Post subject: Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon
arflech
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After that game piqued my interest again, I remembered an exchange in the submission thread for Shining Soul in 49:46.88 by DarkKobold: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=235441#235441
DarkKobold wrote:
arflech wrote:
It's called "Resurrection of the Dark Dragon" and it does exist whaddaya have against Narsha and Zuika
That was more a joke than an actual statement of hate. Notably, the manipulation is pretty bad, it requires opening the 'item screen' so that the RNG moves. However, I was considering a 1-star New Game+, where I've already obtained all the cards. IIRC, Mawlock joins the team before the first battle after your first playthrough, and the card system is highly abusable.
I'll mention some things that I've found while playing the game, focusing on important differences from the original Shining Force: The Legacy of Great Intention... The RNG can also be moved by opening the status screen with the R button while the character is at initial position. The annoying feature of experience resetting to 0 on level-up no longer exists: Now, as in Shining Force II, experience is carried over. In addition to the excellent new characters, there are some interesting new weapons, most of which are especially powerful against particular classes of enemy. With the Item Box (and the fact that equipped weapons and accessories no longer take up Item space), you never have to worry about filling up your item capacity; also if Narsha, Zuika, or Mawlock decides to "Remove" an item while in battle, it will go into the Item Box and then be accessible to the main force even before these new characters are acquired (this is helpful for getting those Shower Cures early and selling off Narsha's first Mace for quick cash). Bleu is heavily nerfed. The soldiers in Guardiana now stationarily block the exit at first, so the trick to get into Battle 1 with just Max no longer works. It is harder than before to get Yogurt (only useful for the 100% run). In Alterone just before the end of Chapter 1, if you talk to the King before pulling on the hidden chain, the screen will pan over to where the chain is; the original did not give this clue, confusing players who were looking for an actual statue rather than a wall mount. There is much more dialogue, to fill out the backstory, and there are many more cutscenes; Paopigs are shown to be much more central to the people of Rune than in the original game, and the hero is no longer a silent protagonist. Beneficial spells and items now show their effects on the battle map, not in the cutscene playing beforehand. Character classes are no longer shown in the small HUD during battle, but only in the Status screen; also they are no longer abbreviated to 4 characters. You can only talk to two characters when Old Gert turns you into a chicken; Arthur isn't one of them, even though in the original he had something funny to say. Some of the treasure chests have been removed from battle areas, like the battle in Alterone, even if they are accessible outside of battle; also, opening a chest no longer ends a turn. The enemies now have levels, and you cannot access the Status screen for an enemy unless you have attacked at least one of that type in that battle; now some enemies of a certain type are weaker than others, like the Skeleton in the Cave of Darkness is stronger than those at Shade Abbey. There is now a clear bonus for most battles, the win condition(s) are clearly shown beforehand, and you can rearrange your team before each battle starting with the Marionette, who now has Freeze 4 and is still grossly overpowered. The order in which you add members to the fighting party in the Team menu influences their initial positions in the battle; this can be used to your advantage. The hero now learns Supernova instead of Bolt; characters now gain a "Magic Resistance" stat, but only if they also use magic, and the general trends in stat growth are available in characters' Status pages. Characters can now equip more than one ring at a time; one important ring now available in Chapter 2, the Charm Ring, imparts additional magic resistance, even to characters that normally have none. Perhaps most importantly: If you hold down the B button while walking around and not in battle, you run.
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I think there would be room for a run of this game. Maybe two, even. I mean, someone would need to play a 100% first playthrough to get a verifiable savestate. This first run would different from the Genesis game in terms of graphical and mechanical differences as well as the presense of Narsha/Zuika/Mawlock who could all have a pretty profound effect on late-game strategies. I'm thinking of the Move spell, here, plus movement-related cards. A new game+ run with all cards, of course, would be completely different and pretty incredible to see, I'd say. Both sound like a ton of work though.
arflech
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FreshFeeling wrote:
I mean, someone would need to play a 100% first playthrough to get a verifiable savestate.
Would it be okay if it were not a speedrun or done with tool assistance but just a VBM of an ordinary 100% playthrough, even if such a run ended up being about a day long? I might try doing this (or at least just getting all of the cards), eschewing my typical strategy of powerleveling in order to make the total play time shorter so that the VBM would fit on Microstorage. Also, what is needed is a verifiable save *file* like what the emulator produces when using the in-game save feature.
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If you just want to generate a verifiable save, then the movie that makes the save doesn't need to be optimized. I think FreshFeeling just feels that an optimized movie would be worth watching.
