Yay I feel so special. I read the 9-page earthbound topic that was talking about a speed run, and one thing that kept plauging everyone was the fact that:
a. can't time critical hits (they don't go by frames... kinda)
b. hard to force item drops
c. monster pattern is weird
Those were three big problems (aside from the time, the runthough, etc). I decided to post here because that thread is over a year old with a lot of junk in it, and I'm not personally running through this game so I thought if anyone wants to or is doing one, this might help.
Its not perfect but its a start!
Ok, after reading that previous thread, it was discovered that critical hits can be forced, not by frame-timing (such as in FF6), but rather by moving the cursor/hitting B/selecting enemy. I discovered that this is both true and false.
Here's the magic number: 7e0026 (1 byte)
I just figured this one out after lots of trial and error, and it's 12:41am so I only have 1 working value right now: 147. This value always forces a critical hit from Ness with a set value (ie, always a certain damage depending on your weapons/stats). The TIMING of this value is the bad part. Yes it's true that moving the cursor changes the value to something random (B-button acts as two cursor movements). But here's the nasty part... Example: You click attack (number jumps 'randomly', recreates with save-states). You click again (to confirm your choice) and the real hell starts. Your value starts to go haywire, because it 'randomly' jumps PER LETTER OF TEXT (per frame too, but after the last letter it stops, thus it's really dependent on the Text). That means the longer the monster's name the more number jumps we get (also recreated via SS's everytime). When the words: "Ness Attacks!" shows, the final number is reached. This number determines if you land a SMAASH or not.
Here's where it starts to get weird. This magic number also works on Paula, but NOT on Jeff/Poo. So this number at this value will always give N/P their critical smashes. And if that wasn't enough, this number (147 in my test case) also determines if an item drops or not. Using a forced value of 147, I was able to make any monster drop an item, regardless or what it was (crows with cookies or starman ghosts with goddess ribbons). I'm not sure if this was forcing 'common' or 'rare' drops with this value.
I have yet to test the other values in the 255~range to see what they result in, but I'm pretty sure that more than one gives you the critical hit. What really blows my mind (as if this rng wasn't strange enough), is that supposedly GUTS determines your critical hits, perhaps it makes the window of criticals wider?
Before I go to bed, here's another really weird number to tinker with: 7e0024 - This determines the monster's next battle command. With this on a fixed value, the crow would *always* peck me for 8. Or the snake hit me for 4 (every time). But since the programmers were smoking something when they made this game, this number has one freaky problem - it's dependent on the above mentioned Critical/Gift value. For example with JUST this number fixed, monsters will always do one type of action (in this case, crows just 'huge grin'). However when this was combined with the 'always critical' value, all the crows would peck me for 8.
Bottom Line
I see lots of potential for these values if anyone is making a run. The biggest problems as of now are that I've only found ONE working critical/gift value (I'm positive there's more, or at least more criticals-per-guts ratio). The other problem is actually manipulating these values, which due to the game's hippy programmers, jumps randomly right up until the actual attack. This isn't so much of a problem when you consider save-states, but the choice of a character's name or whatever makes the rng that much more difficult to work with. Perhaps someone can refine this or put it to good use. I'm going to bed!
(Morning update: I realize that this entire thing may or may not be useful to someone. I apologize if this is stupid and a wasteful thread. Maybe if I could nail down more values, it'd be worth something)
CK
Samus taught us that a girl doesn't need brains to be successful. Brains are giant, evil, and vulnerable to missiles.
