Joined: 7/8/2007
Posts: 27
Location: North Carolina, USA
I wouldn't necessarily mind doing a sub of the run if people really wanted that. Since I don't really speak Japanese I would probably use the J2E translations for the sub. I do not really think that subbing the chat would be that helpful and would be where a lot more of the work would come in. Plus the fact that people wouldn't be able to read it anyways because it will be scrolling so fast in most places. But in a 3+ hour run, subbing the 50-60 fights would not be that bad I don't think. But I might be wrong.
In terms of what to use for the sub, I bet I could find something. I am an avid anime fan, so I could ask some friends what they use to sub the anime.
Plus the fan sub guys don't seem to check their email so...
Edit: just found a really nice list of memory addresses, so I might be able to start the run soon!
Joined: 7/8/2007
Posts: 27
Location: North Carolina, USA
Sorry for double posting, but this seems pretty important. I found a couple of very interesting things last night as I was doing a test run up to the mist dragon.
First, you can pause the game in order to get a critical with Kain's jump or Cecil's attack. This will be useful at the very least in this fight, because I can possibly prevent the dragon from going into mist form.
The other, and much more complex/confusing thing that I discovered is that there is at least one way to manipulate random encounters. Before you go to bed and enter the cut scene with Rosa, you can change the number of steps before your next random encounter, and the ones after that. How you do this is take a step. No amount of advancing frames seems to make a difference, but moving around changes the value. What memory address it is, if it is simple one address I don't know, but I do know that this trick doesn't work before other cut scenes (village of mist bombing, taking Rydia to the inn, sick Rosa cut scene). This made me wonder if you walked around in some strange path before you go to your bed, could you max out steps until the next random encounter for all random encounters in the game?? That would be cool.
Indeed, walking in the interior of Baron Castle does seem to affect the step counter (7E0686) just as if it was a place you could get into a battle. I haven't played this game on an emulator, so I don't have any saves to check any other locations.
EDIT: Deign gave me a savestate near the end of the game. It works anywhere with that tileset (I checked Baron, Damcyan, Fabul, Toroia, Eblan, Castle of Dwarves, Serpent Road, and Tower of Wishes). It doesn't apply to doorways, stairs, or red carpets, nor does it apply to the exterior (open air) parts of the castles.
Joined: 7/8/2007
Posts: 27
Location: North Carolina, USA
Nitrodon wrote:
Indeed, walking in the interior of Baron Castle does seem to affect the step counter (7E0686) just as if it was a place you could get into a battle. I haven't played this game on an emulator, so I don't have any saves to check any other locations.
EDIT: Deign gave me a savestate near the end of the game. It works anywhere with that tileset (I checked Baron, Damcyan, Fabul, Toroia, Eblan, Castle of Dwarves, Serpent Road, and Tower of Wishes). It doesn't apply to doorways, stairs, or red carpets, nor does it apply to the exterior (open air) parts of the castles.
Ya, I just found the step counter myself, but I didn't know why it worked. Thanks for the info. This could be somewhat helpful, but would only really be helpful if I could figure out how and when the game decides there should be a battle. I have been trying everything I can think of to reset or change the counter, and so far something else that does it is a save/reset, but that would only be useful if I was trying to get a rare battle because otherwise it takes too much time I think. Plus, it would be kind of boring watching me save and reset over and over again ;p
Joined: 7/8/2007
Posts: 27
Location: North Carolina, USA
Save and reset would definitely save time in the run. In my 'optimized' run to the mist dragon I had 4 random encounters in the cave. To run from a random encounter is about 335-350 frames, save and reset = about 600. After messing around very little, I was able to get 3 random encounters all the way to the desert town so that save like 300 frames i am guessing. I think I can get that down to two fights even. But if I use that trick that means I will be doing it a lot. Is that more boring than watching some one run from battle more? And is it feasible to reset the game a bunch in a run w/o desyncs?
But if I use that trick that means I will be doing it a lot. Is that more boring than watching some one run from battle more? And is it feasible to reset the game a bunch in a run w/o desyncs?
IMHO, I do believe this'd be absolutely mindnumbingly boring... it'd almost, I dare say, come off like a segmented run from TAS with all the resets. :(
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Just another random gamer
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<OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
I'm not to fond of save/reset either. Even though it's faster it will be boring to see that option over and over again. Would drive me nuts.
