Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
These chrono tricks are really cute, it's so sad that they don't end up useful for anything. This game is really frustratingly solid sometimes.
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
So the only PB that can even be touched by any means is the one shown in your NMMB TAS from 2014? It seems this game tries really hard to stop you from skipping the final boss of the original game. It's a remake after all. :P
Yeah, basically so. Outside of Chozodia, there's only 3 PBs in the whole game: one in Norfair, one in Crateria and one in Tourian. There's two states for Tourian, and two states for the ship room in Crateria. For the first state in both cases, the Power Bombs are unobtainable.
Any PB from Chozodia can be collected at any time.
I've actually done that shinespark in the restricted sector before, though I guess I never put it in a video.
Also, I'm surprised you managed to freeze that enemy in Sector 4. I've actually tried that before and concluded it was impossible.
I got some details wrong, so let's clarify things a bit. If you enter the room to the left of your ship from the ship room, you can actually get to Tourian from the wrong direction (we can't actually do this entry, since we haven't been able to get past the Speed Booster blocks). There's nothing to do there, though. The door leading to Mother Brain is grayed out, since Tourian 1 will be loaded. Also the Power Bombs would not be there in this state.
If you'd enter the room to the left of your ship from the bottom-right door (by taking the Ball Cannon up from Brinstar), this'd actually load the post-game state for that room. In this state, the elevator leading to Tourian will be non-functional, as Escape 1 hasn't been completed yet. But if the elevator would work and we could enter Tourian, it'd actually load post-game Tourian, with the PBs still there. Also, if you'd enter the ship room like this, it'd also load the second state for that room, with the ship missing and the PB tank being possible to pick up.
So, a heap of problems, but strictly technically speaking, you can load the room states where the PBs are possible to obtain, without having to proceed past Mother Brain.
Link to video
So here's a practical application of the memory corruption trick. I'm don't think it would obsolete the low% TAS, since this involves memory corruption. Besides, it would just resemble any% with several extra missile tanks.
That is amazing! Looking at the notes, I guess current health is also within the corruptable range, then? Cause if that's the case, why not die OoB by corrupting current health to zero? Not only would this be faster, it'd actually open up a bunch of opportunities as far as rooms go, most notably...
- The RTA viable room for Zero Mission (I'll make a rough vid of this shortly)
- The 3block-wide room in Fusion
Also, have you looked at the memory layouts of the other versions of the game (JPN, EU)? If the memory layout is different, maybe there's other stuff you can do with this.
Like you said, I don't think this should obsolete anything, cause it'd just be almost exactly like any%, with an extra trick near the end. Really neat stuff regardless.
Link to video
Here's the RTA room for ZM (Hard-mode only).
EDIT:
I guess corrupting current health to 0 wouldn't actually help, cause the changes only hit when you reload the save, huh. And then you'd just die after reloading anyway. Well, dang. But uhh, regarding the above room, maybe you could take a look at the possibility of corrupting the floor/ceiling blocks into a pathway?
EDIT2:
Just randomly messing around in debug, apparently it's also possible to corrupt your item amounts to maximum somehow? I just ended up with 1024 max missiles after doing some corrupting in the room above, dying and reloading. Such high item amount actually doesn't provide that impressive of an end-game percentage by default, tho, cause that counter overflows at 256. Could perhaps get 255% or 0% by overflowing / underflowing some values, and then collecting some tanks afterwards to fine-tune the percentage.
Also, have you looked at the memory layouts of the other versions of the game (JPN, EU)? If the memory layout is different, maybe there's other stuff you can do with this.
They should be the same, or at the very least, they should be the same distance apart. So version doesn't really make a difference.
ZX497 wrote:
I guess corrupting current health to 0 wouldn't actually help, cause the changes only hit when you reload the save, huh.
Yeah, it only affects the saved values. The actual values during gameplay are unreachable.
ZX497 wrote:
Just randomly messing around in debug, apparently it's also possible to corrupt your item amounts to maximum somehow? I just ended up with 1024 max missiles after doing some corrupting in the room above, dying and reloading.
Here are all the possible values that can be corrupted:
http://pastebin.com/y2X44nbp
Most of them are are 0, but some of them are over 0x400.
Mmm, thank you. I was about to ask for instructions on how to read this, but I think I get it.
Say like, if tempSaved Current Health (0x2038222) would be at 0135 (hex, so that's 3 tanks 9 health), and the PB blast would reach a corresponding block, that'd set the tempSaved Current Health to 040D (10 tanks 37 health)?
And the values not listed are not corruptible? So if health is at 6 tanks 99 (02BB), it's not possible to corrupt the value whatsoever?
Mmm, thank you. I was about to ask for instructions on how to read this, but I think I get it.
The 'w' is the room's width. But keep in mind that everything is in two byte increments, so '+1' means the value 2 bytes away, and '+w' means the value w*2 bytes away.
ZX497 wrote:
Say like, if tempSaved Current Health (0x2038222) would be at 0135 (hex, so that's 3 tanks 9 health), and the PB blast would reach a corresponding block, that'd set the tempSaved Current Health to 040D (10 tanks 37 health)?
Yep. As soon as you touched a health drop, it would probably reset to max, though.
ZX497 wrote:
And the values not listed are not corruptible?
Yes, it won't be affected. However, it's possible to corrupt nearby values regardless of what they are, like I did in the video.
Edit: This script will tell you the current area of memory that would be affected based on your position. It also tells you an approximate X and Y position you need for affecting the 'targetAddr', so change this as necessary.
I have an idea to get early power bombs in Norfair, but I'm not sure this is really possible. If you first get a shinespark here, but after passing the door, instead of keep going to the right as in the video, you do a reverse shinespark on the slope and go in the lava where the PB is, will you have enough time to refill your shinespark on the slops in the lava and so get the PB ?
I don't know if what I said was clear >_<
La Hollande, c'est un Pays-Bas comme les autres...
Well, actually you _can_ recharge your shinespark in lava / water, by doing a Ball Spark, which gives you a frame to charge it. It's still nowhere near good enough. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure you can even get the first recharge in the lava without running out of shine.
And even if you got all the way to the PB room, with a full shinetimer (somehow), it still wouldn't be enough: just jumping up the steps and going through the tunnel will drain a full charge quite handily.
EDIT: Can get the first under-lava recharge. But that's it :P
You can't skip Power Grid. When you go to Norfair, if you take the door to the right instead of the one on the left to get PG, you will face a [I don't know its name but I'm talking about the purple orb that can only be destroyed by the bugs in Brinstar] right before the door of the big room. Since you can't destroy it, you have to collect PG in order to make ir disapear
La Hollande, c'est un Pays-Bas comme les autres...
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Er, so what axodo was trying to say before the sad formatting accident is that there's a vine blocking entry to the right side of Norfair, like the vines blocking off Varia suit, that magically disappears when you grab Power Grip. To our current knowledge there is no way to destroy or avoid it. The technique we use to skip zebetites might work in theory, but we need ice beam and that's behind the vine.
Even if we found a way around that, we need plasma beam (the unknown item right next to power grip) to damage the black pirates at the end of escape. And power grip is a really useful item! So just like we still grab hi-jump, we might just grab power grip on our way back from getting the unknown item, even if it was optional.
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
A question suddenly came to my mind. Does memory corruption affect the other two save files?
Once the corruption is done, I have to reload the save by dying. If I were to reset the game, the save data would be reloaded from external memory and copy over the memory corruption.
Would returning to the title screen make the game reload external memory?
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Link to video
I know late wave was solved 2 years ago, but I finally got the motivation to test stuff.
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
