Ultima Exodus has a straight forward plot; Exodus is bad, kill him. What sets this game apart is the open world you are given to explore, rather than a railroaded script.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: FCEUX 2.1.6-interim svn0
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Manipulates luck
  • Takes damage to save time

Comments

Ultima Exodus is a game I played for hours as a kid. The basic plot is straight forward; Exodus is bad, kill him. What sets this game apart is the open world you are given to explore, rather than a railroaded script. Character customization is immense and a 20 person bench can be made to pull your 4 member party from.

Stage by stage comments

  • 0:17 Here I make a save file, start to make a premade party and immediately reset. This sets a flag that I've already seen the opening cutscene, which is longer than sitting through the intro again.
  • 0:34 I make a party of 1 cleric and 3 wizards. Magic is needed for moving around the dungeon and to make quick work of the few battles I fight. I'm using a premade party rather than custom because the only stat that matters for this run is the wis/int/max mp, which is maxed on the premade characters. The character select RNG is frame based.
  • 0:36 I named the party VOU1 "we". It made a little bit of sense and didn't waste any frames to input.
  • 0:44 I'm surprised that mob didn't attack me. Usually if any of your characters are within the 8 surrounding squares of a mob after it moves a battle will start.
  • 0:48 Starting with a dungeon crawl. Ascend/descend change floors. The destination on the new floor is based on the frame the spell was cast. No RNG, it just cycles through the 256 cells of the dungeon map, dropping the party at the first empty tile. Sometimes it is faster to walk a bit, rather than wait to be placed at the absolute closest point. By alternating descends and ladders, the bottom 8th floor can be reached in 4 spells. This is good since my characters only have enough mp to cast the spells once each.
  • 1:00 Dropped in next to the mark of fire. This will let me walk unharmed over lava. The whole party takes 50 damage and that won't fully heal by the end of the run.
  • 1:05 I do some walking around to regen mp and pick up some treasure chests that are lying around. Some of the chests are trapped. I either cast OPEN, take the damage or advance the RNG. In the dungeon the chest RNG is advanced by steps, spinning in place works. This run doesn't need much gold, so I don't bother min-maxing drops here since spinning is relatively slow (~12 frames).
  • 1:40 One chest was left unopened so that I could make it back for this descend cycle. Technically, only the wizard that will have 50mp needs the mark of force, but I'm boxed by an ascend cycle later anyway. Giving it to everyone now saves me the time of death notifications later. There is a spin in there that prevents a random battle.
  • 2:02 Before going to the castle to level up I need 400xp. Undead give 4xp each and come at max 8 in a battle, so 13 battles. I need 2500gold and I have ~1400 now. Number of enemies and gold drops can be controlled by spamming B. Type of enemy is based on the frame the fight starts.
  • 2:11 Ghouls and skeletons are both hit by the clerics undead spell, which one shots about half of the enemies at a time. I haven't figured out anything to advance the RNG that controls the number hit. The spell can miss if it is started at the wrong time. When your chars right foot is down and 2 frames before, it will work. There are also situations where the spell will be cast but it hits noone. In those cases I don't bother casting it and wait for the next turn.
  • 3:50 13 fights of 8 each would be four more kills than needed. There are 2 fights with only 7 mobs and the last only has 6.
  • 5:57 Walking on lava is faster than through the forest.
  • 6:02 Pray is needed to get cards and use them later.
  • 6:11 Advancing the RNG will affect mob placement when exiting a city/cave.
  • 9:41 Level UP. Now more challenging enemies will appear; most importantly, the pirate!
  • 10:24 Sailing into the whirlpool takes me to the second overworld, Ambrosia.
  • 11:08 The boat looks glitchy, but I have to fight it.
  • 11:25 Speed of the ship is affected by wind, so some directions are faster than others.
  • 11:38 Shrine of intelligence. Time to pay for power. At 50 int the wizard will have poison, which can hit everything on the screen and works great for killing particular low hp, invisible mobs at the end of the game. Int starts at 25 and costs 100gold per point, so that is why I collected 2500gold. I need to collect a card by praying at each of the shrines as well.
  • 15:12 Manipulating the RNG here, to affect placement of mobs...
  • 16:40 HERE. Also a glitch, I walk on the water and my boat appears underneath me. Need to dodge the whirlpool. It isn't aggressive, but it can get in the way. Which frame you move can affect which way it goes.
  • 16:53 Really nice RNG here. Don't even see the man-o-war on the way in.
  • 17:35 My movement here is chosen to keep the whirlpool in a blocking position, so the man-o-war can't charge me.
  • 17:47 Back in Sosaria. With 30 int I got the spell trans. This teleports the party somewhere on the world map. It is on a 256 frame cycle. 26 of the cycles end up in the upper NW corner, which is a nice entry point to the moongate system.
  • 17:53 Moongates allow transport to places that are difficult or impossible to reach otherwise.
  • 17:56 I need to pick up the connecting flight.
  • 18:00 Cave of Moon, home of the most secret secret. I hang out here a bit because I'm waiting for an ascend cycle, I was hoping to RNG a certain mob placement in this time frame, but it didn't pan out.
  • 18:05 The cave has a ladder that runs from top to bottom, but its in the opposite corner of the floor. I descend then ascend to get to it. It is a single tile on lower levels, so I can't descend directly to it.
  • 18:16 The time lord doesn't just give information, he freezes the mobs in Exodus Castle for you. No bow tie. :(
  • 18:28 I'm ducking in and out of the cave because otherwise there isn't enough time before the next moongate to pimp my ride.
  • 18:40 Normally I'd need to pray for a horn, dungeon dive for a mark of snake and pilot a ship to this island. It was nice that someone left one parked in the moat.
  • 19:00 I RNG to get the first dragon to start on the left. It is the only one that moves/attacks. I briefly open the status menu to bring the party together. Otherwise the dragon will attack the last member.
  • 19:27 Someone said they could dodge all these mobs, but I find that highly unlikely without the time lord's help.
  • 19:29 Lining up the RNG to 8 shot the floor.
  • 19:53 RNG, and regening mana.
  • 20:50 It seems like it should be over at this point and all the effects are just for show. But I actually got trapped inside on my first two runs out. Where the volcanoes pop up is affected by when you move and which direction. But it is hard to tell which of those moves caused the particular volcanoes that are blocking the path.
  • 21:23 End of input

