Topic by nesrocks

Posted: 1/24/2010 12:01 AM

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nesrocks

He/Him

Player (241)

Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil

You can't skip showing magic, the only thing you can hide are the magic's names, right?

aka Nesrocks http://www.youtube.com/user/UoBtExFODA https://nesrocks.com https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios

Posted: 1/24/2010 1:09 AM

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List of "battle blockables": * Navigation message ("Are you really sure you want to do this?") * Exp & JP earned * Ability name * Randomly triggered battle chants associated with spells and abilities Most of these are pretty annoying, and most people probably shut them off. The navigation message is especially horrendous and I'm always surprised when watching videos with it turned on. Exp & JP earned seems innocuous until you realize how much it delays the next action. Besides, seeing exp gained isn't too useful because the math is trivially simple and the stat is listed along with all the other basics by the character portrait. JP earned is even more useless due to JP sharing and high targets clouding perceived progress. It's really no different than not knowing the exp totals in any other TAS featuring level gaining. The characters still jump up and down when gaining levels, and the tone indicates the type of level gained. Ability names would be skipped anyway due to dismissing dialogs on the first possible frame, and the battle chants are only mildly amusing, mostly for the typos.

Posted: 1/24/2010 3:36 AM

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nesrocks

He/Him

Player (241)

Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil

I'd rather watch it without repetitive delays generated by those messages.

aka Nesrocks http://www.youtube.com/user/UoBtExFODA https://nesrocks.com https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios

Posted: 1/28/2010 11:40 PM

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DoctorJohn

Joined: 8/17/2007
Posts: 41

I saw The page about the RNG i'm curious how do you interpret that?

Posted: 1/29/2010 12:13 AM

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Whelkman

Joined: 7/7/2007
Posts: 161

Which page is that? I am curious as well.

Posted: 1/29/2010 12:15 AM

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superjupi

Joined: 10/15/2007
Posts: 685

FFT RNG

Kirby said so, so it must be true. ( >'.')>

Posted: 1/29/2010 12:20 AM

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Whelkman

Joined: 7/7/2007
Posts: 161

Rats. I thought maybe someone had some some more work on it.

Posted: 2/1/2010 3:54 AM

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DoctorJohn

Joined: 8/17/2007
Posts: 41

is this on hold till people figure out the rng?

Posted: 2/1/2010 4:14 AM

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Whelkman

Joined: 7/7/2007
Posts: 161

I tested it a bit, and I don't think there's much to figure out. Input has limited effect on the RNG in the short term. You can influence it by dismissing dialogs then bringing them back, but that's unlikely to save time over just waiting. Since the RNG has only 8 bit precision, your average wait time is 128 frames assuming only one value in the bunch generates a success. However, some events may require certain consecutive values where more detailed manipulation may be warranted. Thus far, I have not had much difficulty in manipulating constant critical hits, even at maximum damage values. I haven't kept track of average delays, but it's probably less than two seconds a pop. Note: I have not yet tested how moving the cursor around the battlefield affects the RNG. It would make for an interesting bot if it does.

Posted: 2/2/2010 11:15 PM

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DoctorJohn

Joined: 8/17/2007
Posts: 41

I pmed Whelkman but maybe is he away at the moment. What are the memory addresses for hit and crit. also waht are they for weatehr a spell will succede or not. Curious about counter/hamedo too

Posted: 2/3/2010 12:59 AM

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Whelkman

Joined: 7/7/2007
Posts: 161

I replied, but it's still sitting in my outbox for whatever reason. Here's the text:

I don't actually know the details of which values generate successes. What my proof-of-concept script does is monitor 0x00962D4 which, I believe, is the damage to be displayed on screen; this address is compared to a provided value. The script loops back to a save state, increments a frame, attacks, and compares again. It does this until the damage equals at least the number provided. Given FFT's crit system of awarding bonus damage from 0 to XA-1, resulting damage may be greater than intended, which has happened in testing.

Posted: 2/4/2010 1:15 AM

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Whelkman

Joined: 7/7/2007
Posts: 161

Replying to PM by DoctorJohn, who asked for Lua assistance, here in case anyone else is interested: Here are some scripts from my bug reporting posts about pcsx-rr: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=221795#221795 Additionally, here's the proof-of-concept script previously mentioned. You'll need libfft.lua linked in the above thread. As you'll see, the routine is quite rough and doesn't offer much more than a way to crudely inflict damage. The final version of this would overload the function call with '<' and '>' so that it could be used for evasion as well. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2275704/TAS/Final%20Fantasy%20Tactics/libfft.lua If you're planning on engaging Lua in pcsx-rr be forewarned that any pcsx.pause() statements used cannot be removed due to them affecting program flow. Personally, I'm waiting for the next version before I head back into this with any zeal.

