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I don't believe 5:50 is possible for the boss. At the start of the battle, a timer counts up to 128 (one per frame), at which point the boss can be damaged. After each hit, a timer counts down from 30 (one per frame) before the next hit can happen. The boss takes 8 hits to kill, which means a minimum of 128 + 30*7 frames. That makes 338 frames, 338/60 = 5.633 seconds, which is basically the time I got (0:05:62), +/- 1 frame and rounding. I don't see how it could be done fully 8 frames faster than that minimum amount of time. I was already inside the boss for the entire battle... Where did you get 5:50 from, btw?
NintenDan wrote:
I see you also go above the giant loop near the end rather then around it. I've considered that in the past, but it just seemed slower...
I tried both ways, and going in that loop was always at least a second slower. But I'll try taking a lower route earlier... you're talking about where I go straight up around 0:19:00 in that level, right?
EDIT: You were right about the lower route being faster, I found something I forgot to do before when I was testing it, and got the time for act 2 down to 0:26:97.
EDIT 2: Got 0:33:52 on Hot Crater 1, mostly following your advice with some minor route changes
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Actually, I'm having some trouble with the route planning, since I have nothing for reference besides videos of suboptimal paths through the level, and have to fully optimize lots of different possible paths to be able to compare them and choose one. So, just about any information on routes, or level maps, would be helpful. Right now I'm trying to decide where it's best to activate the boost in Hot Crater 1.
Also, I could make an AVI of the first zone if you want, but I haven't done that since it'd be better if you're able to watch it in the emulator.
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Phil wrote:
Nitsuja: What is so hard? Snes9x allows gamepad support for Snes gamepad emulation. You could use similar codes.
VBA hotkey input works completely differently from that, it will take changes to that system and that gamepad code to merge it in. It's not all that hard, but I can't test that it works myself without a gamepad, and it will probably take many tries to get it working. (And basically there's not much motivation to work it out, seeing as I don't use gamepads and JoyToKey works well enough for those who do use them.)
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
I'm not sure, but I always wondered if the frame counter for from-start movies started one frame too late, since the frame counts outside a movie are always 1 higher than those inside a movie.
Oh, I hadn't noticed that, but that's just because it uses a different counter (than the movie frame count) outside of movies - that counter is probably just starting at 1 when it should start at 0. (edit: or getting updated an extra time when it starts or something dumb like that)
ventuz wrote:
... JoyToKey ...
Good idea - that certainly looks like it would work, albeit slightly less conveniently than if the program supported it directly. (I wonder if it/anything can do "KeyToJoy"?)
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Atma wrote:
Nitsuja, was there any way to allow/make vba to set the frame advance/other useful keys to a controller (even if its by modifying the .ini)?
No, there wasn't. (Does anyone else here know how to program in that functionality?)
BTW, I think I'm noticing a problem where the frame count that appears when loading a save state (while paused) shows a number that's 1 too high, is this happening for anyone else?
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OK. What do you mean by "mostly" glitchless, though? I think they (glitchless and glitchful) would both make good runs, but you can't really mix them in a non-arbitrary way, so are you referring to some other bug(s) in the game?
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Phil wrote:
Well, I don't think that's what make that 2-attack bug.
I am pretty sure that is what makes it happen, or at least it's something very close to what I said. Look at the battle vs. Rydia - their ATB bars match up exactly and you can do the 2-attack bug against Rydia just by putting A on autofire. And I've been able to make the 2-attack happen against the Mist Dragon by waiting the right number of frames before attacking with Cecil so that Kain's next turn comes up exactly when Cecil's next turn does.
Phil wrote:
And do you love to see the 2-attack bug or prefer that I don't use it at all?
Use it when it's faster like anything else, it's part of the game. It's not an overpowering bug or anything. (It's probably not often that it will save much time, but it would be silly to purposely avoid it when it does.)
Phil wrote:
Well, yes it's true that I can do Kain made a critical hit with his jump ability but it requires Cecil to not attack.
Maybe you could do an attack at the end of the previous enemy battle you run from, to change the critical hit randomness for the battle so that Kain gets a critical hit on at least one jump without having to wait for him?
