Samsara
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Joined: 11/13/2006
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Okay, so PSX support is coming to Bizhawk relatively soon, and I promised myself I would contribute everything I possibly could to a TAS of this game, whether it be one I do myself or one someone else starts. I absolutely adore Star Ocean 2, it's by far my favorite game and has been for well over half of my life, and I want to see it TASed more than anything else. I'm trying to stop myself from absolutely flooding this OP with information (I'm already losing enough sleep as it is), so I'll sum up the game and its potential really quick: SO2 is an RPG with real-time battles that look incredible when done fast. The game can be broken in a number of various, easy ways, including getting the best weapon in the game halfway through the first disc. Random encounters can be skipped entirely and easily, enough so that it's done without any problems in console speedruns. In lieu of flooding the OP with information, I'm instead flooding the rest of the thread with planning and information, which I'll link to in this first post: Nico Boss TAS Analysis post 1: Alen-Tax, Azamgil, Harfainx Nico Boss TAS Analysis post 2: Shin (3) and Synard Useful items (with explanations and locations) Radar item pool + Skill Set breakdowns Here's all the bosses in Rena's story TASed on Nicovideo: Link to video Link to video There are some problems with it, though, and I think a lot of the battles (if not all of them) can be improved. In a future novel post, I'm going to deeply analyze each of these battles and explain exactly why I think that. For now, it's a good introduction to how the TAS will look. I will say two things right now, though: One of the bosses fought is optional and one of the fighters requires something like a 20-30 minute detour to recruit. A few more quick notes that I can add horrifying amounts of detail to if needed: *Rena's story is considered faster and is definitely a lot safer for RTA runs. *The videos above were done on Universe difficulty, which is the hardest. This difficulty is not unlocked at the start: You need to collect about half of the voice samples in the game (off the top of my head, I wanna say you need around 600-650). To say the least, this may require an insanely long verification file if the hardest difficulty is to be used. *The Japanese version is faster not just because of text, but because there's item creation involved in the route and item creation happens to be twice as fast in the Japanese version. Also, the voices aren't absolutely dreadful. *The route may or may not be largely the same as the console route. A lot of testing and work needs to be done to figure out the RNG especially: It seems to only rarely advance when playing the game normally and only changes consistently upon saving and loading. Or at least that's how it was in tests I did a while back. On top of that, testing needs to be done to see which story truly is the faster one for a TAS, since it may be different under frame perfect conditions. I'll be committing myself to this full time after DTC5, whether I do the run myself or with a team. Expect a boss TAS analysis post from me soon, and expect it to be long and rambly and over-informative.
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Patashu
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OMG, a TAS of this would be siiiick!
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Samsara
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Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Alright, boss TAS analysis time. I'll be listing as much as I can understand with my limited Japanese knowledge (thank God mostly everything is in katakana) and as much information as I can about everything I list. This is all off the top of my head, so there may be some misinformation. I've decided I'll be posting these in parts instead of one massive post. It seems easier to take in this way, plus it'd be easier for me to provide clarification if necessary. It'd be easier for me to edit in the future, too. A couple things to note in advance so I don't have to point it out every boss: It appears that all random encounters in the game are avoided, so level and stats will be at a minimum throughout these boss TASes. As for the bosses themselves, Universe difficulty gives all enemies a much higher chance to block damage, so these might end up being the fastest strategies for Universe. Since a complete run is most likely going to be on Earth, that's where I'll be aiming my improvement comments. All Galaxy and Universe do is make the enemies and bosses harder. The strategies and battles would be the same for the most part as it stands. These are not all the required battles in the game, I'll be pointing out unrepresented forced encounters where I remember them. Two last things: One, some of my proposed strategy changes may require further explanation of the game mechanics to make sense, which will come in another essay-length post in the future. Two, every character in the game is optional except for Claude and Rena: When I reference a character "joining automatically", I mean they ask to join during the story with no sidequests or requirements. They can (and usually should) be refused. BOSS ONE: ALEN-TAX Battle starts at ~1:30 in the encode. Rena is at her starting level (1), wearing a Knuckle (her default weapon) and Leather Armor. Game time is 0:32, maybe a little above average for a TAS. The Leather Armor I assume comes from one of the chests outside Arlia's General Store. It's not necessary at all and would waste about 4-5 seconds. Alen-Tax isn't the first forced battle in the game, but he's the first one that requires a strategy. The strategy the Nico TAS uses is solid: Pin Alen between Rena and Claude to prevent him from wandering off and to keep him getting damaged. The main problem I see here is mostly leaving Claude to the AI, which attacks slower than a human-controlled character would. A TAS could easily take advantage of switching characters extremely quickly to dish out as much damage as possible. In fact, I think R2 will instantly switch between the last two characters you controlled: You can switch to Claude as the battle begins and hit R2 to switch back to Rena, and then simply hit R2 to switch back and forth to keep them both attacking at full speed. BOSS TWO: AZAMGIL, SHIELDER x4 Battle starts at ~3:15 in the encode. Dias is at his starting level (35), wearing a Marvel Sword, the Brigandine armor, a Fine Shield, a Leather Helm, and the Mud Boots (which are required to advance in the Heraldry Forest). Rena is at level 3, wearing a Sorceress Knuckle, an Amber Robe, a Buckler shield, a Leather Helm and Leather Boots. I'll put this right out there: