Well, to be fair, many TAS videos use 'stupid' glitches like that. If you choose not to in your video, then that's fine, but saying it like that implies an insult to those who do choose to. It's exploiting a loophole in the game's engine, that's the purpose in many of these videos.
At any rate, due to the differences, I still think a seperate run of the US FF2, or JP FF4 on the SNES should be attempted by someone, if only for exploiting the greater number of glitches left in it.
So, you are that kind of man that is trying to make me guilty because I think it's better when bugs are fixed? rofl
Imo, it was better to be fixed and some other things that could be abused like the easy leveling trick in Giant of Babel and the useful duplication item trick .
I agree with Square-Enix and you feel angry because of that.
Things that people should expect from a remake:
1st. Bugs fixed.
2nd. New features.
3rd. Improving existing feature. Like better music.
I agree with that. It's evident that FF2 Snes, FF4 Snes, FF4 PSX and FF4 Advance on GBA are all different games even if they look similar.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
No need to be so rude. All he said was that if bugs like that exist, they're best off being used. In most cases, they are, and most speedruns on this site adhere to that way of thinking. But he wasn't trying to make you feel guilty about it.
Omega: You don't seem to understand either. I will ask you a question. There's 2 versions of the game.
One that contain some stupid known bugs or one that doesn't. Which one will you choose?
Btw, there's not so many TAS that use glitches like that. Lot of them do have glitches but not so many that let you skip whole part of the game. Most of them let you do those parts quicker. It's not the same.
Zelda 2 and 3 TAS do have glicth like that. Seriously, they aren't amazing. The 1 hour movie is better than the glitch movie.
By " 'stupid' " glitch like that" I meant, and it was evident, a glitch that let you skip a whole part of the game. Not common glitches like in SMB for example or the useful duplication glitch in FF2US or IV.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Yes, I do. One version of the game contains bugs, and another doesn't. The version that contains bugs may be deemed less fun to speedrun due to less impressive gameplay possibilities, or because the bugs are too confusing.
Bugs which you deem stupid; but other people don't. That's the reason why I felt that I had to tell you that you shouldn't discount that possibility.
There's actually a discussion going on in the Final Fantasy III topic about whether Locke's scenario should be skipped entirely due to a new glitch found that lets you walk through NPCs. You may think that's stupid as well, (and I personally would much rather see that part of the game done, too), but it's very personal what people think of it.
I don't like that bug. It's not because I think it is a stupid bug that people must be forced to think that it is stupid. For RPG, I love to see the whole game. Not parts here and there to be like an incomplete puzzle.
I agree with Phil. Sequence breaks are fine and dandy, but they feel a little out of place in TAS's and speedruns. If I wanted to see somebody play through bits and pieces of a game and skip others I'd probably go to a friends house and close my eyes for ten minutes every other ten minutes so I miss important stuff.
I suppose, for me, it's seeing what people can do within the intended bounds of the game and not what they can do by tricking the game. Both are cool to see, don't get me wrong, but I will always prefer seeing a TAS of a game sans the sequence breaking.
<i>A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.</i>
Nope. You can make your GBA run, I look forward to seeing it. I just didn't like the terminology 'stupid bug' because a large quantity of runs on this site use such glitches. But since we both agree that the SNES and GBA versions are different enough to warrent seperate runs there's no need to debate it much further. ;)
Incidentally, I've been playing the FF4 GBA myself, and reached the end of the game yesterday. However, Zeromus leveled my party with two Big Bangs. Cecil and Cid were the only ones who survived the first, it did 2000+ to everyone, and yes, I stole the Dark Matter. My party was Lv45, and all had the best equipment, so I think I just need to level more. I guess I'm too used to the SNES easytype version.
How well do you think you'll be able to manipulate Zeromus's actions? I haven't checked, yet, to see if Big Bang's damage was lowered by stealing the Dark Matter yet, I've only fought him once so far. It's possible that's another 'bug' that was fixed, though I always thought the Dark Matter theft was intentional.
Anyway, food for thought for when you get to the end of the game.
Who knows maybe some people don't like that idea. ;)
I don't know. I am used to FF2US which doesn't have Darkmatter and there's lot of new things in that game. New items etc..
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1276
Location: Uppsala, Sweden
In every TAS or speedrun I've seen of a RPG, the dialogoues is scrolled as fast as possible, which IMO is not fun at all. The main part of a RPG is the story, which is brought forward by dialogues. It was quite some time now since I played FF4 on any system, but I can't imagine that the dialogues would be any slower here. Thus I wouldn't mind seeing a glitch I've never seen before because the story is sort of doomed anyway, because of the fast text ;)
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1276
Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Sure, that's possible and a "good" way of getting the story. But I wouldn't do that since that would be lots of pausing during the run and I'd like some fluency when I watch things. But yeah, it's possible ;)
So, if both of the easy leveling places are gone, how do you plan to get the levels needed to beat the game? It's going to be time consuming no matter what. Have you found a decent place for it yet?
