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It would be nice if the fights were better. It looks like you are getting longer between random fights but sometimes you still only get the 1x or 2x multiplier. Maybe on purpose though?
Seems that you don't always want to get the most steps between fights since having 0 at certain points such as entering a cave resets it (This is why he takes extra steps before entering island cave). With a little work you could plan out these spots and figure out what multiplier you want after each battle. Would require some complicated but interesting math.
There is another way to abuse the encounter mechanic when you move from an area with lower rate to one with a higher rate without resetting the steps. For example on entering the Hagubo caves where the rate is 7 compared to 12 in the outer world. If you had an encounter right outside you might get 45 steps inside before your next fight when inside you cannot do as well. I guess if it doesn't cut the number of fights it doesn't matter though and this means you can't use 0-step reset trick either.
One more thing, if you are maxing out fire power you could use FireG once each on Alonzo and Jarmlu to get 1 fire/1 sph instead of 2 fire.
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Well, like I said there is a lot of room for improvement. Ended up with more xp than I needed at the deathwarp so time could be saved by cutting down on number of enemies per fight. As far as missed hits I need to look further in to how that works. It seems that in some cases I need to miss a hit before I can hit again; nothing else will help. I suspect I could work out a better strategy with beggars for compassion and sacrifice. Should I buy equipment and give away the remainder or wait until I have the key and no longer need to save gold? Shopping wastes a lot of time and the beggars vary in how chatty they are.
Near the end I fought an extra pirate ship near Magincia. This was part of a failed strategy to Gate back there and pick up that ship after finishing avatarhood at the shrine of Valor. Problem is that Gate spell resets ships. It's a little further to sail around from Jhelom but it's not worth fighting another pirate battle to Gate to Magincia. Pirate fight does give valor but I don't need it after getting avatarhood.
Another detail is coordinating the other virtues with how many times I need to talk with Flamis and reaper. Maybe not big but something that needs to be done before making a submission-worthy run. I generated a lot of other notes on details like this.
The dungeon order isn't coordinated well at all. I changed my mind and tried a few different things while I was making it. The idea is to spend less time cutting through altar rooms. I also think Shame and Despise might be faster coming down from the entrance instead of coming up from the altar. I would get to Shame by exiting Deceit and taking the ship.
The limiting spell ingredient was Ash. I could save some of it by using ice instead of fire for a few extra MP. With the extra ash I could use energy more which can save time over Tremor in some battles.
When walking around with 2 party members there are always at least 2 enemies in the random battle. Can I cut back on those battles or is it worth it?
I was thinking about switching to mage for my next attempt but on further thought there are a lot of problems. Mage's starting gold and xp is so low that a lot of fights are needed to get level 4 and key. If I got tremor then it would come really fast in a dungeon but that means visiting castle Britain and then Moonglow with only moongates for travel. Lots of backtracking and waiting for moons. Or I could go into the dungeons without tremor but have really long fights. Then if I was solo I would need to spend more time recovering MP. So now I'm thinking the paladin/mage teamup may be the way to go after all. Paladin's start is just too good.
I might think about solo paladin. Start of Deceit would be tough but once I get MP up I am set. Without a partner I need more time to recover MP but many dialogs could skip character choice and all random battles could be reduced to one enemy. Besides being faster it cuts down on herb usage. Might be worth it.
Thought about druid but she has similar problems to mage. Low starting xp and gold. Could make it to Paws for herbs or Trinsic and buy a bow. But then a lot of gold and xp is needed. Picking up paladin and killing or ditching would be a waste of time; why not use it as main? Only advantage of druid is that at level 4 she gets enough MP for tremor without needing orbs.
Anyway you can see that there is much more to this game. I won't get back to it for a while and even then I probably want to do another test. Still, I learned a lot from this and was able to give a nice preview. Thanks for the encode.
