Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Hm, those prayer scenes cover a fairly large range of areas. We might need to do even more before the ending. Ouch.
At the worst, this glitch could probably be used in a few places to skip smaller segments of the game.
Humbly awaiting your results, Nitrodon!
I looked at the second and third prayer scenes, and both of them check flag 174 as well. I suspect that might be the only flag required for all 7 of the prayer scenes, but I haven't looked into it enough.
To take the Phase Distorter into the past (and thus set flag 174), you need to take the Lumine Hall hole to the underworld (for Andonuts), defeat Ness's Nightmare (for the Phase Distorter), and get the Zexonyte from Onett as normal. Hopefully, those should be the only detours necessary to beat the game with this glitch.
The next problem is figuring out how to beat the end bosses at an unnaturally low level. If nothing else, you can solidify them every turn with PSI Freeze to ensure survival and deal damage at the same time.
Okay, here's a theory to get out of the Lost Underworld:
1) Have Jeff join you like normal.
2) Glitch warp to the entrance of the Lumine Hole dungeon, and go through it to set the Exit Mouse warp point.
3) Death warp back to Threed.
4) Glitch warp to Magicant, and beat Ness's Nightmare. Now you've lost the Sound Stone (for refreshing the screen), but gained the ability to teleport (and Poo).
5) Walk around Saturn Valley to activate the ability to teleport back there, and teleport to Threed.
6) Glitch warp to the middle of the underground Stonehenge Base (accessible without screen refresh due to similar tile & palettes), and use the Exit Mouse to warp to the beginning of the Lumine Hole.
7) Beat Electro Spectre, collect the seventh melody, and drop down the hole to the Lost Underworld.
8) Warp to Saturn Valley, and finish the game like normal.
For beating Ness's Nightmare, I would just manipulate it to use Shield beta while Paula blasts it with about 10 Light-chasing prayers.
Electro Spectre should also be easy. Giygas (phase 1) & Pokey can be manipulated to miss, and Giygas phase 2+3 can be manipulated to skip his turns. In fact, it's a small detour to get the Sea Pendant in the Lost Underworld, and you'll already have the Franklin Badge....
I remember doing some basic, non-thorough tests earlier, and came up nothing. Someone else should give it a try, though. I don't have access to my emulator right now, so let me just share some thoughts before I go to bed:
- There's no point in checking why the game freezes when you try to death warp in the Lost Underworld. Dropping down the hole into the area is a "death-respawn-reset" event -- dying in the Lost Underworld before saving would put you at the entrance to the Lost Underworld if you continued (while playing normally). Other such death respawn resets include entering Deep Darkness for the first time, arriving in the Cave of the Past, and Jeff joining Ness & Paula in Threed.
- Since we NEED PSI Teleport to get out of the Lost Underworld, I can only think of one other alternative to the route I posted earlier: fill up Ness's inventory at the start of the game so that Buzz Buzz sends the Sound Stone to Tracy, then either have Paula grab it (probably via death warping) or teleport back to Onett after beating Magicant. This method seems much slower.
- I seem to recall whether or not you could teleport changed dynamically as you glitch walked between different segments -- so you shouldn't need to head all the way up to the Stonehenge Base to use the Exit Mouse. Just walk to the nearest sector where you're allowed to use the Exit Mouse, and use it to warp (hopefully properly & solidly) to the entrance of Lumine Hole.
- This suggestion could work for a regular run, too: before Ness heads to Peaceful Rest Valley, save at the bus station in Twoson. Then, grab the Cup of Lifenoodles in Peaceful Rest Valley, and death-warp back to Twoson after getting Paula. Revive Paula with the Cup of Lifenoodles, and continue like normal. The lack of PP for Ness won't be a problem -- he gets fully healed after being ambushed by the Zombie Lady.
- Another theoretic improvement: is it possible to lure an enemy all the way to the meteor area at the start of the game? Then, after getting Buzz Buzz & Picky, you could engage it in battle, let Ness die, and deathwarp back to Ness's House? It would save a miniboss battle & some backtracking, at the cost of possibly another battle to lower Ness's HP (probably not necessary if Buzz Buzz is manipulated to miss the enemy & the enemy SMAAAASH!es Ness) & fighting Frank at a lower level.