You wouldn't have the Marvel Sword at this point in a TAS. The steps you have to take to get it outweigh the time it would save in battles: You need to actually do some grinding, pick up skills from different towns on the map and use the SP to unlock the Pickpocketing specialty, and then you'd need to manipulate pickpocketing the Treasure Chest from an Old Man in Mars, and THEN you need to manipulate actually getting the Marvel Sword upon opening the Treasure Chest. It's a lengthy process, to say the least. I believe the rest of Dias' equipment, barring the Mud Boots you automatically receive, is his default equipment. The Treasure Chest, to give a quick explanation, gives you three random items from a large pool upon use. These items can be anything from Fanzines to disc 2 weapons. The pool contains quite a lot of good equipment for most characters, and the Marvel Sword is arguably the best weapon you get out of the Treasure Chest. Rena's Sorceress Knuckle is also from the Treasure Chest, and getting both the Marvel Sword and Sorceress Knuckle is exceedingly rare. I've tried countless times in the past to no avail, though it's certainly possible. So again, you wouldn't have either insanely powerful disc 2 weapon for the TAS. As for the rest of Rena's equipment, I don't think she'd be throwing herself into battles too often after this one, so I'm a bit iffy on whether or not it's worth giving her defensive equipment. It'll be looked into at some point. This presents a strategy problem: A lot of these battles use these powerful weapons, meaning I can't properly judge how the strategies would work with normal weapons. I'll do my best, here. Game time is 3:33, which would be most of the way through disc 2 for a TAS. Oddly, there are 6 encounters listed when I can only think of 5 forced encounters up to this point... Even then, Rena remains the same level she got to after Alen... which implies that she was either killed off or not in the party for the Bandit encounters in the Heraldry Forest... which makes no sense. I'd rather she stuck around to soak up the free EXP anyway. Those three encounters are utter jokes with Dias being level 35, by the way. This battle is unique to Rena's story (there's a different boss in Claude's story) and as such it's not one I'm all that familiar with. The strategy here... might work without the powerful weapons. I feel like switching characters is the best course of action here as well: Dias is still probably best off sending out Air Slash after Air Slash, they're quick and much faster than his normal attack. Rena's purpose might be more suited to luring enemies closer to Dias to save frames with each Air Slash, though he has to stay long range (as indicated by the game), but she can attack too. Again, not being familiar with Rena's story, I'm having a bit of trouble with a proper strategy for Dias. VISSAYER x3 I have so many problems with this battle. One: It's completely optional. Two: Ashton is there. Three: Celine is there. Four: Ashton has the Lotus Eater, which is another Treasure Chest item. Five: WHY IS ASHTON THERE. Okay. Let me explain. Before sailing off to the Lacour continent (where this boss battle takes place), there are two men talking in the port town of Herlie. They mention a two-headed dragon back in the Salva Drift, which is all the way back across the continent of Cross. To recruit Ashton, you have to talk to these two men, then go back to Salva, re-enter the Salva Drift, watch a long cutscene where the dragons merge with Ashton because Claude is a douchebag, and then of course you have to travel back to Herlie to take the boat. This is roughly a 10-20 minute detour, as I stated in the OP, but there's a second downside: Every individual character recruited means more dialogue throughout the game, so recruiting Ashton means you lose even more time throughout the run. That's my main problem with these TASes: Ashton is present for most of the battles when there's absolutely no way he'd ever be recruited in a speedrun, meaning a lot of these strategies just wouldn't work the same way. Don't get me wrong, Ashton's a great character, but he's not nearly great enough to save the time he takes to recruit. Celine being present for the battle also makes no sense. Sure, she joins automatically during the story and thus technically takes no time to recruit, but as a mage all she really does is sit there and soak up EXP at the end of the battle. She's also one of the... eh, talkier characters, shall we say, so recruiting her means more dialogue boxes. And yes, this battle is optional. You can obtain what you need from the Sanctuary of Linga without ever knowing these guys are in there. You're sent in there to get a rare herb, and there happen to be two choices: The Clarisage and the Dillwhip. The Clarisage is not only faster to get normally, it doesn't require fighting these guys. So there's no reason to analyze the battle. In fact, even the TASer knows it, as the next battle doesn't have any of the level gains obtained from the Vissayers. Next! BOSS THREE: HARFAINX x2 Battle starts at ~6:05 in the encode. Leon is at his starting level (30), wearing a Dictionary, an Amber Robe, and Suede Shoes. To my knowledge, this is his default gear. Rena is at level 8 and is wearing the same equipment as the Azamgil battle: Sorceress Knuckle, Amber Robe, Buckler, Leather Helm, Leather Boots. Claude is at level 4, wearing a Marvel Sword, a Brigandine, a Fine Shield, a Banded Helm, and Plate Greaves. If memory serves me correctly, the defensive equipment comes from being supported by the Counterpunch weapon shop during the Lacour Tournament of Arms, meaning it's basically free. Celine (who has a purpose in this battle) is at her starting level (8), wearing a Silver Rod, a Silk Robe, a Leather Helm, Pin Heels, a Rainbow Diamond and the Bandit Gloves. Considering I never use Celine, I have no idea where she gets the Silver Rod. The Bandit Gloves come from Herlie or Hilton, I believe, and they're only useful for the Pickpocketing specialty which ultimately should see no use during the TAS. Also they're 40000 FOL. The Rainbow Diamond would be better off Metalworked into an Atlas Ring and equipped to Claude... ...because Claude should have the Eternal Sphere for this battle. The Lacour Tournament of Arms happens before the Hoffmann Ruins, so you'd have the Sharp Edge, meaning you could manipulate the Radar skill into giving you the two Mithrils you need to Customize it up to the Eternal Sphere. The Eternal Sphere plus an Atlas Ring on Claude means he should pretty much be able to solo the battle with absolutely no effort. Another quick mechanic explanation: Claude's only level 4 for this battle, meaning he'd have gained less than 10 SP over the entire course of the run up to this point. How does he get the SP