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To help Janus out I have disassembled the encounter algorithm. It's complicated but it should be possible to manipulate. There are several parts so I'll try to break it down a bit here. This happens at the end of a battle when the screen collapses to black. There is something different for setting steps on leaving town though it might use some of this code.
First the addresses involved. I'm not sure exactly how snes assembly addressing works but it seems that the high byte of the address can be 7e or whatever. I'll just show the low 2 bytes.
1868 is the steps counter that ultimately gets set here
1867 is an encounter rate that is set based on the encounter rate of an area. Typical values seem to be 7-12.
1859 is a counter that increments every frame
0023 is a one-byte battle RNG
0024 is a one-byte map RNG. It seems to change while on map but not in battle.
0025 is a two-byte encounter helper that is the most important factor
0048 is temporary storage for an adjustment value that tweaks the result a little
The $0048 adjustment is loaded through a DMA call of some sort. I'm not so familiar with this aspect of SNES but that is what it looks like. Address is set in $4202 then 4 nops and a read from $4216. The high byte of the address is the encounter rate and the low byte is the $0024 RNG value.
Battle RNG $0023 gets updated by adding the low 3 bits of $1859 and then multiplying that value by 5. There is no multiply so this is actually done with 2 left shifts and an add. This only affects the step calculation because the carry from the last add sticks around.
Encounter helper $0025 gets updated by adding the low 3 bits of $1859 with the leftover carry bit if set. You can ignore the last paragraph and just know that this means adding a value from 0-8. Then take that result and multiply by 5. For this part everything is 16-bit operations so we are actually updating $0025 (low byte) and $0026 (high byte).
Now we put everything together and get the steps. Take one byte from $0026 (the high byte of our two-byte value) and clear the high bit. Depending on that value (ranging from #$00 to #$7F) we will get radically different step counts:
If result < #$33 then steps = (2 * rate) + adjustment - 2
If #$33 <= result < #$59 then steps = (3 * rate) + adjustment - 2
If #$59 <= result < #$65 then steps = (4 * rate) + adjustment - 2
If #$65 <= result < #$78 then steps = rate + adjustment - 2
If #$78 <= result then steps = adjustment + 1 (This usually means the next fight comes quickly!)
Hex to decimal translation: #$33 = 51, #$59 = 89, #$65 = 101, #$78 = 120
So if you consider this value random, the chances of each case are 51/128, 28/128, 12/128, 19/128 and 7/128. Fairly low odds to get the highest number of steps but also low to get a battle right away.
How to use this information? Dismiss the message at the end of each battle to manipulate the 0-8 addition to $0025. Because of how it works, the manipulation from one battle will actually make a difference 2-3 battles down the line when those bits shift to the high byte, making this an interesting mathematical problem. If possible you could get a few more steps by tweaking the value of $0024 on entering battle. Would need to figure out how to get the adjustment from that value though.
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Test run is done and posted:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/10176369876609165
To light up the dungeons, run with this lua script:
http://pastebin.com/qtSG6puZ
Time was an hour and six minutes. There's quite a bit of room for improvement, maybe enough to get under an hour.
Now that I'm done I'm not so sure about the character selection and a few other route choices. In particular, magic ended up being used more than fighting so I'm thinking solo mage may be the way to go. Unlike attacks magic always hits. The hit/miss logic for physical attacks is not straightforward and can't be manipulated through the same RNG as everything else. Basically, I can't make it so I hit every time with a physical attack. Need to look at this more. Magic does add more text and extra selection dialogs over attacking but it's a small price to pay for never missing and more.
So what is the best random mob for a fast fight? It's actually not one pathetically weak enemy with 20hp or less but a higher level enemy with 40-50 hp. In that case you cast energy, do some damage and then the enemy moves on to the lava field and dies. When an enemy dies that way you miss a lot of text. You don't get experience, but I don't need it once I hit level 4.
Tremor ended up being quite abusable. I'd estimate the chances of killing a room of 7 enemies in one tremor at about 1%. No problem for a TAS. To set this up I use a lua script that knows how to advance the RNG and tells me how many times I need to do that to clear the room.
