Posted: 5/8/2008 8:15 PM
Post subject: Madou Monogatari I (J)
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2479)
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Sega TASer of 2008 Lucky TAS of 2008
Madou Monogatari I is a first person dungeon crawler type of RPG, similar to Shining in the Darkness, but a little simpler. This game has only spells as weapons and they are cast by using different button combos (such as left-up-left-right). The Mega Drive port of Madou Monogatari I has real-time battle system, which means that fast controls produce fast spell casting. Together with very manipulatable randomness, I believe this would be a nice game to TAS. Probably not the basic fast-paced action, but an intriguing challenge to complete fast. I might try it at some point, because I like rerecording games where the movements need little optimization, but the available strategies are vast. My problem is that the game is Japanese and I can't quite understand everything that happens in the game. I have been able to find only one web page, but it does not give much info: http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/puyo/puyopuyo3.htm I wonder if some Japanese sites have any maps, walkthroughs or any other info about this game. Any search help would be appreciated from people who know Japanese. Thanks. So, the luck-manipulation in this game has huge possibilities. Avoiding encounters is easy to do even manually, because every forward step has so many possibilities for luck-manipulation. I have tested it briefly and I was able to avoid all encounters or get a few different encounters without losing any time, just by trying different button combinations on the useless frames. Every forward step has 10 frames that can be used for luck-manipulation. Turning left/right has 9 frames. Turnin 180 degrees has 17 frames. I have an idea of using the dungeon maps (the in-game ones, if nothing else is available) to plan the shortest route. Then I would plan where to encounter certain enemies to get some necessary item drops. Bot would be needed only to manipulate those few encounters. Everything else should be quite easy to do by hand. Well, I'm not sure if I do this game myself or not, but it is a funny idea for the future. So, any chance somebody could help me find some Japanese site with more info about this game? Alternatively, I could post screenshots or savestates for people to translate for me, if somebody is willing to do that kind of thing. :)
Posted: 5/8/2008 11:23 PM
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N._Harmonik
She/Her
Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 502
Location: Canada
Hooray, English patch!: http://agtp.romhack.net/project.php?id=madou
Why, oh, why do I even <i>try</i> to understand my own species?
Posted: 5/9/2008 12:13 AM
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2479)
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Thank you for trying, Harmonik, but unfortunately that is a wrong game. It is not your fault, though. People often write inadequate game titles everywhere, me too. You gave me a patch to a SNES game called "Madou Monogatari: Hanamaru Daiyouchi Enji". The patch was labeled "Madou Monogatari". The exact title of the game I'm talking about is "Madou Monogatari I". It does not exist for SNES, as far as I can tell.
Posted: 5/9/2008 4:02 PM
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Aqfaq
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Oh well, here are some parts that confuse me due to the language barrier. Any translation help is appreciated. :) The purpose of these gems is unknown to me: The gems can be destroyed and the result is this: Also, I can't tell what purpose this marking on the wall has:
Posted: 5/9/2008 5:20 PM
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paul_t
Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 8/12/2007
Posts: 102
My Japanese isn't great, but the game doesn't seem to be giving you much information. 1. There is a beautiful gem. 2. The gem was destroyed, unblocking the door. 3. There is a strange marking on this wall.
Posted: 5/9/2008 10:10 PM
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2479)
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Thank you paul_t! Now I know that destroying those gems open certain doors. If it is ok to you, here are some more things I haven't been able to figure out. A message on a wall: Another message: Then there's this door that won't open:
Posted: 5/9/2008 10:39 PM
(Edited: 5/9/2008 10:52 PM)
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maTO
Skilled player (1513)
Joined: 4/28/2005
Posts: 240
Location: Finland
Sega TASer of 2009
If first and second screen is same sentence then: 1+2. "Yottsu no seki ni fuuinsareshi chikara wo kaihouseyo sareba michi wa akaren" Seal four jewels and release your power (And) If you leave a path will open. (If sareba comes from saru 去る) 3. DOREMIFAMIREDO 4. Are? Kono DOA akenaiyo What? This door won't open.
Projects: Warlock, Ren & Stimpy (impr) / Generations Lost (impr.)