for Customize? By unlocking talents. Talents are innate "abilities" that each character has that allow them to be more successful when using certain specialties. For example, the Sense of Taste talent helps the character succeed more often with the Cooking specialty. Characters can unlock talents randomly upon using their specific specialties. Using the above example, a character may be able to unlock the Sense of Taste talent whenever they use Cooking. Here's the kicker: Every talent you unlock on a character gives that character 100 SP. All you need is enough SP to unlock a specialty you don't have the attached talent for. I'll repeat this in a future planning post, but we want characters to start with as few talents as possible, as the bulk of our SP gain will be from unlocking talents. The first huge talent unlocking session will most likely be in Hilton, just before departing for the Hoffmann Ruins (where this battle takes place), so... hey, it fits in here. Back to the battle! Claude may be able to solo, but to save as much time as possible (and to keep everyone alive) he needs backup from at least one other person. In the Nico TAS's case, it's Celine. Celine's purpose is to use Thunderbolt to interrupt the other Harfainx from using Thunderstorm, which is a lengthy magic spell that does a hell of a lot of damage to the party. In short, one Thunderstorm means game over for the TAS. Now to analyze the actual battle: It's painfully slow, though keep in mind that Universe doubles enemy HP so it'd be much quicker on Earth. The first thing Claude rightfully does is use a Silence Card on one of the Harfainx: This prevents a Thunderstorm. Then... everything slows down... except Claude, who uses a Skanda Compress (I think?) and speeds up dramatically. Leon is useless in this battle. Black Saber may look like it does a lot of damage, but that animation takes way too long to sit through as many times as it happens. Claude with Eternal Sphere and proper accessories (Atlas and Berserk Rings) would do... maybe 2-3x that damage with a single swing. Celine, as I said earlier, wouldn't be there since she wouldn't be recruited. The only purpose she'd serve throughout the game would be to interrupt spellcasting, but that can easily be done with fighters by just having them attack different enemies. So strategy-wise in the TAS, there would be a maximum of three people in the party: Claude, Rena, and Bowman. There'd need to be some tests done to see if Bowman saves more time in battles than he adds by being in the party: With a good equipment loadout he's actually a really damn effective fighter and would shorten late-game boss battles significantly, plus he joins automatically. I'll assume that Bowman is recruited, just because I have a feeling it'll be faster in the end. Basically, the battle would go somewhat similarly to the Nico TAS: Silence Cards would need to be used right away to prevent immediate Thunderstorms, Skanda Compresses would need to be used to keep up with how fast the Harfainx are, and both Harfainx need to be attacked at the same time to prevent further Thunderstorms. Character management would be essential to prevent the low-level characters from getting wrecked, especially since Rena lacks a good heal at this point and it wouldn't matter anyway since you'd get one-shotted. Claude would attack one Harfainx, leaving Bowman and Rena to attack the other, whittling down its HP and preventing it from casting Thunderstorm while Claude mops the floor with the first one. Eventually Claude would come back around and provide the finishing blows. That's all for now, I'll write up another few battles tomorrow. I apologize if there's any information that isn't explained coherently or paragraphs that suddenly cut off: I jumped around a lot while editing, and also took a few long breaks, so it's definitely possible I left some unfinished thoughts. I'll take another look at everything once I wake up.
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warmCabin wrote:
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Hey, Star Ocean 2. Nice. Aren't there items in this game that can insta-kill enemies, albeit with a low chance? I got the impression from somewhere that those are used whenever applicable in a SO2 TAS.
Joined: 5/9/2005
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Yeah, insta kill items that can hit story bosses that 'can not be killed' and you are supposed to die too no less. Interesting stuff Samsara. Looking forward to see where this goes.
Samsara
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Joined: 11/13/2006
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Man, I keep forgetting those insta-kill items exist. I always wrote them off as useless... only found out about their insane power about a year ago, actually, and then promptly forgot everything about it. I'll look into those being used for bosses, too, though I'd rather not just provide strategies that are all "Insta-kill, wait for item timer to run out, repeat if necessary" if it ends up working for every boss. EDIT: I built up all the willpower I could muster and took a look at the GameFAQs board for this game. I heartily endorse never going there if you want any useful information. The most useful thing I saw (or rather, the most useful thing I was reminded of) was that you can make Treasure Chests out of Magical Clay with the Art specialty, which you'll be using anyway before Harfainx to get Silence Cards and to unlock Sense of Design. Netting even a single Treasure Chest this way would be extremely useful for the rest of my assumed endgame party: Marvel Sword for Dias, Sorceress Knuckles for Rena, Hecatoncheires for Bowman. Marvel Sword would probably stay on Dias until we pick up an Orichalcum to Customize it into the Silvance, Sorceress Knuckles would be replaced by Empresia once it's picked up in the story, and Hecatoncheires would probably be replaced somewhere in disc 2. There's another benefit to multiple characters: Super Specialties. The most useful one for a speedrun is, oddly enough, Come On Bunny!, which lets you ride a bunny around on the world map. It's fast, goes over odd terrain, and you don't have to worry about random battles. Its usefulness fades once you get the Synard in disc 2, however. Reverse Side could also be useful, as it gives quite a number of items useful to a speedrun: Fill-Up is a Treasure Chest clone, also pulling 3 random items from the same item pool. Lien only pulls 1 random item from that pool, but even that's still pretty useful. Forged Medals drops the experience needed to get to the next level to 1, so using them at the right time means you'll get free extra levels without fighting any extra battles, which in the later game means extra SP, which means higher stats from levelling up the right skills...