Other comments

kamikaze9699 has some non-TAS speedruns on youtube. He takes 2.5 hours starting with a new party, and an hour starting from a glitched maxed stat party. (The glitch is effectively a new game+, as it starts a game with a previously used party)
My run completes in under 22 minutes from a fresh party. FCEUX always saving party data made this tricky starting out. I was always having to delete that data. (is there an option for that?) I ended up making a blank save and setting it read-only.
The RNG manipulation could be improved if I understood it better, but I'm not at a point I can follow what is going on in the assembly.

turska: Judging.

turska: Good audience response, solid run. Accepting for publication.

natt: processing


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3625: nanogyth's NES Ultima: Exodus in 21:22.80
Synahel
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Being an oldschool Ultima fan (and planning on maybe someday trying to TAS Ultima 4 on SMS if I can ever get any way to break the game), I'm very interested on your run. Watching it right now, but thanks a lot for this already!
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"HEY! 1 HAS THE ANKH IN THEIR HAND." Nice work, nanogyth. Voting yes for this silly and well executed run. Thanks for the good explanations too. More Ultima, please.
Guga
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It looks really well-done, so I vote Yes. =) BTW, if this get accepted, I would like the encodes having commentary, it really helps to understand what is going on.
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HUGE Yes vote. I absolutely despised this game as a kid and had neither the patience nor desire to continue with it after my party repeatedly died early in the game. SO glad to see someone finally give this game the ass-kicking it deserves. And thank you, nanogyth, from the bottom of my heart.
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Cheers for all these Encoders turning into TASers! Natt's the next.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
NitroGenesis
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feos wrote:
Cheers for all these Encoders turning into TASers! Natt's the next.
Cheers for your avatar, which is 18 pixels over the size limit! :P Anyway, this run was good. It seems very well made, especially for a first TAS. Have another yes vote.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Synahel
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Ambrosia's music is amazing in this version, I didn't know! Anyway, this was awesome. Thanks a lot for this. Too bad you hadn't to fight grass ;)
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svn0
ahh, ye olde subwcreve, always throwing a loop....
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FCEUX 2.1.6-interim svn0 is feos' build. It syncs on the copy of 2.1.5 I have as well.
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natt wrote:
svn0
ahh, ye olde subwcreve, always throwing a loop....
It is TortoiseSVN's fault. EDIT: uploaded the version from http://www.emucr.com/search/label/Fceux?&max-results=12, now revision number is correct.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Why the NES version over DOS?
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This was awesome! Great find with the time lord. I'll see if I can find out anything about the RNG. Finishing each battle with one spell and getting the gold from fewer chests would be nice. Of course the game itself is really crappy but there weren't many RPGs back then so we wasted a lot of time in Sosaria.
mklip2001
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Unfortunately, I couldn't really get into this run. I haven't ever played the game before, and I couldn't figure out what the characters were trying to do at most points (especially when the dungeons went all black). This is definitely well-played, and the Ambrosia music is cool, but this didn't hold my interest well enough to earn a Yes vote. I'm going with Meh.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
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Unfortunately, I couldn't really get into this run. I haven't ever played the game before, and I couldn't figure out what the characters were trying to do at most points (especially when the dungeons went all black).
Lit dungeon crawls versus the blind ascend/descend abuse might be a worthwhile speed/entertainment tradeoff. Sitting through the first cutscene might be better than a double shot of the boring (but faster) intro. I'm glad people like the Ambrosia music. That is the part of the movie that I find the most labored. I was pleasantly surprised by all of the support this movie has gotten, I feared it would be panned as just a boring non-ff rpg. I'm planning to make a subtitle commentary track, so if anyone has any questions, please let me know. I didn't think of using DOS at all. I played the NES version in the eighties and I know the NES tools better. The horses seem to be purely cosmetic in the NES version. Terrain lag is always the same as walking. Screenshots:
