Posts for primorial_soup

Posted: 3/18/2006 11:08 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

marioguy wrote:

Okay, I'm done watching the movie. I know a good idea of what you could of done, you should of kept metrenome. With luck manipulation you can make it always be Horn Drill, Gillotine, or Fissure. With 100% accuracy. You'll also have 10 PP. I think that would make the run a little faster.

I thought about this as well. Metronome could potentially eliminate all of the two-hit battles after Poké Tower (granted, there weren't very many), although some of these could have been been taken care of simply by rolling a stronger Mew. The only reasonable option for a move to replace would have been Thunderbolt, which means that certain things, such as the battle with Lorelei, would take a lot of manipulation. But I do agree this could have saved a good deal of time, if it were possible to plan the attacks as to not have to heal an additional time (you'll notice after the last Rival battle, I have 0 Ice Beams, 0 Psychic, and 0 Thunderbolts).

Creatus wrote:

Why there was animations in the last battle with Gary ? Those really took some time (I have only seen AVI).

The game turns these on automatically. I use the attacks with the fastest animations (Ice Beam and Strength) as much as possible because of it.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/18/2006 12:30 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

I've never played this game personally, so I may not be the best critic, but after the first three or four floors (once I figured out what was going on), I was thoroughly entertained. I especially liked the creative 'solutions' which involve narrowly escaping death... multiple times. I had a question though: are the green bricks supposed to be able to block two Madusas (in different rows) at the same time? A very well played and obviously well thought out run, with high entertainment value, even for those who don't know what's going on at first. Voting yes :)

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/18/2006 9:17 AM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Maza wrote:

I also think that there should be Mew in the screenshot. Maybe from the battle where primo is fighting/catching Mew since it looks much better from the front.

Maybe something like this?

Maza wrote:

And it looks like I forgot to complement Primo on how good this run really is. All the critical hitsa, non-critical hits, item usages etc. were done very nicely. I didn't notice any spot that could be done better.

I tried very hard to eliminate any noticable pauses. In all but a few cases, I was able to get the delays down to 10 frames or less, and the majority of those were less than 5. I do think this could be better, but not by much. Thanks for the compliments :)

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/18/2006 8:59 AM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Kyrsimys wrote:

I was under the impression that Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Red are two different games. Am I mistaken or is there another reason for this run obsoleting the Pokemon Blue run?

I hadn't actually meant for this run to obsolete the old one. There are a few differences in the games (mainly dealing with pokémon availability), but neither run does anything version specific; I suppose that may be why. As for the screenshot, I probably would have chosen something along these lines:

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/18/2006 6:49 AM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

marioguy wrote:

The video lags most of the time, any suggestions?

You might try using a different media player. It seems to run fine on my (very old) computer with Windows Media Player 6.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/17/2006 5:38 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

I can't say I really understand what's going on in this run either... especially during the pizza contests. After several tries, I will concur that this game is very difficult to beat without attacking anything. I also liked the rythm in the helicopter stage. Voting yes.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/16/2006 11:59 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Very well done. Mine Cart Madness blew my mind, and K.Rool part two made me laugh out loud. Voting yes.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/15/2006 9:27 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

LagDotCom wrote:

Very nicely done! One thing that did make me laugh was when you chose not to learn Metronome... surely that could kill anything of your choice? Or would the waiting time to luck manipulate be too high? Or just not enough PP?

Metronome does seem like it would be a pretty nice ace up the sleeve. I know there were a few points near the end when I really wished I would have had Thunder. But, with the move set I have, there really aren't any trouble battles at all. At the point when Mew tries to learn it, I could replace Water Gun, but when Mew tries to learn Psychic, I'd be forced to replace something... if I decided to keep Metronome, most likely Thunderbolt. I use Thunderbolt 13 times between Poke Tower and learning Psychic, so it's nearly depleated anyway. During the Elite Four I used it 7 times, so Metronome certainly has enough PP for that as well. It might also help with the Koga battle, as two of his were two hit battles, which would have been one hit with Earthquake or Psychic, or a number of attacks really... the more I think about this, the more it seems like this might be a viable option. I do need Water Gun 4 times though, but this could probably be handled with the two Ice Beams I'd be saving from koga, and with Mega Punch, of which I had three left over. My main concern is, of course, how easy it would be to manipulate which move Metronome does, and how much extra time it would take to manipulate the correct attack. I'm fairly certain that manipulating the duration of the button press won't affect it, which means one would be limited to one attack per frame. Assuming a 1/256 chance of getting the move you need, and allowing recursion of one button press, the expected wait would be about 21 frames. Still, this certainly warrants investigation, as it could potentially elliminate all of the battles that weren't OHKOs after Poke Tower. This was a total of 12 cases, times (a minimum of) 300 frames... this might very well save a minute or so if Metronome is in fact manipulatable (which seems likely).