Posted: 5/9/2008 10:43 PM
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2479)
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maTO wrote:
3. DOREMIFAMIREDO
Oh, thanks maTO! That one helped a lot! :)
Posted: 5/9/2008 10:50 PM
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maTO
Skilled player (1513)
Joined: 4/28/2005
Posts: 240
Location: Finland
Sega TASer of 2009
You could search hiragana and katakana tables if you wanted to translate on your own. These are the clearest I found in few seconds: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_hiragana.htm http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_katakana.htm Of course I'll try to help if I'm around :)
Projects: Warlock, Ren & Stimpy (impr) / Generations Lost (impr.)
Posted: 5/9/2008 11:46 PM
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paul_t
Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 8/12/2007
Posts: 102
ドレミファミレド (Do Re Mi Fa Mi Re Do) are probably solfege syllables. Is there a musical puzzle somewhere in the game?
Posted: 5/10/2008 3:22 AM
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Aqfaq
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Thanks for the help guys. There are still some parts about the game that I don't quite understand, but I already developed a very good strategy to complete the game. There is a spell that does random effects, I call it the "random spell". It can be used only once per fight. Some of the ~20 different effects are made only to amuse the player, some even damage the player! But sometimes the random spell produces an istant death effect. This can be used to defeat all basic enemies in a single hit. Another powerful effect is the "elephant stomp", which causes 110 points of damage. The instant death effect does not work on bosses, but nevertheless the random spell can be used in boss fights to deliver one elephant stomp. Level 12 is the final level and consists solely of the final boss fight. This boss can be defeated with 5 super bomb items (which look like pineapples) plus one elephant stomp. One of the enemies (the broom girl) in level 11 drops those super bombs, but it is a rather rare item drop. Anyway, the RNG is so flexible that I believe 5 broom girls can be manipulated to appear and drop 5 super bombs without any loss of extra time. Level 11 has a boss too. It can be defeated with one super bomb plus one elephant stomp. So, maybe 6 super bombs need to be acquired in total. The super bomb has two alternative animations. They can be manipulated without any loss in time. The animations take about 9 seconds, but the other one is 14 frames longer. I think any movie for this game that uses more than one super bomb is better if it wastes those 14 frames to show both animations. It took me about 5 hours to complete the game. A good TAS time might be about ~20 minutes. I'm still not going to start this kind of TAS project seriously, but it is a funny game. I'll see what possibilities it offers. I have the in-game maps for each level, if somebody wants to see them.
paul_t wrote:
ドレミファミレド (Do Re Mi Fa Mi Re Do) are probably solfege syllables. Is there a musical puzzle somewhere in the game?
Yes. That was a combination to open a door. Without this translation, it would have taken me some time to find the correct solution, because I did not even know how many notes (7) the obvious seeming combination had.
Posted: 5/10/2008 10:22 PM
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2479)
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Ha, I managed to find a Japanese info page myself, afterall: http://suwa3.web.fc2.com/data-kan/kou/mdmado_memo.html I use machine translator, so some of the page contents remain obscure, but this page helped a lot nonetheless. For example, the page lists all the effects of the "random spell" and gives locations for important items. It also describes what are the results of all the item combinations. Combining items takes a lot of time though, so that is probably not useful for a speed movie. Edit: First test movie in 24 minutes: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/792483323/MadouMonogatariI-RouteDemonstration.gmv There are lots of mistakes and unoptimized playing, so under 19 minutes might be possible. Anyway, the amount of luck-manipulation in this movie is already quite high. The random spell always manages to produce a very desired effect, so not much level-uping is needed. Only a few battles are fought and huge portions of the game are skipped. Oh, the pineapple super bomb strategy fails, because the damage of those bombs is relative to the character level. So instead of pineapples, my underleveled character needs to manipulate the broom girls to drop "moonstones", which are items that produce same effects as the random spell. These are the fights that were fought: - All undesired random encounters were avoided. - 6 white-hair girls were encountered on purpose in levels 1-2. All of them were manipulated to drop "little elephant" items, which are good weapons. The early part of the game requires some level-uping to learn a necessary spell, so those white-hair girls are good for that. - 2 yellow blobs were encountered on purpose for level-up and money purposes. Money is needed in level 3 to buy a "wall creator" item. - The skeleton boss of level 2 was killed with two little elephants. - Later in the game, 6 broom girls were encountered and every one of them were forced to drop a moonstone item. - The giant bird boss of level 11 was killed with 1 moonstone, 1 random spell and 1 little elephant. - The final boss was defeated with 5 moonstones, 1 random spell, a few little elephants + some basic magic, because my planning failed. The little elephants did not produce as much damage to the final boss as I had expected. Anyway, it went quite well. There exists a minor trick that was used in this movie: Failing to escape the battle causes a short invulnerability period. This can be abused to avoid almost every enemy attack. There are at least two different endings. This movie gets a bad ending, because all the secondary goals were dismissed.