- There's no point in checking why the game freezes when you try to death warp in the Lost Underworld. Dropping down the hole into the area is a "death-respawn-reset" event -- dying in the Lost Underworld before saving would put you at the entrance to the Lost Underworld if you continued (while playing normally). Other such death respawn resets include entering Deep Darkness for the first time, arriving in the Cave of the Past, and Jeff joining Ness & Paula in Threed.
Indeed, I hadn't thought of this. Of course, I may try to find out anyway to satisfy my own curiosity.
- Since we NEED PSI Teleport to get out of the Lost Underworld, I can only think of one other alternative to the route I posted earlier: fill up Ness's inventory at the start of the game so that Buzz Buzz sends the Sound Stone to Tracy, then either have Paula grab it (probably via death warping) or teleport back to Onett after beating Magicant. This method seems much slower.
Another method is to recruit Poo by fighting Master Barf. This would require sitting through two phone conversations and wading slowly through Deep Darkness (from Tenda Village) without Teleport.
- I seem to recall whether or not you could teleport changed dynamically as you glitch walked between different segments -- so you shouldn't need to head all the way up to the Stonehenge Base to use the Exit Mouse. Just walk to the nearest sector where you're allowed to use the Exit Mouse, and use it to warp (hopefully properly & solidly) to the entrance of Lumine Hole.
You can legitimately use Exit Mice to warp from one tileset to another in some Your Sanctuary locations (the current TAS does this in Lilliput Steps), so this shouldn't be a problem.
- This suggestion could work for a regular run, too: before Ness heads to Peaceful Rest Valley, save at the bus station in Twoson. Then, grab the Cup of Lifenoodles in Peaceful Rest Valley, and death-warp back to Twoson after getting Paula. Revive Paula with the Cup of Lifenoodles, and continue like normal. The lack of PP for Ness won't be a problem -- he gets fully healed after being ambushed by the Zombie Lady.
I am aware of this, though I hadn't thought much about the details.
- Another theoretic improvement: is it possible to lure an enemy all the way to the meteor area at the start of the game? Then, after getting Buzz Buzz & Picky, you could engage it in battle, let Ness die, and deathwarp back to Ness's House? It would save a miniboss battle & some backtracking, at the cost of possibly another battle to lower Ness's HP (probably not necessary if Buzz Buzz is manipulated to miss the enemy & the enemy SMAAAASH!es Ness) & fighting Frank at a lower level.
It's possible for Buzz Buzz to miss a Spiteful Crow, so that should work. The extra stats at level 4 are useful against Frank, but it may be possible to work around it. PP wouldn't be a problem, since there's no reason to use PSI before defeating Titanic Ant.
Some more things I've found out:
- If Ness happens to be KO'd after beating his nightmare in Magicant, then he will be absent from the party when you reappear in Saturn Valley. Most likely this would glitch up the post-Giygas parts of the game. Any other party members can be KO'd safely during that fight.
- Getting Saturn Valley to appear on your teleport list involves entering it from the main cave ....which resets the Exit Mouse warp point. Here's a workaround that should work: Before setting the exit mouse warp point to be entrance to Lumine Hall, first glitch warp to Saturn Valley to activate the teleport spot.
- I keep forgetting that death warping doesn't revive anyone but Ness. This isn't a big issue, as we can luck-manipulate a butterfly to give Ness enough PP to heal his cold after doing the glitch. Once in Magicant, while we can start at the entrance to Flying Man's house, we can instead start at the very beginning of Magicant & talk to Ness's Mom -- she gives the party a full heal. We can't visit the hospital in Threed, because that particular room is below the Y coordinate where we start the glitch.
- Speaking of which, if it turns out to be a problem with late-game stuff, we can always deactivate the "don't go below a certain y-coordinate" thing by going back to the Threed stairs & walking onto them normally.
- Oh, and after Jeff joins the group, we need to save in the Threed hotel before doing the glitch. The default death-respawn point after Jeff joins is too low down. Also, in the Sea of Eden, the party must stay as high as possible -- they are JUST able to fit through without going too low.
- Luring an enemy close to the meteorite to fight with Buzz Buzz works fine. I weakened Ness in a previous fight, and lured a Coil Snake over to the police barriers, got Picky & Buzz Buzz, and then went back & red-swirled the snake. Losing the battle death-warps you to Ness's house. So for all you low-level gamers, it's possible to fight Frank at level 1.
- We still need to check if falling down the hole to the Lost Underworld & beating Magicant is good enough to finish the game. It probably is, but someone should probably actually do it on a console.
