Posts for juef


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juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
What do you mean by "more stable"? That is a pretty cool document, thank you! I did figure out most of the stuff relevant to the TAS, but one thing I may have to look into more is the enemy item drops. I'm pretty sure a non-zero 0x32A9 means there will be a drop at the end of the battle, and that value is changed during battle, but I'm not sure what triggers it and how. I did look into a bit of disassembly but it seems like the value seems endlessly juggled between registers and RAM and I could never find the end of it. As can be seen above, I have successfully manipulated an Alum Blade drop once, but now that I've found an earlier zombie (Garlang Gang cave), I can't seem to make it happen again. Maybe it depends on enemy formations, maybe it depends on the enemy position... Heck, maybe there's a drop address for each monster and I just got lucky in my initial manipulation. I'm gonna look into it a bit more later. [EDIT] Never mind, I got it! For some reason I thought drop RNG changed only every two frames, but it does not. What a relief! That means we'll have the blade from the Garland Gang bosses until the end. I can't wait to see how much it helps but I'm very confident it'll be saving more than the time spent manipulating it by the end of that cave. Thanks for sharing the document, by the way 🙂 I'll keep it nearby for sure!
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Thank you for your reply! Yes, I did read the FAQs (thanks for making and sharing them!), and carefully watched the speedrun. The zombies are indeed on the first continent: I have found them in a cave that is a significant detour and available late-ish, as well as in the Tower of Death before the first intended-to-be-won fight with Gades (not on the first few floors, unfortunately). Since this is on the path and Hi Bombs are easy to get before then, that's where I'll try and get the drop. And indeed, the first fight with Gades will probably take 20-30 seconds to prepare so I think it is worth it in the long run.
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Hey all! I've been experimenting with various manipulations for Lufia: The Legend Returns on GBC. As you can see, it's going pretty well: Link to video But there's a LOT that does not seem to have been ever explored. I would appreciate any help at all, notably:
  • Is there a list of enemy drops or enemy zones?
  • What's the earliest / non-detoury place to find a Zombie?
  • Would getting the Alum Blade be actually worth it, considering the Ear Cleaners that will come soon after that?
  • Would winning the first two Gades battles be worth it? I'm enclined to think the first one might be, if only for the added attack power, especially if eventually coupled with the Alum Blade.
Thoughts welcome! Thank you.
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
I am an amateur bass player, at best. But I really love Final Fantasy 4 and its music, so this is happening!
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
I would never have guessed that so much time could be saved. This is an amazing run and I fully expect this to be the last DW4 TAS I ever see to be published. Well done!
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
You're just trying to impress me.
… and holy cow, does it work! What an incredible TAS. The abundant yet entertaining glitches, the great use of the wonky physics, the abuse of mechanics and checkpoints make for an entertaining and very optimized-looking movie. It is weird to have some laps be slower than previous and further ones sometimes, but I can imagine there are physics related reasons for those. I see no obvious improvement and I've rarely given such a well-deserved Yes vote. I wish there were some kind of submission text, but since it's part of the category... 😅 Screenshot suggestion: the flying van, around 47:00 and later in the movie as well.
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Nice TAS! Some of those jumps must have been a pain to optimize. If you remove your A press on frame 13383, you can complete that stage 3 frames faster. The rest of the movie can then be resynced quite easily. Also, in the long ice stage, I have found one (or two?) improvements. See this userfile to see them. There is a difference at the beginning which seems to save a little under 10 frames, but it ended up making the rest desync, so you'd have to redo the rest of that stage properly. I also went for a different strategy at the top of the stage, but I'm not sure if it actually saves time or not.
juef
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Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (123)
Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Is the Mountain Cave bottom floor layout the same as in the US version? I believe the path that first grabs the two side-by-side chests is slightly shorter.
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Oh...! It appears I have. 😅 My bad, I will cancel this submission. Thank you for pointing this out.
juef
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Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (123)
Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Given the new version by adelikat, this submission can be removed. Thank you!
