Posts for Paulygon

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Posted: 1/27/2009 4:13 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
Posts: 74
Location: California
If anyone has tried to convert and watch dave's solo movie under FCEUX, you may have noticed that it desyncs early on. It has nothing to do with inserting frames or anything like that. It has a save-state that FCEUX removes upon conversion, which contains a critical piece of information. However, there is a way to make it work, for anyone interested. Here's how: * After the converted movie is started, it should be paused. * Under the Debug menu, open up the Hex Editor. * Scroll down to address 0x688A and click on it (refer to the window's title bar to make sure you're at the right address). Type 40, overwriting the old 00. * Close the hex editor if you want. * Resume the movie or save state first if you might want to watch it again. This RAM address is the index to the battle engine's pseudo random-number table. If the movie had started with a fresh power-up of the system, this address would have been set to 00. This is the case for the current TAS of the game and why it will work properly when converted. In this particular case, the value happened to be 40 at the start of the movie. Because the converted movie starts at 00, the first battle (5 Imps, strike first) is different than what is in the original movie (3 Imps, ambushed). Needless to say, that's where it all goes wrong. Fascinating how everything hinges on just this one value. :)
Posted: 1/9/2009 8:10 PM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
Posts: 74
Location: California
Very nice! You're right about using the Defense sword (found in the Waterfall). It's equivalent to RUSE, which will be especially helpful in the final area, with potentially enough inescapable battles to otherwise use up all L1 charges before Chaos. Also, WALL isn't necessary in the final battle, since the Ribbon grants protection from everything. (Only XFER can negate that protection and it's not in Chaos' spell rotation) Having completed almost all of the solo party configurations, I can say with confidence that the worst party belongs hands-down to a solo Thief with no class change. Mages, at least, have defensive or offensive magic to compensate for being otherwise relatively weak. BB starts off slow, but then becomes virtually unstoppable later on. Fighter, of course, has great offense and defense. Thief, on the other hand, has the worst of all worlds.. no magic at all and weak weapons until the very end. The only thing he can bring to the table is high HP, in the form of over-leveling. Extremely so against Astos, which is needed to have time to hopefully deliver the 4 or so critical hits necessary to win. With non-TAS luck, that's typically Level 20+. After that, it's mostly downhill, though Lich still isn't easy. The nice thing is that most enemies will run from the over-leveled Thief. :) Of course, the Zeus Gauntlets, et al (including the Defense Sword) are the great equalizers for the second half, though being stuck with the Dragon Sword or equivalent until end-game isn't very fun. The final assault, however, even at L50, is hit-or-miss, considering the "gauntlet" (ahem) that must be run of fiends and tough, inescapable battles. With no escape magic, the Masmune, which is a must vs. Chaos, has to be collected on every attempt. For Chaos, run-enders are CRACK, SLO2, CUR4, and unlucky damage amounts both for and against. It's pretty much just 2 RUSEs via the sword and hoping for the best while he hacks away. :-p As Ninja, things are exactly the same until class change. FAST will tip boss battles in his favor. Especially for Chaos, with the power of the Masmune and FAST's ability to counteract SLO2, should it hit. Even after all that, it would be interesting to see how low TAS-levels of luck could take things.. perhaps less than an L50 finish. :)
Posted: 3/7/2007 3:41 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
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Location: California
I think Spoony_Bard's recent comment sums up my feelings on this exactly. Good work so far and I'm looking forward to the finished run. For what it's worth, I support a glitched and non-glitched run, but we'll see how it turns out. Also, nice work on figuring out the bug and a fix, dwedit. It's always interesting to see how such things are supposed to work and where they go wrong.
Posted: 10/29/2006 9:29 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
Posts: 74
Location: California
Great improvement, easy yes vote.
Posted: 4/5/2006 2:24 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
Posts: 74
Location: California
My vote: YES YES
Posted: 3/26/2006 9:15 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
Posts: 74
Location: California
I must agree whole-heartedly and cast my yes vote. The amount of work put into this is amazing and it shows. Congrats on a fantastic job! Oh, and the quote was nice, too, heh.. although in fairness, it was said before I knew you could put it on slow speed and control most of the battle actions, as well as use different button presses to greatly increase the speed of luck manipulation in battle. I'm sure glad I was wrong on those points. :-) Once again, thanks for the unrelenting efforts that produced this gem.