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Samsara
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List of enemy instant kill items and possible ways to get them in the TAS, thanks to EternalSphere's absolutely excellent Item Encyclopedia on GameFAQs: *Nuclear Bomb: Will drop all allies' HP to 1, but has a chance of instantly killing an enemy. Chest in Fienal Tower, the Treasure Chest drop pool, Machinery. *Melting Lotion: May cause an instant kill on attack. Compounding (Artemis Leaf + Wolfsbane, Mandrake + Wolfsbane, Lavender + Wolfsbane, Wolfsbane + Wolfsbane), chest in Field of Power, the Treasure Chest drop pool. *Idol: May kill all enemies instantly on use. Art (Magical Clay). *Fairy's Statue: May kill an enemy instantly on use. Art (Magical Clay), the Treasure Chest drop pool. *Bubble Lotion: May cause an instant kill on attack. Compounding (Aceras + Wolfsbane, Artemis Leaf + Wolfsbane, Mandrake + Wolfsbane), chest in Sanctuary of Linga, the Treasure Chest drop pool. *Bitter Lotion: May cause an instant kill on attack. Compounding (Lavender + Wolfsbane, Wolfsbane + Wolfsbane), the Treasure Chest drop pool. *Algol: May cause an instant kill when defending against an attack. Would not be used. It's a shield that's specific to two characters that would not be recruited, plus it's the result of a Super Specialty skill (Blacksmith) which would require multiple party members to learn suboptimal skills in order to unlock in the first place. Sadly, this has the best chance of instant death. Other important items of note, including those mentioned in my posts above: *Treasure Chest: When opened, this item gives you three random items out of a pool of 223. There are quite a few items that would serve a TAS well. This would be obtained through the Art specialty, using Magical Clay. There are four other items that share the same pool as the Treasure Chest: Fill-Up: Obtained from the Reverse Side Super Specialty. Gives three items. Lien: Obtained from Reverse Side. Gives one item. Fountain Card: Obtained from Art, using Magical Canvas. Gives one item. Jack-in-the-Box: Obtained from Art, using Magical Clay. Gives one item or causes a random encounter. The Treasure Chest pool contains the following useful items: Attack Vial (50% more melee damage, but disables killer moves) Bitter Lotion (instant kill) Bubble Lotion (instant kill) Kamikaze Tonic (50% more melee damage) Lilith Tonic (50% more melee damage, but can't control character) Lotus Eater (weapon for Ashton, very high-selling item) Magical Clay (can be used for more Treasure Chests) Marionette Pill (revives character with 50% more melee damage) Marvel Sword (weapon for Dias, can be customized to Silvance) Melting Lotion (instant kill) Nuclear Bomb (instant kill) Rune Full Moon (weapon for Bowman/Rena, can be customized to Moon Fists for Bowman) Skanda Compress (gives a character high speed in battles) Skanda Ointment (gives all characters high speed in battles) Sorceress Knuckles (weapon for Rena/Bowman[???]) *Silvance: Probably the best sword to get on short notice for Dias. More powerful than Marvel Sword and gives nice stat boosts to boot. Claude Customizing the Marvel Sword with an Orichalcum will give you this. *Moon Fists: Probably the best gauntlets to get on short notice for Bowman. Bowman Customizing the Rune Full Moon with a Diamond will give you this. *Sharp Edge: A unique sword with a very important purpose. This can be obtained from Gamgee after the Lacour Tournament of Arms, as long as Claude and Dias fight in the final round. This is automatic in Rena's story, while in Claude's story you actually have to fight through and win. *Mithril: A rare metal that gives the Sharp Edge its very important purpose. This can be obtained through the special ability of the Radar skill: Every time you level up Radar, you get a random item from its item pool, and Mithril happens to be one of the items in that pool. You'll want two of them. *Minus Sword: A nice weapon on its own, but like the Sharp Edge it serves a much more important purpose. Claude Customizing the Sharp Edge with a piece of Mithril will get you this sword. *Eternal Sphere: Claude's ultimate weapon. Every attack shoots a spray of 8 stars that each do 1/4 the damage of the original attack. Arguably the most powerful weapon in the game with the right setup. Claude Customizing the Minus Sword with a piece of Mithril will get you this monstrosity of a weapon. *Meteor Ring: Every normal attack the character makes hits an extra time for half the original hit's damage. This includes the star spray from Eternal Sphere, meaning Claude effectively hits 18 times per attack. Obtained in a chest in Eluria Tower or a random drop from Fenrilbeasts in the Field of Courage. This doesn't stack with itself as far as I know. *Berserk Ring: Induces "Anger" status on the character. Anger status doubles attack power and normally happens when another character they're close to falls in battle. The only downside to this ring is that you can't induce Anger status again in battle. Metalworking a Ruby with Claude is the only way to get this in the TAS. *Rainbow Diamond: An excellent gem with multiple useful properties. Equipping it on a character (accessory slot) will raise their specialty levels by 1, meaning 2 will raise their Specialty levels by 2. However, the big use for these is to make Atlas Rings. Rainbow Diamonds can be Alchemized at level 7 Alchemy (or level 5 Alchemy with two Rainbow Diamonds~) when you have a Lezard Flask. They can be obtained rarely from the Survival specialty. There's one in a chest in the Sanctuary of Linga, a Private Action in Lacour nets you a free one, and they're a random drop from the Yety enemy in the Field of Power. *Atlas Ring: Also doubles attack power at the cost of making you weak to literally every element. In short, two Atlas Rings plus Anger status means you do 8x damage, which sounds amazing in theory... and to be perfectly honest, it is amazing on everyone but Claude. Claude with Eternal Sphere and a Meteor Ring does 18 hits, which has an extremely high chance of putting enemies into Peep status every time he attacks (and of course this can be manipulated to stunlock bosses to death). This setup may be used on Dias, assuming we can use Rena as bait to put him into Anger status. Metalworking a Rainbow Diamond with either Claude, Bowman or Dias would be a way to get these in a TAS, though there's a free one in the Field of Power. How broken is Claude? This is probably the setup that gives Claude the most damage per normal swing, not assuming any Combat Skills activate. This may not actually be how the game calculates damage and I may be wildly off, so be warned: *Eternal Sphere: Base 1600 weapon power, with 8 stars doing 1/4 base damage each. Effectively 9 hits per swing with 3x base damage. *Slayer's Ring: Adds 2 extra "attack chances" per swing, applying to all 9 hits. Basically doubles damage. *Atlas Ring: Double damage. *Attack Vial: 50% attack power increase during battle. *Anger status: Double damage. Total: 36x base damage with that setup. On top of that, it's possible he could crit the enemy (extra damage + instant peep), it's possible he could GUTS the enemy (close to double damage) and it's possible the Combat Skills "Below The Belt" (ignore enemy defense) and "Mental Training" (extra damage) can kick in. These can apply to all 27 hits: It's almost guaranteed they'll all activate at least once. The damage cap is 9999. If Claude hits for 9999 with that equipment setup... 1 hit: 9999 2 hits: 4999 24 hits: 2499 It comes out to about 80000 damage per swing, 79973 to be exact. He'll only have the Meteor Ring for the TAS, though, so the numbers will be a bit lower: 24x base damage with that setup, with an effective "damage cap" of 54982 per swing. Have I mentioned I love this game?
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ars4326
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This TAS was made for you, Samsara! Looking forward to your work on this one!
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
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I think you can get Treasure Chest from merely advancing in Radar, which saves you from leveling in Pickpocketing if you don't want.
Samsara
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Tristal wrote:
I think you can get Treasure Chest from merely advancing in Radar, which saves you from leveling in Pickpocketing if you don't want.
