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Editor, Skilled player (1202)
Joined: 9/27/2008
Posts: 1085
As I consider this a joint project with Bobo the King, I may find it difficult to get myself reorganized in an effort to complete this run if I go solo now. As far as I know, we already figured out everything there is, so no bursts of inspiration to save more frames had come up as of now. I do have something to TAS while waiting, so it's not like I'm completely trapped. It's just that this run is fairly dependent on the two team members coming together again.
Player (80)
Joined: 8/5/2007
Posts: 865
FatRatKnight wrote:
As I consider this a joint project with Bobo the King, I may find it difficult to get myself reorganized in an effort to complete this run if I go solo now. As far as I know, we already figured out everything there is, so no bursts of inspiration to save more frames had come up as of now. I do have something to TAS while waiting, so it's not like I'm completely trapped. It's just that this run is fairly dependent on the two team members coming together again.
I'm still here... sort of. Haven't been checking too often. But it's time to come clean-- I have some bad news... I was admitted to grad school. If you know anything about grad school, you know that it simply obliterates your free time. I can attest that's absolutely true-- between studying, doing homework, and grading papers, I have no free time to speak of at the moment. I don't anticipate it will be this way the entire semester, but I also can't say anything about when it might improve (except over spring break). I'm sure that my schedule will clear up by the summer, though. The big question in my mind, however, is how much I'll enjoy TASing in my free time. It's a lot of fun and a rewarding hobby, but it also requires a lot of time and effort, both of which I may be short of. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm willing, just not able at the moment. Just keep me updated if you find yourself in an FFL mood. I can probably squeeze out a few hours over weekends at this point, but I may be able to do more later. Spring break is from March 12th to 20th inclusive and the semester ends May 7th. I'm happy to do my part, it's just that I can no longer spontaneously say, "I'd like to get back into that FFL run again." We'll need to schedule things in advance. Edit: By the way, TASing Mario Golf had also crossed my mind as a fun, easy diversion. Great minds think alike, it seems. But did you also think of TASing Mario Tennis?
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Bobo the King wrote:
Edit: By the way, TASing Mario Golf had also crossed my mind as a fun, easy diversion. Great minds think alike, it seems. But did you also think of TASing Mario Tennis?
I actually did pick out Mario Tennis as well. Though, someone already picked out Power Tour. I also found out resets are my friend, as it allows me to skip the entire intro in Mario Tennis and the later portion of the intro in Mario Golf: Advance Tour. I also believe it's possible to attain enough distance in MG:AT to reach the greens of every hole, including every par 5. And then some. But let's not get too sidetracked, as this thread isn't about the various Mario sports. As you are currently busy, let me know when you can find some spare time. Try to let me know ahead of time, so I can take the time to set my mind into FFL. So, FFL will sit for a while longer. Our plans made for FFL isn't likely to disappear, so we should be fine when you get the time.
Player (80)
Joined: 8/5/2007
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Gear yourself up. Next week is Spring Break and I should have a little free time throughout the week. I'm shooting for two or three hours a day, which might be enough to finish one world at a time. I should be clear that I do have a fair amount of work on my plate as well-- principally, grading papers and researching for a term paper. With good time management, I should be able to cram it all in there. Ha! "Good time management..." What am I thinking?
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
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Well then, I should make efforts into trying to remember things like the SEI-RYU strat and who should or shouldn't die. I will make some effort in relearning everything here in preparation for your return.
Player (80)
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I'm going to set aside about two hours tonight to also get up to speed and maybe get started on the run. I remember now that you had extensively researched the best strategies for who to die in World 1. Because you're the better strategist between us and you're a little ahead of me anyway, could you remind me what the plan is and, if it's not too much trouble, summarize our other findings? I know we have a few old posts that outline the step-by-step strategy, so it should just be a matter of filling in the details we've amassed since then. Also, did we ever write down the fastest way to navigate menus? I remember a few strategies. For example, my luck manipulation bot can save and reset with perfect efficiency and I know that to use TELEPOR you have to press up for 3 frames before pressing A.