Phil wrote:
I really don't understand why people think that Tellah can cast all such spells. It's written in some FAQs at GameFaqs.com that Tellah can cast Fire 3 on Snes with Recall. LIARS. I have also tried the japanese version. The only spells that Tellah can cast on Snes as well as the GBA version are: Fire, Ice(Blizzard), Lit(Thunder), Toad, Weak(Tornado), Doom(Death), Stone(Break) and Virus(Bio).
I had Tellah cast Lit 2 or Lit 3 (can't remember which) on Octomammoth when I played FFIV hardtype (it was a fan translation, but I doubt the translation changed Tellah's spells). It did several thousand HP of damage, killing that boss in 1 hit. It's possible they took it out of Tellah's spell list in this remake, though.
Phil wrote:
Btw, I found a way to manipulate Battles. Either I could make sure that there's no battle at all on my way or having different enemies in those battles. The only way that I found to do that requires to use quicksave and return to Title screen and load the game. I don't know if you prefer that since I think it can be annoying or not to do that at all.
I think you should do this if it really saves time overall compared to anything else you could do. I don't see how going through a few menus would be uglier than running from a few battles anyway, we already see enough running as it is, and if it's really faster then it should be smoother. Whatever you want to do, though.
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Not using the BIOS is more convenient for people watching the movie, Using the BIOS is more likely to allow for accurate emulation, but really I haven't seen the BIOS make any significant difference except for certain games that completely crash without it. If it's required for the game to work right then obviously the BIOS must be used, otherwise the author can choose whatever they want (and will probably want to choose not to use it, for the convenience of others).
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Well you told it to open the file read-only, so it's just obeying that, or so it thinks. But yeah, it's a bug from calling fopen with "rb" instead of "rb+".
EDIT: this bug is fixed now in v9.
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note: this info doesn't apply as of Snes9x1.43+ v9:
I think I know what the problem is. You have to make sure "read-only" is NOT checked when you load the movie, or else it won't save your movie file even if you press the read-only hotkey to switch to read+write mode. If you have it checked and switch out of read-only mode, it will only pretend to be recording, so to recover your movie you have to play it back again without read-only checked and then load your last save state and stop the movie. Quitting the emulator or loading another ROM is the same as choosing Stop Movie, btw, so I don't think that was the problem.
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I'm not very far into watching this yet, but I'm wondering about the Mist Dragon fight. You give 2 critical hits to Cecil's attack for 70+ damage, but Kain's jump can critical (although the screen doesn't flash) for 120+ damage. Would it have been too much waiting to get Kain to have those criticals instead of Cecil?
Also, did you find a way to cause the 2-attack bug? I think it can be made to happen at will by causing one character's ATB bar to become full exactly when another character's does, and quickly attacking with the first character at that moment.
In SNES FF4 it was very easy to make Tellah kill Octomammoth in 1 hit with Thundaga, but I guess it's not so easy to manipulate that with the changed randomness of the GBA version?
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CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
I didn't see that option. All I know is that my sram kept getting erased when I would play the movie back, and this is the only method I could think of to get around that.
It says "From reset (SRAM)" in the movie record dialog. If you select that it will save the SRAM into the movie instead of erasing it like normal.
EDIT: I just checked to make sure there's not a bug with this, and there isn't - the feature does work without erasing the SRAM on playback.
(Not to make a big deal of this, if you didn't intend this to really be submitted in the first place.)
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I think when the glitch doesn't work, it's because of the way you landed on the floor before trying to do the glitch. Specifically, if you don't land from at least a short fall beforehand (from ending a volteccer too close over the ground) then the glitch won't happen again until the next time you jump or fall. In that save state you gave, it is possible to glitch from that floor without jumping onto the boxes in front of you - just do a little jump onto the same floor and you'll find you're able to do the glitch after that from the floor.
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GeminiSaint wrote:
Um, I have the version with the monkey intro.
Why is the "Remove Intro" option grayed out in the re-recording version of VBA? Oh, well.
