against other Pokemon used by the Elite Four to save more turns. However, I'm going to need to find the closest Ether of any sort to the main path (and depending on how far away it is, it might take some time to get it). This likely means I'll be putting Fissure onto Blastoise, but I'll still need to do some investigation before I confirm for sure.
Now, as for restarting the run itself.. if at all possible, I'd like to be able to find out how easily I can manipulate the starting stats for a Squirtle. Since there's no obvious variation at level 5, I'd need to level it up a bit to be able to determine what it's DVs are, and to do that I'd either need to use the Rare Candies gameshark code (which is slooooooooooooooooow) or have the code to be able to pick up my starter at any level I want, preferrably level 50. I could then experiment using it, then confirm my results by obtaining the Squirtle then using the Rare Candies code to manually level it up to 50 to double check. Unfortunately I can't seem to find this code anymore (if it even existed; it might've been for another Pokemon game for all I know), so if anyone happens to have it lying around, please let me know.
You might not be able to manipulate the pick-up level directly with a single GameShark code. However, instead of using multiple rare candies you can level your pokemon directly to 50. Use this experience modifier code and then beat your rival or use a single rare candy:
0101A6CF
01D0A7CF
You could also use the memory viewer to instantly view the DVs.
You might be able to find the DVs in the memory viewer. I don't recall how well VBA's viewer works, though. I just remember editing my Pokemon in my save file so they could have all 15s.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
The memory viewer is quite simple. Just type in the address, hit the "Go" button, and look at the upper left corner.
In this case, you'd use address D186 and look at the first two bytes shown.
Hi. Omni pointed me towards this thread when I told him that I was interested in doing a Pokémon red speedrun. That being said, I haven't looked at it since about July. Anyway, I've recently finished, with an end time of 1:50. I deviate from the 'typical' red/blue speedrun in that I use Mew as my main character starting at Cerulean, with a starting move set of Water Gun/Mega Punch and ending move set of Ice Beam/Psychic/Mega Punch/Thunderbolt. Video and save games
Timesavers:
-Mew. Mew takes a hella long time to catch and is only level 7. However, teaching him Water Gun (short detour in Mt. Moon) enables him at level 7 to defeat a level 17 Onix without difficultly (gaining 3 levels in the process). By the time you get to Bill's, he's stronger than your Squirtle was. The time used to catch him is saved later by not having to catch an electric pokémon (most likely Zapdos), and by not having to use switch mode (thus avoiding the 'Trainer is about to use...' dialog 21 times for the elite four, which adds up).
-Escape Ropes. Since I'm not using Dig as a main attack, I purchased these in Pewter at the same time I bought the Poké Balls. This saves time by not having to teach the TM, and also every time it is used (since the Item menu is considerably faster than the Pokémon menu).
-Bubble. When used effectively, Bubble can save a lot of time. By slowing the opponent on the first turn, it makes would-be two turn battles into '1.5 turn' battles (i.e. the opponent only gets to attack once). Of course, this only works if the opponent is faster, but it comes up often enough.
-Critical Hits. By this, I mean not getting a Critical unless necessary. It is often the case that one Critical hit will not kill an opponent, but two Normal hits will. By not Critting the first hit, you save ~20 frames every time.
-The very first Weedle. He has exactly 22hp. Squirtle's Normal hit will do 3, and rarely 4 damage. A Critical will do 4, and very, very rarely 5 damage. The moral of the story is, he can be killed in 5 turns instead of 6, saving ~300 frames. But this means you need to get two 5 damage Crits, which takes a lot of manipulation. Throw in 4 point normal hits and save yourself 20 more frames.
Mistakes:
-Rare Candy in Cerulean. I went 900 frames out of my way to pick this up, and wasted another 250 frames to use it. I thought I'd need it, but I really don't think I did, considering half the time during the Elite Four I didn't even need to Critical.
-First trainer in Cerulean Gym (the one that triggers Mew). I'm really not sure what I was thinking. Not only am I hit every attack, but it also shows the 'not very effective...' message every time. I could easilly save 200-300 frames there.
-Doduo west of Celedon. Catching a Doduo saves time over a Spearow, because it saves the 'can't learn more than 4 moves...' message. However, they seem to be pretty rare, and I end up standing around for about 100 frames waiting for one. I think the best bet is probably to catch a Pidgey on the way to Vermillion, as they are very common, and the next time I heal is in Fuschia, where I had the Doduo anyway.
-Rare Candy in Warden's House. Another wasted 750 frames. There's probably only one pokémon (the very first Dewgong) in the entire Elite Four that would become two hits instead at two levels lower.
-Various Battles. There's several battles which I'm sure could be done in one move should I have played with the manipulation long enough. The question becomes, "Is 300 frames worth 10 minutes of my time?" A lot of times I said no.