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
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I believe this is the World I RNG plan. Judging from our local posts anyway. Now that I know you're back, I'm going to check over the plans. I haven't done so yet for whatever reasons. As for the fastest menu navigation, we don't actually have much written down. I know that accessing the Equip menu is a single tap left, not two taps right. Going up or down through vertical menus is fastest when we alternate two frames of left and two frames of right inputs while holding down. The select button can be used to "double-tap" the A button faster. There might be a few things I'm forgetting. Alright, enough messing around. I'm going to stare down SEI-RYU and figure out what was my favorite RNG.
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
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Well, that World I RNG plan, at least its outcome I've typed in there, works out just fine against SEI-RYU. Here's the overview of what we go for: Names: ... Either completely blank or one-letter names. We have a single vote towards having names to reduce confusion at expense of time. World I Order: ABCD is re-ordered to DBCA. The starter MUTANT F in A is to be our GAZE (death) mutant. We then proceed to manipulate the stuffing out of the RNG to get GAZE, TELEPOR, two sets of POWER, then just straight mana. P-FROG goes pop from GAZE. KINGSWRD will also be stared at to oblivion. The cronies will be manipulated to be a single foe and beaten down. And we skip GEN-BU by TELEPOR and finish up by talking to that one NPC and an inn stay. We swiftly climb the tower, reset-manipulating encounters away. World II We swiftly run through the caves, reset-manipulating encounters away. We grab the BATTLE sword in the northeast town. This sword, along with a starter HAMMER, will be what our two POWER mutants use versus SEI-RYU. Oh, and we reset-manipulate encounters away some more en route to SEI-RYU. Before we kill SEI-RYU, the party is to be reordered CDAB. C is the one with a pile of agility and safely absorbs the first hit; D is our sacrificial meat shield with 7 agility; A is the main mutant with 8 Agility, outspeeding the soon-dead D; And B is the MUTANT M who uses POWER along with A to smash SEI0RYU in. My tests show that giving A the BATTLE sword and leaving B with the HAMMER wins easily enough. Switching the two weapons so that B has BATTLE sword and A has HAMMER causes two more actions (The HAMMER strike doesn't kill, SEI-RYU misses) to take place. Whether the case may be, B needs to hold on to the BATTLE sword later on. After this death, the order is now CABD. If we use one-letter names, we'll need to have the right anagrams for greatest entertainment. I'm not a good wordy person, though. World III We GAZE things dead. Monster Trio is the main problem, however, and C would be the one fated to die here. I haven't double-checked things here, yet, but we should have a party ordered ABCD once we're finished with that battle. As A is faster than D, A goes first, insta-kills any further bosses due to exploited stone weakness, and on we go. Beyond that, more and more mana, STONE book, and turn BYAK-KO into instant art. World IV It's suddenly less clear once at the point where we recruit a fifth member into our team, replacing some dead guy. We have two paths -- Do we take the HUMAN M or MUTANT M into our party? Either way, the final rush beyond this world will be identical due to judicious use of SAW. It's just the path leading up to said final rush is a question that needs answering. Regardless, once the new party member is with us, the remaining live ones are fodder -- No more mana growth is planned to handle any further bosses, preferring SAW to take that place. Those are the basic plans I have so far put together. Again. I should be able to clear out World III just fine, in further tests I hope. Feels kind of like looking over old tomes of a lost civilization or something.