Unfortunately, it's not possible. This is the full Radar item pool, again taken from the Item Encyclopedia on GameFAQs: Aquaberry x5 Blackberry x5 Blueberry x5 Cook From The Heart Cure Stone Feet Symbol Frog Healing Ring Mental Ring Mithril Moonite Orichalcum Peep Half Spectacles Stardust Ring It'd only be levelled a minimum of 3 times, for the 2 Mithrils (for Eternal Sphere) and an Orichalcum (for Silvance). Pickpocketing wouldn't be used for Treasure Chests anyway, Magical Clay is much more efficient considering all the talent unlocking that needs to be done before the Harfainx fight. I don't even think Pickpocketing would be used at all, as all the really good pickpocket targets are long before the TAS would be able to steal from them. The only time I can see it coming in handy is possibly in Claude's story, when he's summoned back to the Calnus at the end of disc 1. He can pickpocket a Battle Suit while up there, which would allow for much more reckless boss fights. Today's Infodump: Skill Planning Because I haven't rambled enough already. There are frames to save in determining which skill sets get purchased and which are left behind. Ultimately, skills are useful in regard to both stat raising without needing to level and learning the proper Specialties needed. Knowledge 1 (necessary): Mineralogy: +3 INT per skill level. Used to unlock Identify, Metalwork and Alchemy. Herbal Medicine: Blue/Blackberries heal 3% more per skill level. Used to unlock Identify, Compounding and Survival. Recipe: Favorite foods heal way more. Used to unlock Cooking. Metalwork is absolutely necessary for the insane damage output we're looking for. Alchemy's also useful, though it's more likely we'll get all the metals and gems we need without having to resort to using it. Same with Compounding: There are faster ways to get the instant kill potions (Treasure Chests <3). Knowledge 2 (probably skippable): Musical Notation: (Skill level)+1 AGL increase. Used to unlock Musical Talent. Biology: (Skill level)2x10 HP increase. Used to unlock Compounding. Tool Knowledge: Item selling prices raise by 3% per skill level. Used to unlock Identify. The HP increase might be nice, but nothing else jumps out. Multiple characters with Tool Knowledge doesn't stack: It just takes the highest skill level on a character. Knowledge 3 (probably skippable) Mental Science: +5 MP increase per level. Used to unlock Compounding. Piety: Random stat increases based on a low percentage of your current stats. Fairyology: (Skill level)+1 INT increase. Used to unlock Alchemy. MP would only be useful for the three people that aren't Claude, or as I like to call them the three people who aren't doing enough damage for it to matter. Piety is absolutely useless due to its mechanics, as it works best at level 255 with perfect stat point manipulation. Again, Compounding and Alchemy might be useful if there weren't other ways to get the things we'd need from them. Sensibility 1 (necessary): Courage: Used to unlock Pickpocketing. Patience: +2 CON per skill level. Used to unlock Practice and Survival. Esthetic Sense: Used to unlock Art and Metalwork. Good Eye: HP restoration from food increases. Used to unlock Cooking. Esthetic Sense is the key to this skill set. Sensibility 2 (MANDATORY): Playfulness: Gives FOL per skill level. Used to unlock Oracle. Danger Sense: +3 STM per skill level. Used to unlock Scout. Perseverance: Lowers SP needed to raise skill levels. Used to unlock Practice. Poker Face: +3 GUTS per skill level. Used to unlock Pickpocketing. There isn't a single skill here that isn't useful in some way, except maybe Danger Sense (though STM is quite important for post-battle healing). Perseverance is the top priority for SP management: A single unlocked talent is enough to level it up to 10 and you'd still have 20 SP left over to spend as you like. GUTS is an amazingly important stat: As mentioned in the previous infodump, gives you a chance to double damage per hit (which means 18 chances per swing with Claude). The formula for Playfulness is something like (previous level's FOL) + (previous level x 600). For example, level 1 gives 100 FOL, so level 2 would give 100 + (1 x 600) = 700 FOL, and level 3 would give 700 + (2 x 600) = 1900 FOL. 1: 100 FOL 2: 700 FOL 3: 1900 FOL 4: 3700 FOL 5: 6100 FOL 6: 9100 FOL 7: 12700 FOL 8: 16900 FOL 9: 21700 FOL 10: 27100 FOL ...To put it simply, levelling it up to level 10 gives you 100000 FOL flat. Sensibility 3 (absolutely necessary): Functionality: +6 STR, DEX, AGL, INT per skill level. Used to unlock Customize. Radar: Gives a random item out of a possible 15 per skill level. Used to unlock Oracle. Effort: Lowers a character's overall needed experience by 4% per skill level. Used to unlock Practice. Functionality is amazing, both in the stat boosts it gives and the Specialty it unlocks. Radar, as previously mentioned, gets us the two Mithril we need long before we can acquire it normally. Effort is decent, it may give us more free levels, but it's not a priority. Technique 1 (necessary): Whistling: Used to unlock Familiar. Copying: Used to unlock Reproduction. Sketching: Used to unlock Art. Kitchen Knife: +20 STR per skill level. Used to unlock Cooking. Kitchen Knife is lovely, it's one of the first skills I max out when I play the game normally, but the real skills here we want are Whistling and Sketching: Whistling to eventually get us Come On, Bunny! and Art because Treasure Chests, yo. Technique 2 (necessary): Mech Knowledge: Used to unlock Machinery. Craft: (Skill level)+2 AGL increase. Used to unlock Customize and Metalwork. Animal Training: Used to unlock Familiar. Writing: (Skill level)+2 DEX increase. Used to unlock Authoring. Craft and Animal Training, to say the least. Authoring might actually be really useful for saving SP too, though I have to double check what skill books can be written first. Technique 3 (necessary): Musical Instrument: (Skill level)+1 AGL increase. Used to unlock Musical Talent. Metal Casting: +2 DEX per level. Used to unlock Customize. Scientific Ability: +10 STR per level. Used to unlock Metalwork. Mech Operation: Used to unlock Machinery. You guessed it: Metal Casting and Scientific Ability are what we're after here. Scientific Ability is a high priority in particular, as it gives some decent extra damage like Kitchen Knife does alongside leveling up Metalwork. Combat Skills...? Don't bother. Mental Training in Combat 2 might be nice for Claude, though. Maybe at some point I'll actually start playing the game and really testing/verifying all my information. God, I need a life.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: I CAN'T STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS GAME, SEND HELP
Samsara
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More Nico TAS analyzing. I swear I'll move this all to a Pastebin once it's complete, sorry for post after post of text-walls and infodumps: BOSS FOUR: SHIN (3), STONE STATUEx2 Battle starts at ~10:05 in the encode. Dias is his default Lacour Front Line level (he reverts back to 35 when he officially joins the party), wearing a Marvel Sword, a Mithril Mesh, a Mithril Shield, a Plate Helm, Silver Greaves, a Mind Ring and a Tri-Emplem. THERE'S STILL NO REASON FOR ASHTON TO BE HERE, but he's at his default level (17), wearing a Lotus Eater, a Mithril Mesh, a Buckler, a Steel Helm, Silver Greaves, and two Tri-Emplems. Claude's level 17, wearing another Marvel Sword, a Mithril Mesh, a Mithril Shield, a Plate Helm, Plate Greaves, and two Rainbow Diamonds. Rena's level 18, wearing a Sorcress Knuckles, a Mithril Dress, a Buckler, a Hermit's Helm, Witch's Boots, and two Tri-Emplems. I say Shin (3) because this is the third time you fight him: The first battle is timed, you need to survive for one minute. The second battle requires you to lose. The timed battle would only have one goal, and that's for Shin to not use Foehn. Foehn would be like Thunderstorm in the Harfainx battle: Powerful and time-wasting. The