So in total, were I to do this run again (which I doubt I will), I could probably manage to spare another minute or so. Other than the affore mentioned, I think the route and execution are as compact as possible. I'll be viewing Tilus' run to see if it gives me any other ideas.
EDIT:
Tilus wrote:
However, I'm going to need to find the closest Ether of any sort to the main path
There happens to be an Ether right before Bill's house. If you look at the fence just to the right of the Lass with with the two Oddishes, you should find it.
That's a very interesting strategy! My run also got 1:50, and I believe I could take off another minute, maybe two from the run through some optimizations I just found.
Likewise, I'll probably go ahead and watch the run you just completed right now, and see if there's anything new I could learn from it.
Unlike Tilus' movie it seems you take damage in a few places. Were each of these hits taken to save time (when the waiting required to manipulate randomness outweighs the time lost in damage animation), or just accepted out of laziness?
Either way, the loss of "takes no damage" is negligible compared to the contributions of a new run that is 45 seconds faster, fits the category of abusing programming errors, and features Mew.
I concede defeat. Your route wins.
There were a number of small optimizations (on top of avoiding the mistakes you mentioned) I used to my run that you hadn't used on yours, and those are all going to add up to much more time than any amount of timesavers I could gain using my route.
I never imagined the Mew glitch could be executed so quickly, and never imagined that Mew's TM flexibility would allow for much more one hit opportunities than Squirtle. (Unfortunately, it's still not enough for me to use Mew as a super HM slave and save time, though.)
I'd really like to see a more polished version of this run, with the small optimizations in my run and the errors removed. However, if you don't want to do your own redo of the run, I'll be more than happy to do it justice.
(Though for submitting the current run, I'd say no. It's rather unoptimized, and could really use a more polished run.)
Honestly, I'm a noob here, and didn't know where.
Tilus: I just finished viewing your run, and I have a few suggestions (you may already know about some/most of these):
-Squirtle starting stats. I played for a long time before I got a Squirtle with stats I liked. I'm not sure of the numbers offhand, but I think the max might be something like this: Atk:12; Def:13; Spd:10; Spl:12. At any rate, I eventually got with with max Atk and Spl, which I think helped a lot; looking at many of your beginning battles, you tend to use a lot more attacks than I do. Also, make sure his speed is at least that of Gary's Bulbasaur, or he'll be getting an extra attack in the first battle.
-First Weedle. It is possible to kill him in 5 attacks, although it does take a while. Starting stats may also play a role.
-Route between Cerulean/Vermillion. The trip to Vermillion isn't short, if you can avoid doing it twice (by fighting the Cerulean Gym beforehand), that'd help quite a bit.
-Route through Rock Tunnel. You fight an unnecessary Hiker. See my run for details.
-Route in Celedon Gym. I know this one has been mentioned, but there's a trainer with only one pokémon instead of three.
Improvements I could make to my own:
-Talking with trainers.
-Route from Cerulean to Rock Tunnel (not going through the house a second time).
-Route through Pokémon Tower. One less trainer and a faster route on the 3rd level.
-Route through Silph Co. Once again, one less trainer.
-Route in Saffron Gym. I used 5 jumps to get to Sabrina instead of (I'm guessing optimal) three.
Questionables:
-Celedon Gym before Pokémon Tower. I'm really not sure which route is faster. From my rough sketches, I think the difference boils down to this: (PokéCenter_to_Store + Store_to_Gym) vs. (PokéCenter_to_Gym). My gut feeling is that the second of these is shorter, but I'd have to do a time trial to confirm it. You may have other reasons for this switch as well.
-Route in Veridian Gym. I'm quite sure that it's faster to get to Giovanni without stepping outside (I recall measuring this), but what I didn't take into account was the route back afterwards. Once again I'd have to measure this.
I *was* quite sure that I wasn't going to do another run... now I think I just might ;)
EDIT:
hanzou wrote:
Unlike Tilus' movie it seems you take damage in a few places. Were each of these hits taken to save time (when the waiting required to manipulate randomness outweighs the time lost in damage animation), or just accepted out of laziness?
This is the first assisted speedrun I've ever done. You'll notice most of these happen early on. I was just being a noob. That, and I didn't realize that "Takes no damage" was a goal to be obtained.
Joined: 5/27/2005
Posts: 465
Location: Turku, Finland
Nice! I'll most definitely watch your run, primorial#soup but I'll do that tomorrow. It's bedtime for me now ;)
The mainreason for this post was, that I happen to have quite thorough walkthrough of Pokemon Blue/Red. If either of you is going to make a new run of Blue/Red, I could scan it to minimize the trouble you'll have to go through in making the run. The only minus on the walkthrough is that it's finnish, but I guess it's the pictures that really matter. So just say so if you want me to scan it, okey? :)
EDIT: Here are some of my scans which I made for Tilus: Silph Co., Pokemon Mansion 1, Pokemon Mansion 2 & Victory Road. As you can see, I have edited the a bit so it's easier for people who don't understand finnifh to read them.