Player (80)
Joined: 8/5/2007
Posts: 865
Still here, though I don't need to tell you progress isn't going quite as planned. I've been busier than I've expected, and it looks like it's only going to get worse over the next couple days. The good news is that I'm pleased to see how simple the plans are. Of course there are intricacies, but I've got most of those written down in my notes. I had a sense that the run would be tricky, but I think most of our time will be spent just trying different RNG manipulations and seeing which one comes out on top. Even the movement is automated with my script, so that leaves... menu navigation, battles, and... gosh, I think that's all we have to do manually. So if I can just scrape together two or three hours, I could actually get this damn thing started. I'll give you a heads-up when I get fully into gear. I'm hoping to get something done by this weekend. Just be aware that it's other obligations, not a lack of interest or willingness that's keeping me from working at the moment. Edit: Oh yeah, and Sara at Tower Reversed caught sight of a GameFAQs topic and in response made an enemy encounter list. I don't think it will be particularly useful to us since we'll be manipulating away battles, but it's neat information. I'm not yet sure what the "freq" column indicates (the bottom number is the encounter rate, but that's all I know) or why there is an asterisk in the upper-right corner of some of the cells. What struck me about the encounter list is that it's not separately compiled for each map/terrain; instead, it seems to be one long list and every part of the map is given a "difficulty index", which dictates where in the list to start. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look at rows 15 to 1B and notice how the encounters (particularly PIRATE-GECKO-JAGUAR and SHRIMP-RED BONE-GUARD) just shift to the left with each row. It's an interesting way to set up the game (at least I think it is). Edit 2: According to Sara, the three numbers in each cell of the "freq" column are effectively the same information: the first number is the byte stored in the ROM, the second is the probability of an encounter based on that byte, and the third is the threshold for an encounter that you and I are familiar with. Of note, the glider's encounter rate isn't listed explicitly, so it appears that the glider effectively divides the encounter rate by 2. Also, the enemy encounters apparently aren't stored in list form with a "difficulty index", as I conjectured above. Sara informs me that although the enemy encounters are listed in order in one part of the ROM, each encounter is, in fact, called individually and explicitly. Finally, the asterisks indicate battles that are different in the Japanese version of the game. So add these to the growing pile of screwy programming habits: they stored the encounter rates as fractions when thresholds would have sufficed and they went through all the trouble of making the encounters table one long list only to ignore it entirely and program them individually.
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
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Posts: 1085
This is likely how we'll destroy SEI-RYU. Minus my goofing around in the menus in a most unTASlike way. As for the MOSQUITOs, a group of 3 instantly dies to GAZE. Strangely, encountering 1 or 2, quite possible while still grabbing the Mana+5, lets them attack first, but a group of 3 lets our GAZE mutant strike first. Additionally, the spot I loaded the game from is the near-optimal tile, as it lets the guard step towards us without any delay as demonstrated. Any closer, and we must wait a frame or two; Any farther, and we'll need to take an extra step, eating 16 frames. Finally, the last hurdle, the Monster Trio, couldn't have ended better even if I want it to. The second fodder dies (if she doesn't use ESP) without a fuss, and the monsters die without any time-wasting actions other than killing our fodder for us. This is pretty much perfection, right here. And with that, after BYAK-KO, our two mutants suddenly don't matter. It's all down to a newcomer, and his stats are completely independent of everything we do up to getting him. So we don't need to think about World IV until we finally get there. So you ended up busier than expected. That's fine. If you get nothing else done this week, at least find some time to suggest the names we should use. Blank names all the way through (fastest)? Single letter names with carefully thought anagrams (Don't forget -- we're getting a fifth member eventually)? Full-blown names? We still have time to think about this. When we finally start, changing the names become rather inconvenient. I am impressed with Sara at Tower Reversed. Promptly creating the encounter list for FFL after someone was asking about it, definitely a nice thing. If even posts here are being watched, then I suppose my thanks here would be quite noticed. So, uh... Thanks! You certainly put an effort right into it. EDIT: I forgot to mention I've been getting a few PMs from Kuwaga. The discussion is mainly about the RNG, and we concluded that there's no easy way to create a lua script that predicts the RNG values when we reset. Well, short of running the emulator and going through the reset process and recording what comes out. Address FF04 is based on a hardware timer, which is where the RNG is getting its source of "random" numbers when we reset. Directly reading it probably isn't going to give us the precision we need to unravel the RNG, and good luck trying to count opcodes. We've got just about everything planned out. We already know what RNG values we want from resets, so there's little we can get from deconstructing the RNG further. Incidentally, take a look at address CB00. In fact, take a look at the next one at CB01, too. Actually, Tools -> Debug -> Memory Viewer -> Address CB00 and friends, all the way out to CBFF. I wouldn't have expected the entire RNG table being right there in memory, of all places.
