Wow, I had completely forgot that the sanctuary where Dhaos was locked in has the Retaliation music theme. I thought it's only in Ifrit's place. It's very cool. I wonder how are the voice samples going to work when I record the actual submission as AVI... snes9x generally has had some problems with the voices (most notoriously the intro song, which sometimes chops and plays small pieces as noise). The intro song will not be heard, but the introduction scene has sampled speech.
How's optimizing the run on the Japanese ROM version for submission going, AP?
Doesn't he skip the intro scene (where Edward D.Morrison speaks) too? Or are you talking about the Dhaos battle at the start of the game?
Random encounters are incredibly common in this game, and skipping them will save vast amounts of time. It's good to know how holy bottles work, because you're gonna need a lot of them. Figure a given random encounter takes at least 5s to resolve (from fade-in to escaping to fade-out), and a holy bottle lets you skip, at bare minimum, 2 encounters -- thus, any time it takes less than 10s to get a holy bottle, you're gaining time. Arranging the money to buy them all is gonna be tricky, though fortunately they aren't especially expensive, if I recall correctly.
DPS stuff
0: Normal damage
1: Double damage
2: Half damage
3: Zero damage
>=4: Negative damage
x = (attack - def*4)*mul*33/32rng = table[((state++)&0xff)<<1]
if(state >= 0x38) do something
byte * state = 0x85;
word * table = 0x103c;
word rng() {
if(++*state >= 0x38) {
word x;
for(x=0;x!=0x19;x++)
table[x] -= table[x+0x1f];
for(;x!=0x38;x++)
table[x] -= table[x-0x18];
*state = 1;
}
return table[state];
}rng:
$C3/E793 08 PHP P:...Mx....
$C3/E794 8B PHB P:...Mx....
$C3/E795 DA PHX P:...Mx....
8 bit mode;
if(++$85 >= 38) {
shuffle();
$85 = 1;
}
$C3/E796 E2 20 SEP #$20 P:...Mx....
$C3/E798 A5 85 LDA $85 P:...Mx....
$C3/E79A 1A INC A P:...Mx....
$C3/E79B 85 85 STA $85 P:...Mx....
$C3/E79D C9 38 CMP #$38 P:...Mx....
$C3/E79F 90 07 BCC $07 [$E7A8] P:...Mx....
$C3/E7A1 20 B7 E7 JSR $E7B7 [$C3:E7B7] P:...Mx....
$C3/E7A4 A9 01 LDA #$01 P:...Mx....
$C3/E7A6 85 85 STA $85 P:...Mx....
16 bit mode;
return $103c[($85&0xff)<<1];
$C3/E7A8 C2 20 REP #$20 P:...Mx....
$C3/E7AA 29 FF 00 AND #$00FF P:...mx....
$C3/E7AD 0A ASL A P:...mx....
$C3/E7AE AA TAX P:...mx....
$C3/E7AF BF 3C 10 00 LDA $00103C,x P:...mx....
$C3/E7B3 FA PLX P:...mx....
$C3/E7B4 AB PLB P:...mx....
$C3/E7B5 28 PLP P:...mx....
$C3/E7B6 6B RTL P:...mx....
shuffle:
16 bit mode;
for(x=0;x!=32;x+=2)
$103c[x] -= $103c[x+3e];
$C3/E7B7 C2 20 REP #$20 P:...mx....
$C3/E7B9 A2 00 00 LDX #$0000 P:...mx....
$C3/E7BC BF 3C 10 00 LDA $00103C,x P:...mx....
$C3/E7C0 38 SEC P:...mx....
$C3/E7C1 FF 7A 10 00 SBC $00107A,x P:...mx....
$C3/E7C5 9F 3C 10 00 STA $00103C,x P:...mx....
$C3/E7C9 E8 INX P:...mx....
$C3/E7CA E8 INX P:...mx....
$C3/E7CB E0 32 00 CPX #$0032 P:...mx....
$C3/E7CE D0 EC BNE $EC [$E7BC] P:...mx....
for(x=32;x!=70;x+=2)
$103c[x] -= $103c[x-30];
$C3/E7D0 BF 3C 10 00 LDA $00103C,x P:...mx....
$C3/E7D4 38 SEC P:...mx....
$C3/E7D5 FF 0C 10 00 SBC $00100C,x P:...mx....
$C3/E7D9 9F 3C 10 00 STA $00103C,x P:...mx....
$C3/E7DD E8 INX P:...mx....
$C3/E7DE E8 INX P:...mx....
$C3/E7DF E0 70 00 CPX #$0070 P:...mx....
$C3/E7E2 D0 EC BNE $EC [$E7D0] P:...mx....
8 bit mode;
return;
$C3/E7E4 E2 20 SEP #$20 P:...mx....