losing battle would... I don't know. Die as fast as possible. So this battle's a lot faster than the last one, which is nice! This is around the point in these boss TASes where things start to get fast and hard to really analyze deeply, but I'll do my best. Dias uses a Skanda Ointment immediately upon the battle beginning and oh my God the menu scrolling is horrible please make it stop. The Stone Statues are prioritized, which is a little odd as they're not much of a threat, but ultimately things go pretty swimmingly. I'm surprised to see Claude using Shooting Stars: Not sure what's up with that, really, but with the TASer's setup maybe it's the best course of action. It's just not doing the damage I'd want to see out of it. Aside from the menu scrolling and Ashton's presence (seriously: really great character but so much wasted time to recruit him in a speedrun) there's just the typical problems I see with the equipment: Claude really should have the Eternal Sphere by now, and... Wait, this is the last actual disc 1 boss (there's another timed battle just before the disc ends, this is the last one you actually have to beat), if memory serves me correctly... It's at the top of Eluria Tower... Which means... The TASer... didn't get the Meteor Ring. Sorry, that just hit me. I need a moment. Deep breaths, Samsara. Deep breaths. Don't get mad on the internet more than you already do. Okay. There you go. So yeah, the Meteor Ring would be a huge benefit at this point no matter what, especially with the equipment setup this TASer is using. I'd stress Claude using it over anything, even something like another Atlas Ring. Claude does insane damage anyway, and the extra 9 hits per swing (with Eternal Sphere of course) means a world of difference when it comes to stunlocking. Proper stunlocking will come into play in a later analysis... Anyway. For the full TAS, Claude would have his endgame accessory setup by now: Atlas Ring and Meteor Ring. This battle wouldn't be long enough to pull a "woman in a refridgerator" on Rena, i.e kill her off to incite Anger status in Claude, but it'll most likely be manipulated for battles way down the line. I'd probably go with Berserk Rings at the very least on Dias, Rena and Bowman, with Dias most likely getting an Atlas ring himself since Air Slash is just too good (look at it in this battle, like damn son). I can see this strategy working for us: Someone (likely Rena) would use the Skanda Ointment as the battle begins. Claude would home in on Shin and tear him apart, Dias would solo one of the Stone Statues while Bowman and Rena team up on the other one. I'm planning on having Rena actually fighting in every battle, for two reasons: The extra damage will make earlier battles that much faster, and as stated earlier she can be manipulated into Anger bait for Claude and Dias in later battles. Shame, though. I like Rena a lot. I hate to see her die but I'd love to see her come back with a Marionette Pill. BOSS FIVE: SYNARD Battle begins at ~11:30 in the encode. Dias is level 36 with the same equipment he had in the last battle. Ashton still shouldn't be there, but is level 22 with the same equipment as the last battle. Claude still doesn't have the Eternal Sphere, but is level 22 with the same equipment as the last battle. In a surprising turn of events, Rena is level 22 with thee same equipment as the last battle. So here's a battle where I can't tell what's going on based on the fact that Claude's just using Shooting Stars over and over for half of it. I'll keep it brief for once. Things to avoid: Rena's Cure All, like any spell with an animation, is just wasting precious seconds. Claude gets Peep'd, which shouldn't happen. More character switching is needed to keep things optimal, and honestly Claude shouldn't be using any KMs except for one, and he doesn't have that one yet. Okay. The Synard is a flying boss, which presents a major strategy problem for our TAS: Claude only shoots Eternal Sphere stars when on the ground, not when he's doing an air attack... I've got an interesting idea... Something you'll see often with jumping enemies like Vorpalbunny (or its recolors) is when trying to attack them, you may end up under them, and they'll jump off your head since you're obviously a solid object. Characters can sort of "stack", though it's a rare occurance and hardly ever lasts long due to the AI being a bit off. However, this is a TAS, so it could be possible to set up a situation where Claude gets on top of another character (Bowman seems likely, as Rena has a nice jump attack) and uses the extra height to be able to use melee attacks against the Synard. Claude can easily get onto another character using his Head Splitter KM, so that's not a problem. The problem would be keeping the Synard in place and immobile, as I'm not sure how movement would work with Claude on top of someone else. It's possible to set a character to manual control in the middle of a battle (basically turning off their AI) so standing still wouldn't be a problem, but I'd need to test if it's even possible to move in that configuration. If this strategy fails, I'd probably just straight up copy the Nico TAS with a few modifications: Dias would be using Air Slash more consistently instead of Cross Wave, Rena would be in close quarters as well because her jump attack is actually pretty likely to hit, and Bowman would be there... doing something. I hope he has a KM that'll hit the Synard from the ground. ...For having so much useless knowledge on this game, I really don't know anything about Bowman. I've always gone with Precis during my playthroughs, though she requires effort (or rather, about 5 minutes) to recruit so she's a no-go for the TAS. I'll stop here for this post, partly because I'm approaching 7000 words written over all my posts in this thread so far (including this one) and partly because the rest of the battles are mostly kinda same-y and there's not much to say about them in terms of revising strategies, so I can probably knock out the entire rest of the bosses in a single post. At this point, everyone pretty much already has their endgame gear, so pretty much all my strategies are going to end up sounding a lot like "Hey, stunlock this guy with Claude until he dies" or "Make sure Dias interrupts this guy with Air Slash so he doesn't perform his 20 second long fire attack that insta-kills you in TAS conditions". Good news though for people not actively following the BizHawk dev threads: I did some testing with SO2 and as far as I can tell, aside from a minor sound glitch it runs really well. Savestates and re-recording are stable, too, though I'd like to test that further when I have the time.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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If a picture says a thousand words, then I've said about 7 pictures in this thread already, so here's something a bit easier to understand: Link to video Copy-pasting from the video description: Rena's a couple levels higher than she should be in this video since I neglected to manipulate away random battles, but it doesn't change the strategy at all. Switching characters allows for faster attacking since the AI delays between hits. Alen is pinned down and can't move or attack, he's basically stunlocked throughout the entire battle. The first character switch needs to be done manually (hit Circle then select Claude), then the L2 button can be used to switch back and forth immediately. No manipulation was done in the battle (as I haven't looked into how to do that yet) so Claude gets hit almost immediately. I set Rena to manual control so she wouldn't automatically Heal and run away when switching back and forth between her and Claude. I did this without savestates at 25% speed, so it can definitely be faster.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
ALAKTORN
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Oh my god that looks so much better. Why didn’t the Jap TASer do that?