Player (80)
Joined: 8/5/2007
Posts: 865
Still here, just not much to report. I survived my hardest week of school so far, so I'm starting to feel like I can take a break to TAS... but only after I grade 40 papers.
FatRatKnight wrote:
This is likely how we'll destroy SEI-RYU. Minus my goofing around in the menus in a most unTASlike way. As for the MOSQUITOs, a group of 3 instantly dies to GAZE. Strangely, encountering 1 or 2, quite possible while still grabbing the Mana+5, lets them attack first, but a group of 3 lets our GAZE mutant strike first. Additionally, the spot I loaded the game from is the near-optimal tile, as it lets the guard step towards us without any delay as demonstrated. Any closer, and we must wait a frame or two; Any farther, and we'll need to take an extra step, eating 16 frames. Finally, the last hurdle, the Monster Trio, couldn't have ended better even if I want it to. The second fodder dies (if she doesn't use ESP) without a fuss, and the monsters die without any time-wasting actions other than killing our fodder for us. This is pretty much perfection, right here.
Microstorage seems to be down currently, but I'll check these out as soon as reasonably possible. Tell me if the links work for you.
FatRatKnight wrote:
So you ended up busier than expected. That's fine. If you get nothing else done this week, at least find some time to suggest the names we should use. Blank names all the way through (fastest)? Single letter names with carefully thought anagrams (Don't forget -- we're getting a fifth member eventually)? Full-blown names? We still have time to think about this. When we finally start, changing the names become rather inconvenient.
Hmmm... I'm starting to think that the anagram thing may be too subtle and stupid. Have you determined the party order throughout the game? It will much more difficult to deduce a good anagram without knowing how the words rearrange themselves. Full names are just about out of the question because it would take too long and I can't think of five appropriate names. I guess we could use them as a way to thank contributors to this run. In addition to BOBO and RAT, we could include ALEX for Alex Jackson and SARA for... Sara. Who else? (Seems like an unusual way to thank someone-- name a character who's destined to die after them. At least they nobly manipulated the RNG.)
FatRatKnight wrote:
I forgot to mention I've been getting a few PMs from Kuwaga. The discussion is mainly about the RNG, and we concluded that there's no easy way to create a lua script that predicts the RNG values when we reset. Well, short of running the emulator and going through the reset process and recording what comes out. Address FF04 is based on a hardware timer, which is where the RNG is getting its source of "random" numbers when we reset. Directly reading it probably isn't going to give us the precision we need to unravel the RNG, and good luck trying to count opcodes.
Interesting, but you're right-- it probably won't help us much at this point. In any case, it's good to investigate (never know what you'll find). Send Kuwaga my thanks.
FatRatKnight wrote:
Incidentally, take a look at address CB00. In fact, take a look at the next one at CB01, too. Actually, Tools -> Debug -> Memory Viewer -> Address CB00 and friends, all the way out to CBFF. I wouldn't have expected the entire RNG table being right there in memory, of all places.