$C3/E7E6 60 RTS P:...Mx....
emu = snes9x
-- Generate the next N random numbers
function step_rng(state, table)
state = state+1
if state >= 0x38 then
for x = 0, 0x18 do
table[x] = AND(table[x]-table[x+0x1f],0xffff)
end
for x = 0x19, 0x37 do
table[x] = AND(table[x]-table[x-0x18],0xffff)
end
state = 1
end
return table[state], state
end
function top_rng(n)
-- Copy initial rng state
state = memory.readbyte(0x85)
tsize = 0x38
table = {}
for i = 0, tsize-1 do
table[i] = memory.readword(0x103c+i*2)
end
-- generate the requested number of numbers
res = {}
for i = 1, n do
res[i], state = step_rng(state, table)
end
return res
end
gui.register(function()
nums = top_rng(27)
for i = 1, #nums do
gui.text(10,8*i,string.format("%04x",nums[i]))
end
end)
while true do
emu.frameadvance()
end
I made a slight gaff when re-stocking on holy bottles in Alvanista. Didn’t realize you could enter Alvanista from the southwest stairs beside the item, weapon & armory sign. [...] in the real run [...] I should’ve done this to begin with
As you can see, gale shield speeds up the basilisk fights tremendously. I bet if I had allowed Cless to solo every boss battle so far, he would’ve known gale shield after winning the Maxwell fight instead of the 3rd basilisk fight.
It seems I missed a mental ring in the third oasis, which could’ve been sold for good money. Ah well, funds aren’t even remotely an issue right now.
I re-stock on flare bottles in Olive Village, although it might be better to do this in Treant’s forest.
---------------------------------
3.17 Maze! Treant's Forest
---------------------------------
I run out of holy bottles on my way out of Treant’s Forest, but manage to manipulate fights that are quickly escapable using the sorcerer’s ring.
---------------------------------
3.18- The City of Midgard
---------------------------------
Nothing worth mentioning.
----------------------------------------
3.19- The Tower of Twelve Stars
----------------------------------------
Same. Well I do hate this dungeon with a passion.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
3.20- War! The Valhalla Plains and the Aerial Battle
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The hitboxes around the enemies are unforgiving so sometimes you have to wait for them to pass even though it appears you should be able to maneuver around them.
I intentionally get into a random battle (frame 474034) just before the boss in order to kill off my characters. Fortunately, the Chimera ambush was pretty effective for that. I also have Cless equip the mecha-halberd.
Ishrantu fight: frame 475483
Gale shield, how I love you.
Aerial battle start: 491589
Since Arche’s spells are a good 6-8x stronger than Cless’ physical attacks as well as multi-targeting, it actually makes sense from a speed perspective to cast spells, especially thunder blade since its animation is so swift. The exception to this is against Charons, who absorb all magic spells.
I’m very glad to see Cless has learned fury slash since I suspect it will be very effective against Dhaos.
Evillord fights: frames 524904, 529938, 532385, 546774
After the first fight, I transform the ?weapon I received into the Moon Falux, a holy elemental weapon that’s effective against hellord and his goons. Dhaos as well, incidentally. The second fight isn’t necessary, but I really wanted that hourglass, and the accompanying treasures were quite good regardless. On the last fight I use an elixir since Cless’ hp is critical and taking damage is sometimes advantageous for cancelling attack recoveries. I also whiff an attack intentionally in order to manipulate a faster Arche kill.
I run out of holy bottles yet again…
Dhaos fight: frame 548973
The Dhaos fights are like half the reason I wanted to TAS this game. I’ve got to say I’m rather pleased with how this turned out. I make Dhaos look like an absolute fool by trapping him in 4 gale shields in a row.
-----------------------------------------------------
3.22- Unicorn! Help us Save the Yggdrasill
-----------------------------------------------------
For some reason I have to talk to a woman in Midgard in order for the White Forest cutscene to activate.
I should’ve bought an extra pair of jet boots at the very beginning of the game so Mist could dash through this area.
Evillord x3 fight: 582232
I use fury slash here for variety’s sake, not sure if it’s actually faster than spamming tiger blade. And once again killing off my characters is more of a challenge than the boss fight itself.
Oh, I finally get that hourglass I missed in the mystical forest. How convenient!
----------------------------------------------
3.23- Thor, the sunken Hi-Tech City
----------------------------------------------
2SH fight: frame 609091
There’s a lot that happens in an extremely short time frame, so I think it deserves explanation. I start the fight using a chrono glass since the enemies are extremely aggressive and disrupt your attacks before you can even attempt them. Then I have Arche cast indignation because it 1HKOes the 4400Rs. After that Cless re-targets a far-away enemy so he can use lionheart at close range and instantly corner both 2SHes. Then Cless uses a flare bottle, Arche casts a 2nd indignation, and Cless spams blade storm until victory is achieved.