Samsara
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I assume it has to do with the difficulty, as this strategy plan is on Earth (default) and the Nico TAS is on Universe (hardest, needs to be unlocked): Universe difficulty adds an extremely high chance for enemies to block attacks, alongside doubling enemy HP, attack power, and INT, so it's possible that this strategy wouldn't work under the Nico TAS conditions. Luck manipulation seems like a huge pain in this game too, in that it looks like it might not even be feasible, so that's something to factor in as well. The Nico TAS and my planning vids will be using different approaches anyway, since they're on different difficulties and have much different conditions (characters, items, weapons, etc). This is probably the battle that'll look the most similar, since aside from the difficulty the conditions are completely set in stone. Can't break the game until you leave for Cross, and this battle is about 5-10 minutes before that happens. I might make a run on Universe difficulty in the future, in which case the strategies would be a lot more comparable, but I'd have to spend quite a while gathering enough voice clips in a verification movie to unlock it in the first place (multiple playthroughs!) so I'm sticking to Earth for the first run.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 424
Location: UK
I'm looking forward to this TAS. Please keep up with your interesting planning posts! It would also be nice to see a bonus dungeon TAS.
Samsara
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Thanks for the support! It's nice to know people are interested in my insane planning posts, though I've sort of put all that on hold in order to focus on DTC5. I'd also like to fact check my planning before continuing by actually playing through the game again, since every planning post I've made barring the Alen-Tax battle has been completely off the top of my head. Once February rolls around, I can start playing through the game on Bizhawk and posting massive walls of text again. As for the Cave of Trials, I was considering a sort of "100%" run of the game where I accomplish the most content possible in a single playthrough, though it would only be as a personal project and not something I'd submit to the site due to how arbitrary the goal is. I'll give the Cave of Trials a shot for fun, though, as I'd love to see it done when severely underlevelled... That being said, I'd like to see it done with the best setup as well (level 255, best possible equipment) just to see how fast it can be blazed through. I might do both in the far future, who knows?
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
holy
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このTAS動画は所謂お遊びプレイです。 即死効果のあるアイテムを使っていないのもそのため。 最速を目指していない、Tool-Assisted [魅せプレイ] 特にこの投稿者に関してはその傾向が強いです。 理由として考えられるのはエミュの不具合です。 戦闘時にパーティーメンバーが1人の場合フリーズします。 TASvideosに投稿するほどの物を作ることが出来ないので だいたいこれぐらいでいいや。といった物が出来上がります。 もし不具合が出ないのであれば ここ数年の間に私がもう少しマシなTASを製作していたでしょう。
ALAKTORN
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holy wrote:
このTAS動画は所謂お遊びプレイです。 即死効果のあるアイテムを使っていないのもそのため。 最速を目指していない、Tool-Assisted [魅せプレイ] 特にこの投稿者に関してはその傾向が強いです。 理由として考えられるのはエミュの不具合です。 戦闘時にパーティーメンバーが1人の場合フリーズします。 TASvideosに投稿するほどの物を作ることが出来ないので だいたいこれぐらいでいいや。といった物が出来上がります。 もし不具合が出ないのであれば ここ数年の間に私がもう少しマシなTASを製作していたでしょう。
I don’t understand this really well but I’ll try a rough translation. “This TAS isn’t serious. That’s why it doesn’t use the instant-death item. It doesn’t aim for fastest, it’s kind of a playaround. The guy who made that TAS usually is like that. The reason could be because the emulator is bugged. When battling, if you only have 1 party member, the game freezes. It’s impossible to create something submittable to TASVideos, so he just made something that was somewhat alright. If there weren’t bugs, I would’ve made a better TAS.”
Samsara
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Ah, I knew that me not fully understanding Japanese would cause a divide, here. I mean no disrespect to that TASer or to the TAS itself. For what it's worth, that TAS is extremely well-done given its limitations and different goals. The later battles are insanely fast even without things like the Eternal Sphere and Meteor Ring, especially since it was done on Universe. I had some doubt toward it being "serious" due to the in-game time and Ashton's recruitment, but it still convinced me it was at least somewhat intended to be a planning video. The strategies between my eventual TAS and the Nico TAS will differ greatly anyway due to the difficulty, so I shouldn't have been so critical over their choices, especially since I misunderstood the TASer's intent. I apologize. I'll keep that in mind for my future analysis posts. As for the emulator problems, those should all be solved once BizHawk 2.0 is released with the Octoshock core. The first thing I'll be doing upon its release is verifying that completing the game is possible with no problems. After that, I'll begin the TAS proper.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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Samsara wrote:
The first thing I'll be doing upon its release is verifying that completing the game is possible with no problems. After that, I'll begin the TAS proper.
