Definitely can't wait to see you do that snes9x version, because I am one of those obsessed enough with the sound. I am not able to watch the zsnes version with sound (Windows XP), and I can't stand watching movies without the sound.
Yes you can!
There's this really cool program I found recently while looking for tools to run Tomb Raider on Win2k. After a while I thought "HEY! Theres this RPG movies from Saturn I ALWAYS wanted to see SO much" I always cried cause I couldnt get these old versions of Zsnes to run. Then I tried to run it with VDMSound and I was the happiest guy on the world. I spent the following 10 hours watching the Terranigma run in one sitting. Awesome movie Saturn!
http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=VDMSound&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=
Get this thing from somewhere, install it and then right-click the Zsnes.exe and choose "Run with VDMSound"
Hey Saturn, maybe you could write about this program somewhere on your homepage, I'm sure theres much people that dont know about it and cant get older Zsnes versions to run on XP or 2k
Nice to hear Zer0. I haven't a clue how VDMSound works because I never needed that since I can playback DOS on my system anyway but maybe I will notice it on my site later after I have analyzed it a little if I have time.
Definitely can't wait to see you do that snes9x version, because I am one of those obsessed enough with the sound. I am not able to watch the zsnes version with sound (Windows XP), and I can't stand watching movies without the sound.
Yes you can!
There's this really cool program I found recently while looking for tools to run Tomb Raider on Win2k. After a while I thought "HEY! Theres this RPG movies from Saturn I ALWAYS wanted to see SO much" I always cried cause I couldnt get these old versions of Zsnes to run. Then I tried to run it with VDMSound and I was the happiest guy on the world. I spent the following 10 hours watching the Terranigma run in one sitting. Awesome movie Saturn!
http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=VDMSound&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=
Get this thing from somewhere, install it and then right-click the Zsnes.exe and choose "Run with VDMSound"
Hey Saturn, maybe you could write about this program somewhere on your homepage, I'm sure theres much people that dont know about it and cant get older Zsnes versions to run on XP or 2k
The leveling up is a MUST in Terranigma if you don't do that you lose much more time in the result, my promise. Just see my 100% speed run on www.freewebs.com/saturnsmovies/zsnesmovies.htm for a perfect example for leveling up to the best times.
Is there any way to tell this version of ZSNES to resume playing a movie partway through (with save states) or a way to increase its fast-forward speed higher than 9 skipped frames per frame? As it is it's too long for me to watch in one sitting. (Plus the sound is wretched and the speed fluctuates a lot, especially in dialogue.)
But from what I saw so far, there must be at least an hour or so of pure leveling up, and I'm not convinced it really saved any time compared to the time spent on it. If leveling up is really necessary, then I think it would be faster to skip some weaker enemies and level up only on the stronger enemies when necessary (even though it takes longer to kill them, they do give more EXP). I'm pretty sure that leveling a lot is not the fastest way through the game, even though it seems like it and the game was designed that way.
Saturn wrote:
No collecting magirocks or use magic definitely don't help to make the run faster in one situation a bone pin is usefull (in Norfest Forest to escape from Storkolm quickly) but this needs only 1 magirock which you will have anyway. But for a 100% run you have to find all.
Personally I don't think collecting useless magirocks (and other things, like armor) just to make it 100% is very entertaining. But, whatever. Actually, for bosses that need strong hits to beat like you mentioned, maybe magic would save time (if there are any spells that do large damage). Magic damage doesn't depend on your level, right? (I wouldn't know, I never used magic when I played through the game myself.)
Joined: 6/20/2004
Posts: 292
Location: United Kingdom
I use VDMSound and it works perfectly for me. Just those movies are too long for me to watch at once without using the computer otherwise and it keeps freezing when i load the box back up. If only I had sound drivers for DOS...
Is there any way to tell this version of ZSNES to resume playing a movie partway through (with save states) or a way to increase its fast-forward speed higher than 9 skipped frames per frame?
No, even in newer versions there is no such feature so far. But on speed up in DOS mode of zsnes v0.989c if you set in VIDEO options to MODEX and remove VSYNC or MMX Support I managed to speed up the movie so much that it takes about 3 sec for 1 min in realtime so its not 9 times faster but full 20 times faster!
nitsuja wrote:
But from what I saw so far, there must be at least an hour or so of pure leveling up, and I'm not convinced it really saved any time compared to the time spent on it.
Well maybe 1 hour max in whole game but not more.
nitsuja wrote:
If leveling up is really necessary, then I think it would be faster to skip some weaker enemies and level up only on the stronger enemies when necessary (even though it takes longer to kill them, they do give more EXP). I'm pretty sure that leveling a lot is not the fastest way through the game, even though it seems like it and the game was designed that way.