I ended up cutting it close on herbs with only 2 ash left when I finish. If magic gets used even more then it will probably be necessary to refill on that. Ash is used in missile, fire, energy, tremor and gate. So just about every useful spell.
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Derakon wrote:
I'm not especially familiar with this game; is it possible to drop most of your gold in a pile, then pick up 1GP at a time to give to beggars? Alternately, give away all your gold, sell one small item (perhaps a spell reagent?), give the resulting money away, etc?
You cannot drop gold. Only weapons and armor are sellable and some are pretty cheap (10G for a staff). Now you do need to take at least 15 steps outside of town between handouts and you need 49 random battles throughout the run anyway so that is why I am thinking trigger a random fight for the treasure. It also helps that unlike RTS it is possible to tweak battles to come sooner and be easy enough to finish in one turn.
One way to work this in without actually going broke is to buy some equipment and then give away the rest of your gold. If you don't mind the virtue hit you can sell it later for full price when you need the gold. Banking your gold this way also preserves it across deathwarp, a trick I planned on using anyway.
Edit: More on this - if you give away all your gold to get compassion and sacrifice, then sell something and do it again, you will get sacrifice but not compassion. You need to take outer world steps to clear the flag for compassion.
About the RNG, I am looking into how far I can push Tremor. Maybe pretty far. In the outer world there seems to be a limit to luck manipulation because everything works on a 16-frame rule. Only thing I found to break the rule is casting magic. Extra steps before exiting towns gives more options for luck than just tweaking your walking path. In general I use the terrain to control when battles happen because it is the timing that is important. The terrain where the battle happens can be significant too.
Anyway, in a dungeon if you are stopped you can move on any frame, improving chances for luck manipulation quite a bit! Problem cases will be when there are two rooms in a row because then we are subject to frame rule again.
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One more big discovery is that when you give away all your gold to a beggar you get 5 compassion and also 5 sacrifice. So there is no need to give blood. That's very convenient because healing the 100 hp back is annoying. It works well with my paladin route here because I am done with gold early on. Also, I found the whirlpool at 117, 120 and it was invisible. Whirlpool is interesting but with getting the key so early I can get balloon easily and do cove along with Serpent spine.
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http://speeddemosarchive.com/Ultima4NES.html
Congratulations on beating this game under two hours! Druid is an interesting choice and clearly works out well. That got me thinking about this game again.
Here's my new plan:
Pick paladin. Sell the sword and buy a bow.
Walk around and end up in Minoc. Could go through gates and pick up black stone but nothing else is really productive because we want to avoid visiting anywhere twice.
At Minoc have 675 gold saved and have 400 xp. That will be 7-9 battles depending on gold and monster manipulation.
Now at Minoc buy three Axes. Jump into the furnace, pick up the rune and then die. This could be sped up by getting poisoned earlier. Of course this deathwarps to Lord British.
We get 400 gold and keep all the equipment we bought. Since we have 400 xp we can hit level 4. On the way out of the castle, talk to the tremor mage, pick up rune of Spirituality and the three chests by it.
Now we can get a ship. Do it and head to Buccaneer's Den. Besides the ship we need 1-2 more random fights to get enough gold. At the Den we sell our chain and the three axes to get 2000 gold and change.
We now have the key and a full reagent pouch at level 4 in very short order. Plus we have already collected three runes and the only weapon we need. At level 4 paladin has 23 MP so he can cast Energy and Ice. This is a TAS, so we can manipulate every battle to be one enemy (the first set of battles will need 2-3 to get enough xp). Anyway, depending on the sea creature it will fall in one shot to bow, Fire or Ice. So we can start collecting stuff.
I say collect stuff first so that we can get our virtue back up to get Mariah to join. Not right away though, wait until we are ready to hit the dungeons. At very least we want to enter Hythloth through castle Britain and get the balloon. Then visit Cove to get candle and learn Gate Travel and get the white stone.