What the... ah crap! HAHAHAHA! We spent, what, five pages deducing the RNG? I swear I searched for it in the ROM, but I guess I just didn't look hard enough. Anyway, I'm going to go back to grading papers some more. After that, I have one homework assignment to work on, but I should be otherwise free (aside from stuff I choose to put off). If you're very lucky, I'll have the run started sometime this week, but hey, you know my track record for getting your hopes up. Still, I'm looking for an excuse to take a break. Edit: Nearly forgot! Be sure to check out Zoogelio's "Battle data?" thread on GameFAQs-- looks like Alex Jackson is back! Edit 2: Also, I've figured out how to use IRC. I'm currently on the TASVideos channel, for what it's worth. I don't think there's any need to chat in realtime at the moment, but when the run starts ramping up, we may want to communicate via IRC or AIM. Tell me if you use an IM service at all and I'll PM you my screenname(s) (eventually).
Ambassador, Experienced player (709)
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
For names I think either single letter or tribute names are fine. If you go with single letters make them different though. That will be enough to have some idea what is going on.
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
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Bobo the King wrote:
Microstorage seems to be down currently, but I'll check these out as soon as reasonably possible. Tell me if the links work for you.
Nope. I'm having trouble. We may need to use an alternate method if this stays like this for long.
Bobo the King wrote:
Hmmm... I'm starting to think that the anagram thing may be too subtle and stupid. Have you determined the party order throughout the game? It will much more difficult to deduce a good anagram without knowing how the words rearrange themselves.
Start: 1234 (obviously, whatever we start with is our start order) Before first battle: 4231 At SEI-RYU: 3412 After SEI-RYU: 3124 (Due to death of 4) After Monster Trio: 1234 (Due to death of 3) After getting 5th member: ???? (We, uh... Will figure it out, I hope)
Bobo the King wrote:
What the... ah crap! HAHAHAHA! We spent, what, five pages deducing the RNG? I swear I searched for it in the ROM, but I guess I just didn't look hard enough.
Well, it was placed in RAM, nevermind what code generates it into RAM. But regardless, this was a surprise to hear the table sitting there.
Bobo the King wrote:
Edit 2: Also, I've figured out how to use IRC. I'm currently on the TASVideos channel, for what it's worth. I don't think there's any need to chat in realtime at the moment, but when the run starts ramping up, we may want to communicate via IRC or AIM. Tell me if you use an IM service at all and I'll PM you my screenname(s) (eventually).
I sat myself in IRC now. Now on #tasvideos channel. My IRC nick is pretty similar to the name I use here.
Joined: 6/24/2007
Posts: 119
may I suggest the word combinations: SATE EATS EAST TASE SEAT TEAS
Start: 1234 (obviously, whatever we start with is our start order) Before first battle: 4231 At SEI-RYU: 3412 After SEI-RYU: 3124 (Due to death of 4) After Monster Trio: 1234 (Due to death of 3) After getting 5th member: ???? (We, uh... Will figure it out, I hope)
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
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Posts: 1085
Hey, Microstorage looks like it's back up! As for the letters AEST... SATE - 1234 Begin EATS - 4231 Immediate switch TESA - 3412 Pre SEI-RYU TSAE - 3124 Post SEI-RYU SATE - 1234 After Monster Trio EAST - 1234 Begin TASE - 4231 STEA - 3412 SEAT - 3124 EAST - 1234 Hrm... Don't forget we'll eventually get a 5th character, who will replace one of our dead party members. This lets us introduce a new letter while getting rid of an old one! Though, we could always go with the classic A B C D and E. We can also leave one character nameless and still know who's doing what well enough. If we can avoid tearing our hair out from luck manipulation twice over, maybe an alternate run with the fastest names of leaving them blank and see how that goes.
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
With TASE, by any chance is E dead at that point? Because then you'd have TAS, which is a clear winner. :)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
Joined: 9/27/2008
Posts: 1085
Derakon wrote:
With TASE, by any chance is E dead at that point? Because then you'd have TAS, which is a clear winner. :)
We could instead have STAR -> RTAS for a nice subliminal message. Even better, it might even be within the first minute or so! Dead characters still have their names intact, I believe. Even so, E would not die at all in that particular formation.
