User Files for Soul Blazer

Act 4 complete!

Act 3 is now complete!

This WIP completes the first two worlds of Soul Blader.

This WIP completes the first world. A lot of FatRatKnight's ideas have been reused, as well as a few of my own.

Gem drops are predictable but difficult to really manipulate, so I occasionally have to delay myself by some frames to get good RNG in that regard. I probably could have killed one extra fly with magic in the first Underground Castle visit and saved about 16 frames. In Leo's paintings, the Magician Soul was in a bad alignment, so killing the column of brick enemies was slow; but there was nothing I could do to prevent that...

Enjoy the WIP!

Last TASing session of this file was Dec 28. I'm having difficulties getting back into TASing it. Sorry...

I need more GEMs. If I continue, I'll probably spend less of them against that odd jellyfish thing.

My attempt in trying Soul Blader for a bit. Wow, the text sure is fast.

Notably, due to timing differences in text, I can pick up two larger GEMs in the first room without a single frame delay.

Regardless, potential improvements are noted:

I hope to have 39 RNG calls by the time I release the bridge guard (currently, it's 40 calls). This will allow for two large GEM drops from the later enemies I have to fight, and make up for the lacking GEMs I'm left with.

Cleaned up a few things in code. Also, it displays hitboxes! Well, green rectangles of some sort. Not entirely sure if they are hitboxes, but it seems to be so for most things. The player's rectangle isn't a hitbox, it seems.

Still gets the same false positives for lair information. Aside from added boxes and some code cleaning for (hopefully) easier maintenance, it's largely the same as the previous script.

Here's my lsnes script for Soul Blazer. It's currently set up for (U), though I have a commented line packed somewhere in there that would make it compatible with (J) instead. The lair listing code needs it, as it's the address for the pointer to the first object.

Top-left corner: Position of player
Right side: RNG, direction a certain enemy will go next
More right: List of lair information: Position, count, timer
Other odds and ends: Count of detected lairs, count of objects, RNG frame timer

This script gets false positives for lairs at times. I have tried to search through the object data some more to tighten the detection, but without success. The attempts are minimal, however, as there are no observed false negatives, and I usually can weed out the false positives while TASing.

Nothing real fancy, though. Haven't even put in the boxes that I feature in the Snes9x script. It serves well enough, though.

A demonstration of the sort of luck I should be getting. USA version, by the way.

22 GEMs. Up from just 4. I get two big ones. They should have a 1% chance to appear at this time. Yet I get two. I just looked at the RNG and figured out it could do that.

47 frames lost in manipulation. Even if all I get are four fireballs, and waste them on nothing more than killing 3 HP enemies sooner, that's 64 frames saved in return. I'm optimistic about this.

In any case, I spent the 47 frames on the name screen.

Something I was doing. Add it to the pile of projects I've started. Oh, this is using the USA version, not JPN. Sorry about any confusion.

Improves approximately 100 seconds over the published movie to the end of GreenWood.

I think it can be done a little faster... I didn't figure out a few things involving luck, and almost certainly need to do them. Also, judging from the next thing I need to do, I didn't end with enough GEMs. Either manipulate more or grab that 50 GEM chest. I'm guessing the "manipulate more" part is doable.