Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/2/2014
Posts: 3
Plexa wrote:
0) It does same frames though :) I've also thought about shortening other names (Garet/Ivan/Mia) but it doesn't save time in regular dialogue since the game displays names one word at a time. But it *might* save time in battle text since I believe that the game displays battle text in chunks rather than 1 frame/1 word like dialogue. It's plausible that you might save some frames from shortening their names, but it might take longer to shorten the names... I have no idea to be honest :) Isaacs name certainly saves time since the very first cutscene has his name a few times while the text is set to 1 frame/1 letter. So you save 2 frames each time his name is said!
2)Haha Werster also goes out the bottom, I was wondering if I was just horribly missing something :D
6) Oh my god that's so sick. I never realised that. Thanks for the time save :P I wonder why it happens?
17) You have to open the menu to give the anchor charm to the captain. You should do the djinn menu there since it saves having to open the menu a second time.
18) You can probably use Babi's squiggly text (the text that wobbles on screen) to advance the RNG to get favourable encounters after Altmiller, but also extra frames during meteor vs hail to get good encounters before altmiller.
19) If I recall correctly, defeating a mob with summons took a similar amount of time to saving/resetting/running. Perhaps the extra levels from taking a fight or two can reduce the number of ACs required. Could also look into using Sand to advance the RNG to a nice place to minimise encounters.
21) Fair enough :) I was impressed that it was even possible to beat them with that setup! I was also impressed with Ivan dying to #savetheframes.
Happy to offer any advice :)
@jlun, I sat down and timed out all the cutscenes and almost half of the game is taken up by cutscenes xD
0) Garet's name in Japanese let me feels like taking 1 extra frame to display than other PCs, so shorten it may save some frames, but still i don't really like to shorten it, so...
6) maybe is the way they controlling flags was not good. like, casting move on snowman will create an invisible object at where snowman drop, and snowman itself have no collision boundary? who knows :)
17) Noted. Another thing never come out from my mind. Thanks!
18) Encounter manipulation is another big problem that didn't dealt very well in this run. Yeah i should know that obviously from that bridge to Altmillar is shorter than to dock.
19) My first test run was using that way (kill monsters in Venus lighthouse). As we have very low health, we need to use Flash to reduce damage (or use cure to heal party members), and low agility also cause enemy will move in every fight. In average that each fight cost around 20 seconds vs save&reset 14 seconds. A few leveling should help, so... More Tests!
21) I was feel like hit by a hummer when i done it without even notice it. (My third run, and reason i start this run). The main reason for Ivan Sacrifice is the success of quartz's revive in next turn, or i will need to set ground to avoid Menardi uses death scythe.
about cutscenes: that is more than i thought...
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/2/2014
Posts: 3
Plexa wrote:
Hey this is pretty good! Looks like you worked out how stupid stairs are in this game, most of the staircases seem to be optimised. I've noted down comments as I spotted them.
0) You lose frames throughout the run because names are not shortened, at least shortening Isaac's name is worth it
1) vs Bandits in Vault, you should take damage on Isaac so you can use Cure on him later in Goma cave. It would have saved you using two additional moves (~4s) after curing Garet to drop PP below 5 (you had 8 PP so 1 cure would drop that to 5PP)
2) Why did you leave Vault going through the south exit? All my tests indicated that going top was generally faster (unless I'm really bad at timing)
3) In Bilibin cave seems like you could let the "get item" animation last an additional frame to save attack cancelling in the next fight?
4) The second fight in Bilibin cave can't be optimal, way too many attack cancels. Use the get item RNG to manipulate a better path.
5) Hit three encounters on the way to Imil, can get that down to two with a better seed. There's also some sub-optimal movement you can use going around the corner to Imil to minimise the encounter counter which might be helpful
6) What happened when you moved the snowman in Imil? It didn't fall down in my movie, is that just an emu bug?
7) I'm surprised going the right staircase at Mercury entrance is faster, I thought left would clearly be better :P
8) Your retreat warp after beating the lizard fighter looked unoptimised, since you can do the warp lower and walk diagonally to minimise movement frames. I could be wrong about this though so I'm curious to know if you did this intentionally.
9) The Saturos fight was cool. I like using Isaac to heal after the Psynergy Stone. Shame that it doesn't save any time at Tret though.
10) I'm almost positive that skipping the first retreat warp in Tret will save time over this route. In RTA we can't control RNG so the retreat warp saves time on average, while in TAS it should be faster to manipulate fights to drop HP (and hence PP) and get optimal escape luck.
11) Another thing, you can actually do Tret backwards in RTA and I wonder if doing Tret backwards or using the early OOB would save time in a TAS setting (it loses something like 10-30 seconds in RTA the last time I tested it with RTA strats). In the second room of Tret take the left exit and you can get OOB there, you can skip right to Breeze in that OOB saving you climbing the tree. If you can find the right door this should be faster with TAS strats.
12) You use Cybele against the Killer Ape, usually we try to avoid this at all costs because it takes forever. Is there no way to avoid it in TAS?
13) You get a fight between Mogall Forest and Xian, I would suggest you add some RNG frames from one of the summon animations to avoid this encounter. It's certainly possible.
14) The door you used to skip Altin is not optimal in TAS. Its the only door you can hit reliably in RTA, but there is a door which takes you to the left exit which I could only ever reliably hit in a TAS setting. That saves a lot of time since you skip the Hama cutscene when you exit the right side. I can't find where I wrote down the coordinates for the door unfortunately :( but I do know that the door exists!
