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dwango, as a heads up I wanted to let you know that we'll be using NES consoles at the event with the NESRGB mod to capture over s-video. I'm not aware of any timing differences since it uses the original CPU and leaves the PPU in place while bypassed. If you know of any problems getting sync with this mod installed, yell at us now.
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dwangoAC wrote:
Gyre, I like almost all of your ideas for different reasons. Some of them we've already shown during the bonus block for AGDQ 2014 (Dr. Mario and The Legend of Zelda) and we did Mega Man for SGDQ 2015 so that's probably out but I'd love to do a run of Metroid with commentary. I was unable to get Battletoads to behave and true had poor results with other Battletoads movies as well, per the Console Verification Tests page, so that one is definitely out. River City Ransom sounds interesting, it hasn't been tried yet. These things take time and cartridges. :)
You're right that I missed striking off the ones that had appeared on bonus stream already.
Battletoads and Legacy of the Wizard are both in the failures list. They're old movies though. I was planning to see if they could be patched up to work with a more modern emulator first. Possibly too ambitious if Metroid is already a viable candidate...
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The old 6 Golden Coins would be good to try. I have no idea how well it might sync.
I started putting together some NES ideas for replays since that is in theory relatively safe. Looking for existing runs that are highly rated, noticeably different from human play, and reasonably available.
These games have already been verified (Metroid only for 100% but I'm expecting the others to work):
NES Dr. Mario (JPN/USA) in 01:12.83 by CtrlAltDestroy
NES Metroid (USA PRG0) "low%" in 11:08.78 by Lord Tom
NES Metroid (USA PRG0) in 08:19.32 by Lord Tom
NES Mega Man 2 (JPN) in 23:48.51 by aglasscage, FinalFighter, pirohiko, & Shinryuu
NES The Legend of Zelda (USA PRG0) in 22:38.13 by Baxter & jprofit22
The last two are on the long side but very well known with the audience and I believe neither are going to be offered for straight up play at the event.
These games might have potential for testing:
NES Battletoads (USA) "warps, 2 players" in 11:04.72 by feos & MESHUGGAH
NES Castlevania (USA PRG1) "minimalist, pacifist" in 12:53.41 by Grincevent
NES Legacy of the Wizard (USA) in 13:44.23 by Lord Tom
NES River City Ransom (USA) "playaround" in 12:55.38 by adelikat & JXQ
NES The Battle of Olympus (USA) in 10:40.78 by foda
On the N64 front I really want to see if F-Zero X can sync. There is some very good content there.
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dwango, do you have a feeling for what consoles will be supported by the bot for SGDQ? We talked about adding more features beyond the existing replay boards. I'm assuming NES and SNES is a given. How likely would it be to get other consoles that have seen verifications such as Genesis or N64?
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I'm not bothered by the ending softlock. It might hurt the entertainment value a bit but we're talking about a run that involves watching 52 game overs. There are already accepted TAS and RTA runs of the sketch glitch which have the same problem with the ending. I'd expect they'd have to trigger the World of Ruin cutscene to fix it.
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The regular sketch% speedrun softlocks at the same point in the ending. It's waiting for an NPC to walk over a trigger but because it's not initialized properly he'll never get there.
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Some more technical details for people that like to geek out.
The game uses memory from $0300-$033F for constructing many of the menus. Walking up and down stairs repeatedly corrupts a list of return locations used to remember what floor you came from past a reasonable number of entries the programmer expected to need. Because of that, opening the menu afterwards causes the instruction pointer to jump to "code" at $030A which is actually data. This runs through some garbage instructions for a while until reaching the name of our second player.
In the first trip the second player name corresponds to the instructions:
LDA $A356
BCS xxxx
The load instruction puts the value $66 into the accumulator. The address we're pulling from is just an arbitrary ROM location that has the right value and can be constructed using our limited alphabet of names.
The branch instruction will be taken. We don't control where the branch goes because character names are only 4 bytes long but the next byte happens to be a value that sends us to $032C which is a little before the fourth player name. This again runs through some garbage instructions for a while until reaching the fourth player name corresponding to the instructions:
TAX
JMP $9385
The tax instruction copies the value $66 from the accumulator to the X register. We then jump into the middle of a routine that's normally used for updating character data. This stores the value of the accumulator at an offset specified by the X register so we write $66 to address $6166 in memory. That memory address is the level of our second character who the game now thinks is level 103.
In the second trip our second and fourth character names correspond to the instructions:
LDA $83AA
BCS xxxx
---
JMP $90A0
The load instruction puts the value $1A into the accumulator. The jump instruction then takes us into another copy routine that's normally used for updating map data. We haven't set the X register but it will be $10 based on the menu code run previously. The result is that we write $1A to the address $6F10. $6F10 controls the NPC dialog for the guard standing next to the staircase and $1A is the ID for Garland's final message before you fight Chaos. That message is programmed to automatically start the Chaos fight.
