- Uses Gens11a emulator.
- Takes damage to save time.
- Aims for fastest completion time.
- Luck manipulation
THE GAME (From Wikipedia, paraphrased and quoted):
As the goblin army makes their last push into Duke Barrik’s castle, the sky is ripped open and both armies are sucked into the void. Duke Barrik's castle is transported to a valley enclosed with impossibly tall cliffs and a brilliant red sun overhead (the 'Eternal Sun' of the title). The Duke requests that the four player characters explore this strange environment in order to find allies.
The player controls a party of four characters. There are three distinct styles of gameplay: Outside Adventure mode, Outside Combat mode, and Dungeon mode.
Outside mode is basically just walking around on the world map. You can encounter monsters and when you do, it transitions into outside combat mode which is characterized as turn based with overhead view. Dungeon mode is real-time combat with monsters roaming and fighting at will.
LUCK MANIPULATION:
When traversing the overworld, the party will make erratic movements to either save time walking or to manipulate random encounters. It wasn’t until late in the run that I realized how I was influencing random encounters. If I had known at the beginning I probably could have saved 200-400 frames used running out of the way.
In the dungeon mode, I do my best to run, shoot, blast, and swing my way to meet the objectives for the best times possible.
For combat, I use the Wand of lightning as the primary kill weapon throughout the entire run. Due to luck manipulation, it never runs out of charges. The Wand of healing is used to heal me a few times, but is mostly used a method of input manipulation.
Input manipulation in this game is ridiculously hard. The only way to affect the next move in a battle is based upon the last move in battle. This means for each battle, the last command in the previous battle will affect what happens in the next – you can’t do something between battles to affect combat without bringing up menu or something (too time consuming for TAS). This was the hardest part of the run as I would sometimes have to fight several battles per rerecord to make sure I would make the best time and still keep my Wand of lightning.
Furthermore, in battle, when confronted with enemies, you have three options with which to manipulate the input: A slot, B slot, or pass character (button C). That’s it. I’ve tested every possible means of changing the combat using controller input and found nothing else that will work. So if one of those three won’t change what happens in the next character’s turn, then I’m pretty much out of luck.
THE TAS:
After careful research and testing, I’ve found the bare minimum requirements to beat this game with fastest possible time.
Use default party.
Talk to Marmillian. He will issue the Duke’s request for allies.
Get some items: Buy four slings from weapon store. Pick up Wand of healing in hidden basement behind Temple. Pick up Wand of lightning in hidden laboratory inside Magic shop. Equip those items.
Go to Beastman caves. On the way, stop and slay a Red Dragon getting a few levels. Then pick up all the treasure he leaves providing some great weapons and armor to help in the game (This is the only thing I did that was not required for completion, but was extremely helpful since my party needed the hitpoints and armor for later trials.)
In the Beastman caves a door covered in vines is found. The game informs that Marmillian may help. Go back and talk to Marmillian. He will give a Withered vine that repels vines.
Go back to Beastman caves and enter vine covered door and go all the way to the back of the caves where the door is (this door leads to a place called Malpheggi Swamp which I found is not necessary to complete the game.) On the wall right next to the door is a combination needed for the next cave.
Leave Beastman caves and go east to Azcan caves. Exit Azcan caves and fight the only mandatory outside battle atop the pyramid. Go through pyramid and retrieve four Rings of fire protection.
Exit pyramid, go back through cave, go all the way west, cross fire bridge, enter Oltec tradeway.
Go all the way through Oltec cave to find Oltec trader who agrees to be allies, giving you a medallion, and completing the Duke’s quest.
As you return to town, everyone has gone crazy and destroyed the place. Marmillian explains that there is a creature underneath the valley driving everyone insane. He gives you a scroll to read to summon Ka who will destroy the Burrower.
Go through shortcut in graveyard and exit in swamp. Enter swamp cave and go to the city of Dark Elves. Go through the city into the very bottom cavern where the Burrower is. Read the scroll and watch the best live action cinema ever created!
Flygon: Removed redundant "Fastest Time" branch (Due to branch being automatically assumed for unbranched movies anyway) and expanded game name to its full name. Of course, an encode will be coming up.
FractalFusion: Well done although there's a lot of walking around. Accepting for publication.
Here's a better screenshot than the one I posted earlier:
FractalFusion: Please wait before publishing this. I need to check whether input can be shortened at the end.
FractalFusion: Any publisher can publish as-is using
Flygon's encode. Input can be shortened at the end, but it has already been encoded, so it is too late to change it. I'll mention it in the movie description.