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/15/2006 11:33 AM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

sargon wrote:

And I do have a question to author: why not learn bubblebeam when you get it from misty? It's more powerful...

Well, the simple answer is that whenever I need to use Water Gun, it's a one hit KO anyway. Learning Bubblebeam is completely unnecessary, although it is more powerful.

sargon wrote:

Oh and really good job on this run, I don't see any major improvement of this run unless the tactic is changed or some new glitch is found. gratz

Thanks :)

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/15/2006 9:33 AM
(Edited: 3/15/2006 10:05 AM)

Post subject: Re: #1014: primorial#soup's SGB PokÃ©mon Red in 1:46:19

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant. I think I've got it now.

Bag of Magic Food wrote:

I demand proof of this assertion

Wikipedia wrote:

There are even rumors that Mew is available in the Japanese Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow versions. One such rumor claims that Mew was originally given from the Game Freak Pokédex designer in Celadon City once the player caught the other 150 Pokémon; another claims that the trick to find Mew by surfing to an immovable pickup truck east of the S.S. Anne actually worked in the Japanese games. Both of these rumors have been proven false.

I must have read some bad information somewhere >_>;; EDIT:

KDR_11k wrote:

Is the time the text takes for appearing constant or could shorter names reduce text times? Especially pokemon names, which would be printed a few thousand times over the course of a run would save a few frames that way, provided the text entry dialog doesn't eat too much time.

Glancing over my spreadsheets, Chamander's name comes up about 73 times. Changing his name to a single character would save 9x73 frames, or 657 frames. Entering a new name would most likely take less than this. Mew's name comes up around 170 times, and a single character name would save 340 frames, which is probably pretty close to the amount of time it would take to enter a new name. At any rate, it couldn't possibly save more than a few hundred frames, and certainly not 2 minutes. EDIT2: Those numbers aren't quite right. There are other places where the pokémon's name appears other than attacks, such as leveling, evolving and the dialog "Mew is unaffected!". Pokémon R/B is short enough that it doesn't make too much of a difference, especially if using Mew. In a G/S/C run, it might just save a minute or two.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/15/2006 9:00 AM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Ahh, thanks for the heads up, I hadn't thought of that. Should I cancel this submission, or can you make the necessary modifications?

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/15/2006 8:31 AM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Run completed and submitted (I told you that would go fast). Ending in-game clock was 1:45. I appreciate everyone's feedback and suggestions, with special thanks to Tilus for suggesting the majority of the optimizations with cut five minutes off my original run.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 3/11/2006 2:30 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

This update took a little longer than I expected. Due to insanely bad luck, I was stuck on a single attack (Gary's Pidgeotto on S.S. Anne) for over a week. I ended up going through well over 4000 attacks before I finally got the "one in thirty-two" max crit that I needed. The current video file, with progress through Vermillion Gym, now 5914 frames faster than the original. During this segment I began using the memory viewer a lot more heavily. I located the DVs for random encounters (and actually trainer battles as well, but it's always constant), and was able to roll a Mew with 14/15 attack, 14/15 speed, and 13/15 special. The location in the Ram (0xFF80) is CFF0. The actual stats for the pokémon are just after, which is useful for knowing exactly how many HP it has. I also located the damage your attack is going to do, which saved a lot of time. A really handy thing about this is, one frame before the actual damage is calculated, it flashes the maximum damage posible, which allowed for better planning of attacks. This is at location D0D8. I've also refined my battle strategy a bit. I've found a way to generate 1320 unique attacks waiting no more than 10 frames. The strategy is this: when you come to an attack, go through the first eleven possibilities (waiting 0 to 10 frames), and for each of those manipulate the duration of the press (5-25 frames is the operable range). If you didn't get what you needed, go back to the previous button press and wait one frame. Once again, go through 10 possibilities (waiting 0 to 9 frames). If you allow two levels of recursion (which I ended up doing for the Pidgeotto), the number of possible attacks jumps to 5720. Certain factors, such as which attack you opponent does, and whether or not they miss, are not quite so easy to generate possibilities for. I do end up waiting for more than 10 frames in a few places, most notably when manipulating 1/256 misses. From here on out though, it should be smooth sailing, with OHKOs basically the entire way.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 2/23/2006 7:35 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

OmnipotentEntity wrote:

Were the 72 frames to get back into the Abra part of the rotation?

