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I guess I'll chime in.
I've been keeping my eye on RCR EX TAS progress for some months and while I really wanted to see the game represented on the site, I wasn't too thrilled with the choice of category, since Any% seemed like a far more natural debut. I don't recall the exact theoretical TAS route but Lottery->Excalibur (lots of 'em) + Skaterz->Pump Sneaks was assumed to be fastest. One major routing issue was that there was no fast way to deathwarp back to Waterfront Mall other than jumping in the pit before the warehouse after some immense backtracking but if you find a way to do all the shopping and then void out or die in Mojo's room, something similar would likely be optimal. Amusingly this route would look very similar to the current RCR NES TAS. I'd really strongly recommend reaching out to the RTA community on discord for advice for routing on future submissions.
Finally, I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere but the RNG is handled by a simple index and array of size 128 or 256, I forget which. The index cycles through the array taking the value of both the element retrieved and the one after it to do RNG magic until the end of the array where the RNG array is rerandomised and index is reset to 0. An interesting note is that the array always seems to be initialised with the same RNG values at power on, which hinted at an RTA-viable route to using Lotto Tix. Also we were looking for the Gang Distribution table in the ROM (chance of each gang appearing in each room) but were unable to find it - please let me know if you discover anything. Good luck!
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MUGG wrote:
Do you know more differences?
Generally most bosses drop more cash and the small fish drop less. Shop prices are significantly changed. JP rounds down to nearest ¥50 after death warp, whereas US rounds down to nearest $0.05. Also US can buffer input B to exit the Belongings menu, saving a frame. The reason I specifically mentioned the 'hopping off items with up/down' mechanic is because, apart from these changes, it's literally the only difference that I'm aware of. US is identical to PAL afaik.
MUGG wrote:
Perhaps Japanese's easy difficulty would allow you to kill bosses even quicker?
Undoubtedly. Easy lowers stamina and will power, and JP has an estimated 2-3 seconds of text-related RTA time saves, but US was a goal choice.
MUGG wrote:
In that first warehouse, you could L+R glitch through the wall, but I haven't tested much. I have only gotten it to work using crate/trashcan.
I'm only aware of that being possible in 2P, but would probably save up to 5s if implemented in 1P route.
MUGG wrote:
You can enter shop and despawn by L+R glitch. This causes you to first enter the shop and after leaving it, you are placed at the start of the map.
I had briefly tried using L+R for the shopping segment but I couln't find any significant improvements as Happy Feet Shoes is really close to loading zone so it's fairly quick to run after exiting shop.
MUGG wrote:
It is possible to slightly kick a crate from afar by L+R glitch.
This would certainly add entertainment value, but I'm struggling to think of a situation where it wouldn't lose time.
MUGG wrote:
If you hold a crate, and an enemy attacks with a crate, while you start running, you will be running backwards.
Also amusing, but unfortunately Ryan runs a lot slower in reverse and the setup would be too costly.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
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Hey Chamale, love your work!
I didn't solve the RNG but 0x0018-0019 controls gang type, weapons, and enemy behaviour. There are only 8 initial spawn configurations for each room, which is determined by a global timer at 0x052B that increments every time game polls for input. As a full cycle is only about 0.27 seconds, it was often better to wait for a desirable future pattern, which gave ample time to find the appropriate gang with fewer weapons. Most of my re-records came from doing this manually.
High school appearance probability by map
The last possible empty room is outside Vacant 3rd Factory so some lag in the Factory and Burb Village is unavoidable. Also, despite the thrown Chain in Capitol Ave. Bridge, there were no lag frames from death warp until Home Boys outside Warehouse.
I tried briefly to replicate Simon in your TAS to no avail, would be interesting if it's exclusive to Boat Shoes, but I think I just haven't found it yet :)
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
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@Judges My excitement with finishing the TAS may have got the better of me, as I have since found a cleaner Twins fight which saves 65 frames, see User movie #67425670568261337. Is it possible to substitute this for my previous submission?
@xxezrabxxx Thank you, submission notes were edited to include your encode.
@mklip2001 Only Squids, Internationals, or Cowboys after Rocko would yield enough money to get the $36.95 for Boat Shoes without a costly detour. Fighting the harder gangs isn't horrible as long as they don't cause unnecessary lag by using/dropping weapons.
@MUGG Ivan skip would be a huge achievement is possible, I would love to hear if you make any progress - it might be worth checking out Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari (J) as one of the very few differences in mechanics is that you can't hop off a crate/trashcan by pressing up or down. I have tried briefly in both but it seems the door won't open unless the Event Flag at 0x0044 is raised
@everyone else Thank you for your kind words!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
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Memory wrote:
I'm having trouble understanding the research rollover bug from the ufopaedia text. Does it basically allow you to allocate "wasted" research time upon completion of one research project to another project?
Each night at midnight the game iterates through the list of research projects and deducts the number of Scientists allocated from the number of Scientist-days remaining to complete each project. If Scientist-days remaining of a given project <=0 the research is complete and the player is prompted to reallocate Scientists. Once the player exits the research menu, the game continues to iterate through the list, repeating the above steps if necessary. The research rollover bug occurs when these reallocated Scientists are assigned to a project further down the list as the game checks each project one-by-one, allowing for the player to get credit for research on more than one project.
Note that the table included in the submission text is sorted by order of beginning the project in the TAS and does not exactly correspond to the project completion order. The complete ordered list of projects is available here