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arflech
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Derakon wrote:
If you just want to generate a verifiable save, then the movie that makes the save doesn't need to be optimized. I think FreshFeeling just feels that an optimized movie would be worth watching.
I just got an idea...maybe I'll do an ordinary run, send off the VBM and save-file (and savestate, because I remembered that the New Game + run can start from one), and then dump the AVI and chop it up to turn into a Let's Play on YouTube.
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Derakon wrote:
If you just want to generate a verifiable save, then the movie that makes the save doesn't need to be optimized. I think FreshFeeling just feels that an optimized movie would be worth watching.
Yeah, bingo. I'd love to see either type of run. The opinion of the masses is probably different; this game basically already has a published run (kinda), and it ain't the most world-renowned game.
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arflech: Are you planning on doing this run, or just making a save for someone else? I made a movie that got to around halfway through chapter 3, trying to get 100% of the cards. The sad thing is, one you've named the main character, you are stuck with it. If you are trying to convince me to do a run... you know what to name the main character >_<
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arflech
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making a save for someone else I lack the tenacity to actually do a TAS, let alone a 100% TAS and indeed, although I normally stick with the defaults, that special one-character name Z will definitely help with the text speed but I wonder...when you do the New Game +, what exactly gets retained? I know that the cards do, and some of the items do (based on the description in a FAQ of the conditions for getting the Teeny Bikini)...
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Yo Arflech, could you please tell me what you normally do for a simple, ordinary speed run of Shining Soul?
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arflech wrote:
but I wonder...when you do the New Game +, what exactly gets retained? I know that the cards do, and some of the items do (based on the description in a FAQ of the conditions for getting the Teeny Bikini)...
It appears that you only get the teeny bikini if you have 100% of the cards, and you are 'given' a new one - it will instead be a Teeny Bikini (if you don't have one). That is what I gathered from the FAQ.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
arflech
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FionordeQuester wrote:
Yo Arflech, could you please tell me what you normally do for a simple, ordinary speed run of Shining Soul?
I've never done a speed run
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Really? Because I got the impression that you did, considering you said this... ...eschewing my typical strategy of powerleveling in order to make the total play time shorter so that the VBM would fit on Microstorage. Also, what is needed is a verifiable save *file* like what the emulator produces when using the in-game save feature. I got the impression that you at least knew the rudimentary steps for how to beat this game quickly and efficiently.
RD3
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I haven't played this game in ages but it's a real blast - the card system with Mawlock would be perfect for TAS since you can clone, give extra movement, give extra turns, give flying abilities and kill weak enemies either by using a card to hit all of them or using a card that lets you attack from anywhere on the map (basically, kill the boss character quickly). Beginning maps would be extremely easy to finish quickly but you risk crippling your other characters since they miss out on the exp - Mawlock only gets 1 exp for killing things at the beginning whereas lower level characters get your standard 49 exp (IIRC) so he'd be better off as a support character - using cards to give characters extra movement or flying abilities would probably be wiser in the long run. However, this is a TAS so I have no idea if that would be the best idea or not Mawlock does only start out with 20 MP when you get him though so it's unlikely you'd be able to use cards like Dark Dragon(?) which cost 50 MP. However, if you're not aiming for a 100% 'card' run then you can skip out some of the more useless cards (like Yogurt...lol)
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It turns out that the 'R' technique is much slower than the item technique for RNG manipulation.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
arflech
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FionordeQuester wrote:
Really? Because I got the impression that you did, considering you said this... ...eschewing my typical strategy of powerleveling in order to make the total play time shorter so that the VBM would fit on Microstorage. Also, what is needed is a verifiable save *file* like what the emulator produces when using the in-game save feature. I got the impression that you at least knew the rudimentary steps for how to beat this game quickly and efficiently.
I got that inspiration from watching the TAS of the original Genesis game.
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So, I finished my verification movie, it is a whopping 14 hours long, and is available here. But it does get all cards. Here is the start of a NewGame+ movie: Link to video
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Hm. Already two battles were more-or-less skipped, the skipping is still kind of time-consuming. It's not a BLJ. This is either going to be totally cool and wicked awesome or... uh... conceptually pretty neat and awfully boring to watch. I'm hoping for and expecting the former.
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I'm surprised that the pause on each enemy unit is so much longer in this version compared to the original. It really slows the game down. Pretty game, though, and at least the portraits aren't as doofy as they are in SF2.
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arflech
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wow you had much greater resolve than I did, DarkKobold :-(
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Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.