Honestly I thought exactly as you before, scip weak enemies and kill only the stronger ones. The problem is the difference of experience is not that high like the time to kill them, for example if you kill the "Dignal" (The Demon in RA-Tree) in the beginning of the surface world to safe the plants, you get 15 exp per one. Now much later in Louran (death town) you get 18 till 20 exp points for one enemie, its really not much difference but brings up a much harder way to kill them. You will have so much problems to kill them (on low level) that you will be faster if you would kill the demons in ra tree instead.
It's really hard to explain but even if my way of leveling up is still not optimal its definitely faster than just concentrating on harder enemies for more exp (what I wanted before myself). I suggest you experiment yourself to kill late enemies on low level to understand what I mean.
nitsuja wrote:
Actually, for bosses that need strong hits to beat like you mentioned, maybe magic would save time (if there are any spells that do large damage). Magic damage doesn't depend on your level, right?
Wrong! Magic depends very much on your level (I guess even ONLY on your level) and the problem is on some bosses you even can't use magic (like the Final Boss) and THIS is on the fish-boss in marmaid tower the case too. So you can ony beat him with physical attacks and have to be at least on level 21-23, I guess lower than 21-20 will take a damage not greater than 10HP per hit but the damage rate increases extremely after every better level from this point on.
Well, Zelda games make good time attacks, and Terranigma is a lot closer to Zelda than to, say, Dragon Warrior. (Actually Terranigma has better action potential than many games, with the real-time battles, very short invincibility periods, ability to run in 12 directions, and the variety of spear attacks.) Admittedly, Dragon Warrior and some other RPGs have tricky ways of getting through them fast which is probably the real reason people would want to see runs of them, but I'm still convinced this game also has some way of beating it faster than one would think possible.
See, this is why I'm baffled at how many people want to time-attack RPGs. You're going to have hundreds of boring battles no matter what you do.
Just want to say that at least my Secret of Evermore run will be without leveling up at all, so you don't have to be scared about that in this game.
Sorry for the very late writing, I just thought I say it now for better clarification about leveling up in this RPG. It's very hard to say (and maybe I'm wrong) but I believe that I can finnish Secret of Evermore in less than 3 hours recording time maybe even more faster, even on 100%.
I'm starting to believe you're right that a lot of leveling is needed in Terranigma, though, but not so much that it wouldn't be worth doing to get through the rest of the game. Actually I think maybe I'd rather see a Seiken Detsetsu 3 run at this point, after seeing how well the other Secret of Mana/Evermore runs are coming along.
Actually I think maybe I'd rather see a Seiken Detsetsu 3 run at this point, after seeing how well the other Secret of Mana/Evermore runs are coming along.
First a small correction: not Seiken Detsetsu but Seiken De_N_setsu :-).
Second in my opinion this game is by far more bad for a timeattack. Sure it is a great game too (I made a perfect movie walktrough for it on ZSNES) but in total the battles you have to do in this game are by far slower than on Terranigma (almost like in Chrono Trigger) after every battle the characters pull out their weapons and move only in slow speed to the enemies and you have to hit the enemies a lot to kill them, and I think the leveling up in this game is even more needed like in Terranigma because of the class changing (you can reach the final class only from level 38 or higher ---> in Terranigma I don't need a greater level than 31-32) and without the final class in SD3 you can't beat the last bosses because you don't get the needed skills and a higher defense so they can kill you in one single hit, plus the best armor/weapon is only equipable on the final classes. I ensure you that its impossible to beat the game in less than 5 hours no matter if 100% or not.
Terranigma is realy a nice game to timeattack, because the killing of enemies in right levels is very fast and as I said before I believe you can beat the game in less than 4 hours in any % and this is really fast for a RPG I think.
Joined: 6/20/2004
Posts: 292
Location: United Kingdom
How are you doing on this anyway? I can't wait to see it so i don't have to get out old zsnes again, as i hate loading dos programs and also th enoise it makes for wind.
Do you mean Terranigma? If yes, I haven't started yet as I said before I finnish Secret of Evermore first - made my latest update to WIP 4 yesterday, for those who wanna see: www.freewebs.com/saturnsmovies/snes9xmovies.htm
I would love to see this game TAS'd. The music's good, I bet there would be some interesting manuvers used... and hey, mid-length rpg runs are usually some of the best.
Thoughts?
saturn did a test run of this a while back, I think the final length was somewhere around the 4:30-4:40 mark, with only a few monotonous levelling sessions.
I personally didn't get that much enjoyment out of watching it, but it was by no means badly done.
The any% run Atma mentioned has a in-game time of 4:34 hours at the last savepoint. It was more of a test run because I have never recorded a serious any% run before. I recorded it in November last year on Snes9x.