If you're aiming for pure speed without entertainment, then by all means go by it. But please release an entertaining version first. :)
Joined: 7/8/2007
Posts: 27
Location: North Carolina, USA
Personally, I would rather not do it, 1) because I find it boring as well 2) because that means another thing to worry about in the run. I do think abusing that trick would save 10+ minutes of real time in the end, but I will refrain from using it for a first run, because I am sure I will find other stuff to improve on IF I decide to do this game twice or more.
Edit: Mist Dragon goes down before it can go mist form, 5 crits and 1 Cain jump. Too bad it desynced halfway through battle... Time to fix (*Fixed now).
Joined: 7/8/2007
Posts: 27
Location: North Carolina, USA
On my way to Octoman, the Soldiers in desert town got killed in 1 hit by dark blade. Grabbed the ether in a pot in the town. Currently at 0:12, compared to 0:14 in the SDA run, of course they are also different versions of the game so maybe not the best comparison.
On my way to Octoman, the Soldiers in desert town got killed in 1 hit by dark blade. Grabbed the ether in a pot in the town. Currently at 0:12, compared to 0:14 in the SDA run, of course they are also different versions of the game so maybe not the best comparison.
Joined: 7/8/2007
Posts: 27
Location: North Carolina, USA
Ya, as soon as beat Octoman I will put one up. Pause is my best friend in this run as far as I can tell.
Edit: I am somewhat satisfied with my progress, but there are a couple of things that might be able to be improved. Thoughts so far:
1. I don't think it is possible to kill the Mist Dragon much quicker than I did.
2. Battle with soldiers could maybe be improved but by very little.
3. Grabbing the ether in the pot in town *might* have unnecessary but it only cost my 20 frames.
4. Compared to Phil's GBA run I take a different approach with Octomon. Rather than have Tella recall virus 3 times I only do it twice. This is because it takes quite a deal more time for Tella to recall in this version. Also getting criticals with Cecil *seemed* like it required to much manipulation to be worth it. That is to say the crit damage was 160 versus the 120-140 regular. All that being said, it might be quicker to try it another way. I spent a good deal of time testing stuff here.
Enough of my rambling, please tell me what you think and where to improve.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/688324271/AtDamcyan.smv
After trying to think of a new game to work on, I saw some posts for FF4, and since I had been avoiding it for so long, I felt it was about time. I have a WIP that progresses up to Kaipo, but I wanted to see what you were going to bring to the table CGoCPftF, before I posted it. I'm a little underwhelmed.
1. I'm not satisfied by your version choice. Being that it's "hard-type", makes it easier because of extra abilities that can easily be exploited by a TAS(general consensus is to play on hard difficulty unless it really hinders the entertainment). Also being in japanese makes viewers very much uninterested(because it really hinders the entertainment).
2. It's upoptimized like crazy, your in-game timer is 46 seconds slower than mine at the end of kaipo even though you have shorter dialouges and a shorter guard fight.
3. I must vote yes for save / reset because a. it makes the movie shorter by saving time, b. the only arguement against it is that instead of seeing someone save / reset you get to see the player run from yet more battles(Note: I also had a run without the save / reset and it was still 43 seconds faster).
Here is my not so current WIP, I've already found some changes that improve an extra 147 frames.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/753724276/FF2.smv
I'm sciencing as fast as I can !
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<adelikat> once more balls enter the picture, everything gets a lot more entertraining
<adelikat> mmmmm yummy penises
Joined: 7/8/2007
Posts: 27
Location: North Carolina, USA
Wow I didn't realize someone else was contemplating doing a TAS of this game. I wish you would have told me 10 day ago, because I would have put up no resistance at all to you doing the run and not me ;p. The reason you find my actions to be unoptimized is probably because this is my first experience with a real speed run of any kind let alone a TAS!
The version choice was chosen from what seemed to be the consensus of the forum. The fact that it is in Japanese is irrelevant considering the last page's talk about subbing the text. So the only remaining question is about the difficulty. I do not believe that the time you gain from a few fights (i.e. the soldier fight, Octomammoth, and a few others) will shorten the game compared to the other changes that were made in the version, in fact I think it will make it longer. For instance, items are more limited in the original, and some bosses have been modified in the US version to make them easier. Not only that, the original abilities add entertainment value (for me at least).There is an FAQ somewhere with an extensive list of the changes that I will try to find.
The choice to not use save/reset was again made because of the input that I received from others. I am sure this will be a split issue in the run, and regardless of the fact that it actually saves time, some people might give it a meh vote just because it makes the run 'boring'. That being said it is your choice.