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This was definitely unexpected and definitely a yes vote. I kinda wish there was light in the dungeon as a trade off as it IS confusion, but still :) I am shocked it could be done so fast! I was figuring maybe 45m-1h.. so 21 mins was Woah! Definite yes vote! Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
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Captions are in, but they need some work.
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I was entertained. I like the music, but I don't really like how most of the areas are so dark around a few spaces in the center of the screen. Still, very good run overall. Yes vote.
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CoolKirby wrote:
I was entertained. I like the music, but I don't really like how most of the areas are so dark around a few spaces in the center of the screen.
That sadly is how the game works. Not sure why it was like that.. doesn't appear to be limitations. I think it was more to make things challenging by not being able to see the straight forward obvious path and having to explore... but this is merely a guess. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
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syncs on fceux 2.1.5 release
File: Ultima - Exodus.nes
CRC-32: af09af09
   MD4: 5f48cd0fbae064920e94d8217f265a8f
   MD5: e5260f0faf8970ca20e2a933abfb00d0
 SHA-1: f3214823cebdc63810e2e938b523e18883f1d9bb
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Collection http://archive.org/details/NesUltimaExodusIn2122.8ByNanogyth Youtuber http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI2eTN3DYXQ&feature=youtu.be All subject to further change before publication... hoping to get a subtitle track in there, amongst other things
Twisted_Eye
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Worked on starting a TAS of this game myself a few years ago--ended up intimidated by the amount of work I'd need to do to figure out the finer details of glitch party members. (the following is based on memory--wherever I kept my notes, I cannot find. Inaccuracies are possible.) You mention the glitch that effectively makes a new game+. If you use it on a completely fresh, save-less sram, you can reach junk data that creates uber-characters that start out having 0hp (living until they take any damage and then being unable to resurrect, I believe) , 255 mp, a high level, thousands upon thousands of gold, and junky sprites. These junky characters differ depending on save slot (1-3) and stable slot (1-20). Where I got overwhelmed was that some of the junkers, in the game's status menu, are shown as having some of the cards. I couldn't find any combination of 4 that said they had all four, but things were so off that I decided it would be worth testing if their false data would fool the game into thinking they had the missing fourth card anyway. This...was where I decided that it would be way too much work testing something that prrrobably wasn't even going to work, and since I haven't ever gotten much of anywhere in the game (was always a Quest of the Avatar guy myself), I wasn't entirely sure of how it would all be done anyway. Since all of the above would kinda alter the run a little bit, being extra glitchy this way, I wouldn't use this to affect how I'd vote for this run. Low-glitch vs. hi-glitch designation, I guess. I wouldn'[t be surprised if the glitch party would stay have to go learn to pray, pray for the missing card(s), THEN end the game, so who knows how much time WOULDN'T be saved by adding in a partially glitch party. If anything, I'd suggest using this extra info for a later obsoletion run, if it turns out to do any favors but nothing else game-breaking. However, you did miss something else: whenever you power-on the game or press reset, if you hold down the B button, the game skips almost immediately to the game select screen, saving you like almost a thousand frames each time. (obviously a run that would use the character glitch I described would need this, there'd be a ton of resetting in the first minute to set it all up) ...anyway, yes, I liked your run, you've done a fine job!
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What Twisted Eye suggests as a strategy sounds like it's a different category to me; so there's no reason we can't have both.
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Another oldschool Ultima fan here, and a "yes" vote from me. Stellar example of a TAS, as was The False Prophet run. Now if someone would just break Quest of the Avatar to smithereens. :s
Synahel
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chrstn wrote:
Now if someone would just break Quest of the Avatar to smithereens. :s
Game of my childhood. I've tried to corrupt saves on the SMS version (which is in my opinion the definitive version of the game, hell it was issued 5 years after the Dos version), but no luck so far. Glitched characters may be a cool addition to such a run, but maybe it fits in another category.