Improvements: Somehow I suspect this fight would go a lot faster if Cless knew magma rift (lv 41).
Dhaos 2 fight: frame 622091
The priority in this fight is to make Dhaos leap back until he corners himself, then engage in the usual gale shield shenanigans. This time though it’s much harder to land multiple gale shields in a row so I have to use a lot of physical attacks to manipulate his patterns. Trust me, it’s not easy to get Dhaos to stand there doing nothing, it happens maybe 5% of the time.
It’s ok that Arche survived as levelling Cless isn’t a priority anymore. The remaining techs he learns from levelling are firebrand (lv45) and focus more (lv50), neither of which are terribly important.
-------------------------------------
3.24- Future Times are Better!
-------------------------------------
Ah, my favorite part of the game. Damage figures get really inflated, lots of sidequests, better overworld map music, better spells, techs, and so on. I can’t believe I made it here under 3 hours! For reference, the only real-time run I know of had a time of 6 hours at this point (link).
I’ve had a quick look at future bosses and it seems Klarth’s Maxwell summon will be important. Arche will be useful as well since tidal wave is effective against the boss of Odin’s Tower and has a very fast animation. I have no use for Mist since acid rain and haste don’t seem to do anything, so I swap her for Chester.
I buy a Damascus and composite bow and stock up on holy bottles before leaving Miguel. Technically, Venezzia sells better weapons, but they take too long to acquire because of the gondola ride. It makes virtually no difference in the Volt fight either since the fastest way to kill him is using gale shield, whose damage is independent of weapon stats.
On my way to Venzzia I do a little item management. I swap Chester and Mint, use a holy bottle, equip Cless and Chester’s new weapons and also give Chester a white mist since Mist had it previously.
-------------------------------------------
3.25- Lightning Spirit! Volt's Cave
-------------------------------------------
Volt fight: frame 665736
If I weren’t able to 1 round the arurouns with tiger blade, I would’ve swapped that skill with magma rift. Otherwise it’s not worth the time spent switching the skills. Amusingly, Chester gains 9 levels in this fight.
On my way back to Euclid I learned you can manipulate NPC positioning using the sorceror’s ring. This will be useful for micro-optimizations in a real run.
Now that I have the ability to fly, the game is cracked wide open. I did extensive testing against the next 3 bosses, which yielded the following information:
Fangwolf data
Flamberge sword: 299-326
Laser blade: 0
Destroyer: 319-329 (crits do 478-522)
Flaming sword: 138
Lucky blade: 495-510
Arc wind: 0
Duelist’s sword: 0
Polearm: 546-563
Tidal axe: Heals
Flambelk data
Tidal wave (spell): 1500
Wave spread (bow): 284
Crescent bow: 0
Vorpal sword: 215-222
Laser blade: 0
Destroyer: 153-167
Ice coffin: 58-64
Lucky blade: 328-338
Arc wind: 0
Duelist’s sword: 0
Polearm: 380-392
Tidal axe: 184-190
Origin data
Crescent bow: 780-851
Elven bow: ~1000
Flamberge: 196-202
Vorpal sword: 196-202
Laser blade: Heals
Destroyer: 115-126
Lucky blade: 290-299
Arc wind: 352-384 (enemy drop in Fenrir’s cavern, not worth it)
Duelist’s sword: 145-158
Polearm: 342-352
Tidal axe: 166-171
Conclusions: The polearm is the best choice in all 3 of these bossfights and elemental weapons overwhelmingly suck against them.
Other observations:
-Focus more doubles Cless’ damage output, whereas a flare bottle only increases it by 50%. Unfortunately the bonuses don’t stack.
-Fury slash and magma rift are by far my best short range techs. Firebrand is completely useless while soul wave doesn’t damage Wolfang or Origin.
-Cless is badly out-damaging my other units. A souped up fury slash crit can do as much as 7800ish damage, whereas Chester and my casters do 1000-2000 damage at best.
-I don’t think raising Chester is worthwhile because he’ll only be useful against Dhaos 3 and Neo-Dhaos with the berserker bow, and there’s absolutely no way I’m going to Lower Morlia for that. Similarly, Klarth’s best summon is Origin while Arche’s best spell is meteor storm. Meteor storm’s animation is incredibly long and only does 2500 damage, so we can rule that out. Now going by this video, Origin does ~2200 damage with a reasonably fast animation, but the player’s Klarth is lv 64, so my Klarth is going to do significantly less damage. Tl;dr: The entire future will be a Cless solo basically.
I’m going to do Fenrir’s cave before Odin’s tower because Flambelk is a harder boss and soul wave + vorpal sword might be useful in the 4 forced encounters in Odin’s tower (5 if you count acquiring a salamander’s ring).
