Joined: 2/15/2009
Posts: 329
Fastest non-assissted I've seen is about 7 hours to reach excalibur 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzQlBRt1v08 Some interesting techniques used in this video. Some of the luck manipulation almost looks tool assissted. I might use the same route as a start.
Working on: Legend of Legaia, Vagrant Story
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
This topic is for ePSXe. A new topic would be better for FFIX discussion.
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Joined: 7/29/2005
Posts: 459
Location: Brazil
you posted the same video twice XD and, yeah, you should start a new topic for ffix^^
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Post subject: Final Fantasy IX
Joined: 5/17/2007
Posts: 124
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Moderator Edit: I've changed this topic to be the main Final Fantasy Topic I was wondering if anybody has had the idea of doing a run of this well known Final Fantasy IX challenge. For those who are unfamiliar with it " The Excalibur II Perfect Game is the ultimate attempt at completing a perfect save file in Final Fantasy IX. Contrary to initial impressions, the Excalibur II - obtainable in Memoria only within 12 hours of starting the game - and a completionist playthough are not mutually exclusive." I don't know how well the rerecording emulator plays this game but would be interested in seeing a PERFECT run of this challenge to see how fast it could be done with perfect playing.
Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4044
It sounds like it'd be a lot less of a headache to 'casually' TAS it, as oppose to optimize it.
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Wren
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Joined: 4/11/2005
Posts: 196
Location: Michigan
As long as this run is going to be, I'd love to see it actually performed. I've actually done the run myself and I loved doing every minute of it... as opposed to actually just playing through FF9 which I find to be rather tedious. I wish we would see more challenge runs on this site actually. The concept "If you’ve ever wanted to see how a superhuman would beat your favorite video games" is nice and all but real life superhumans do Low Level challenges with a bunch of self imposed silly rules. On that note though, there are a lot of things done in that run that take a vast amount of time... but are mostly done after Excalibur Two is obtained. Those should certainly be skipped (no need to get 99 of every item or even 1 equip able copy for anyone capable of equipping with one left aside from items that are miss able) and the run should probably just set the framework for actually completing the challenge after the fact. The best part of a run like this is it showcases absolutely everything in the game something most TASes lack.
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Joined: 5/17/2007
Posts: 124
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Glad to see someone else has interest in the run. All though I have to disagree with FFIX being tedious to play normally...
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
DaShiznawz wrote:
All though I have to disagree with FFIX being tedious to play normally...
It's mostly the battle system. It's slow and ATB bars keep filling during attack animations making it very hard to guess when anyone will get around to making their move. Then there's the auto-counterattacks that just keep stacking up. I'd love to see a proper FFIX run. I once made a very short film using ePSXe rerecording (but not in any way that would be acceptable for TASVideos) in which I get a Mage Masher on the first steal in the first battle. You also really don't need to ever get money if only you do the duel perfectly. The unassisted run would be a good template.
Joined: 5/29/2010
Posts: 18
A perfect run would include the Ultima Weapon and that one takes f'n long when it's not possible to "control" the items you get in the chocobo game (no idea if that works, not that much into tasing). Would you need to get all cards for a perfect game? As far as I know the optional quests are pretty linear to the story of the game so you can do most of them while completing the story, at least it seemed like that when I played trough it the last time trying to do everything using a guide. Anyway I would so watch that run, also I would try to help as much as I can. /edit just remembered, there was a cut scene when entering the Iifa tree which caused the emulator to stop, or more like stopping the graphics, it wasn't a plug-in related problem, you actually had to save the game in front of the cut scene and play past that scene without using save states because they caused the emulator to stop playing correctly. I was using ePSXe I think.
Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4044
As far as TASing goes, if something is controlled by 'luck' and there is an easy way to change what the game is using for 'luck' (i.e. taking any action that forces the game to roll a random number) then you can make luck do as you please with enough effort.