It would be convenient to max virtues early seeing how we don't need to cheat anyone anymore. Then we can stop by shrines while collecting other items.
The definite part is that we would eventually sail to Verity Isle and get the book from Lycaeum. Then we hit Moonglow exactly once to get Tremor, Gate, the rune and Mariah.
Reason for getting Mariah is that she has 50 MP despite being only level 2 and so she can cast every spell. Still, we only want her for the dungeon crawl as our pally can manipulate one-on-one fights and one-shot them. But when we have big rooms we want to tremor them.
Now we can either head straight to Deceit or visit some shrines - maybe Spirituality with Gate then get a ship and do Sacrifice and Honesty on the way to the dungeon.
Now it should be possible to manipulate all or almost all enemies in each room dead from Tremor. Deceit is a pretty fast descent and there are three orbs. With some healing our level 4 pally can power up. After the stone room we can get a fourth so that we have 43 MP and two chars that can tremor! Even if it is not difficult to manipulate full-room kills having two tremor users will save a lot of recharge time.
With Gate we don't have to get all the stones at once. Not sure if this is good for many dungeons but we can exit, Gate to Britain and enter Hythloth. We already have white stone so we can collect the rest and get the keys. On the way out Mariah tragically dies.
Now we get the rest of the items and visit the rest of the shrines with valor last of course. For that we do repeated fights by the shrine of humility. Unfortunately, the easiest fight we can draw there is one daemon. We can take it out in two bow shots sometimes and we can also use ice for one-shots. Still, triggering battles with one step gets us to 49 a lot faster. The necessary steps to meditate at all the shrines gives us a lot of other random fights too. Of course they will all be 1-1 one-hit fights.
The end of the route will be picking up the rune of Valor in Jhelom, visiting the shrine for the last virtue and heading to the Abyss. In the abyss we should be able to one-tremor most fights with two tremors as a fallback. For some small rooms it may be advantageous to save MP and break out the bow.
So yeah, had a lot of ideas but less sure about having time to actually do something high-quality. If anyone wants to help or take this up then go for it.
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I'm curious if Final Fantasy syncs. The full run is way too long but I have a script that generates the input to enter names as fast as possible for a potentially hot donation item. The run could stop after Garland or load a savegame near the end and beat the final dungeon. Still too much for a half hour show but maybe some other time.
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This was the first submission in a while that interested me. Early on it looked well optimized with a lot of attention to details, but there were definitely some little mistakes near the end. Seems that you were avoiding bonus capsules but with how fast they count up it seems unlikely to be faster overall.
No damage, glitches or special weapons forces some interesting tricks but is painfully limiting in other places. Yellow devil is really, really long. Overall I have to say I enjoyed seeing a different approach to this game but I'd like to see it cleaned up a little more.
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Sorry, it wasn't helpful to fully understand it so I didn't look any deeper. But you can examine in the FCEUX debugger to find out more. Also, I think that the low two bits may only be right for fighters or certain levels.
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Free download that is even blessed by Capcom:
http://www.capcom-unity.com/mega_man
It's basically Mega Man vs the Street Fighter gang. Primarily a Mega Man game with 8 bit graphics and sound.
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I was thinking about this game and messed around some. Here is a lua script you can use to display coords onscreen and get frame rewinding.
I started and got about a pixel ahead of Marx at the beginning of 1-1B from subpixel optimization. Then an enemy behaves differently so it may not help after all. I don't think I will continue but I hope this lua helps.
Noticed on vertical scrolling areas that the highest positioning is when the screen scroll subpixel and player subpixel are both 0. It is hard to tweak though so it may not be worth worrying about in most situations.
http://runeaxetas.googlecode.com/files/NinjaGaiden3.zip
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It desynced for me and then my wife went into labor before I could figure out the problem. The run was totally awesome but she still wouldn't go with Soma for a name (it is a boy).