In terms of better optimization, the in game clock can be a little deceiving on how much time was saved. You pause a lot more than me in battle (to better optimize the run) and use the save/reset trick, all of this stops the in game clock. That being said, your mist dragon fight was at least 300 frames better than mine. So, if you are actually going to take the run up that would be more than fine with me. I would rather sit on the sideline and give my input and support.
I do plan to make this a full-time project, I have made some recent discoveries regarding an experience glich as well as me and Nitrodon had some brainstorming regarding the last boss. We've developed a unique strategy that will invariably take down Zeromus probably faster than most people would do even with a full party of 70's.
I am not trying to downplay your work at all, I do believe that for a first time you did remarkably well. And yes, the in-game clock is decieving in terms of movie frames, however, I believe it would be a bad choice not to try and optimize the in-game time as well as the total movie frames. All in-game time saved in my current wip has not affected the movie frames in an adverse way. In fact I believe with all the extra pausing it has actually ended all of the auto-battles a total of about 40 frames early.
Version choice is inevitably the authors choice. Consensus from the people i've spoken to on IRC is that the US version is best for 2 reasons. Because it's in English(obviously) and because it is what the majority of the viewers would be accustomed to. You and I both know about the extra abilities in the japanese version, but a much more casual player/watcher may not know of them. This leads to a misunderstanding that may cause them to dislike the movie. These are the reasons that I think the US version is best. Of course there are good reasons for both.
As for save / reset. I believe there to be no good arguement against it. As I said, it's either watch for less time the person resets the game now and then, or watch more random battles that the player will just run from anyway.
I do appreciate your interest in this though. It sparked me to become less lazy and start on my own. As soon as I can get a satisfactory Mist Dragon fight I'll try to post regular WIPs, but for now I need to do a 15th fight with him. (I'm getting tired of him =( , he's getting annoying ).
I'm sciencing as fast as I can !
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<adelikat> once more balls enter the picture, everything gets a lot more entertraining
<adelikat> mmmmm yummy penises
What is that? Not reset as console reset?
Btw, you did used 1.1 as for FF2 version. And the video is desyncronising...
Also, next time, use snes9x 1.51.
CGoCPftF wrote:
4. Compared to Phil's GBA run
Oh, I didn't even know I do have a run for that game... Btw, don't compare with my "WIP", first of all I need to restart the "WIP". And most important, the games are too different to make comparison. It's like comparing SMB1 with SMB2J.
You can't ask that. 1.51 has some issues of its own, so it's perfectly normal to choose 1.43. Because it's new doesn't mean it's absolutely better and certainly doesn't mean it's mandatory to use it.
Everything syncs up in 1.51, for this game anyway. It also has better sound and supposed more precise timing to a real SNES but other than that I can't see what else 1.51 offers that 1.43 doesn't already.
I think 1.51 only syncs movies if there aren't desync issues pertaining to the game (pretty much anything by Sculptered Software. Others as well). This game doesn't have them so why the hell not use 1.51, it'll please those who care about sound and junk.
Also, if you choose 1.51, make sure Volume Envelope Height Reading is off as it causes too much randomness. But if you playback your movie with it on after you have recorded with it off, it should sync up, strangely enough.
Back on topic:
I haven't checked your work as I'm more interested in the finished run but do know, I'm another person who's interested.
This game doesn't have them so why the hell not use 1.51, it'll please those who care about sound and junk.
1.51 has (occasional/difficult to predict) problems with savestates not being readable. IE, it has some issues. Hero of the Day went into more detail in the last ~5 pages of the Super Metroid thread, I think.
I personally have a lot of graphical issues with 1.51, it's the same reason I had to do Yoshi's Island in 1.43 as well.
Also, what Dromiceius said, i was having that issue when i was doing Addams family and it's something I'd rather not have happen when I'm 2 hours through the game.
And Phil: save / reset is refering to console reset which would explain your desyncing
I'm sciencing as fast as I can !
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<adelikat> once more balls enter the picture, everything gets a lot more entertraining
<adelikat> mmmmm yummy penises
It also has better sound and supposed more precise timing to a real SNES but other than that I can't see what else 1.51 offers that 1.43 doesn't already.
1.51 sound crackles. A lot. Changing sound cards, changing sample rate, changing buffer size... same result. When playing anything, videos or games, it crackles. 1.43 does not.
However, it would make no sense to change versions completely if you've already started and completed any significant portion of the run in a specific version. People seem to be slowly migrating to 1.51.