The smv is available in the Snes9x Section (bottom of the page).
Furthermore I recorded a 100% run 2 years ago which is probably better in quality than the any% run. In-game time at last savepoint was 8:52 but I lost at least 3 hours because I haven't skipped the text-dialogs so that the watcher could read them fast enough. Only downside is that it was recorded on a older ZSNES version but thanks to a guy who has captured this run in a 3-segmented AVI so that everyone can watch it.
The zmv is in the ZSNES section
and the AVI at Archive.org:
1st and 2nd segment3rd segment
Note: Both, the any% and the 100% run were played on the fly without using any tools like rerecords or slowdowns so they are in no ways TAS'es.
I already considered to TAS this game but cancelled it because Snes9x desynced on it at that time. But since nitsuja have fixed this problem I would eventually give it a try again after I complete the Super Metroid RBO run.
do you think it'd be possible without the monotonous levelling sessions present in the one i saw? with the pike you get from Mu it could be (on the weird effect that the moment before you take a hit if you cant avoid it you change weapons to give the highest possible defense), since it sacrifices defense for damage output, which would be quite convenient, although you dont get it for arguably the worst boss in the game (DIE BLOODY MARY!).
do you think it'd be possible without the monotonous levelling sessions present in the one i saw?
No, it definitely is impossible to skip this leveling parts even if you get the Enbu Pike of Mu Island. However you could try to reduce the leveling up time to go through the game with a lower level.
I'm really not sure if the Enbu Pike (althought it has awesome strenght) is worth to take (in a TAS at least) because it costs you around 1-2 minutes to get with long waiting animations and you can get it only late in the game where it would be useful only in later quests (from the Great Lake Caverns on).
do you think it'd be possible without the monotonous levelling sessions present in the one i saw?
No, it definitely is impossible to skip this leveling parts even if you get the Enbu Pike of Mu Island. However you could try to reduce the leveling up time to go through the game with a lower level.
I think the fair amount of levelling could well be reduced if you can lessen the damage in a timely manner (defending for the frame you would otherwise take the hit directly?) while otherwise being unletting of an assault on the enemy.
I'm really not sure if the Enbu Pike (althought it has awesome strenght) is worth to take (in a TAS at least) because it costs you around 1-2 minutes to get with long waiting animations and you can get it only late in the game where it would be useful only in later quests (from the Great Lake Caverns on).
Really? I always found it to be invaluable on that incredibly annoying boss in that dudes fortress, with 3 legs. i always did like 1 damage, and with the enbu pike i recall doing like 100+. I think the high output from it would be well worth the time spent getting it, but i guess the only way to find out is to test a battle with/without it and see how much it saves.
Regardless of which way you look at it, bloody mary is still going to take a while, so maybe some spell rings might come in handy. the only one I recall actually having any sort of effect was the one that made a giant orb of light. So maybe 9 of those if plausible for a faster fight.
This are good points. It probably is so close that there is no way around of testing all situations with and without the Pike and calculate the final result of both variants. Leveling up with the Enbu Pike is of course much easier and faster but the cons are that you have to take a additional detour to the Mu Island to get it and there are only 2 bosses (the Stars at Great Lake Caverns and the Robot in Berugas Lab) that will be faster to defeat this way. After that you can get the Hero Pike already which replaces the Enbu Pike.
It is very difficult to make correct calculations on which variation is faster without actually doing a TAS for both routes and compare them side by side. This is another reason that holds/held me back from TAS'ing this game.
About Bloody Mary I am pretty sure that the fastest way to defeat her is still to use perfect timed hits and avoid magic at all because it just takes too much time compared to the slightly higher damage you will get from it.
Joined: 11/17/2005
Posts: 278
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Saturn wrote:
It is very difficult to make correct calculations on which variation is faster without actually doing a TAS for both routes and compare them side by side. This is another reason that holds/held me back from TAS'ing this game.
Don't let it! Any TAS is potentially improvable anyway. In a 15-30 minute Mega Man movie you do have to make the right path decisions or the movie will look wrong. Same goes for the original Zelda. With that game there was a thread dedicated to finding the optimal path that minimized walking on the overworld.
But since RPGs play very differently with tools you can't really make paths. For example, I can stop this run on almost any frame and resume playing without tools. I'd have to walk instead of zip, and I'd be obviously slower, but I could follow the same route. However you cannot play Earthbound unassisted using the TAS as a guide. So for that reason you should pick a route that is helped by tool-assistance, any route at all really, and just do it. I'm not saying don't test variations. What I mean is do test to see if killing Cid is faster than saving him, but don't test to see if Kutan is faster than Celes. And don't regret your decision. You might find that on a second attempt that 'should' be faster that your first run was faster anyway.