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I think this is a good idea. There seems to be a common fear among rookies that they will make a run that gets rejected just because of game choice. Of course there will still be complaints that some runs are tiered down because of game choice. I think this system sounds more accepting that everyone has their own tastes in games.
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That series has some good points but is a bit liberal for my tastes. If you talk about ending poverty and feeding the hungry worldwide you won't get much support from Americans. Even relatively liberal ones like me start to feel queasy. Maybe this is just self-serving bias talking but it's very obvious to me that there should be a lot of poor people in the world. It's a case of "too many captains sink the ship".
Mitjitsu wrote:
With the established media losing its influence and the rise in social media. I think this obstacle could be overcome.
I agree, but it is going to take quite a while. At least a generation or two. Television viewership is still high among the elderly and uneducated, both of which will grow in the short term. My parents sit around watching television all day and are very proud to be among the 100 or so Florida voters that elected Bush II.
Mitjitsu wrote:
So you're being defeatist?
No, just practical. I really do love this country and I really want it to change. But there is not much hope that the political climate will turn around for at least a generation or two. By then the decline will likely be obvious and severe. The ship will probably sink slowly, but I want to scout out the life boats just in case the leak is worse than they are telling us. :)
But that would clash badly with freedom of speech which is (and should be) holy and inalienable.
Actually, it has been clearly decided that freedom of speech does not extend to broadcast television. The FCC is a government entity that controls what can and cannot be broadcast. You need to get a license to broadcast. If you misuse the privilege you can fined or your license revoked. As a country we have rules against showing certain things on television, we just need to add political discourse to that list. Because freedom of speech is inalienable and holy!
I recommend this book to learn more about the problems we are facing. The author has spent a lot of his career working for the Democratic party but the message is not directly political.
http://amzn.to/infodiet
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Warp wrote:
Anybody can become a candidate.
True, but in order to become a viable candidate you must:
* Raise millions of dollars to get your name out. Many people will vote for the name they saw most or last. Or whoever produced the scariest commercial. If you don't use your own money then you need to convince some rich people to sponsor you. So you must either support some policy that favors their business or some cause they believe in. Because of how wealth is structured here you must spend a lot of time with rich people because the middle class simply don't have enough to be worth your time.
* Win a primary election for one of the two major parties. This means pandering to one subset of voters. You can alter your platform between this and the full election but you will come across as unprincipled and alienate a lot of Americans. If you get lucky no one will oppose you in your party primary, but that is more likely if you raised a lot of money.
These two requirements do a pretty good job at stamping out real change. But the vast majority of Americans will not vote for you if you don't follow this. It's really sad how broken American democracy is and there's no easy fix.
Americans like to point out the perfection of the Constitution. But it was written 235 years ago to govern a mostly agrarian society. One of America's great strengths was always its lack of cultural baggage. Now we've surpassed most of the world and are starting to fall back.
There is no short term solution. The current system cannot elect the right people so we need to change it. Unfortunately this is not a popular view since it would cause short-term problems. An easy first step would be banning political ads from TV. One or two-minute ads are an extremely poor format for political discourse.
The practical solution is to pick a country to move to when things get too bad here. Many Americans have done this. I'm going with Australia, mostly because they speak English and the weather is pretty decent. Canada is friendly and I'm sure Scandinavia and the UK are great but I just can't handle the winter.
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I had an Atari when I was really little. Don't remember any games in particular. I think it got put in the closet and never came out again once we got the NES. I like to think that video games are art. But Atari 2600 games are just flashing lights moving around the screen with random blips from the speakers. There is a reason why the American games industry collapsed!
Meh for this and for the whole console.
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I have been playing this game and I noticed that you zip to the right when a block appears on top you. The zip is really fast, maybe instantaneous. Even if it's only the blocks this might be useful a few places. Of course it would be awesome if you can zip with Silberflugel.