- As for beating Ness's Nightmare, Electro Specter, and Giygas, I think there are enough options. We've got light-chasing prayers, Flying Man (unless having him for/after the final battle glitches things up), Multi-bottle Rocket drops in the Cave of the Past (and the Rabbits Foot right by Electro Specter), Franklin Badge reflecting, and the Sea Pendant if it will make the final parts easier.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Who exactly is planning on working on the new run? I would be very very very interested to see it done... even the additions of the more tame "walk through certain walls" glitch (like the Paula Cabin shortcut and the Lilliput Steps cave) will make me enjoy it.
Falling down the hole in Lumine Hall is not a "death-respawn-reset" event. Perhaps it should be, but it isn't. I checked by stopping the TAS in the underworld and killing off everyone, and the party respawned in Winters (where Tessie dropped everyone off on the way to Stonehenge).
Hmm... I really thought that it was a death-respawn point. Well, there's no reason for it to be from gameplay or story-paradox perspective, since you (should) have the ability to teleport out of there the instant you arrive.
Thank you very much for correcting me, because I think I now know what your problem was.
Save at the Threed hotel phone first, and you can death-warp from the Lost Underworld back to Threed just fine.
If you don't save at the Threed hotel phone first, the death-respawn point is where Jeff joined you by the ruined Sky Runner ...which is below where we activate the glitch, which freezes the game.
So things seem rosy now. I don't have time to test this at the moment, but it seems like this is the new route:
1) Start the game, luck-manipulate a random enemy (probably a crow) nearby the meteroite (the police barricades are sufficient) to death-warp back home afterwards. Probably need to manipulate SMAAAASH!es from the crow & Buzz Buzz to miss it. Thus we skip Starman Jr.
2) Do all the normal stuff until getting the Pencil Eraser.
3) Save in the Bus Station.
4) Pick up a Cup of Lifenoodles in Peaceful Rest Valley.
5) Use the clipping-trick to "jump" off the cliff right to Paula's prison.
6) Right after beating Carpainter & saving Paula, deathwarp back to Twoson. Perhaps Ness could catch a cold in Peaceful Rest Valley?
7) Use the Cup of Lifenoodles on Paula, and keep playing normally until Jeff joins the others.
8) Save in the Threed hotel, and head back to the ruined Sky Runner, getting Paula a cold along the way from a zombie.
9) Do the glitch, and head right to where Ness learns the seventh melody. Use the Sound Stone to refresh the area, and drop down into the Lost Underworld.
10) Deathwarp back to Threed.
11) Luck manipulate a butterfly to appear to replenish some of Ness's PP as he heads back to the ruined Sky Runner, getting a cold along the way as well.
12) Do the glitch again, this time healing Ness afterwards, and head to Magicant. Use the entrance to the shop if you want to revive Paula & Jeff with Ness's Mom, or use the entrance to Flying Man's house if Ness is going to solo Magicant.
13) Beat Ness's Nightmare, and Poo will mysteriously join you. You'll arrive in Saturn Valley.
14) After talking to Dr. Andronuts to trigger the change in Onett, leave & reenter Saturn Valley from the main cave entrance to put it on the teleport list.
15) Teleport to Onett, and finish the game like normal.
Variations:
- Recruit Flying Man. He'll stay with you after Magicant -- I don't know if this will mess anything up. Note that if he dies, he'll still follow your party around afterwards, and his only action at the start of every battle will be to immediately collapse again.
- Have Ness be unconscious when beating Ness's Nightmare. This will cause Ness to leave your party when you arrive in Saturn Valley. I don't know if this will mess anything up. While the experience from beating Ness's Nightmare is shared amongst the conscious party members, the Sound Stone boosts & experience will still only go to Ness, even if unconscious.
Oh, ElectroSpecter:
I don't plan to do this run -- I figured someone with more experience should. Sure, it may seem simple luck-manipulation for the most part, but I'm not sure I have the patience for it. Maybe later on.
Bump. Some more progress.
Okay, so I death-warped back from the Lost Underworld, and then went immediately to Magicant.
Not being in a luck-manipulating mood, I powerlevelled Ness & co. for a bit, until Paula learned PSI Shield sigma.
Then, for fun, I recruited Flying Man, and defeated Ness's Nightmare with Ness KO'd.
