Topic by Lil_Gecko

Posted: 9/14/2015 10:06 AM

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Lil_Gecko

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Joined: 4/7/2011
Posts: 520

In fact I got a question. I'm not sure what to do with the optional boss Hades. I can fight him as I pass right in front of him and defeat him in 2/3 turns. Freya and Quina both have the right equipment to absorb the exp. But I can also wait til the end of the game, that my Thievery, Frog Drop, and Dragon kills do 9999 damage, finishing him in only one turn. I was considering a speed/entertainment tradeoff and go with my low level characters, but what do you think ?

Posted: 9/14/2015 10:58 AM

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Patashu

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How unlikely is the strategy you'd use to beat him early if it was attempted in real time?

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Posted: 9/15/2015 5:34 AM

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Lil_Gecko

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Joined: 4/7/2011
Posts: 520

Patashu wrote:

How unlikely is the strategy you'd use to beat him early if it was attempted in real time?

Beyond easy. Hades has an attack called "Powering Sword". It's basically a countdown from 3 before using Curse which would kill all my characters. The strategy would be : - Hades uses Powering Sword. - Every character attack reducing Hades HP to 2000ish. - At this point Hades count should be 1. - Freya jumps. - Hades uses Curse and kills everybody but Freya. - Freya goes down from her jump and kill Hades, taking all the XP in the process. EDIT : I'll do a quick comparison when I'll get back from work, to see how much frames difference does it make.

Posted: 9/15/2015 5:26 PM

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lapogne36

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Location: France

Lil_Gecko wrote:

In fact I got a question. I'm not sure what to do with the optional boss Hades. I can fight him as I pass right in front of him and defeat him in 2/3 turns. Freya and Quina both have the right equipment to absorb the exp. But I can also wait til the end of the game, that my Thievery, Frog Drop, and Dragon kills do 9999 damage, finishing him in only one turn. I was considering a speed/entertainment tradeoff and go with my low level characters, but what do you think ?

Well if possible I would prefer you to wait the end of the game just for the "holy crap you defeated Ozma" sentence

Posted: 9/16/2015 1:35 AM

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Posts: 748

Would be nice to see all the guaranteed 9999 attacks do just that at some point during the run, but I assume they will come up outside of Hades. Outside of that I'm kinda indifferent, as both options have their merits. If I had to pick I guess I'd go with early Hades. The EasterEgg Lapogne mentions would be the main reason I go otherwise, but I think the shock factor of being able to squeeze in Hades before ExII too would be more entertaining/shocking to most viewers. (Considering a few of the YT comments question if he could even get the sword at all after the disc 3 stats... and thats without being aware of the Lindblum stuff.) Also would be nice to see the Dragoon jump more than once. But yeah, not a big deal to me either way. Looking at the frame difference like you say may make one appeal more.

Posted: 9/26/2015 12:21 PM

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Lil_Gecko

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Turns out, it is possible to do all the trips to Lindblum but one and still get in time for Excalibur II. Awfully close but still. It saves a whole lot of time not to go back to Memoria before picking up the Protect Ring reward. Unfortunately, Tetra Master can't be hex-edited back so will have to redo it. Meh...

Video coming soon.

Posted: 9/26/2015 5:12 PM

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Feared that might be the case about the cards. Hope they treat you better this time around. Great news about being able to get the Nero family side quest all but wrapped up in time. Not to mention having only 30 seconds on the clock is alot more exciting than plus 11 minutes.

Posted: 10/5/2015 8:39 PM

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Lil_Gecko

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Disc 4 up to Excalibur II : Link to video

Posted: 10/6/2015 2:52 AM

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koalu

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Joined: 3/4/2015
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Just finished watching... I'm not a runner personally, so I don't have much relevant to add here. I just wanted to say again that this run is amazing, and also compliment you personally on the awesome job you've done with it. I can't wait to see the finished product. Gecko, you are the man!

Posted: 10/7/2015 5:19 PM

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lapogne36

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How many card games must you play to upgrade 1 card ? It looks like it will take forever to do so, but good luck anyway... oh wait there is no luck in a TAS ;)

Posted: 10/7/2015 7:44 PM

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I_have_no_name

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Joined: 5/22/2012
Posts: 26

Cards upgrading is a straight random chance every time they win a card battle. Assuming no X cards already, I'd guess about 4 or 5 levelups could be manipulated, though with enemy attacks/multi-battles 10+ could theoretically happen. That's ~50 worst case, ~40 expected case and ~20 best case.