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Joined: 12/31/2009
Posts: 174
I want to do it and in fact, sorta started months ago (I only wanted to see how awesome the swordfight would look). I'm uploading the test run right now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-thaM-UiKM I'm current debating if it should be a perfect game or not (either way, it will definitely be a level 1 game).
Joined: 5/29/2010
Posts: 18
we can stick to atomos199's guide for most of the time when It comes to route planning. (If you don't know that guide by now, http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197338-final-fantasy-ix/faqs/41181). I think his definition of a perfect game is pretty good. Having Zidane absorb Tantarian's and Abadon's EXP for having the most possible Perfect Characters. Getting all missable items (1 for each character to equip and 1 for the inventory) Getting all unique items and of course opening all missable chests. etc., you can find everything in that guide, he put 5 years of work in it, I think that's the best route we can use (maybe some TAS improvements here and there). So there's one thing stopping us from a (real) perfect game, forced xp from Tantarian and Abadon. You can read everything about that in section D of Atomos199's guide.
Post subject: Final Fantasy IX E2PG WIP
Joined: 12/31/2009
Posts: 174
Final Fantasy IX - Excalibur 2 Perfect Game More Information:
    * FF IX - 4 disc Final Fantasy game that returns to the roots of Final Fantasy. * Excalibur 2 - Legendary ultimate weapon in both the game and its players. Only obtainable in the second to last area in disc 4 IF the game clock is UNDER 12 hours. * Perfect Game - See below.
Goals:
    Takes Damage to Save Time Uses Death to Save Time Heavy Luck Manipulation Best Ending Uses Suboptimal Character Contains Speed/Entertainment Tradeoff (Possibly)
Perfect Game Goals (Does not apply if available in Disc 4):
    * Perfect quantities of all items
      * Limited Amount - Collects all * Buyable Equips - Number of characters that can equip the item + Amount required to synthesis perfect quantities of missable items + 1
    * Opens all treasure chests * Searches all field icons (hidden items) * Collects all key items * Level 1 Game
      * Required for maximum stats
    * Delivers all Mognet Letters * Sidequests (Unavailable for completion in Disc 4)
      * Buy All of Stiltzkin's Deals * Complete Dr. Morrid's Coffee Sidequest * Defeat All Treno Weapon Shop Monsters
Small sample of what can be done (TAS Sound Plugin 0.2 is used for the sample and will be redone with a different sound plugin) here. Feel free to recommend me better Sound Plugins to use before I get too far ahead.
Joined: 3/18/2006
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Location: Great Britain
cool this might motivate me to continue ffvii
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Joined: 4/6/2006
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To avoid clutter, I think it's better to just post in here. Here's the youtube video because it was incorrectly linked. Recording the sword fight alone probably would have been more efficient, as I read in the video description that you skipped a bunch of items and events leading to it in order not to bore the viewer (a bit ironic). Personally, I think people should focus their excitement towards a normal run of Final Fantasy IX before talking about a so-called 'perfect game' run. Those who can boast about completing such a run probably had to abuse resets in order to achieve it. What they don't realize is how this parallels to utilizing savestates. My point is I don't think a perfect run TAS would differ much from one done in real-time. The only difference is you'll see cleaner battles and prettier luck manipulation which won't add much if compared to a regular run, given the limitations.
Joined: 12/31/2009
Posts: 174
There will still need to be restrictions placed on how far to take the perfect game. In disc 4, after getting the Excalibur II, I will have to decide between continuing on to the final boss (about 5 screens away and lose 100% completion) or going back and spend hours grinding away, completing Chocobo Hot and Cold (and connected sidequests), level up the cards, etc and then going back and beat the final boss (100% completion).
Joined: 5/29/2010
Posts: 18
a 100% completion could take really really long, people will get bored fast, but they have to watch it in parts anyway, no one will sit true a TAS over 12hours straight. That's why I say F' that, make it as long as it has to be, put everything into it that's needed. Recording this run will take loooooooooooooong anyway. (But I still think getting every card is enough, we don't have to lvl them up, the characters stay lvl 1 for the whole game too so no need in leveling anything anyway (expect for poor zidane who has to absorb xp) That's how I think a "perfect" game could look like, but everybody will have his own opinion on that, the player should decide. And it looks like I won't be a playing part because I'm stuck with the first fight trying to steal mage masher, for hours... I suck at luck manipulation.