I agree completely. I tend not to be interested in RPG TAS's or speedruns for games I haven't already beaten for that reason. Plot-skipping glitches shouldn't really matter if you can't keep up with the text anyway. It's a moot point here though, since the glitch is simply unavailable.
Woot...finally something I can contribute to! Some points:
-Ya can still lvl like mad off of Dolls in Zot, and that summoner in the sylph cave. And of course, killing the party after ya become a pally on the ordeal mtn still works wonders for training.
-There are 2 brand new areas! One opens up in Ordeal mtn after the Babil situation....there lies special eq for the switich characters..as well as stuff ya can't find anywhere else. The other is a 50 floor final dungeon on the Moon that can only be accessed by the specific party ya beat the game with....containing even more "only there and FREAKING awesome content/stuff"
-Many characters can gain upgrades to their special powers...for example...Edward's Sing becomes Chant...whihc casts Shell and Protect on your entire party
I'd go on listing more...but it'd be far easier for all needing info to chekc the thread over at Gamefaqs.
Glad to help a little regardless though.
I wish you good luck in the speed run - Seems like a tall order from my fiddling around. Near as I can tell, it doesn't seem like there's much of a way to avoid / manipulate what fights you get into, and whether they are back attacks or pre-emptive strikes.
Also, the game has a nasty habit of giving you fights after taking only one step from the previous fight, which happened as many as four times in a row to me in the Tower of Zot (i.e. four steps, four fights).
I've experienced the double attack bug, but it seems to happen more with my characters in the backrow, from casual observation. More interesting are speed balance issues - I might be mistaken, but I don't recall Cecil getting four attacks to one for the twins ever, or Yang being ridiculously fast once you get into the underworld.
Also, charge times for the twin spell and most magic seems to be significantly warped. The twin spell is essentially worthless - it takes them three to four rounds to cast it. Any second level elemental spell has a wait time on it, three level moreso, but the Bio spell has no charge. Also, white magic seems to launch immediately as well.
Something feasible is probably doable if you put enough effort into it. I'm playing fairly normally, and I'm only at six hours at the first entrance to the Tower of Babel. If I had skipped all the dialogue and manipulated save states better, I probably could have shaved a lot of time off that.
There's so many new items and somes have been removed. The strategy is different than what I have thought before starting this game. Some of those new items are really useful.
Some of the Items have been revamped too. Tents restore full Hit Points and Magic Points now, instead of just SOME.
I wonder how many other items got revamped in this version.
Are you sure of that? I distinctly remember using Tents and only getting a partial refill of HP and MP. Besides, that's the point of having two items for that, Tents and Cottages. It's the Cottages that restore full HP and MP.
I don't know where did you get that misinformation from. It restore HP/MP partially for me as well. Maybe you tried to use tent on low level characters making it looked like complete restore? Try pass level 40 characters or so, make Rosa or Rydia run out of MP and use tent.
Glad to see a run of this game is being done. Oddly, there are still discrepancies between the Japanese and English versions of the game. I'm not sure how in-depth they are, though; I've only touched the English version to get a feel for the new translation, and since then I've been working to beat the Japanese version. While an excellent English translation they made some unusual decisions (like using "Damnation!" as a one-word expletive instead of something a little less G-rated), and the dancer at the beginning takes her clothes off in the Japanese version as she does in the Super Famicom version, but does not in the English version. I highly doubt the differences are worth considering, but after playing through the Japanese version I'm giving the English version a go, and if anything sticks out like crazy I'll post an update.
Joined: 10/12/2004
Posts: 19
Location: Montreal beach, baby!
I watched your movie, and I love the menu scrolling speed you got there, since it is known among many FF4A cart owners that menu navigation is sloppy at times.
I noticed that you missed an Emergency Exit item (which is basically the same as the Exit spell) in the Antlion cave. If I recall correctly, it is on the floor before the boss. That can be useful either to get out of that dungeon, or any other.
Loved the manip with Tellah and Virus. And with the zombies and Break too. Good thinking there! Do you know if you could have got Thundaga instead? I'm not sure to what Recall is limited.
In the Fabul war, at the last battle before you face Kain, if you could let Cecil live under 50 hp, it might shorten the Cecil vs Kain encounter, if cecil's not fully restored as when he dies during the war. I'm not sure on that one, but if he keeps his sub-50 HP, that would save time. That would need to be tested, though...
Oh, and do you happen to know which memory areas manage item-dropping odds? Been trying to track this down, but to no avail...
Great run so far, dude!