15) The manticore skip seemed good, but I wonder if you tested a S&Q-less skip to Manticore? You can enter reveal, go into retreat mode, then leave reveal to glitch out the Lamakan map. Slightly to the left of where you do the normal retreat warp there is a sinkhole embedded into the wall. If you fall into the sink hole, run from the enemy, you will get put at (0,0) and just need to press A to fight the manticore. It's definitely slower in RTA because Lamakan is hell, but it might be faster in a TAS setting.
16) I wonder if you could enter/exit Lamakan after getting vine to dodge an encounter?
17) In the ship menu you can at least 1 frame by doing the menu when you give the lucky charm to the captain instead of doing it before the fight.
18) Getting ground after altmiller is faster in a TAS setting. We get ground before Altmiller in RTA to make the RNG more consistent and hence faster on average. You don't have to worry about that so you should get ground after.
19) The post-ship part of the game is quite different to RTA so I don't have as many comments, aside from questioning the amount of saving and reseting you do. While I appreciate why you do that (more than the average person at least!) it would seem that more attack cancelling/grn manipulation could be used to get runs saving the reset.
20) Why do you skip the Gaia Blade? There doesn't seem to be a good explanation for this. Of course, you're not getting it for the attack power rather the +Venus power which gives judgement a nice buff which my logic tells me would save at least one action on Menardi/Saturos and FD which could compensate for the time taking to get it.
21) The S&M/FD fights are really long. I know in Any% that these fights are longer than 100% (which gets both down in 9 turns in RTA) but there is probably some rerouting you can do to speed this up.
All in all this was really fun to watch :) great job!
Thank you very much! It was very interesting to watch your RTA videos. Surprised me a lot!
Here's some answers to questions i can answer. Appreciate to these suggestions!
about stairs: Very want to question those programmers how they programmed these stairs. Why they have all different way to climb and down!
0) The only reason for this is that i don't want to see a name with single letter : ) (It is a great advantage in english version as "I" will make sense, and i will do it too)
1) Noted.
2) TOTALLY FORGOT THAT THERE IS ANOTHER EXIT AT TOP. It should be faster from top. Noted
3) Noted. And is applicable to other places.
4) Noted.
5) Noted.
6) It is told from the comment on Nicovideo. As the description, the snowman in game is considered as dropped when move is cast on it. So cancel move after casting still allow to obtain Fever.
7) I never tested it, so no comment on it.
8) It is not intended. Or most thing is not intended.
9) Distance is a large problem :)
10) Noted.
11) Noted. Still a lot more thing to discover!
12) Noted. It should good to change Cybele to two Ramses, after one Venus is recovered.
13) Noted
14) Noted
15) O..K.. Definitely this will work. Another appreciation!
16) Noted
17) Hmm, i'm not very understanding this...
18) It should be that in my opinion too, but in this run go ground first was quick. Should have some problem on dealing with that be first attack fight.
19) All saving and resetting (before Venus Lighthouse. In Lighthouse is 100% inescapable) is tested and compared with RNG manipulation. when Cancelling is over 37 times, Save and reset will be faster.
20) It is resulted from my last run (not uploaded). In that run, i recognized that i didn't equip anything after the lalivero shop (literally any equipment, include gaia blade), so i had thought that these items are not necessary to beat it, so not obtained. I think i need to have another run to test this. +91 attack should let other Damaging Djinns worth more.
21) Definitely need rerouting and can be faster. The primal objective in my run was to beat the game, and those boss fights (especially last two) have less tries, as i was not sure these bosses is able or not to be defeated in this condition.
Again thank to these precious opinions that is very helpful! I will make next run better, definitely.
jlun2 wrote:
So the retreat glitch only saves ~20 mins from a 3+ hour long TAS. Huh. I'd thought it'd be like sub 1 hour or something gamebreaking due to all those runs that forgoe it. :P
you know why? because there have too many dialogues than dungeons : )
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/2/2014
Posts: 3
Kirkq wrote:
He ends with 5/6 of each djinn type, which I really don't feel is optimal, but it's very hard to calculate the time gains/losses. Bosses are either weak to fire or water, and most major bosses are weak to water, but a summon from 4 earth and 4 jupiter isn't bad at all. Djinni also make your characters stronger when not in summon mode. My best guess is probably 4/4/4/4 is optimal, but that's mostly speculation. Adding more would save time in battles and lose time acquiring them. I'm not sure if it's faster or not.
4/4/4/4 is not very possible due to the ground and flash. their effects are so important in fight bosses and dijines, and they can only acquired at late game. I'm thinking that the cost of time produced from only use lv3 summons to bosses is larger than the time saved from not to take the dijin. It is same to say to water dijin, can deel more damage to final bosses. Wind may ignore the bleeze, due to its effect is not useful and cost some times to acquire it.
Kirkq wrote:
EDIT: I'm wondering if sacred feathers would've been a good investment. They double distance to next encounter for a while. Most encounters are run from pretty quickly though, so I'm not sure. They take some time to buy and some time to use as well.
The Sacred Feathers and avoid acts same. When your level is above a certain amount determined by area, it will stop the counter of encounter. So the only place this is after Saturos until the toret.
If there have some sentence make someone feel bad, i will apologize, my English is not very good =)