Actually, I meant not getting either Excalibur or Crystal sword. IMHO Excalibur is definitely faster than Crystal, especially because of dupe-as-you-go. Actually I thought about this more and I am ~80% sure that getting Excalibur is the way to go in a TAS. I am somewhat in favor of giving harvest XP to Rosa, Edge, and Cecil instead of just Rosa and Edge. You have to harvest 50% more to get Rosa and Edge the same amount of XP, but you get to use Cecil and Kain during Zeromus.
I am almost completely sure that getting armor is pointless. You don't have to level for most of the game, and HP (i.e. levels) not stats are mostly what help you survive. If you look at Kain Stryder's FAQ and search for "win a battle" in the Equipment section, noticing the meager stat gains, who can equip what, and enemies you fight, I think you'll agree.
Like Mlandry said, there is variance. However, it is no different from the variance that occurs from attacking. I definitely recommend keeping Kain in the front and attacking. Jumping doubles base attack value, which typically means a little better than attacking twice, depending on the physical defense of the enemy. However, you get to critical when you attack, plus it is much faster. (You can attack faster than you can even queue a jump.) The only time you want to Jump is during battles in which the enemy counterattacks, like Rubicant.
To be honest, this would probably not be fair even at full size. It's a portrait of the Montreal-based instrumental rock group, Godspeed You Black Emperor.
From what I have learned, relying on FAQs for doing TAS isn't a good idea. Those FAQs are good for normal playing but that's not normal playing here.
I don't know that rock group. Sorry.
I would like to work more on this run but both Snes emulators does have some problems.
I'm not suggesting FAQs for any advice. I was just pointing to one that has a complete list of equipment and how you get them. And I'd say over 95% of FAQs are useless at best for normal playing anyway, let alone speedrunning of any type.
Would it be worthwhile to manipulate the Pink Puffs to quickly get five tails? Even if you plan on manipulating everything, there's still the Behemoths with their powerful attacks that you can't escape from; you've going to need good protection, especially at such a low level...
Hey Phil, I would actually be interested in doing this run if you don't mind (maybe you have other runs higher up in priority since you're a busy man). What I'm wondering about is, what exactly on the technical side is stopping you from doing this on either snes9x or zsnes? And what was the devs' response?
Even if you have pretty low levels, it's a waste of time because you have to trek all the way out and all the way back in to get anything from it. It's pretty much an "extra" if you want to take 1 damage for pretty much everything, along with other stuff like the Glass Helmet. You could probably raise more than enough levels with the amount of time it would take.
"If all you did this year was sit in your cubicle and masturbate...say you're a self-starter who proactively reengineered your personal inventory with Total Quality, conforming to all EEO/OSHA/ISO9000 requirements."-Scott Adams
Sorry to repeat myself, but...
I'm assuming based on what you wrote above that sound issues in zsnes are causing desync. Or is it just that the recorded sound is garbled? And I'm assuming that snes9x has similar issues or you would have already tried it there.
Also, did Nach or anyone else give a timetable to when this might be fixed? If the answer is "indefinitely," I might want to think of taking up another project.
No, Snes9x's sound emulation is sucking and zsnes is better but does have desync issue because of its current sound core. Pagefault is currently fixing it by implementing Sneese's sound core which is known to be the best Snes sound core.
Does SNEeSe use snesapu? Because I heard that was the most accurate. I use zsnes so I don't really follow snes9x, but I'm surprised it isn't on par with zsnes yet because kode54 wrote the current zsnes sound core, I thought.
Surprise surprise~!
This testrun goes all the way up to defeating Octomamm. Despite taking a couple extra detours for things I'll use later on (and fighting a battle, to get Rydia a couple levels and thus some survivability vs Octomamm - keeping Rydia alive and giving her some levels will be very, very helpful in the next couple boss battles), I reach Octomamm a few seconds before Mlandry's testrun.
I might actually go through with this one, since I'm liking how it's turning out so far. Of course, it's not perfect (the number of random battles really, really needs to be decreased), but it gives a much better idea of what's possible with the game.
I accidentally left "Sync sound with CPU" on, but I was able to play through the entire movie without a desync when unchecking it on playback, so if the sound sounds weird to you, feel free to uncheck it.
As always, comments and criticisms are appreciated.
I watched most of the run (desynched slightly before Octomamm, but that was because I couldn't find the right ROM.) It looks good so far. The menu manipulation is very nice, and the battles were all very well done. I only have two quibbles. First, is there any way to manipulate the NPCs out of your way? You got stuck behind them multiple times in the desert town. Second, did you need the item drop from that first battle in Octomamm's cave? That seemed pointless to me, and a waste of a second or two.
I'm looking forward to more of this. Do go on with it. I'd love to see a complete run.
You can turn it off permanently in the movie by unchecking it on playback and then re-recording from any savestate.
Phil, was this the sound problem you were talking about? When I turn that option off the music sounds perfectly fine to me.
I think I have already tested it and it stills suck.
Plus, Snes9x doesn't have a "concept of current save slot, increase/decrease/load/save actions, and make-current-on-load/save options "
Anyway, I will do FF4 on GBA when the ROM will be available tomorrow or in 2 days if the sound is good.
Edit: :@ Actually, that fixes the sound problem. After all these monthes, I could have done that game if I knew that before. I will check the GBA version, if I don't like it, I will start it on Snes when the "concept of current save slot, increase/decrease/load/save actions, and make-current-on-load/save options " will be implemented.
Tilus: Btw, I can see many errors in your video. The main one is the fact that you don't critical hits your enemy. Btw, you can't manipulate random to avoid battles. They are unavoidable. I have already started that game on Zsnes and I wasn't able to avoid them no matter what I do.