Posted: 3/23/2006 2:45 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
Posts: 74
Location: California
I have been following the wips, as well, and have been impressed by the creative methods for getting the time down so much. A definite "yes".
Posted: 3/19/2006 9:16 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
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Location: California
It might be a little late for this, but FCEUXD (a version with some nice debugging additions) has a window that lets you edit/view the contents of NES memory in real time (not a list of disconnected addresses, though, which would also be nice). That might make a great addition to the customized versions of the emulator used here. The source code is out there (at Zophar's, for instance) if anyone thinks it's a good idea and wants to give it a shot.
Posted: 2/4/2006 2:46 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
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Location: California
Very much agreed, a definite yes.
Posted: 1/30/2006 7:55 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
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Location: California
I think it's this one: 086 Rhinoceros Man Battle Ax 4 0 0 0 70 0 88 100 22 126 39 The one you mentioned is the Rhinoband, found around the Riverside area.
Posted: 1/25/2006 7:58 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
Posts: 74
Location: California
Here's a snippet from a faq (contains EUC Japanese text) for the PS remake of DQIV on gamefaqs that mentions 8 different treasure probabilities: P = Item drop percentage. 0 = 1/1 1 = 1/8 2 = 1/16 3 = 1/32 4 = 1/64 5 = 1/128 6 = 1/256 7 = 1/4096 Some code for determining item-drop probabilities that I hadn't understood for this version now makes perfect sense in light of that information. With that in mind, I would say this same behavior is confirmed for the NES version. As to which monsters have the 1/4096 odds, you've just been wresting with one :-)\ and another is the King Metal. As for which monsters have what probability percentage, that can also be found in the faq mentioned above, directly below the table (search for "4096"). Of course, familiarity with the remake will help in finding the right monsters and treasure names.
Posted: 1/11/2006 8:33 AM
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Paulygon
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Location: California
There are 4 different drop-anything calculations in the original, which I assume were carried over, and each enemy was assigned one of them. 0 means the enemy would never drop an item (Domovoi, etc.), 1 means an infrequent drop (most enemies), 2 means a more frequent (though still not frequent) drop (the centaur-like enemies, iirc), and 3 means a guaranteed drop (Dr. Lugae, Brachioraidos, etc.) I'm sure the 5/98 (~5.10%) in this one corresponds to the "1" category, although in the original, the odds were slightly higher at 15/256 (~5.86%), as you said, Phil. The confusion on 5/98 arises from the fact that these odds seem to only ever be discussed in terms of the standard PinkPuff/Flan Princess battle, so I'm pretty sure the 5 does not relate to the number of them. Anyway, I know Terence studies disassembly of game code (I've seen some of his findings for Dawn of Souls). He discussed the derivation of the 5/98 ratio in a topic once, though not in technical detail (and of course I didn't save it v_v). Having done disassembly for some NES/SNES games (and little for GBA games), I'm keenly aware that even when the code for something is found, sometimes there's still the possibility of some unknown influence. That may indeed be the case here, but if he's found out more since then, it hasn't been discussed publicly to my knowledge. So until more info surfaces, I'd be inclined to take the existing figure at face value.
Posted: 1/7/2006 8:05 AM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
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Location: California
Hmm, I think it's gone by now (you know how topics get purged there after awhile). At least, I didn't see it in a casual perusal of the current topics. I have seen the 5/98 figure repeated without dispute many times recently, however. For example, here's a "Pink Tail" topic that mentions it. http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=929937&topic=25529548
Posted: 1/3/2006 11:08 PM
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Paulygon
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Joined: 4/6/2004
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Location: California
Quick note about the item-dropping odds. The odds of getting anything at all per monster is 5/98 in this version (learned that from gfaqs board from knowledgeable hackers). Once past that, then the regular odds come into play. On the SNES, the treasure probabilities were reduced to fractions from smaller ranges completely covering the total space of 0 through 255, namely: 1/2 = 0..127 5/16 = 128..207 11/64 = 208..251 1/64 = 252..255 I'm pretty sure this has carried over, but haven't confirmed it personally.
Posted: 12/29/2005 8:12 AM
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Paulygon
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Hmm, judging by your avatar, I'd say you like this game quite a bit. :-) I remember it back from the PC and Sega CD days.. quite a while ago. I think it would be interesting to see just how fast it could be done.