Joined: 8/13/2005
Posts: 356
Location: Canada
Sounds like the five characters should be S, T, A, R, and E, such that T, A and S are the three that stay consistently. This would allow the most wordplay and, as a bonus, TAS is there the whole time. The two teams could be (TARS, ARTS, RATS, STAR) and (TASE, SATE, TEAS, EAST, EATS, SEAT), depending on how they need to be rotated. If you need a sixth, I'd recommend Y. Most helpful post ever.
Player (80)
Joined: 8/5/2007
Posts: 865
Looks like we've now got an unassisted speedrun too. School has been tough lately, with a term paper due this Wednesday. After that, I have one final stack of papers to grade, a presentation to throw together, and a paper I'd like to write in addition to the usual homework. Things won't clear up completely, but after Wednesday, I expect I'll have enough free time to work on this game. Tell you what: I'll set an alarm for next Friday and I'll get on IRC, we'll chat, and I'll devote the day to TASing the game. It should be a fine way to celebrate a productive semester. After one day of TASing, we'll see where things go. We might burn through the game over the weekend or just do a little bit a few hours at a time on a weekly basis. This summer will be devoted to research, but thankfully, that'll be more like job. Once I get home, my time should be mine alone. So in short, we begin this Friday. No more putting it off. I've shafted you enough times already. The long term schedule will be more hazy, but I expect it should go smoothly with a good start.
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
Joined: 9/27/2008
Posts: 1085
Just posting to acknowledge that, yes, I confirm your post and will get myself ready. Hope to see you on IRC. Just had a little problem involving my computer's power supply frying on me. It's been replaced, and nothing else seems to be lost, thankfully.
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
Joined: 9/27/2008
Posts: 1085
Our movies, by progress. Not important for viewing. Just skip down, but these are for curiosity. We certainly weren't too lazy here. ... Okay, stare at these comments. But this is the last piecewise WIP. World I progress. Look here, not those up there. Ah, the luck went more smoothly than I anticipated. Although there were three relatively long waits, I think things went pretty darn fast. We're definitely on track with our plans. Nothing unexpected that throws our plans out the window. ... Eh, just use the bold link up there and take a look, I guess.
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Wow, that's pretty fast. While it's clear that you aren't resetting immediately after saving, the delays don't feel long at all. It took me a second to think about it when you started walking backwards though. Very nice, I hope the rest of the game turns out this well. Does vbm support comments? It would be really nice to know what you are getting after each battle since there is no in-game feedback without going to the status screen.
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
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I could always whip out something like this lua script to give you some onscreen comments. At this point in the run, we'll be luck-manipulating enemy encounters away, a LOT. I delegate this task to my good partner, Bobo the King, and this should give plenty of time for me to write up some comments about this section. So give me some time to comment up this run. And yeah, some delays were long enough that I start running the other way. Or play around with the hyper speed menu cursor. I figure we should at least confuse the viewer with this wait.