Indeed. I overshot my target area, and had to wait as a result. But even so, the ranges weren't quite where I expected them to be. I really don't have enough datapoints to conclude anything, but it seems that there are in fact random factors which affect the cycles. Although I certainly should have passed up the Abra 10 region, I should have been dead on for the Abra 8s, for which I was once again about 80 frames too early. I have no idea what these factors are however, and have even less of an idea of how to manipulate them. But as the run is, this was the soonest an Abra could be possibly be caught, within 5 or so frames.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 2/21/2006 7:12 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Through experimentation, I have determined theory 1 to be correct (or at very least, theory 2 to be incorrect). With no other options, I decided to go back and save a few frames. I estimated 80 to be the bare minimum I needed, but was aiming for 120 to have a buffer for manipulation. I actually saved 160 frames, but end up waiting 72 frames for my abra (by having to walk three steps into the grass instead of one). Saved frames result from many small improvements: using the Ember saved from the gym battle in a smarter location, avoiding unnecessary critical hits through better damage manipulation, and a better battle strategy overall. The user Truncated suggested that perhaps non-critical hits could be manipulated to crit. I experiemented a little bit at the time, but found it didn't work too often. But in fact, it works quite often, allowing for even faster battles. The current video file, now 4334 frames (well over a minute!) faster than my original run.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 2/2/2006 5:59 AM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

So I'm through Nugget Bridge again, and it's time to catch an Abra. I'm currently 1425 frames ahead of my Charmander test run, and 4155 frames ahead of my initial run. But as far as catching an Abra goes, I've found either I find one right away, or I can't find one at all. For this run, the latter is the case. I tried everything I could think of; waiting to end the last battle, redoing the last battle completely, but nothing seemed to work. Then I began to notice a trend. All of the pokémon I was encountering were either lv12 Pidgeys or lv8 Kakunas. They both have high occurance rates, but together they only make up 30% of the probability space. I figured something was up, so I decided to do some research. Entering the grass at different frame counts, walking until a random battle occured, and then recording the frame at which the pokémon appeared. I repeated this for the two cases mentioned above, both waiting a few frames to end the battle (at the got cash for winning screen), and redoing the battle entirely. The results are as follows, sorted by time of appearance:

winning...88277     winning...88279     different battle
-----------------   -----------------   -----------------
88815 - pidgey 12   88837 - pidgey 12   88835 - pidgey 12
88840 - kakuna 8    88839 - kakuna 8    88841 - kakuna 8
88862 - kakuna 8    88846 - kakuna 8    88852 - kakuna 8
88867 - kakuna 8    88865 - kakuna 8    88855 - pidgey 12
88887 - kakuna 8    88866 - kakuna 8    88856 - kakuna 8
88892 - kakuna 8    88866 - kakuna 8    88868 - kakuna 8
88893 - kakuna 8    88870 - kakuna 8    88879 - kakuna 8
88903 - kakuna 8    88927 - weedle 7    88898 - kakuna 8
88916 - weedle 7    88946 - weedle 7    88901 - kakuna 8
88929 - weedle 7    88954 - weedle 7    88916 - kakuna 8
88933 - weedle 7    88976 - weedle 7    88922 - kakuna 8
88934 - weedle 7    89028 - pidgey 13   88940 - weedle 7
88978 - abra 8      89029 - oddish 14   88964 - weedle 7
88986 - abra 8      89036 - oddish 14   89018 - abra 8
88994 - abra 8      89052 - oddish 14   89026 - oddish 14
89030 - abra 10     89062 - abra 10     89040 - oddish 14
89043 - abra 10     89072 - abra 10     89051 - abra 10
89055 - abra 10     89073 - abra 10     89067 - abra 10
89059 - abra 10     89165 - pidgey 12   89071 - abra 10
89082 - oddish 13   89260 - weedle 7    89121 - oddish 12