The scans I'm now willing to make of the whole booklet would be simply scanning the pages and uploading/giving them to you. I wouldn't be editing/translating them since that would mean a huge amount of work.
I've determined I will be doing another run. There were two things that concerned me, but I've convinced myself that they won't be an issue.
First, the loss of exp from skipping those two trainer battles. The total experience loss sums to 2829, which is actually just fine, because I had a 4080 point buffer in my original run (which I took advantage of by burning a Rare Candy early).
My second cercern was whether a level 48 Mew could stand as well against the Elite Four as a level 50 (without requiring too many more attacks). I did a short trial run from my current run, sending him (at level 47) in without feeding him the candy. It looks like the first Dewgong will become two hits (this was the only one hit battle I actually had to manipulate), but the rest of Lorelei's remain as they were. The other three trainers I rarely even needed to Crit, so I'm not worried about them. I'm now questioning whether the Rare Candy in Cinnibar is even worth getting (it's 300 frames out of the way). And if I choose not to get that one, then accessing the item menu to feed him the first one may not really be worthwhile either. This would mean sending him in at level 46, but it looks like that won't be a problem. I think this is my current plan of action.
So, other than the mistakes I listed in my original post, and optimizations I listed in my second, If anyone knows of anything I may have missed please let me know.
i have no idea how do you catch mew with this glitch
but you can try getting another mew instead of getting two pokemons for HM, it would be faster, poké centers would be faster too ;)
i have no idea how do you catch mew with this glitch
but you can try getting another mew instead of getting two pokemons for HM, it would be faster, poké centers would be faster too ;)
You have to repeat the glitch again to get a second Mew, plus you already defeat a trainer so you need someone else.
Instructions to perform Mew glitch are somewhere in this thread.
you can try getting another mew instead of getting two pokemons for HM, it would be faster, poké centers would be faster too ;)
The crazy thing about this is that it's actually very doable. But it would mean walking Nugget Bridge another time, fighting the Youngster instead of the Lass on Route 25 (the one that has the slowpoke), and then backtracking a little on Route 25. The time it would save would be not having to catch Oddish or a flying pokémon, a few frames at the heal centers in Fuschia and Indigo Plateau, and 500 frames in the Hall of Fame. Oh, and another 400 frames from Squirtle's 'can't learn more than 4 moves...' dialog. I think I'd probably be losing on the trade, but I'll do a time trial just to be sure ;)
But something you have brought to my attention: the Hall of Fame credits take a really long time. I'd be willing to bet that depositing 4 pokémon requires less than 2000 frames, so that might be a good optimization. It could also be done before healing to save a little more.
EDIT:
Actually, the Lass on Route 25 is unavoidable, even if the Youngster is fought first. This means that catching another Mew would result in having to fight an extra trainer battle, which considering the gains were questionable at best, would most definately be slower than the current approach.
EDIT2:
I found a few hours, so I've restarted. Coming out of Mt. Moon I'm 177 frames ahead of my first run, and the only difference is that I've talked with three trainers instead of allowing them to 'notice' me. I actually picked up after the first Gym, meaning I decided not redo the first Weedle battle (in order to talk with the trainer first). A 5 turn battle would take forever to reproduce, and I don't think it's worth it for a one time minimal gain.
I made an accidental discovery which turned out to be very useful. In Pokémon R/B, as in many other games I'm sure, the moment when an attack is issued determines how much damage it does, whether it is a Critical, which attack the opponent does, whether the opponent misses, etc. No big surprises there. The discovery I made is that how long the button is held also plays a role into how much damage the attack does. This is particularly useful for getting maximum damage on a critical hit. Once a Critical hit is found, you can play around with the duration of the button press until you get one that's max damage. It doesn't work all the time (in fact, some durations even 'uncrit' the attack), but I would estimate that about one in three times it does. It saves a lot of time as far as manipulation goes, and also framewise (I've managed to get two-hit KOs on a few battles that were previously three hits). I figured I'd share the knowledge for anyone who might be doing a(nother) run.
Does pressing buttons that don't do anything at other times help?
Like I say, it was an accidental discovery. But since the random number generator seems to be heavily dependent on on user input, I wouldn't be surprised if other events with a random component were affected by 'dummy' button presses as well. Two possibilities that come to mind are walking through grassy areas, and perhaps tossing a Poké Ball. This is pure speculation, of course. When I need to catch an Abra I'll test it out.
>in fact, some durations even 'uncrit' the attack
If this is the case the reverse is probably true too. Have you tried getting a critical by holding the button longer on a hit that usually isn't a critical? That could cut waiting times even more if it worked.
