It will be interesting to see where Lil Gecko's TAS ends, since there shouldn't be a diff between english and japanese text.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Joined: 9/7/2005
Posts: 144
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
That .jp run didn't do the Puck skip... Maybe they don't know about that? And the text skipping doesn't seem to be all that much faster than a human mashing X.
Is that an assumption or well researched knowledge?
Text bubbles don't appear to be influenced by the amount of characters to display (though I haven't made frame comparisons), and on the scenes I checked the amount of text bubbles was equal in both languages... but you never know where they managed to sneak an additional bubble in to make it fit.
Puck skip isn't much in an 8 hour run. I noticed slower text skipping in most places. In any case if I saw this I would stop working on my run. (but don't)
Guesstimation - even if it is a little slower - it won't be the minutes different that any other "1 character per frame" game has.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Ok so I've tried the japanese version for comparison.
It doesn't have the "Published by Square Electronics" logo at the beginning which save around 200 frames for the japanese version but that's it. Everything else seems to be the same.
The number of characters in a bubble text doesn't matter, it always takes the same amount of time no matter what, that's why you don't have to bother renaming the heroes.
The problem with his TAS is that it's extremely far from being frame precise and that bugs me a lot.
As I mentionned earlier the text skipping can be way faster, even the Squaresoft logo at the beginning can be skipped earlier.
The battles even if they're really good could have been done faster. The most flagrant being letting the Plant Brain taking a turn.
Anyway, I'm back to shopping in Dali and still puzzling with what would be the best/fastest strategy for the upcoming parts.
According to the time on his video I'm something around 9200 frames ahead atm.
As for now I'm still carefully route planning, because everything I'll buy/equip for now will have an impact on the speed of the Disk 3/4 so I'll prefer to double/triple check everything.
My first thoughts
- Yellow Scarf will be skipped so ne need to steal a steepled hat from Black Waltz 2/3.
(One Yellow Scarf will be found in Cleyra, I don't need Millionnaire atm, and no need to strength up since Limit Glove is gonna do the trick until then).
- Buy Bronze Gloves because in addition with the Coral Ring, it will boost Steiner's Spirit enough to hit criticals on Black Waltz 3 rematch.
- Everybody seems to get a Silk Shirt but I really don't see the point. I'm probably missing something so... Anyone ?
Once the strategy is clear the rest should go with the flow. I'll probably post an update at the end of Disc 1 but don't expect it too soon though.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Don't know. It reduces thunder damage by 50% and teaches cure and thunder, but that's it (as far as I remember, anyway). I don't know if those things are very useful.
Actually I've changed my mind.
I'll post the update now, that way if you spot something wrong it's better that I know it now :p
Reached Lindblum Inn (In Game Time : 1h28m22s)
Must be something like between 11 and 12K frames ahead of the japanese TAS if I didn't miscalculate.
New strategies on Black Waltz 2 and 3.
BW3 didn't even have the opportunity to attack :D
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HLXX7MSL
If you want to make an encode Dada feel free to do it ;)
Yes I didn't change anything before the exit of the Ice Cavern.
EDIT : @Zanoab : yeah it's planned up to a certain point.
The Ogre @ Lindblum against 2 Mage Masher
The Coral Ring from the Festival of Hunt which also happens to be the fastest item to get.
Get the Multina Racket in South Gate.
Multina Racket + Feather Hat for Dagger gives her a great power of attack
Coral Ring is going to go from one character to another but it has the advantage when combining with Bronze Gloves to boost Steiner's Spirit enough to allow him to make some Critical Hits.
The extra Mage Masher is to synth an Exploda to give Zidane Lucky Seven.
The extra Leather Wrists are to be synth with Glass Armlet and then in Power Belt
Lots of others stuffs to be bought in Treno but that's not for right now ;)
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The whole trip from Dali to Lindblum is basically one gigantic cutscene/FMV during which you're allowed to buy some things and have two battles.