After arriving in Saturn Valley, everything was indeed ready to go to Onett for the Meteorite Piece. I powerlevelled Poo so that he could learn PSI Teleport -- this alone is why keeping Ness in the party is probably the fastest way to go.
I abused PSI Teleport alpha to get to the meteor with no battles, and went back to Saturn Valley, then went to the Cave of the Past a-okay.
I did NOT want to luck manipulate, so I powerlevelled to level 60. PSI Starstorm is awesome -- and, only knowing the omega level, the name "Starstorm" doesn't appear in the menu -- just the omega symbol.
Anyways, I beat Giygas, and all the prayer stuff went smoothly. Well, I didn't have sound on, so maybe it doesn't sound right, but everything looks & plays fine (although Gerardo Montague doesn't appear in Saturn Valley, it doesn't mess anything up).
Immediately after the cutscene where they wake up, Ness disappeared, and it was just Paula & Flying Man. Uh oh -- no way to teleport back. And Minibarf was in my way (easy fight) -- Flying Man mysteriously disappeared after the fight. Then, the zombies were still blocking the way in Threed....
So I didn't get to check if the game would end properly. It's official that skipping Ness is out, just for the extra time it would take to clear a walking path back to Onett. I kind of doubt that Flying Man is a problem.
By the way, walking with Flying Man in the Lost Underworld is funny, since his sprite is still normal size....
I'd love to see a testrun movie as I still don't know how the glitch actually looks like and how severely it skips the game.^^
Okay, let me try to explain it a bit better....
Everything in Earthbound is in one large map (see here). Whenever you walk through a door/cave-entrance/hole in the floor, the game warps you to where its destination is.
Now, when Ness & co. step onto a staircase (like those under Threed or in the pyramid), they automatically move forward a bit & "lock" onto the staircase, so that they can only walk up or down diagonally.
If the game interrupts that locking procedure (by telling you someone's HP is getting critical due to poison/cold/etc. -- possibly other things like your Dad calling you could also work), then control gets messed up, and Ness & co. get "ghosted".
While ghosted, you can freely walk through anything, and directly walk around the map posted above with impunity. Most areas will appear pitch black due to having a different tileset than what is currently loaded, but you can reset the tileset by using the Town Map (if standing in an area that shows up on it) or the Sound Stone. You can hear the music of whatever area you're in, so that can help you orient yourself.
In order to unghost yourself, you must go through a door or warp somehow (death, use an Exit Mouse, teleport). Doors only exist in areas with loaded tilesets.
Some rules -- don't go out of bounds. It will likely freeze.
Also, you can never go below where you activated the glitch -- I guess the game tries to lock you onto the staircase, and gets confused when you're nowhere near it. This "can't go below" line stays in effect after unghosting yourself, and also when warping via doorways, teleport, etc. So don't enter the Threed hospital after starting the glitch in the Threed underground passageways.
You can clear this "don't go below" line by heading back to where you started the glitch & walking onto the staircase normally -- everything goes back to normal completely when you do so.
Now, you can start the glitch, and then (provided the area isn't below you) immediately stroll right up to Giygas's lair. Use the Sound Stone to refresh the area (if you need to), walk in & out of the doorway to unghost yourself, and fight Giygas.
...except that the game will freeze on the first prayer cutscene. As you play, the game sets or unsets "flags" that it can check later to see if you've done certain things.
The flag that is required for the prayer cutscenes to work is set when you travel back in time in the Phase Distorter. But we can't just glitch-warp to where Poo learns PSI Starstorm omega, as the only doorway to unghost yourself is on the wrong side of the chasm.
So we need to use the Phase Distorter in Saturn Valley. This requires (1) dropping down the hole into the Lost Underworld (this sets a flag that gets Apple Kid & Dr. Andronuts to appear in Saturn Valley), and (2) beating Ness's Nightmare in Magicant (this sets a flag that gets Dr. Andronuts to ask for the meteor piece).
Thus, the game involves rushing through until we're able to glitch-warp, dropping down the hole to the Lost Underworld (and death-warping back to Threed), glitch-warping to Magicant & beating Ness's Nightmare, and then continuing the game like you normally would after finishing Magicant.