When Chaos takes his turn, like any enemy he first checks whether to run from battle. This uses a morale calculation:
80 + 2 * [Party Level] - Random[0..50] > [Enemy morale]
As a boss, Chaos has 255 morale which is normally impossible to overcome. In TheAxeMan's previous TAS he showed off making Chaos run by reducing his morale using multiple critical hits with the FEAR spell. Here, we instead use our level 103 party leader and a lucky roll through RNG manipulation to cause the same effect.
And so Chaos runs away and the world is saved.
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The problem with certain stairs in FF1 have been known for many years. Until recently it was believed that it could only be used to crash the game. Although both FF1 and FF4 have large glitches related to stairs the two bugs are actually very different.
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Nice job putting this together! It's amazing how few non-lag frames there are in the run. The delays in TheAxeMan's version are optimal as far as I can see.
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I realized that instead of buying houses, we can save corrupt enough of them in and spend down to 32. No actual gameplay required.
1. buy 1 wood armor, 4 chain armors, inn
2. run ad9573b0/aa4c90ab
3. run 4ca9a6run ad8a70b0/aa4c90ab
4. use down to 33 houses
5. run a2719ab0/984c5ab3
6. fight imps killing off all but 1; use down to 201 pures and then run
7. buy 57/58* heals
8. use down to 32 houses
9. run 4c59a6
* After testing it looks like 57 heals can give a corrupted credit sequence depending on conditions. 58 might be a speed/entertainment tradeoff to have correct credits.
Edit: Hilariously, heal potions are the slot 57 item. Now we don't need to do any shopping either.
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welcotar wrote:
1. New game, buy some heals and save at inn so you have 10G left.
2. Use 4ca9a6 to underflow gold.
3. Buy up to exactly 58 heals.*
4. Get yourself to a house shop and buy exactly 76 houses.*
5. Underflow your pure potion count to 255 using a2719ab0/984c5ab3.
6. Go fight some imps and have all your characters drink ineffectually until you have exactly 201 pures.*
7. Run 4c59a6.
Quick optimization here is that you only need 57 heals and 32 houses to trigger the credits. Should save about a minute and a half of shopping. I think this is faster than the scare the boss route, but it's amusingly close given how different the approaches are.
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I've been doing glitched runs this week and got it down to a 59 minute RTA today. I think a TAS with the same approach would be less than 40 minutes. I do some slow safety strats for RTA that are unnecessary with minor manipulation.
The fastest method I've found for killing things is to corrupt the level of your party leader and trigger all enemies to flee.
ad56a3b0/aa4c8593 sets the level of the second character to 102 (effectively 103 for morale calculations) which guarantees everything but bosses who have about a 2/3rds chance to run. Should be easy to manipulate without costing much time. I'd like to make it higher but loading accumulator values over $7F sets the N flag which leads to a crash down the line.
If you need xp, ad8c8db0/aa4c8593 gives the first player 589824 xp which takes them to level 37 after enough battles. Same principle works to give the second player max experience but conflicts with the level code. You could reorder party between glitches if you wanted a high effective level party member and an actual level 50 party member for some reason.
If you just need a small amount of xp, aa4caeb3 gives 1792 xp to the first player with a single code.
If you need money, 4ca9a6 will underflow your gil if called with less than 19 gil to start with. It's basically jumping into a purchase after the money check is already supposed to have been done. Fairly quick to setup given the starting amount and another single code.
I haven't found a way to skip or directly acquire the Key yet. Closest I've got is to use 4caf93 to get the medicine and take that to Elfland. Would save quite a bit of time to avoid that trip.
Here's the basic route I have in mind:
- Glitch 4 orbs.
ad7e72b0/aa4c90ab
ad9a71b0/aa4c90ab
ad4d71b0/aa4c90ab
ad80c3b0/aa4c90ab
- Glitch medicine.
4caf93
- Glitch level of second character.
ad56a3b0/aa4c8593
- Move second character to party lead.
- Walk to ToF and trigger Garland fleeing. Warp back and get the lute and bridge.
- Walk to Pravoka and trigger pirates fleeing. Get the boat.
- Sail to Elfland and get the Key.
- Sail home and walk to ToF.
- Walk through ToF triggering all bosses to flee.
As much as possible you want to manipulate enemies to surprise you and bosses/unrunnable encounters to go first in the turn order. If you can kill off your other party members without losing time, that might turn a profit with a reduced number of commands to input.