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
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Very impressive! Just thinking of analyzing the game mechanics make me feel overwhelmed, but clearly you got a good grasp of them. I thought it would take hours to reach that ending.
juef
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Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (123)
Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Looks good to me! Can't say this is super entertaining, but still very satisfying. I always wondered how those fights worked. Would using the SNES mouse make navigating the menus a bit faster?
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Well done! I haven't noticed any obvious improvement, and the total avoidance of random encounters made this more entertaining than I would have expected.
juef
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Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (123)
Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
This might possibly be the first BizHawk submission that was made using the Linux version of BizHawk.
I made my recent Godzilla 2 TAS with the Linux version of BizHawk :)
juef
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Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (123)
Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
That is consistent with my findings. I brute forced the slots to make sure I have the quickest jackpot everytime, but since there are 8 different icons and they cycle every frame, it takes at most 2*8 = 16 frames to get a jackpot. IIRC, it ended up taking around 10 frames each time. I don't think there is a better human strategy than simply mashing A and hoping for the 1/64 chance of a jackpot.
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
nymx wrote:
I can only imagine how hard this game has been for runners, especially considering how much time you have to clear each screen (I'm guessing that is a count down timer in the upper left?).
That is correct but probably not in the way you think. Each time you complete a screen with some time left, it makes the beginning of the next screen a checkpoint. The title screen mentions this using icons, but I understand how it can be confusing, especially in a deathless run. Also note that there is a slight variation of this mechanic if you play the game again after reaching the end screen.
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Thank you for your comment! No offense taken; I knew this wouldn't be very entertaining except maybe for those who love the game, but I just wanted to see it done. :) Also, is it just me or is the text in the submission text's table way too big? If anyone knows how to fix it, please let me know!
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
My bad, I forgot the changes to the config only get written when the program ends gracefully. Here it is. [Edit] I'm on the TASVideos Discord in case you'd like to chat more directly.
juef
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (123)
Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
juef
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Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (123)
Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Not sure if I'm doing something wrong here so I won't post in the Github issues for now. I am using the latest BizHawk release for Linux. Using a fresh config file, I can load and play a GBC game (such as ucity). But if I import a GBC BIOS which is verified as correct by BizHawk and enable it, it crashes right after loading the ROM. Simply changing true to false in the following part of config.ini makes everything work as expected:
  "CoreSyncSettings": {
    "BizHawk.Emulation.Cores.Nintendo.Gameboy.Gameboy": {
      "$type": "BizHawk.Emulation.Cores.Nintendo.Gameboy.Gameboy+GambatteSyncSettings, BizHawk.Emulation.Cores",
      "EnableBIOS": true,
I can provide more details if necessary. Notably, I see a "mono_crash" JSON file created each time this happens. [EDIT] Switching from the Gambatte core to the GBHawk or SubGBHawk cores also make it work fine.
juef
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (123)
Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Temp encode: Link to video
juef
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Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (123)
Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-beta-suggests-you-wont-be-able-to-revert-to-old-game-builds-much-longer/
Valve has responded to claims that Steam will soon disable the option to download previous versions of games. In a statement provided to PC Gamer, a spokesperson clarifies the company is not planning to disable access to older versions of software. "We are actually not planning to disable downloading old builds. What we are working on is an approach on handling edge cases involving unowned content, and helping partners more easily take down builds that need to be removed for things like copyright issues," the statement reads. "We’ll have more to share on that work when it’s ready to ship."
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
Oh, sorry, I didn't check the discord to see if it was reported. I'd definitely be glad to hear this isn't true.
Post subject: Last Steam beta disables downloads of older game versions
juef
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Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
See this tweet. Obviously, this is very bad for a lot of things, including possibly TASing? I believe most PC TASes use standalone versions such as GOG's, but I thought I'd post it here just in case.
juef
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Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (123)
Joined: 1/29/2007
Posts: 204
Location: Québec, Canada
I just went and looked in the forums / BizHawk download page for the first time in a while, and saw that there is once again a Linux build. I just wanted to mention how happy I am about it! Looking forward to try it when/if I try my hand at TASing again. Thank you to all those involved!
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