Posted: 10/9/2015 11:09 AM

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Lil_Gecko

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Upgrading a card from P/M to X and then from X to A isn't the problem. I can do it in one game if I want to (though it will take longer than a regular game). The main issue is getting Attack and Defenses to their optimum values. It goes from 0x00 to 0xFF. The left bit is the one you see on the card, the right one is the hidden stat. Every time right one hits 16, it's reset to 0 and left one increases by 1. I only take cards that have a left bit 1 value away from the optimum, 2 tops if the right bit is E or F. At the end of each game, a certain number of +1 are attributed to the hidden stats. The maximum I managed to get in 40ish games is 5 times +1 to different values. What does it mean. Well that to have perfect cards, I need to upgrade them up to 18 times max. Bad case scenario, 70 cards need to upgrade 18 times. 4 upgrades per game. That's 315 games. At about 30 seconds a game. 2h40 of Tetra Master. I may space the games as a speed/entertainment tradeof though. But I have an important news : Thanks to the amazing work of froggy0025 of disassemble the Tetra Master mechanics, I now have a working lua script that tells me when cards will upgrade from M/P to X and X to A. So no more bruteforcing and a huge relief.

Posted: 10/10/2015 5:57 PM

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Oh wow. I thought you were just going for the A rank Cards for the collectors rank. I didn't realise you were maxing your card stats too! You are crazy! Fantastic news about the lua froggy0025 managed to sort you out with though. Be interesting to hear how much faster it makes getting the Memoria cards this go through compared to last time. Not much to add regarding the wip other than it was enjoyable, outside the necessary evil of the back and forth from Lindblum course.

Posted: 10/10/2015 8:02 PM

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Lil_Gecko

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Let's say on average it takes 150 tries of bruteforcing to upgrade a card. 120 frames a try. That's 5 minutes per upgrade. And that's on average because sometimes I couldn't upgrade after 200 tries and just move on. Froggy0025 disassemble all the Tetra Master mechanics and thanks to the formula of the PRNG and the type upgrades, I managed to write a lua script that goes through all the numbers and tells me how many frames I have to wait for the upgrade to happen. 30 seconds tops. Moreover, I can see which frames upgrade so I can really optimize which card to use when. I should probably be done with Memoria in a full day of TASing instead of a week :)

Posted: 10/22/2015 12:36 PM

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Lil_Gecko

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Wasn't feeling very motivated to TAS lately. Still battling Ghosts of Memoria in Tetra Master. For those interested, here is the calculations done to see if a card upgrade from P/M to X and X to A. Tetra Master RNG is located at A0009010 (4 bytes) a = ((RNG*0x41c64e6d+0x3039)/0xFFFF)%0xFFFF; Then a Bitwise And is perform between a and 0x7FFF b = BitAnd(a,0x7FFF); Finally, an other Bitwise And is performed : x = BitAnd(b,0x3F); y = BitAnd(b,0x7F); If x or y = 0 when the 2 cards finished battling, there's an upgrade for the card which wins. If x = 0 then card upgrade from P/M to X If y = 0 then card upgrade from X to A. Thanks again to Froggy0025, I would never have figured it on my own.

Posted: 11/4/2015 8:04 PM

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Lil_Gecko

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Made great progress today. Nearly done with the Ghost of Memoria. I've also decided I'll do Hades after Ozma, for the easter egg as suggested, but for the fun of it, this is how it would go if I were to do it right now : Link to video

Posted: 11/12/2015 12:28 PM

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Lil_Gecko

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Little teaser : Link to video

Posted: 11/13/2015 5:14 PM

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d-feather

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Joined: 2/12/2015
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Location: Everett, WA

Although I don't have any familiarities with Final Fantasy IX and haven't been following your progress much, that fight was pretty awesome.

:shrug: I'm more active on Twitter nowadays: @HunterCoates5

Posted: 11/13/2015 5:41 PM

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lapogne36

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Love the title. Just saying.