Posted: 5/11/2008 12:01 PM
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N._Harmonik
She/Her
Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 502
Location: Canada
Aqfaq wrote:
There are at least two different endings. This movie gets a bad ending, because all the secondary goals were dismissed.
Maybe you could also make a run that gets the best ending. If there's a big enough difference, perhaps both will get published.
Why, oh, why do I even <i>try</i> to understand my own species?
Posted: 5/13/2008 10:10 AM
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2479)
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Thanks, but I'm probably not interested doing the longer version. I'm not even sure if the short version is publishworthy. :P Anyway, despite having no intent to record this game for real, I have now done about 1/3 of a new movie with increased precision and slightly refined strategy. Could somebody please check that the movie works properly. It should end in level 3 after meeting a purple blob guy: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/272795015/m9.gmv
Posted: 5/13/2008 4:51 PM
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mz
Emulator Coder, Player (79)
Joined: 10/26/2007
Posts: 693
Aqfaq wrote:
Could somebody please check that the movie works properly.
Yeah, it works well here with Gens v9.5c. I find this game to be very interesting: the voices, the graphics and the music are all great. But even then I still doubt most people here will enjoy something of this genre. It sure gets repetitive after a while. :P
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
Posted: 5/13/2008 5:48 PM
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2479)
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I tried to translate some some spell names, but I still have no idea what they do. The spells seem to have no direct effect on anything and I believe I don't need them in the run, but nevertheless, it would be nice to know what they do. This is how they got translated by a machine: ひ-どん => "Terribly it is" ばよえ-ん => "It is to obtain" Heh, I have no clue...
mz wrote:
It sure gets repetitive after a while. :P
Yeah, the beginning is the most repetitive part, because I need to level-up and collect the little elephant item-drops. The next five minutes will have no fighting at all, so walking the hallways may also get repetitive. Anyway, I have hope for completing the game in less than 18 minutes. Thanks for verifying the WIP, mz.
Posted: 5/13/2008 7:37 PM
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maTO
Skilled player (1513)
Joined: 4/28/2005
Posts: 240
Location: Finland
Sega TASer of 2009
These were for SNES Madou Monogatari, but spells could be same. http://www.rpgdl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=94166&sid=c1ed4ec622ee2b1a7335a89f5d7ce2e6 "Heedon - Sleep Spell. A wave of little sheep come dancing in a pink background around the enemy. This has a rate of about 50% to work, and it doesn't work on bosses. The enemy sleeps for a minimum of two turns and maximum of three turns (no Diacute applied). The Diacute spell also raises the chances of Heedon to work, but I don't think it ever reaches 100% chances to work... and it can't be stacked up with itself. This costs some MP." "Bayoen - Don't act Spell. A rain of flower petals fall, a trail of flowers reaches the foe and a flower circle ensnares the enemy, making him/her lose his action for the turn."
Projects: Warlock, Ren & Stimpy (impr) / Generations Lost (impr.)
Posted: 8/31/2008 9:29 AM
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satan
Joined: 8/31/2008
Posts: 56
I haven't played this particular Madou Monogatari game (I hate dungeon crawlers, and the language barrier doesnt help either), but Bayoeen is the "ultimate" spell in literally every iteration of the series - even in Puyo Puyo. On the Saturn MM game, it does non-elemental damage to all enemies. On the SNES game, it was a happiness bomb that made enemies forget about attacking you for a while. There are a few japanese sites with huge character encyclopedias for Madou Monogatari, the easiest to navigate (that I know of) is this: http://suwa3.web.fc2.com/data-kan/index.html Do note that it stuff written about every MM game, not just the Megadrive one. Use this tool for translation, it is much better than the crappy google translator: http://www.ocn.ne.jp/translation/?tool3 Also, I can help translating the character names if you need. The "girl with the broom" is probably called as Witch, if it is the blonde little girl with blue outfit. You can tell the character names are imaginitive.
Posted: 8/31/2008 12:20 PM
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2479)
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Thank you, satan. Welcome to the forums. You seem to know a lot about Genesis / Mega Drive games. I already finished a full movie for this game, but the submission was rejected due to poor entertainment value: http://tasvideos.org/1982S.html