Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Hmm, I see. This seems way over my head. I'm seeing most of this for the first time, and it doesn't seem easy :p
There is another method, but I've only heard about it from FatRatKnight. IIRC, he uses trial and error (i.e., statistics) to infer the critical hit formula. I could venture a guess at how he does that, but you'd probably want to ask FatRatKnight himself.
I have just private messaged him, hopefully he can get back to me about that. What would be your guess?
I'm eager to make some progress on the run tonight, as I only have the weekends free>.<
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Ok, this is PCSX debugger window. It is not the same version which has frame advance and re-recording options. I'm not entirely sure what to do here..
[URL=http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x268/antdgar/debugger_pcsx.jpg][/URL]
you may want to click on the picture to view in full size :p
I believe the enemy health address is at 800F8614. I put that under 'Set Breakpoints' on the bottom right. I'm not sure what 'Reg' should be set to...?
I guess MemWrite is setting a breakpoint when the address is written to...
Once I press Run, it brings me back to this screen. And the address 800B007C is selected and shown in various boxes. I guess the enemies HP is being written on every frame by 800B007C?
I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. Some reading up on the subject should be helpful. Are there any general things I should be doing?
Oh, I'm not going to give up until I've tried everything. I really dislike manipulating critical hit luck manually... =D
edit: if you have some spare time, im in irc, maybe it's easier to discuss there.
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Dromiceius wrote:
With a little luck, that's the RNG you're looking for.
I have 2 addresses.
I have a 4byte value and a 2byte value which seems to greatly influence criticals and misses. (100% criticals so far). Is it safe to assume this is the right address?
When I freeze them at the values for 'miss' (when I miss an attack). It seems to guarantee a miss. At least I had 50 misses in a row and I used turbo mode to randomise the frame of attack... I have to freeze them both, so it seems they share a relationship. If I freeze one value only, then some attacks won't miss/critical.
Miss and critical are governed by the same addresses, so when I said 'miss' in this post you could substitute it for 'critical'. I do have the separate values required for critical and miss.
Sorry if it's confusing.
Seems to be what I'm looking for?
I don't have any experience with debugging, I may need some additional help =p But I'll see how I get on.. oh, and thanks for your help so far.
http://doc.kodewerx.org/tools.html#psx
This website recommends PCSX with debugger over pSX emulator. I'll try PCSX w/debugger first.
setting a breakpoint on the enemy HP being written, and backtracing up to the point where the damage/critical-ness is determined.
Do you mean that I should find the address for the enemies health? And set a write breakpoint on that?
I'm using MHS by L.Sprio for RAM hacking. It also features a debugger, so I would to use that.
I'm not sure of what do about breakpoints and 'backtracking'
If you could give me some idea of what to do :p
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Hmm, I have time to work on this now. However, I need your help.
I'm wondering how to find the relevant RAM addresses for critical hits.
I have a test battle where I've marked down which frames are criticals, misses etc. So I can use that battle for RAM comparing etc. since I know when each type of attack is available.
I now have time to work on my FF7 run. It would save time if I could devise some sort of formula to calculate when a critical hit is possible.
In battles there are 4 frames which constitute an attack type.
For example:
attack on frames: 1-4 = critical hit
attack on frames: 5-8 = miss
attack on frames: 9-13 = normal attack (40HP)
I also know that the pattern repeats itself after 65536 frames. So, we know that frames 1-4 are critical hits. 65536+1 = 65537
Frames 65537-65540 will be critical. The pattern repeats like this.
The only problem is, I don't know when a critical hit will happen. In battles, I will have to keep trying each 4frame set to see if there will be a critical hit. This takes a long time, and I think it's possible to defeat this problem with RAM watching + some sort of formula.
Can anyone help to devise a way so that I can know when each critical hit is available?
I think something like this has been done with past FF games on SNES...
I would like to know how it is done.
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
No
I should say that you can TAS any game that works on gamecube/wii
there are limited features, but enough to make a decent, although short, TAS video.
I would make some, but I don't have time at the moment
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
I rarely login using antdgar2. I would've seen your message had it been sent to antdgar (no 2) :P
You have to build the Re-recording version from SVN.
To build the re-recording version you have to edit Source/Core/Common/Src/Setup.h
and uncomment define re-recording
then build it normally
I assume you know how to compile from source
Desyncs like a monkey on xanax, or at least used to. I haven't used this emulator recently though, it may have somehow improved
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
JPeterson-
// File description: Rerecording Functions
/* ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
How the timer works: We measure the time between drawn frames, not when the game is paused. So time
should be a fairly comparable measure of the time it took to play the game. However the time it takes
to draw a frame will be lower on a fast computer. Therefore we could perhaps measure time as an
internal game time that is adjusted by the average time it takes to draw a frame. Also if it only takes
ten or twenty milliseconds to draw a frame I'm not certain about how accurate the mmsystem timers are for
such short periods.
Rerecording: Added frame step function and status bar for the input recording.
Turn on frame stepping with Ctrl, step with Space
Frame advance works btw.
Rerecording and nJoy: Copied the recording functions to nJoy
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Yes, luck manipulation.
There are other speed modes, perhaps I should start again using level 4 (the max.)
The only problem is I couldn't get such a huge score. The blocks will fall too quickly to do the combo captures that I was doing in the original run...
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
I think this game would make for an entertaining TAS. The Training and Mission sections may look quite cool when performed flawlessly.
I'm not an expert with this game, but I do know some things. I'll try out a TAS once I get bored of Kurushi.
Example of training mode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icJ8-ZC_aOA
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
In several guides, they mention the best way to complete this game is to alternate between the gangs missions.
For example, loonies green missions then zaibatsu green missions.
I may try it out to see how good this game looks...
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Ver Greeneyes wrote:
BadPotato wrote:
- Manipulate luck (any TAS using savestate have this kind of option, right?)
Luck manipulation practically defines TASing.
'Luck' in games is usually controlled by Random Number Generators (RNGs).
For example: Final Fantasy games usually update their RNG every frame, and so 'luck manipulation' means attacking/stealing/whatever on the right frame. If the chance of success is very low, this could mean you have to wait a lot of frames - for a 1/256 chance, the worst case scenario is that you have to wait 255 frames, or 4.25 seconds. So in that case you want order your commands in the way that requires the least amount of waiting.
FF7 is the worst. Some events only happen 1/65536 x_x
[/URL]
you may want to click on the picture to view in full size :p
I believe the enemy health address is at 800F8614. I put that under 'Set Breakpoints' on the bottom right. I'm not sure what 'Reg' should be set to...?
I guess MemWrite is setting a breakpoint when the address is written to...
Once I press Run, it brings me back to this screen. And the address 800B007C is selected and shown in various boxes. I guess the enemies HP is being written on every frame by 800B007C?
I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. Some reading up on the subject should be helpful. Are there any general things I should be doing?
Oh, I'm not going to give up until I've tried everything. I really dislike manipulating critical hit luck manually... =D
edit: if you have some spare time, im in irc, maybe it's easier to discuss there.
If someone is interested in doing this game, go ahead. I will be making some videos when I have spare time. I'm doing this game in preparation for House of The Dead when Dolphin TAS functions are complete
Stage 1 - Area 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXDZr6Ntjak
Stage 1 - Area 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H31uZmJtXpQ