The new strategies are woorking out nicely. Looks hAwt! If you manage to squeeze things to under an hour, I will have sex with you. I know that's a motivator. And if it isn't, well, I promise not to have sex with you.
And maybe italicise more words. But really, man. Nice job.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Yeah, I'm doing lots of planning and things are lookin good. Unfortunately there's nowhere near 17 more minutes to take out, but if I get really lucky there's hope for a run under 70 minutes. Avoiding forced fights will save time, but because I beat them quickly anyway, it's not that much time. Looking through the encounters, I'm pretty sure I can take out the gas dragon fight, which is too bad in a way as it's one of the toughest enemy groups in the game. I have a couple more radical ideas which I'll leave as a surprise, but even if it all works out I'll still be well over an hour.
One thing I need to figure out is how I fall behind Mookish on encounters around the visit to Dwarf cave. I should be ahead because he picked up some extra treasure in Marsh cave and walked around Elfland instead of through. Yet he gets ahead in fights near Dwarf Cave, then blows his lead by sailing around on the ship to avoid a shadow fight. Does anyone see how this happened?
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Well, the distance between encounters follows a set pattern, just like the enemy group, so this should be the same. However, some steps count more towards your next encounter. According to the FAQ, the ratio is 6:5:2 for outside:inside:ship (off this topic, the ship is over 3x faster than walking, so in real time, the fastest way to advance the encounter list is to sail around on the ship.) There are certain squares that don't count towards an encounter, for example, the grasslands in front of Coneria. You can see in the beginning how I take some extra steps around the forest and actually walk further than Mookish before the first fight--my second fight is in the temple rather than outside. You can also see this effect in dungeon doorways, try pacing in and out of a door and see how many steps it takes for your next fight. So at some point, Mookish walks over terrain that doesn't count towards encounters which I missed. I wouldn't rule out some sort of glitch here either, perhaps there are sea squares that count the same as land? Who knows, I was just wondering if anyone noticed and could tell me how this happened.
I'm impressed.
Amazing how much time you can save when you're only dealing with one character instead of four...and some nice optimizations also. I don't really understand how the whole "reset" of the game works in terms of the movie, though. Perhaps a bit of explaining to this old dumbass would help :)
I'm curious if they'll let two runs of this game be published...one for full characters/speed/low level, and another for single character/speed. If not, well...your run HAS given me a few ideas in regards to the game...and I may have to give them a run...
....after your run is done, of course ;)
To be considered a country, you need to have a beer. Sure, it helps to have an airport or nuclear weapons, but at the very least....you need a beer.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Yeah, I've also wondered if a playaround-type run would also be interesting, seeing as how an optimal timeattack will be very minimalistic. You could go for lowest levels or pick some insane party, like all white and black mages. Then show off as many glitches as possible, talk to the invisible man, make Chaos run, whatever.
My posted run doesn't use the save/load trick, but I have tested it and it seems to work. Basically, the idea is to save game, emulate a power cycle (not just reset), and then load the saved game. At first I wasn't sure if it would record, but it does. I don't know of any runs that actually do this, I might be the first.
The game starts up pretty quickly, so not much time is lost, and the encounter sequence resets to the beginning. One manifestation of this is the well-known kyzoku trick: if you load your game and immediately go out to sea, the first fight (and the third) will be against kyzokus. Just save after this, turn the power off and back on, and you can repeat as much as you want.
As part of my planning, I'm going to redo the end of the test run to see if this trick will be helpful. I'll use a cabin after the waterfall to avoid the ZomBull fights on the way to Leifen. However, this doesn't save that much time, since I whup the ZomBulls pretty easily. It's definitely worthwhile if I can still get a decent sequence through the Temple of Fiends though. The current sequence lets me get through with only three fights and a few extra steps (which could be tweaked out of Gurgu, but I digress.) It looks like I might still save time this way, but there are enough variables that I really have to play through to find out.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Here's an update on some things I've learned in my testings:
The 2-4 shadow fights in Marsh cave are always enemy strikes first. However, it's not too terribly tough to manipulate two shadows which both miss. With three or more there always seems to be a hit though. Since it's the first fight in the cave and I need to advance the encounter list, I might just move the encounter out of the cave, saving a few seconds.
I may have use for the save/load trick, but it doesn't save an amazing amount of time, maybe 20-30 sec. I would avoid all the zombull fights and have a pretty similar flow through the TOF. Coincidentally, this also puts WarMech on the path.
Blue D can be sped up pretty well by taking a couple hits, so I don't think I'll bother with wizard staff.
The WzVampire/ZombieD combo can definitely be run from, it's just the all-ZombieD groups that can't.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Ok, I have a pretty good idea how my next version will look now. However, there is a wildcard in that the steps to next encounter don't always seem to be constant, and there's no explanation why in some cases. I've found some cases where particular squares don't advance the counter, but in other places encounters happen with more or fewer steps for seemingly no reason. Unless I can figure this out, I'll just have to work with what I can get.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
TheAxeMan wrote:
Ok, I have a pretty good idea how my next version will look now. However, there is a wildcard in that the steps to next encounter don't always seem to be constant, and there's no explanation why in some cases. I've found some cases where particular squares don't advance the counter, but in other places encounters happen with more or fewer steps for seemingly no reason. Unless I can figure this out, I'll just have to work with what I can get.
Strange. I figure that they'd use coordination checks to count down to the next encounter.
I suspect that those tiles might be starting points for NPCs such as bats. Maybe you could check if that's the case.