You'll notice that each pokémon type (species and level) has a specific range that it appears in. There is admittedly a bit of overlap between the ranges, but this is both explainable and expected. There are actually two rolls for random encounters: once when you first enter a tile, and once when you are about to leave (to confirm the second of these, you'll notice that leaving a square in a different direction often produces an encounter where you are still in the old square, but facing the new direction). Taking this into mind, all of these values could be plus or minus 18 frames, which puts things back into their respective ranges. Also notice that changing random factors in the game did not affect these ranges at all. Additionally, they seem to repeat every ~320 frames or so. I currently have two theories: Theory 1: The z80 processor has a register known as the r register. Every clock cycle, this register is incremented by one. If not accessed too often, this register can be used as a simple (albeit very bad) RNG. My theory is that the code takes this value, and if it is within a certain range, produces the corresponding pokémon. This would mean that in effect, which pokémon you see at a specific frame count is set in stone. Theory 2: When the player first enters a zone (i.e. changes from one geographical area to another), the distribution is seeded randomly, and then continues on it's normal 320 frame cycle. If theory 1 is correct, then I only have two options. Either wait 160 frames for an Abra, or go back and try to save ~120 frames previously, which will indeed prove difficult. If theory 2 is correct, then I can perhaps solve this problem by waiting a certain number of frames before entering the Nugget Bridge area. Although truthfully, I really have no reason to believe this theory, I'm just being hopeful.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 1/27/2006 9:10 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Tilus: once again I must thank you for providing invaluable information. I hadn't realized that different pokémon have different experience curves. Mew happens to have one of the fastest (at least up to level 50), and Gyarados has the absolute slowest. From the equations provided on the site, I calculated that a level 47 mew has earned approximately 96000 experience points. When this same experience is given to a Gyarados, he'd only be level 42. This level discrepancy is so high, that I think it rules Gyarados out as a valid option.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 1/27/2006 2:17 AM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Move progression for a Gyarados would probably be something like this: Start: Bite, Dragon Rage, Leer, Hydro Pump -Bubblebeam replaces Leer. No brainer. -Thunderbolt replaces Dragon Rage. Against pokémon level < 20, Dragon Rage will typically be a OHKO. But at this point in the game, it's outlived its usefulness. -Ice Beam replaces Bubblebeam. Also not much to think about. Just about everything Bubblebeam would have been effective against, Ice Beam is as well. -Surf replaces Hydro Pump. This would be happening directly before Blaine. It's a shame to see it go, but I see it as a necessity. -Strength replaces Bite. This is certainly questionable. A strong normal attack is needed to fight Sabrina, and I don't think Bite would cut it. There are certainly a lot of other options, but this one is particularly appealing, because it saves having to teach Strength to Charmander. Elite Four battles would be something like this: Lorelei: Strength against Jynx, Thunderbolt against all others. Bruno: Surf against Onixi, anything else against the fighters (this should be fine, since they have such a low special). Agatha: Thunderbolt/Ice Beam against Golbat, and the rest, I'm not sure really. Most likely a single Ice Beam to freeze them, and finish off with Thunderbolt or Surf. The 60 Gengar would probably be a three hit battle. Lance: Thunderbolt for Gyarados, Ice Beam for the rest. The big question becomes whether in fact Gyarados would be faster than Mew overall. Gyarados will save a lot of time in the first half of the game, with one hit battles that even a level 20 Squirtle/Charmander couldn't manage. The third quarter would be about the same (as Mew OHKO'd the entire way), but the Elite Four would be quite a bit slower. My gut feeling is that Gyarados would in fact be faster, but since the routes become so different, the only way to test this would be to do a complete run.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 1/26/2006 7:01 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

FractalFusion wrote:

primorial#soup wrote:
Fun fact: A level 7 Gyarados knows Bite, Dragon Rage, Leer, and Hydro Pump.
You're not kidding, right? That sounds too good, considering Gyarados can learn Ice Beam and Thunderbolt as well.

I'm not kidding. Dragon Rage is ridiculous this early in the game, a guarenteed 40 points of damage, which would probably defeat Misty's Staryu in one hit, and the Starmie in two. And Hydro pump is 120 power... I think that'd handle the last 5 pokémon in Mt. Moon pretty nicely. Bubble Beam and Bite would probably handle Nugget Bridge/Route to Bill's. Then there's also the advantage of not having to pick up the Water Gun or Mega Punch TMs. Gyarados would perhaps be a better option than Mew, if it weren't for one detail, that being Agatha. A level 60 Gengar is a pretty tough customer, without being able to learn Dig, Earthquake, or Psychic, I'm not sure what his chances are. Perhaps there's another option that I'm overlooking? But if Gyarados was to be used instead of Mew, I think that starting with Squirtle would probably once again become the faster option. EDIT: Actually, I'm wrong. Charmander would still be a faster choice. Although he's 1000 frames behind entering Mt. Moon, he makes up for it later by serving as the Cut slave, saving 1500 frames. That, and the trigger for Gyarados happens to have two grass-type pokémon.