That option didn't work right, but you could try using GBATA to remove the intro from the ROM.
CtrlAltDestroy: Why did you start this movie from a savestate instead of from the SRAM? There's a "start from SRAM" option in VBA, which works for GBA games such as this. This movie could be converted to start from it, actually, by pasting its input into a movie that starts from the same SRAM, and such movies will submit properly (an exception would have to be made to accept it for publishing, but depending on the movie I think it would be a reasonable exception if enough people are sure of its validity).
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One response before I look at this: When you're doing the glitch, the thing that matters is not where your character is, but where the camera (screen center) is positioned. So it's possible that flying into walls doesn't waste any time at all as long as the camera keeps moving. Also, about the trick not working, it will only work if you're able to turn from the left edge of the screen for a frame while still staying all the way on the left edge of the screen. You need to be able to stick to the left edge for the trick to work (which I thought only depended on how far into the jump you are, but maybe there's some other factors).
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Kitsune: You will need a BIOS for this game. Just getting another ROM probably won't help. And don't ask where to get a BIOS; that's just as bad as asking for ROMs. (A BIOS is like a ROM for the system instead of for an individual game. It makes games emulate more accurately, but it doesn't come with the emulator because that would be illegal.)
Kitsune wrote:
I don't see anywhere in my last post where I have asked, I merely stated I would check EDonkey. Maybe you should get your eyes checked. -.-
You said that you had just downloaded the ROM, and then said the names of some sites and services where you would look to download another version of it. And you've done similar things in a few other threads (such as the FFIV Advance thread). If you're going to download ROMs illegally, don't announce it or details about it here.
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Maza wrote:
So I hope there will be a v17 in near future.
Since v16 was totally broken, here is v17 already.
- fixed movie loading and PNG saving problems of v16
- made frame count (and whole display) update when pausing at full speed during a skipped frame
- made "automatic update" checked by default in the memory viewer
- fixed some non-win32 code in gb.cpp and movie.h
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Maza wrote:
Nope, the new version (vba-rerecording-16) still has the same troubles as the older on (vba-rerecording-15). :(
When I save or load a state the emulator boost through exactly 10 frames.
Maza, it sounds like you didn't try any of my suggestions in the previous post. Try using 5% speed and/or try enabling "accurate sound pitch" and let me know what those do.
Also, FYI the problem was that when the menu was pulled down, the sound gets stopped temporarily, which was the only thing maintaining the emulator speed so it zipped forward a few frames until the sound came back. And there was a bug that made it think the menu was being pulled down every time you used any hotkey, which is why it happened when you saved or loaded a savestate. But that bug's been fixed now, so I'm not sure I believe you when you say it still happens upon simply saving a state.
Phil wrote:
So wasn't enough for v17
Yeah, I guess it is. Well this static linking seems to have broken too many things so I'm going to at least revert that, which should fix PNGs and movie loading.
Phil wrote:
If I want to remove somes of the graphics layer, I must go to Options->Video->Graphics layer then uncheck them. The main problem, after unchecking one it closes the menu and I am forced to redo Options->Video->Graphics layer.
Just use the hotkeys (ctrl 1-8) for the graphics layers, that's much easier. It would be nice if the video settings are reorganized into a video dialog (and the same for some other types of settings), but that's relatively unimportant considering that the video settings work ok now and changing it would take a lot of annoying GUI work.
There is some bug with the hotkeys sometimes not being set when you start up VBA, which usually goes back to normal if you close VBA and open it again, but I haven't had any luck finding that bug so it looks like it's not getting fixed yet.
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Phil wrote:
+ When I capture screen it also captures messages like frame counter.
There's an option to disable that. "Options->Video->Text display options..." and choose "On Game" instead of "In Game". (But you'll need to use v16 if you want the frame counter text to appear when you load a save state.)
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Phil wrote:
We can't capture picture when emu is paused.
No, that seems to work, but maybe you found a different bug. Capture screenshot only works if you choose BMP format (PNG crashes). My guess is that the requested "statically link with MFC" addition has broken the PNG support.