Ok, I have a pretty good idea how my next version will look now. However, there is a wildcard in that the steps to next encounter don't always seem to be constant, and there's no explanation why in some cases. I've found some cases where particular squares don't advance the counter, but in other places encounters happen with more or fewer steps for seemingly no reason. Unless I can figure this out, I'll just have to work with what I can get.
I'm just throwing this out there, but if this is happening on the overworld for example, maybe it's due to different meta-tiles (the cause of the Peninsula of Power for instance) having slightly different values for the terrain types. It doesn't really make sense, but then again, neither does the phenomenon you describe.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
I've started the final run, and am a little past Astos. Compared to my posted test, I'm about 46 sec ahead. My best guess now is that I'll finish at about an hour 14 min. The party is four fighters because everyone else sucks. So far there have been quite a few changes, but only one will probably be a big surprise (and I'll leave it that way for now.) Stat gains on levelup don't manipulate very easily, so I wasn't able to get luck on level 2 or 5. Fortunately, this isn't a big deal, I'm running just as easily as before (in my test run I got luck on 2 but not 5.)
I've noticed a bug which hurts in a timeattack, but will probably never affect normal play (unless you're going for a low-level solo run...) There is a limit of one levelup per battle. If you go into your status after this, the experience for next level will show some high number due to an overflow somewhere. You'll get the levelup after the next battle you fight. I'm not fully sure how this will affect me, but it definitely does mean that in some cases I get screwed out of a levelup unless I take on an extra fight. I wonder if it's possible to lose any experience this way?
As far as the mystery of encounter steps, I'm still not sure exactly where the steps come from, but I've converged on something that puts me where I want to be.
As far as I know, you don't lose any experience. The amount until the next level is just a 16-bit calculated number that's generated when viewing the status screen and not actually stored anywhere. The game uses lookup tables based on class and level to derive the amount of exp for the next level and just subtracts it from the current exp. The 60000s numbers are just it's way of coping with a negative amount for the next level (because of only one level-gain at a time). Internally, all exp gains deal only with the actual amount, and not with the amount left for next level, so there's no funkiness by passing up the amount by enough for additional levels.
Thanks for the explanation Pauly, but I have a question.
The exp screen lies, but what about your stats?
Say, if you got Agi, Str, and Vit in a battle where you got TWO levels up, do you gain two points in those three catagories, or just one?
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Thanks, that explanation of levelups seems to fit with everything I've seen.
I was proceeding pretty well, over a minute ahead of before, but changes in the encounters are throwing me off. This is very annoying, as it's really the most important consideration in this run. In particular, two shadow battles in a row are really bad, since one of them will have to be enemies strike first. I can take some hits if I have to, but it wastes time and looks bad. Even if I can fix this, I'm wondering if there will be some change ahead which will throw things off? After my last run, I had a pretty specific plan as to where I'd like to be in the encounter list, but unless I can learn more about how the steps are determined, this might turn into a more iterative process. One theory is that perhaps the area each fight takes place in affects the steps to the next encounter somehow. Anyway, I worked my way up past Sarda and back into Earth Cave. I'll probably see how things work out a little further, but I think I'm too far behind on encounters, I'll have to go back and redo a few things. Luckily I've figured out a process which should make this a bit easier.
As far as positives, I've mastered manipulating the NPC movement, so I won't have any bats in my way this time.
Whoa, sweet. We definitely want to hear all about it. =)
Speaking of the encounter steps, someone [URL=http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=522595&topic=23262084]created a topic about it[/URL] just today on gamefaqs. I don't know if the info will have much practical use, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Thank you, Paulygon, now I'm at least as excited as Inzult! That info on the encounter steps is actually extremely useful to me. It fits with some phenomenon I had observed--the steps to next encounter being different in dungeon vs outer world. In particular, there are times when you can enter a dungeon one step before you would get an outer world battle, and then walk quite aways into the dungeon before you actually get a battle. I had also noticed that in some cases, 1 outer world step = 1 dungeon step = 1 ship step. The significance is that in theory, I could use this information to avoid encounters in some areas and get encounters in others (when I want to advance the encounter list.) This also explains how Mookish got ahead in the encounter list--the counter hit a number between the sea and outer world threshold, I was on land, and he was at sea.
I just finished Ice Cave, about 1:40 ahead of before. I'm going to finish the run I'm working on and submit it, but armed with that new info, I may be able to do even better.
How do keep I the bats out of my way? It's pretty simple actually, the NPC movement will change if you enter the area on a different frame. It also changes if you bump into one of them. So all you have to do is wait one frame before taking the stairs to Earth Cave B3, for example, and the bats' movement will be different. You can also pass by one bat, bump into him for one frame, and it will change his next movements as well as the movements of all the other bats. Then it's just a matter of finding out which tweaks will keep them out of your way. In most cases I only needed to wait or bump for one frame and it's almost impossible to tell when played back full speed. For example, in the test run, watch when I go into Melmond. I bump into one townsperson, making Dr. Unne walk towards me.
I was just going to point out the step mechanics topic on GameFAQs. Paulygon trumped me.
Glad to see that this is still going well, TheAxeMan. Four fighters, eh? I guess Mookish didn't use the red mage for very many battles anyways. The extra durability of a fourth fighter is probably slightly better (given a low-level RM's low number of spell charges).
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Well, I don't take the fourth fighter for his durability, but more for his damage per gold efficiency. The silver sword is very important to my strategy, and if you check my first pass, you can see I need every last gold piece for it. So 100 gold for a spell is just not worth it. My next run pushes the money management for this to the extreme, as will be revealed when I submit. ;)