Posted: 9/13/2010 10:57 PM

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nesrocks

He/Him

Player (241)

Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil

Where's the saviour of the day? I'm eagerly anticipating a TAS of this game :(

aka Nesrocks http://www.youtube.com/user/UoBtExFODA https://nesrocks.com https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios

Posted: 9/15/2010 7:59 AM

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DoctorJohn

Joined: 8/17/2007
Posts: 41

I would love to do it but i can't get the Lua's to work for some reason. i think i am just retarded.

Posted: 9/16/2010 1:24 AM

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Whelkman

Joined: 7/7/2007
Posts: 161

I can't get Lua to work, either.

Posted: 9/17/2010 2:00 PM

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nesrocks

He/Him

Player (241)

Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil

What about doing it old fashion by trial and error?

aka Nesrocks http://www.youtube.com/user/UoBtExFODA https://nesrocks.com https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios

Posted: 9/18/2010 1:06 AM

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Whelkman

Joined: 7/7/2007
Posts: 161

No way. That's insanity, particularly when it comes to party stat generation. It takes 8792 frames, including 40 optimal button presses, just to see the results of a new trial. Given that you'd probably need to run hundreds of trails to get the desired stats, time would be better spent actually cracking the RNG. Add to that the hundreds of critical hits with particular damage ranges you'd need to manipulate plus manipulating misses against your party... On top of all that you need to manipulate enemy signs for most battles... I'd rather wait until pcsx-rr matures.

Posted: 9/19/2010 11:22 AM

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antd

Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain

are you having lua problems?

Posted: 9/19/2010 5:13 PM

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Whelkman

Joined: 7/7/2007
Posts: 161

Yeah, every version since the August 2009 release crashes if I attempt to use savestates in Lua.

Posted: 9/19/2010 8:26 PM

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BadPotato

Joined: 1/26/2009
Posts: 558
Location: Canada - Québec

6 month ago, I used lua and savestate with pcsxrr for suikoden2... and I had no problem. Could you post a simple script with this crashing issue and a explanation about what you want to do?

Posted: 9/19/2010 8:27 PM

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Whelkman

Joined: 7/7/2007
Posts: 161

http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=245805#245805

Posted: 9/24/2010 4:06 PM

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CGoCPftF

Joined: 7/8/2007
Posts: 27
Location: North Carolina, USA

From my experience with the RNG, a lot of things are not manipulatable. For instance, critical hits occur on particular frames, and there is no way I could figure out how to change that. You can change the stats of enemy characters (and ally characters if you have never encountered them before), but once again I could only do this by delaying frames before entering a battle, and seeing the result afterwards, which is pretty much infeasible for a TAS. Do you know another way of manipulating the RNG in this game?

Posted: 9/25/2010 12:05 AM

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Whelkman

Joined: 7/7/2007
Posts: 161

Your experience matches mine. Input itself seems to have little effect, but certain actions like calling menus does. However, calling and dismissing dialogs probably takes more time than simply waiting in just about every case. I have not rigorously tested all possibilities, however. As for the value of manipulating stats by waiting alone, it should still be viable given that sign optimization should shave off at least one attack for several seconds of savings. At five seconds you'd get 300 rolls before you break even time-wise. Surely one of those is better than whatever you get entering on the earliest possible frame.

Posted: 9/25/2010 3:50 PM

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nesrocks

He/Him

Player (241)

Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil

I'd settle for anything inperfect other than nothing. Oh wait, no TAS is perfect.

aka Nesrocks http://www.youtube.com/user/UoBtExFODA https://nesrocks.com https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios

Posted: 9/27/2010 4:24 PM

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CGoCPftF

Joined: 7/8/2007
Posts: 27
Location: North Carolina, USA

I actually did a little TAS playaround of this game for fun a few months ago and made it just past the mandalia plains fight. Brute force is very time consuming and since I was just playing around with it I would settle for things that were probably not optimal. Critical hit brute forcing actually was not very bad at all to do, but the stats part was the real killer since it takes so long to check that. My idea for a route was kind of similar to the SDA run, but instead of trying to get Ramza to calculator while progressing the storyline, I wondered if it would be better to get easy encounters at Mandalia plains and speed through the leveling process. I have seen a random encounter with one monster in my playthroughs on the console before, but could not get one after several hundred frames of testing, so I settled for 2 monsters. Even with that, it is still a very fast method of leveling Ramza. It gets even faster when Ramza learns sleep. The combination of sleep and yell gives Ramza a ton of turns by himself assuming that everyone is asleep. That being said, it might be faster to progress the story line along while you get Ramza to calc instead of powerlevelling.