Posted: 10/27/2005 9:41 PM
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Paulygon
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Location: California
I remember making some DW2 codes quite a while ago, but never got around to releasing them because I couldn't test on the actual cart. Never made one for criticals, but I did succeed in making one for always getting a treasure chest after battle: AESPGYZY You sometimes get extra gold instead of an item, but this is normal. You also won't get any items if the inventory is full, of course.
Posted: 9/16/2005 8:41 AM
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Paulygon
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Location: California
I definitely agree with the others.. very impressive. *contributes to the pile of 'yes' votes*.
Posted: 9/2/2005 6:30 AM
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Paulygon
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Whoa, sweet. We definitely want to hear all about it. =) Speaking of the encounter steps, someone [URL=http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=522595&topic=23262084]created a topic about it[/URL] just today on gamefaqs. I don't know if the info will have much practical use, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Posted: 8/31/2005 4:20 AM
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Paulygon
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As far as I know, you don't lose any experience. The amount until the next level is just a 16-bit calculated number that's generated when viewing the status screen and not actually stored anywhere. The game uses lookup tables based on class and level to derive the amount of exp for the next level and just subtracts it from the current exp. The 60000s numbers are just it's way of coping with a negative amount for the next level (because of only one level-gain at a time). Internally, all exp gains deal only with the actual amount, and not with the amount left for next level, so there's no funkiness by passing up the amount by enough for additional levels.
Posted: 8/28/2005 8:02 AM
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Paulygon
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Ah well, better late than never. I'm not sure which poison needle code you mean (I have several), so I'll paste these from my FAQ (available on GameFAQs also): AEUXLVGP : The Poison Needle always hits a normal enemy's vital spot for an instant defeat. AEKZATYP : The Poison Needle can work even on bosses. AEXXGTGL + SXSXZVVE + SXSXTVVE : All weapons have the property of the poison needle. The weapons will do normal damage (including the poison needle), while still having a chance to defeat the enemy instantly. On that last set, normal damage means that damage will not be reduced to 1 automatically, but will be calculated in the same manner as ordinary weapons. Each of these three code sets can be combined selectively with any of the other two to produce the desired effect.
Posted: 8/27/2005 2:25 AM
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Paulygon
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Aha, nice work. As for spells like beat and defeat, I think in this game they really don't work at all where they're not supposed to (i.e. on monsters that are said to be immune), although I haven't actually looked. I've made some Poison needle codes before, so I can comment on that with more authority. It definitely does not work on bosses, ever.. I had to make a special code to allow for that. :-} We're definitely out of luck on this. As for the Venomous Dagger, the game does the same check as the Poison Needle, so it won't work against bosses either. I remember in my Balzack-II recovery testing that once he was shaking with laughter, so I guess Taloon's "Awful Pun" move works against bosses, but is obviously not nearly as useful as the waving-finger. =\
Posted: 8/26/2005 9:20 AM
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Paulygon
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The amount appears to be slightly variable, with an average of about 50 HP recovered per round. The values ranged from 47 to 55, but I'm not positive that those are the limits. The only way to find out the exact amount of recovery (and Balzack's HP) each time is to use the debugger, set a breakpoint, and view the memory once the breakpoint has been triggered. I can give you the details if you're interested.
Posted: 8/24/2005 8:47 AM
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Paulygon
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Location: California
Are you sure Ragnar still has the Flying Shoes? That's not it's supposed to be, as the shoes are one of a few chapter-specific items (Flying Shoes, Iron Safe, Sphere of Silence) that are removed at the completion of the respective chapter. Anyway, it would appear that particular scenario drops out.
Posted: 8/18/2005 5:55 AM
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Paulygon
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Location: California
The casino bonus from the tunnel is 2000 coins, which would probably make a nice starter pot to work with if you're going to be getting anything from the casino. There's about a 1 in 32 chance of getting the bonus, but it doesn't check until you walk in front of the guard that's standing at the midpoint of the tunnel.. it can be either directly in front of him or the square below, it doesn't matter. Just wait for the right frame to make your move and you'll get it.
Posted: 8/17/2005 7:31 AM
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Paulygon
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Location: California
His special attacks definitely only work in Chapter 5. As for his tripping, it results in a guaranteed critical hit, which would undoubtedly be useful. :) Another of those attacks is the ability to steal a treasure chest from an enemy, which may prove to be quite useful on the right enemies.
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