I was playing around a bit by using the movie to start ghosted and discovered that you can also unghost yourself (and probably get rid of the invisible line) by hitting the trigger point for walking diagonally on any staircase, not just the one you used to start the glitch. Although, if you hit the trigger on the top of a staircase, you have to be careful to only hit the stairs walking trigger point once, otherwise the game forces you to walk up diagonally for a bit, and then you're stuck because you can only walk diagonally now and running into the staircase again does the same thing. Here is the proper way to do it.Here is the wrong way to do it. (both of these movies had the characters ghosted with the blue staircase used in the example movie) Notice that I am not pressing anything at one point when Ness is walking diagonally in the wrong movie.
Walking below the invisible line appears to simply put you in staircase diagonal walking mode and you can't get out (unless you are lucky enough to be lined up with a staircase or maybe a door). Warping below that line is a different story though, I suppose.
Oh, and this is what going out of bounds looks like. The game kind of freezes for a bit, and then... HUH??? (note: if a different tileset was loaded, there would be a lot of graphical glitches while the game is frozen, but the one I used here wasn't interesting enough)
<ccfreak2k> There is no 'ctrl' button on DeHackEd's computer. DeHackEd is always in control.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Floogal wrote:
1) Start the game, luck-manipulate a random enemy (probably a crow) nearby the meteroite (the police barricades are sufficient) to death-warp back home afterwards. Probably need to manipulate SMAAAASH!es from the crow & Buzz Buzz to miss it. Thus we skip Starman Jr.
I'm assuming you could skip Buzz Buzz's shield if you simply turned around after touching the enemy (to get a red swirl) and died during the surprise round, which would save some time. But is it worth skipping the 16 exp from Starman Jr? My instincts say probably, but it might be a close call.
The Starman Jr. talks to Buzz Buzz before the fight begins, so something tells me that the fight is started using a command code instead of the standard touch an enemy and fight, which means that where you are in relation to the Starman Jr. probably does not matter.
<ccfreak2k> There is no 'ctrl' button on DeHackEd's computer. DeHackEd is always in control.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
blahmoomoo wrote:
The Starman Jr. talks to Buzz Buzz before the fight begins, so something tells me that the fight is started using a command code instead of the standard touch an enemy and fight, which means that where you are in relation to the Starman Jr. probably does not matter.
You may have misunderstood the nature of my question ;]
A couple posts back we were talking about dying after getting Picky to skip the fight entirely.
Everything in Earthbound is in one large map (see here). Whenever you walk through a door/cave-entrance/hole in the floor, the game warps you to where its destination is.
Now, when Ness & co. step onto a staircase (like those under Threed or in the pyramid), they automatically move forward a bit & "lock" onto the staircase, so that they can only walk up or down diagonally.
If the game interrupts that locking procedure (by telling you someone's HP is getting critical due to poison/cold/etc. -- possibly other things like your Dad calling you could also work), then control gets messed up, and Ness & co. get "ghosted".
Ah, this is beautiful. I once had an experience of this sort in regular play. I had just entered Stonehenge base and was expecting a pizza. I got the cancellation call and managed to walk through a wall. After a short distance of screwing around, the music from the traffic jam in Dusty Dunes started playing.
I was surprised when I looked at the linked map that Stonehenge and Dusty Dunes weren't closer together, but it looks like the monkey caves are there... I guess that could've been why.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
FreshFeeling wrote:
Ah, this is beautiful. I once had an experience of this sort in regular play. I had just entered Stonehenge base and was expecting a pizza. I got the cancellation call and managed to walk through a wall. After a short distance of screwing around, the music from the traffic jam in Dusty Dunes started playing.
I was surprised when I looked at the linked map that Stonehenge and Dusty Dunes weren't closer together, but it looks like the monkey caves are there... I guess that could've been why.
Ah, so it works with any message! I wonder if it would be faster to call for a pizza than to catch a cold or get poisoned?
Ah, so it works with any message! I wonder if it would be faster to call for a pizza than to catch a cold or get poisoned?
If the run is going to be standard until reaching Threed, it occurs to me it might be best to just pick up the "For Sale" sign in Burglin park, since I think you can use it anywhere. I might be remembering wrong though.
Is anyone actually working on this right now? It looks like Halamantariel was starting a redo of the regular game but his last post in this thread was two months ago. Does anyone know if the glitched TAS is in progress, or is it discussion for a future project?
Edit: Asking because TASing has always fascinated me and I might eventually pick it up with something like this, if no one else does first. That would be a couple months down the road, though, and I have no experience (see post count) so please don't take this as a claim.
