The run looks good technically, but I doubt it would be very entertaining.
Also, have you considered picking up a weapon to let Maxim suicide in one hit? It may or may not be faster than letting Maxim die in 3 attacks. Of course, you could always manipulate two high-damage critical hits instead, which would likely be faster than either of the other options.
To me, luck manipulating 9 Iris treasures and beating the Ancient Cave in 10 minutes is entertaining, but you're probably right, most people aren't going to find this entertaining. I don't really care though, if it doesn't get published here, I still had fun making it.
I had considered using a weapon to kill myself, but I was rather thinking of a spell or item since I wouldn't have to equip it first.
Joined: 6/9/2005
Posts: 171
Location: Southern California
I watched my friend sink an entire summer of hours into this Ancient Cave--I'm absolutely floored that you think you'll be able to do this all in a single run. :) Please don't be discouraged by nay-sayers!
Thanks for the motivating words :)
As for the run, I've got another minor setback. Starting at floor 16, the simulation data again became inaccurate. I'm not going to take any more chances now though; I'm going to run the simulations for every possible floor so I'll have all the possibe data I need to finish it.
Estimated simulation time: 3 weeks (I'll try and find a faster machine though)
I'm also leaning towards the PAL version, since the messed up graphics cover a significant part of the run compared to a normal playthrough. Also, the time difference will only be a minute or two tops.
The amount of frames needed to complete the game would probably be low (hence the "minute or two tops"). However, PAL being played back at 50fps instead of 60fps, the difference in movie length would be great (hence the half-hour thing).
Still, I would be in favor of the (E) version, mainly because of the messed up graphics in the (U) version. In my mind, the (E) version is the original and the (U) is just a really sloppy adaptation from PAL to NTSC with many bugs.
Yarrp for (E), Narrp for (U).
5 months later...
I finally found time and motivation to tackle this beast :). I've spent a couple of days rewriting some programs and I made a fast 'preview' of what the eventual tas would look like:
Click!
Recorded using snes9x 1.51 with the following pro-action replay codes:
82E99EA9
82E99F02
This movie gets all 9 normal Iris Treasures in 36 floors and grabs a Providence and escapes at floor 37. Naturally, the actual tas will go all the way to floor 99 and defeat the jelly, but I wasn't feeling like optimising another 62 floors when the first 36 weren't optimal to begin with.
The strategy I will use in the actual tas will aim for an Iris treasure every 10 floors, so I will have the last 8 floor to worry about an item/spell/weapon to kill myself with.
As for the version of the ROM and emulator I'm going to use, I'm not sure yet. For clarity: since this run will probably last less than 10 minutes in NTSC timing, the timing difference in PAL will be 2 minutes at most. For a normal-mode speedrun, which lasts about 3 hours in NTSC, the difference in PAL is ~36 minutes.
Fun fact: the probability of finding 9 Iris Treasures in 36 floors is 2.5459 e-11
Joined: 11/17/2005
Posts: 278
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Amazing! Just that preview is star worthy! Of course, it won't get one because it isn't obvious what's going on and you're playing an alternate goal. But the length is perfect. The manipulation just to get the stairs that close together is insane. Added to that the fact that you also got the first nine Iris Treasures in about 3 minutes... just wow. I giggled. This movie is what TASes are all about. What you just did in 10,000 frames is probably what I would spend 20-30 hours doing unassisted. (Maybe.)
It's that time of the year again, and I started picking TASing Lufia II again. This time I started an improvement of the normal-mode TAS.
The goal I set when I started recording was to defeat the Catfish in 4 rounds without healing, while keeping the number of frames lost due to luck manipulation below the amount of frames it would take to extend the Catfish fight by 1 round; 355 frames. The total amount of frames lost due to luck manipulation is 188 frames, which means I succeeded :).
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/834441994/lufia2-tas-v2.smv
This WIP is 1634 frames (27s 14f) faster than the currently published TAS and I think the total completion time could turn out to be sub 3 hour. This TAS was recorded using the snes9x v1.43+ lua 0.06 version. About 30 different Lua scripts were used to luck manipulate floor transitions and delaying frames in town. Both the Lizardman and Catfish fights were simulated and optimized in Java.
The next milestone of the TAS is going to be Camu, and will probably take an even longer time to optimize than the Catfish battle. So don't expect any progress any time soon :p.
Wow! Impressive run so far!
For reference, Nitrodon and I had made a test run a few years back (2006), and it was faster than the published run up to the point you had gotten the Anger Brace (for the IP Battle Lust), because we didn't get that for some stupid reason. Anyway, what I want to say is that, our test run was faster in the beginning of the game, and I used it to check if your new run was better. Here's what I found.
Frame numbers are the first frame of total darkness (screen is completely black) after the mentionned event. First number is our old test run, second number is your new run.
