Topic by TASVideoAgent

Emulator: VBA rerecording 1.7.2 v19.3

This TAS completes Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones in 1:06:49 (240536 frames). I also finished in 94 turns.

This game is the eighth in a series of Strategy RPGs. As an RPG TAS, it probably won't appeal much to people who haven't played the game, but I'm hoping that the enjoyment of those who have balances that out.

I don't really feel like writing a novel about this run (despite the fact that the levels are called chapters), so I'll just go ahead and summarize the main techniques used.

RNG abuse:

In this game, simply sitting around doing nothing has absolutely no effect on the randomness. However, the same random number generator is used for both combat and the path-drawing algorithm. This means that by forcing the game to randomly choosing between two different ways to get to the same location (e.g. by pressing a diagonal), you can alter the outcome of future combats. There is hardly a turn in this run where I don't abuse this fact at least once, so I can get luck to go my way again and again.

Characters:

For most of the game, my main fighting force is Seth, with a little backup from Vanessa. This changes partway through to become Vanessa with a little support from Seth. Saleh makes some appearances as well. By abusing the RNG as above, I can make sure that the characters I use get statups in the three offensive stats (strength, speed, and skill) nearly every levelup. There's no way a normal Vanessa could pull of some of the stunts she does on a regular basis in this run, simply because with my help, her 35% strength growth becomes 100%.

Glitches:

I only actually use one glitch in the entire game. This was to have two characters occupy the same square. This is accomplished by getting the path arrow and cursor to be on different squares when you press A--if the cursor is in a legal destination square, the character will move to wherever the arrow is pointing to, even if that's not a legal destination.

Some people who have played this game may be familiar with the control enemies glitch, which I did not use in my run. This is because I'm fairly certain that it wouldn't save time--the enemies already commit suicide even without me going through the effort of controlling them. It takes a fair amount of time to get the glitch set up, too.

Special Thanks:

I'd like to thank Nitrodon for being far far better at Fire Emblem TASing than I could ever be. I'm convinced that if he was actually doing this run instead of helping me do it, it would be considerably better. Here's hoping he goes back to his FE7 TAS some day.

I'd also like to thank everyone who ever prodded me in the topic to get going again. It didn't always work, but it at least made me feel guilty about forgetting to TAS for months on end when I came back to it.

I'll go ahead and end these comments with a quote by me from the FE8 thread:

"I just know that when this run eventually gets obseleted, the new run will be faster on every chapter, and will be able to sum it up smugly as 'better luck manipulation'."

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. Oh! I also corrected the ROM name.