Joined: 5/29/2010
Posts: 18
so I was testing stuff once again and I run into a possibly huge problem... I played until the 1st fight, tried stuff, and just decided to record me messing around in order to find out if everything plays back correctly since I had major desync problems the last times. No desync but when playing it back the first time (regular speed, no fast forward, no slowing down, same plug-ins, nothing new, I didn't even restarted pcsx) the game gave me completely different ATB Bars messing everything up big time. Stoped the movie, played it back again, same ATB Bars, no idea WHY they changed but they did. After that I tried restating pcsx to see if that could maybe fix the problem. Again completely different to the two ATB Bars before... Tried playing it back having Read Only checked and unchecked and now I'm stuck with the third ATB Bars I got. So I recorded having ATB A I played it back and got ATB B I restarted PCSX and got ATB C What the...? Anyone else had this problem?
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Record with no sound plugin only
Joined: 5/29/2010
Posts: 18
let's say I record something using no sound plugin to avoid the problems I just had, can I still replay it using sound plugins without getting desyncs or.. well what I said the post before? /edit forgot to say thanks^^ wow this really works :O saved my day man
Joined: 12/31/2009
Posts: 174
antd wrote:
Record with no sound plugin only
No can do. I recorded up to the first fight with no sound and ran it on a peops sound plugin but the RNG resulted in different ATB amounts. Peops and the TAS sound plugin is able to sync with each other only and only if I check that there are enough empty frames during screen transitions (between maps, battles, etc). I did some testing months ago and the loading resulted in a different amount of lag frames (+/- 2 frames every transition) which makes the entire movie after it need to shift which will then change the RNG which results in an even more troublesome desync. Hopefully the loss of a few seconds is worth allowing a working sound plugin be able to sync.
Joined: 3/27/2010
Posts: 32
How about actually attempting to finish EXIIPG on PAL version. I heard it's impossible but not for TASers.
Joined: 5/29/2010
Posts: 18
How about actually trying to finish EXIIPG on PAL version. I heard it's impossible but not for TASers.
Well, let's say it like this (taking Atomos199's guide as example) If you need 11h 30m for an run on the NTSC Version you will need about 13h 48m on the PAL Version. Atomos199's guide is really good and optimized and aims for 11h 30m and for sure it can be done quicker, especially when TASing the game but I don't think we can finish a perfect game in 10hours (which is 12 hours on the pal version) to get excalibur II (without using cheats). I really like the idea of finishing it on PAL but it seems impossible without finding some good glitches to save a lot of time and not resetting the timer. You can look up the explanation why PAL is slower in Atomos199's guide in section Q03. I posted the link in this thread already.
Joined: 3/27/2010
Posts: 32
cythelol wrote:
How about actually trying to finish EXIIPG on PAL version. I heard it's impossible but not for TASers.
Well, let's say it like this (taking Atomos199's guide as example) If you need 11h 30m for an run on the NTSC Version you will need about 13h 48m on the PAL Version. Atomos199's guide is really good and optimized and aims for 11h 30m and for sure it can be done quicker, especially when TASing the game but I don't think we can finish a perfect game in 10hours (which is 12 hours on the pal version) to get excalibur II (without using cheats). I really like the idea of finishing it on PAL but it seems impossible without finding some good glitches to save a lot of time and not resetting the timer. You can look up the explanation why PAL is slower in Atomos199's guide in section Q03. I posted the link in this thread already.
Well, rlouisw has just beat the game in 10:59:43 (cut scene skipping included). And don't forget the warp glitch. Indeed, skipping Oeil Vert and Desert Palace breaks the rules of the challenge, but I can't think of another possibility
Joined: 5/29/2010
Posts: 18
Afaik cut scene skipping isn't working on pcsx rr, we have to take them with us.