After the Lizardman fight: 20129 20015
After the Catfish fight: 35110 33762
In other words, your new run is fast! It looks great, the catfish battle was INSANE!!! Keep up the good work! It's gonna be an awesome run! There were a few things that made me go "Huh?" but then it all made sense when I noticed an awesome fight or the lack of enemies on the world map, or other things that needed manipulation.
You have my full support! Go Gunty Go!
I can remember a while back first seeing Gunty's run beating it in 3 hours. I was so amazed.
But just a while back I was thinking to myself "I could do better"
So I started a run, got bored, and then thought "I bet I could do an Ancient Cave run"
And I got stuck doing that and came here for inspiration, only to see that Gunty is once again amazing me.
Keep up the awesome work.
I recently completed my Camu simulator, but when I started building a brute-force backtracking framework around it, I realized it would become too slow to actually use it.
Therefore I think it's best to first come up with the theoretically fastest possible fight, and then searching for the initial RNG state and party stats which allows for this particular strategy to work.
The perfect strategy would include performing the Kukri's Thunder Blast IP attack every round and Camu not performing Break Attack, or calling companions. Whether Maxim or Guy should have the Kukri is something I'm no quite sure of yet.
In other words, any progress on this is going to take a while :)
EDIT:
I'm trying to enjoy this game but the item drops are pissing me off. I would like to make, or just have, a lua script or cheat code to help get item drops.
Nitrodon wrote:
For any attack, the RNG is used 21 times for that attack per target. (I know what all 21 do, but most are irrelevant for most actions.) Additional numbers may be used before all of these (for targeting, including attacks which always target all enemies) and after all of these (for the animation), but we'll just focus on the ones that change the effect on a certain target. After those 21, if the enemy dies, can drop an item, and no items have been dropped this turn, an additional number is generated. For Camu (for example), this number gives a 12% chance of continuing with the attempted drop (low number = drop). After that, if the first number succeeded, it generates a number 0-3, and a 1 (i.e., 0x40-0x7F) makes the item drop. In a multi-target attack, this occurs before the effects on the next enemy are determined.
It looks like if I set all the randoms at 0x7e0521-57 to 0x40-0x7F I get guaranteed drops for easy items like potions, and if I set them outside that range I never get anything. That makes sense. But how do you make it go low for the first check? Or, how can you tell which of the random numbers is going to be checked next?
I'm trying to enjoy this game but the item drops are pissing me off. I would like to make, or just have, a lua script or cheat code to help get item drops.
Nitrodon wrote:
For any attack, the RNG is used 21 times for that attack per target. (I know what all 21 do, but most are irrelevant for most actions.) Additional numbers may be used before all of these (for targeting, including attacks which always target all enemies) and after all of these (for the animation), but we'll just focus on the ones that change the effect on a certain target. After those 21, if the enemy dies, can drop an item, and no items have been dropped this turn, an additional number is generated. For Camu (for example), this number gives a 12% chance of continuing with the attempted drop (low number = drop). After that, if the first number succeeded, it generates a number 0-3, and a 1 (i.e., 0x40-0x7F) makes the item drop. In a multi-target attack, this occurs before the effects on the next enemy are determined.
It looks like if I set all the randoms at 0x7e0521-57 to 0x40-0x7F I get guaranteed drops for easy items like potions, and if I set them outside that range I never get anything. That makes sense. But how do you make it go low for the first check? Or, how can you tell which of the random numbers is going to be checked next?
The number you're looking for in your last question is 7e0559.
Alternatively, set 81FB8A to 0 to bypass the first check (which will set all drop rates to 1/4), and/or set 81FB94 to 0 to bypass the second check (which will quadruple all drop rates).
The number you're looking for in your last question is 7e0559.
Alternatively, set 81FB8A to 0 to bypass the first check (which will set all drop rates to 1/4), and/or set 81FB94 to 0 to bypass the second check (which will quadruple all drop rates).
Sounds like exactly what I want, but isn't that outside of memory range?
I applied them and they don't seem to be working, though the second one does affect battle sprites.
Edit: Oh, I found this:
Iron Knuckle FAQ wrote:
----------------------------------
Garanteed 100% Chance of Item Drop
----------------------------------
Using this GG/PAR code (created by Relnqshd) Item drops will always occur. Be
careful though since you can have only 1(ONE) item per battle and the item you
receive will always be the item dropped by the first enemy you kill. So always
kill the monster of the desired item first.
GG (US):
6DE9-34D1
DCE9-3401
PAR code (US):
81FB5880
81FB590A
This works (though the odds are a little unsporting now). So the 8nnnnn range is in the ROM data?
I believe the Lufia ROM data is located at 808000-CFFFFF.
Anyways, I completed another boss battle example; the Regal Goblin. This strategy saves up to 479 frames compared to the current speedrun, and gives Maxim a full IP bar to fight Camu.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1804455304/regal_goblin_example.smv
I'm probably skipping the Witch ring since it's resulting damage increase will probably not be worth it this time. Not grabbing the Witch ring will save another 766 frames.