Posted: 11/15/2015 8:58 PM

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Lil_Gecko

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Thanks ! Unfortunately, I'll probably have to redo it. Quina is needed in the team to continue the Frog Catching World Tour. And going back to the Invicible to pick it up takes a lot of time. I'll have to time a fight with Quina in the party and see which one is faster, if I ever managed to get a right Ozma fight with Quina that is to say. Its damage during Charge ! are pretty low but it can do Limit Glove for 9999. Limit Glove is time consuming though. And to expend on what was written in the commentary. Some boss are scripted to act right away at the start of a fight, like Ozma does. But its starting ATB is 1599/1600, so it takes one frame to fill it up. If one of your character was also 1 frame away from full ATB, he will act before the ennemy. It happens in 2 cases : Speed of 23 with Random Number use to fill the ATB being 23 => ATB is 5911/5920 increasing by 14 each frame at max speed. Speed of 19 with Random Number use to fill the ATB being 51 => ATB is 6547/6560 increasing by 14 each frame at max speed.

Posted: 11/16/2015 12:32 AM

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Ah, bummer about having to redo, but I guess you'll be used to it by now! And the Ozma fight has to be more fun than those damn cards. Quina expecting to replace Amarant or Freya in the re-fight? I guess either could potentially effect the exp routing as I assume Quina still has all s/he needs to level optimally. Though I forget what amounts of exp you need for level99, so the amounts that Ozma gives could just be a drop in the ocean as far as I know. Not that its based off any real knowledge of the game or not, but surprised that you get to Ozma so soon. Looking forward to see how you fit everything else together.

Posted: 11/16/2015 4:15 AM

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Lil_Gecko

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There is a couple reasons why it's better to do Ozma now. Most important is Freya being level 32, so that Ozma does LV4 Holy instead of Curse. Sure there is other levels that are multiple of 4, but that would require, going to level up, go back to fight Ozma, then go back again to level up. That also answer who it's going to replace. Freya is crucial for this fight. The other reason is that the third Qu's marsh I'm going to do is still a few minutes away from not having a tadpole in it. So I have to wait a little anyway.

Posted: 11/16/2015 5:44 PM

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Lil_Gecko

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Even better news !!!! After hours and hours of trying, I finally got a extremely decent Ozma fight with Quina in the team. And it's faster than the video above. How, you would ask ? Well I tried to delay one attack from Freya to make her hit Critical and it happens to change Ozma next attack from LV4 Holy to Mini all. Mini takes way less time than Holy in term of animation, but here's the plot twist. If you remember the beginning of Disc 4, I took a little detour to get Blue Magic from Zombies and Mistodons. The Mistodons teach Quina "Angel's Snack" which make him/her use Remedies on all party members at once curing Mini in one round. So Freya doesn't need to jump to avoid the attack and can be part of Steiner's Charge ! I also add the Mythril Helm to Steiner's equipment so he deals 9 999 damage. That takes Ozma life under 10 000 before its 3rd attack which would be Holy. Holy kills Gecko, Steiner suicide, then Quina use Limit Glove and him/her and Freya splits the experience while still having the right equipment to stat boost ! I'm really happy with how it went. I think it was Paused that asked what Blue Magic would be of use a few pages ago, well you can add Angel Snack to the list and it's a real life saviour ^^ So, so far, Limit Glove, Night and Angel's Snack. Frog Drop will come along within the next hours.

Posted: 11/17/2015 5:50 PM

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Lil_Gecko

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22 (!!!) seconds faster. Link to video

Posted: 11/18/2015 12:38 AM

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Neat fight. Does the relatively tiny amounts of chip damage Quina hits for during the fight actually contribute anything in the end? And I know his/her attack damage is all but randomised between next to nothing and the max, but even so that was a lot lower than I was expecting, especially as he/she is the highest level of the party by along shot, outside of maybe Freya. Guess it goes to show how unimportant levels can be in this game. And for a couple of unrelated observations; these videos have made me notice how ridiculous Stiener looks with the overly flashy ExII whilst in his rusty Armour. And I like how the early game boss killer Limit Glove, which is usually completely outclassed by this point in the game, gets a visual representation of this by its sphere being fully obscured by the bigger badder sphere that is Ozma.... yet it still finishes it off anyway. Also, yeah, it was me asking what Blue magic would get used, I do enjoy strats where characters get to show of more of their repertoires rather than falling back on the same strats over and over; so this was a treat for me too.