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Posts: 865
Yeah, a while back, I was thinking of suggesting that we make an annotations script. Then I stumbled upon a topic with just such a script, authored by none other than FatRatKnight. He's rather prescient. As for my progress, I'm almost through the first chunk of the tower, but my luck-manipulation bot came up dry on the last floor. I may need help with that, if only briefly. Otherwise, I'll need to backtrack to the last luck manipulation, costing roughly 16 frames (as I recall, the second-best option reached one step farther post-reset, but was two steps back). On the positive side of things, I made a walking bot for when we don't need to manipulate luck. It's a little inefficient, but a welcome addition, nonetheless. Edit: Just watched Poxnor's speedrun (not yet published, but I'm a verifier). In World 3, after entering the Floating Castle when it's near Jeanne's hideout, he leaves without using the glider. That is, he just steps off the catwalk (plank?) and into the abyss. It's worth testing whether it's faster. My guess is that it isn't, but I can't say for sure as yet. I think it'd be an extra 4 frames to take one extra step in the glider, but 12 frames faster to move one tile down in the glider, rather than on foot. This may not be exact, since I've found that entering vehicles is a little "sticky"-- input is halted for two or three frames. Anyway, this edit is just a note to ourselves to test it. A few other things caught my eye. First, he somehow manages to trigger the initial confrontation with So-Cho while facing the counter, not the NPC next to it. If I recall, that doesn't really make sense and it may get him through that cutscene one step (16 frames) sooner. Second, he mysteriously stops to talk with the Creator before taking the elevator to ASHURA. This just didn't make sense to me at first, but now I wonder if it's equivalent to the NPC (who happens to look exactly like the Creator) we need to talk to in World 1. I'm going to look into it. If we can talk to him there, it will save us many steps. The rest was just random observations. Most of it was very good, with a few minor mistakes that were generally related to our discoveries. For example, he doesn't leap off the elevator during his descent in the factory, costing a few dozen frames. Nothing too notable. And as a side note, it is really weird watching a run of this game with the sound on. Edit 2: A quick RAM search seems to indicate that the address that flags whether the man in Base Town has been talked to is CC95 with a duplicate address at EC95 (for anyone idly reading this conversation, most or all relevant RAM addresses are in the C___ range with duplicates in the E___ range). I'm going to proceed and keep an eye on that flag throughout my earlier test run. Expect another edit shortly... Edit 3: Yes yes yes yes yes! It appears we need to talk to the Creator at any point in the game. I caught good opportunities on floors 5, 10, and 22, with Poxnor's strategy (floor 22) likely the best as the Creator only says, "Be careful! Ashura lives above." I may check the other possibilities as well, but I think he's chattier then. Normally, a revelation like this that requires extensive backtracking would get me down, but I like this one. It'll save us a lot of time (upwards of 100 frames) and it'll give me a second chance to do this portion, which was having really crappy luck. Besides, it's not as much backtracking as it seems, especially with my walking script. I'm really happy to have caught this! Much thanks to Poxnor! (We'll have to thank him in the submission text.) Edit 4: Last edit for the night, I swear. I just checked the Creator's dialogue on floors 5, 10, and 22. They were as follows. 5F: "Look for the old man!" 10F: "The ruler of this world is calling for guards. Being a guard is the quickest way to meet him." 22F: "Be careful! Ashura lives above." 5F is the shortest, but I discovered that we can't walk up to him smoothly. At the very least, he'll cost us about 4 steps, much more time than his dialogue would save. I thought we would pass by him on the way to the door to floor 6, but I realized we actually start at the door on the top edge of the room, not the left. 10F is along the way, but far too long. Nothing really to consider there. 22F is strongly looking like the best option. The only other possibility is on 15F, but his dialogue would have to be pretty short. I think he's actually out of the way, negating that possibility. I didn't check too carefully. Anyway, if we plan on talking to him on floor 22, we can always check floor 15 along the way. Bobo out.
Post subject: MusicDelay, SaveDelay, and ResetDelay
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Joined: 9/27/2008
Posts: 1085
We were looking at different ways to affect the RNG on reset. I had known that the sound processing affects the RNG in some sense, but now we have some hard definitions I want to put down here. MusicDelay - The count of frames we wait to begin the music we hear when we reset the game. This is defined to be zero when we transition to the music as soon as possible. SaveDelay - How long, in frames, we wait to save the game. If we save the game as soon as possible, this is defined to be zero. As the saving process begins playing a sound, this affects the RNG when we reset. ResetDelay - Number of "useless" frames between saving and the actual reset. If there are no spare frames between the moment we save the game and the A+B+start+select reset, we define it as zero. With these three controls, we can pick the frame count we reset at, what the music is doing at the moment, and what the save sound is doing at the moment. This should give a degree of control above what we were previously doing, and this means we might have to redo World I to see if we can tinker with the RNG even harder than what we've currently got. We'll see how much we can tighten up the manipulation. I'm hoping we can ensure no more than 20 wasted frames each time we reset.
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