As a wise, orange soda loving man once said: "Aw, here it goes!" I may not actually get around to doing this until August or September, but it's definitely happening now that BizHawk 1.11.0 is released. Life is good. Let's make this happen.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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Samsara wrote:
I may not actually get around to doing this until August or September, but it's definitely happening now that BizHawk 1.11.0 is released. Life is good. Let's make this happen.
Happy August or September of 2015, everyone! I've started a test run!
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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Happy September/October of 2015, everyone! I'm about 40 minutes into the run, which I have officially upgraded from "test run" to "final run" since with the help of some very lovely people (and GameFAQs posts from a decade ago), I've found out essentially everything I need to produce an optimized run. I've chosen to do Claude's story, as it has the faster RTA run, I'm more familiar with it, and it'll likely end up being the faster TAS. I don't know if both stories are publishable since a huge amount of the game is the same (probably about 90% of the game, mostly in dialogue), though in the future I may do Rena's story just for kicks. Here's a fun thing I didn't know until I started: (U) is waaaaaay faster. For text reasons. I wish I was making this up. (J) text is full of unskippable pauses, meaning that longer dialogues could end up being close to a minute longer than comparable scenes in (U), which has absolutely no pauses. To put this into perspective, I did the first 15 minutes of the game on both (U) and (J), except not really because I did 15 minutes on (J) and roughly 12 minutes on (U) to reach the same point. This pattern isn't consistent over the entire course of the game, the intro is just extremely text heavy, but I'd estimate that a TAS on (J) would be somewhere between 20-30 minutes slower due to text alone, perhaps only a minute of which would be negated by the few faster things it has. Here's a second, either more or less fun thing depending on the kind of person you are: This game uses Knuth's subtractive RNG, which has been described on Discord as "pretty bad lol". 56 values are used for it. One value serves as the index and increases linearly from 1-55 (though not always 1 at a time), and the other 55 are the actual random numbers that get generated as an array. Whenever the index is called, it advances and chooses the corresponding value in the array. When the index moves past 55, it wraps back around to 1 and some cool math games are performed on the numbers in the array. Here's a dang example in Lua!
Language: lua

function SubGen(seed) local n, r, s = 54, {}, { [0]=seed, 1 } for n = 2,54 do s[n] = (s[n-2] - s[n-1]) % 1e9 end for n = 0,54 do r[n] = s[(34*(n+1))%55] end local next = function() n = (n+1) % 55 r[n] = (r[(n-55)%55] - r[(n-24)%55]) % 1e9 return r[n] end for n = 55,219 do next() end return next end subgen = SubGen(292929) for n = 220,229 do print(n,subgen()) end
I'm currently forcing smart people to code for me working on getting a prediction script for when I need to actually manipulate RNG extensively, in roughly 20-30 game minutes from where I currently am. Actually advancing the RNG in-game is extremely limited to the best of my current knowledge (though I will be investigating it closely): There's a known way of RNG manipulation through the Oracle skill, but this is a lengthy process that, depending on what you want to manipulate, can potentially take hundreds of uses to get to the result you want. The index will advance every frame on the title screen, which pretty much means that every 55 frames you'll get a new set of values, but the problem there is that the RNG gets seeded the exact same way upon the game starting/soft resets, so you're essentially throwing the RNG back to the beginning if you want to try and save scum it. My goal is to not have to save scum at all, though with the nature of the RNG this could be much easier said than done, and it may mean that I will have to open the menu far more often than I already have to open the menu just because the RNG happened to line up in the exact way that I want to do what I need to do without losing time overall. I don't know if I'll post full WIPs, a large portion of the TAS is just clearing text ASAP, but once I have more actual TAS-y stuff done I'll put together some videos of battles and all the manipulation necessary for them. I just finished talking to the king of Cross, sitting at a current TAS time of 39:12.60 and an approximate RTA time of 38:35.56. The RTA WR of 4:49:23 reaches the same point in 39:32, so I'm about a full minute ahead of it so far. I should be making up a lot of time in RNG manipulation and battles, though. EDIT: Aw, heck, have a Streamable for the Alen-Tax fight, AKA "what I posted here several years ago, but better": JK IT GONE EDIT2: Had a minor desync issue which was quickly fixed. Updated times. Also, here's a userfile for my progress, since what I meant by "posting full WIPs" was "posting full encodes", because I am an idiot: User movie #69484968390313208
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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TIL the name of this RNG algorithm (pretty common for RPGs), not sure why it's "bad" though. For these sort of TAS, you should progress normally up to the point where you need a specific lucky event, check how many RNs you must burn in order to get this event, and hex-edit your movie file to burn the same number of RNs in the most time efficient way (different movement, waiting in a screen where RNs are burnt over time, ...).
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lapogne36 wrote:
TIL the name of this RNG algorithm (pretty common for RPGs), not sure why it's "bad" though.
I'm assuming they mean it's "bad" in the sense that it's bad compared to other RNGs when evaluating them on what makes RNG good. A good RNG does not allow someone to determine the next number by knowing the previous results. A good RNG has a good distribution of all possible outputs. Etc. This RNG doesn't have those qualities, so it's bad by that measure.
Samsara
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Happy "holy crap it's been over half a year since I last worked on this run", everyone! User movie #74587388183534509 With the release of BizHawk 2.6.3 I've finally picked this back up. This WIP ends right after the Varmillion fight, with my last input sitting at a TAS time of 1:07:04.17 and an approximate RTA time of 1:06:27.13. It's been so long since I last worked that there's a new RTA record, reaching this point at roughly 1:08:30, so I'm about 2 minutes ahead, give or take differences from the RTA record playing on PS2. This upcoming hour of game time is going to be extremely important, as I intend to do all of the setup I'll need for the rest of the game here. Perhaps a bit of a lofty goal but it honestly should be doable. EDIT: Just manipulated my way to the Eternal Sphere, about to leave for the Hoffmann Ruins. Once I finish up the Harfainx fight, I'll post a new WIP and a long explanation for my manipulation session. Fun fact in advance: Sorting your items calls the RNG 1024 times!
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.