FractalFusion wrote:

Spikeman wrote:
I believe the super nerd at the end of Mt. Moon will give you a mew. Have you tried him?
I heard his last Pokemon generates a Mew, but some FAQ said that you can't get this Mew. Maybe the FAQ never thought about Escape Rope.

This is true. It appears that the Rocket by the Mega Punch TM is also the first instance of a glitch trainer, which because they're on the same level, means that the Super Nerd can't be used as a Mew trigger.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 1/26/2006 2:40 AM

Quote

primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

It is correct that wild pokémon have random stats, but as Bag of Magic Food indicated, the variation is limited to two or three values. I did more experimentation in Mt. Moon, escape roping, fighting a trainer on the first level, and then having a random encounter before entering the lower level. It seems that both Paras and Clefairy have a special that's too low (or rather, they are too low of level). So it looks as if Cerulean is in fact the first opportunity to catch a Mew. Fun fact: A level 7 Gyarados knows Bite, Dragon Rage, Leer, and Hydro Pump.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 1/25/2006 10:50 PM

Quote

primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Bag of Magic Food wrote:

Could you use a wild Pokemon battle as the trigger? I know it'd be tough to find a random one with 21 Special, but hey...

Yes, you can! I can't believe I never thought of this. You do however, need to battle a trainer first, for this I could use the first Hiker on the route to Bill's... he has a Machop and a Geodude, which would be a much faster battle than the swimmer in the Gym. Then in the patch of grass two tiles away from him, I could encounter a suitable pokémon. However, wild pokémon have random stats, which certainly complicates matters. In that patch of grass are Weedles, Kakunas, Pidgeys, Oddishes, and Abras. I think we can scratch the first three from our list of candidates. I did a short trail starting from an older run. A level 10 Abra produced a Staryu, meaning a special of 27. Even if I were to find a level 8, it would still probably be too high. A level 12 Oddish produced a Gastly, meaning a special of 25. Once again a level 10 Oddish might be to high, but it's worth a shot. I'll continue playing with this theory and report results later. HUGE EDIT: Apparently, I've told a minor fib. I said that fighing trainers in the same zone as the glitch trainer would reset the glitch, but that's not the case. The truth of the matter is that you can't fight them at all. Instead, you can walk right past them! *UN*fortunately, in the glitched area, you can't use A, B, or start. Which means I can't simply avoid those two trainers, because there happens to be a couple fossils in the way. /me curses. What I could do in this situation is save and continue from the other side of last trainer, but I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be allowed in a speedrun video, right? Unless pokémon happens to have a reset code? (EDIT: Err, I can't save because I can't use the start button. Nevermind this.) In any case, I'll be looking for other opportunities to exploit this. Oh, and the lowest level Oddish in that patch of grass happens to be level 12, so unfortunately that idea's not going to work. I appreciate everyone's input!

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 1/25/2006 9:25 PM

Quote

primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Maza wrote:

Are you sure that Mew can't be caught any sooner? If it would be, you'd get more levels to Mew rather than your starter, which would most likely speed up the run.

In order to execute the Mew glitch, two components are required: 1. The 'glitch trainer'. A trainer which notices you from five tiles away (i.e. the moment they scroll onto the screen). 2. The 'trigger trainer'. A trainer whose last pokémon has a special of exactly 21 (other values will produce other pokémon). After the glitch trainer has scrolled onto the screen, but before they notice you, press start. Then use Fly/Dig/Teleport/Escape rope. Fight the trigger trainer. The next time you return to the area of the glitch trainer, a Mew will appear. At first glance, Mt. Moon seems to have the necessary components. The Rocket near the Mega Punch TM serves as the glitch trainer (Escape Roping back to the Poké Center outside), and the very last trainer (the one guarding the fossils) serves as the trigger. The problem is, they both happen to be in the same area of Mt. Moon, the lower level. Fighting a trainer in the same area of the glitch trainer seems to reset the glitch, and Mew doesn't spawn. I know for a fact that this is the first instance of a trigger trainer in the game. There may be other possibilities for a glitch trainer, but in any case, it would require a lot of backtracking. Doing it in Cerulean is very clean and compact; I need to heal before Bill's anyway (to Teleport back), and backtracking consists of walking Nugget Bridge another time. But truthfully said, even if it were possible to obtain Mew in Mt. Moon, I'm not sure how useful it would be. The next battle is either Gary, or the Gym, both of which would be impossible for a level 7 Mew. In fact I'm very lucky that the first trainer on the route to Bill's happens to be an Onix, as Water Gun is four times as effective as normal, and this allows me to gain three levels without any effort.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 1/25/2006 2:51 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Spikeman wrote:

Would it be faster to catch the second mew and use it as an HM slave?

This question was answered about a page back, but I'll answer it again. Catching a second Mew would involve fighting yet another additional trainer, and even more backtracking. The time it takes to catch the first one is only offset by the fact that Mew is stronger than Squirtle/Blastoise, therefore resulting in many more OHKOs, and also because of the TM flexibility alleviating the need to catch a second pokémon to deal with Lorelei (see Tilus' run). But in comparison to catching two wild pokémon, catching a single Mew takes at least 5 times as long. That, and this really isn't an issue anymore (at least for me anyway), as I'll be using Snorlax as my second slave. So really what the question comes down to is whether catching a Mew is faster than catching a random Pidgey on the way to Vermillion. I assure you, it's not.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 1/24/2006 8:18 PM

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primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Wandering Road wrote:

Hmm...do you think it might be faster to catch a Spearow and trade for Farfetch'd in Vermilion, since he can use Cut and Fly?

In general, probably not. It takes about 1500 frames to catch a wild pokémon; I'd be willing to bet that the trade animation takes considerably longer than this. However, It looks like I won't be needing a Cut slave at all, as Charmander fills that role nicely. Instead, I'll be needing a Surf slave, for which I intend to use Snorlax. This will save even more time, since the Snorlax encounter is unavoidable anyway. The encounter itself (from the time Snorlax attacks to the time the character can move again) is about 750 frames, which in effect will all be saved. Needless to say, I've very excited about this new run.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))

Posted: 1/24/2006 6:44 PM
(Edited: 1/24/2006 8:21 PM)

Quote

primorial_soup

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (87)

Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Maza wrote:

I just watched you newest run and it was very fast. The trainer battles were started nicely, good idea. :)

I actually got this idea from Tilus' run. He deserves credit :)

Maza wrote:

Thou', I do have one question: Why four Poke Balls?

Ball 1: Abra, necessary for Mew glitch, and saves time in backtracking. Ball 2: Mew, main battler after Nugget Bridge. Ball 3: Oddish, Cut slave. Ball 4: Pidgey, Fly slave. This leg is highly optimized, and pushes Squirtle to his limits. It's even about 1000 frames faster than Tilus' run at this point, which is impressive considering I spend extra time purchasing escape ropes, extra time picking up the Water Gun TM, and extra time picking up the Mega Punch TM. I was pretty sure this was going to be my final run. Then I had a crazy idea. I was going over trainer battles looking for room for improvement when I noticed something. Over one third of the Pokémon fought in this section are bugs! Which, although they're weak, Squirtle still has trouble with. I began to wonder if perhaps Charmander would be a better choice. The result of my curiosity is this test run, which was completed in less than 2 hours. That being said, it's rather clumsy, and rather unoptimized at times. An example of this sloppiness is Brock's Geodude; manipulating a Tackle miss is a lot faster than letting him do Defense Curl, but I let it slide because I wasn't expecting any real results from this. I also did 6 hits on him instead of 5, which I'm quite sure is possible. If you watch the Onix battle, my second crit is huge, allowing an 'easy' 5 turn battle. Coming out of the Gym he's about 4000 frames behind, but he makes up ground fast. Besides just the bugs, Charmander has other advantages. He's stronger and faster direct from the starting blocks. On top of that, Scratch is more powerful than Tackle, and Ember is just as powerful as Water Gun, but is learned 6 levels earlier. Squirtle's three disappointing 'one-pixel crits' were easily done. For most of the battles, little or no manipulation was necessary. Anyway, long story short, this run clocks in 781 frames faster than my best Squirtle run. I was amazed. So it looks like I'll be doing this leg yet another time, with Charmander, without the sloppiness, and with more aggressive text box manipulation.

print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))