Pre-emptive Attack!
This is a testrun of Final Fantasy 5, which completes the Wind Shrine, 4185 frames (nearly 70 seconds) faster than Boco's testrun. I'm going by /*-'s walkthrough at this point in time, though I might deviate slightly depending on how some tests come out.
Notes on this run:
- I name the main character "Tilus" (or at least as close as "Tilus" gets in kana). Given how few times the main character's name appears in the script, this won't lose nearly as much time as one might think, so I'm not naming him "A" or anything else short and silly. I have considered going back to Battsu/Butz/Bartz, his "default" and more official name, though, and might go back and do it if people request it.
- Like many SNES speedrunners, I upgraded to snes9x improvement 9, with the memory viewer, and have attempted to experiment with it to try to find a way to manipulate the distance between random battles inside caves/dungeons. Extensive searching and testing has come up with no solution, not even a counter which counts up or down the distance remaining until a random battle. After looking back, the distance between my run and Boco's between battles (and even the formations encountered!) is eerily similar, so chances are this may not be manipulateable at all, instead possibly being called off a set and unchangeable encounter list, not unlike FF1. Anyone with assembly knowledge want to take a look into how this works?
- The time it takes to run away from battles in this testrun is slightly inconsistant, which while fast seems to have as much as a second of variance in between escapes. I haven't attempted to manipulate this variance down in this testrun.
- There's about 120 frames (2 seconds) delay when you try to run right through the save point in the Wind Shrine, which includes the "ding!" and the text explaining what save points do. Considering I'll lose a couple dozen frames for every save point I attempt to run around, I'm pretty convinced that doing this will eventually save time in the long run.
- I attempted even more extensively to try to decrease the amount of time it takes to win the Wingraptor battle. I went through a couple hundred frames of manipulation scattered around the several moments of input in a futile attempt to manipulate in a critical hit, with no success (which leaves me wondering, is it even possible for knives and swords to critical in this game? I can't recall the last time I've seen one critical), and given the peaks of damage I could be dealing with my weapons, attempting to win this battle in any fewer than nine hits, without a critical hit, isn't possible. So, I just go ahead and input as fast as possible. Though, if anyone with assembly knowledge wants to try and verify or deny whether swords and knives can critical or not, feel free.
- I made Faris the thief right off, to save a little bit of time by only having to change three characters to black mages before Karlabos. This might be cutting things a bit close with the HP, but I should be fine.
If there's any comments/questions/concerns/etc that anyone has with the run, feel free to comment away.