Here's the encode, it starts where the earlier video left off:
Link to video
(still processing at this time, it'll be up soon)
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
You ought to write commentary for this run when it's done, so people can read along with what it is you're buying in the store, and why you do certain things. Would be very interesting in particular for this run due to the fact it's mostly planning.
I'd be willing to help you make it if you're interested.
I thought of doing it with Lua so I could also display Ennemy's HP at the same time.
But as I'm no good at lua I just made for i=0,x gui.text(blabla) emu.frameadvance(), clear, for i=0,x emu.frameadvance(), and so on... but it's long and boring to do so if you have a good script that will make it easier I could do that.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I was thinking much more low-fi. When the run is done we simply watch it and chat about it on IRC or something, you explain everything that's going on (with a cheat sheet I presume) and then when it's done I'll grab the text + timecodes and convert that to a subtitles file. :)
Sure I'll be happy to do that.
Small Update. I wasn't happy with the BW2 fight.
Technically it should be possible to use Fire Sword first, kill Vivi and Critical with Zidane without having BW2 counterattacking which would allow to not revive Vivi and also save a Phoenix Down for Quina.
Unfortunately none of my random numbers makes that possible : /
But I figured out that if I also attack BW2 with Dagger that would bump the RNG closer enough to the next Critical Hits from Zidane, so the wait for the RN to be in Critical Hit position last less longer than the Fire Sword Animation.
So if I do :
BW2 Attack
Zidane Critical Hit
Vivi Suicide
Steiner Attack
BW2 HP is lower than 50% so he should counter. But we made Vivi his primary target and since he's dead, the counter failed.
Dagger Attack
BW2 Attack
Zidane wait a little for the RNG to be set.
Zidane Critical Hit.
Steiner Finishes him off.
This is 6 seconds faster and doesn't waste a Phoenix Down. Hurrah \o/
EDIT : This is also where commentaries would be interesting because for everydoby, the attack from Dagger and her wooping 7 HP damages compare to the 350 from Zidane wouldn't make much sense.
Officially 4 minutes ahead after getting Quina. \o/
But damn... Getting 2 mandragoras on preemptive strike is.... well even harder than expected... Still no luck for now.
EDIT : Limit Glove done. Time to do some testing. Would diging 10K+ Gils and gysahl greens in Chocobo Hot and Cold be longer than getting off tracks to pick them from different treasures ? (With the odds of digging 10k Gils being an astounishing 0,012% :D)
EDIT 2 : mmh. Between 1:05 and 1:10 to take 10K Gils and the Gyshal Greens. Not Sure it's worth it.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Why exactly do you need so much Gil again? It would certainly look impressive to find it through the Chocobo sidequest, though. But I'm pretty sure you can easily get that from various random chests throughout the game, as long as you don't need it right away...
What about synthesis? If you use Wrists/Steepled Hats to synth a Cotton Robe, you can sell that at a profit.
I was watching the japanese TAS and saw he was picking a lot of chests containing gils. When you know how much time it takes to open a chest and adding the detour it takes to take them (the one under the bridge after the Gate, the one in Cleyra and so on...) I was just wondering and also didn't thought Choco takes so much time to dig. I forgot to edit but it's a clear no for this sidequest of course.
BUT I took some sheets and calculate exactly at every point how much Gils I would have and how much I could spend and figured out neither would I have to do the H&C sidequest (which is a shame because it really looks nice :)) nor would I have to pick up the gils from the chests or Cotton Robe trick. I would have enough everytime.
That being said, I fixed my previous Burmecia attempt. Despite saving 30ish frames in the Black Mages fight I had to loose most of them to manipulate Beatrix. So it ended up only 7 frames faster, but I manage to make the Black Mages drop a Phoenix Down which is way better than the traditionnal Potion.
Disc 1 complete here : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FNUOUEJX
Should be close to the final product.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Could you provide a save state close to the start of the new part? Just so I don't have to fast forward through the parts I already put up on Youtube.
Actually, by the time you read this I've probably already captured the new part of the run, but in the future it would be useful.