I realized that instead of buying houses, we can save corrupt enough of them in and spend down to 32. No actual gameplay required.
1. buy 1 wood armor, 4 chain armors, inn
2. run ad9573b0/aa4c90ab
3. run 4ca9a6run ad8a70b0/aa4c90ab
4. use down to 33 houses
5. run a2719ab0/984c5ab3
6. fight imps killing off all but 1; use down to 201 pures and then run
7. buy 57/58* heals
8. use down to 32 houses
9. run 4c59a6
* After testing it looks like 57 heals can give a corrupted credit sequence depending on conditions. 58 might be a speed/entertainment tradeoff to have correct credits.
Edit: Hilariously, heal potions are the slot 57 item. Now we don't need to do any shopping either.
Yes, this is all the J version. The same bug exists in the NA version, but because of the smaller alphabet the character set doesn't include jumps and addresses are entirely in ROM, so you can't really write memory and it's pretty guaranteed to softlock. It might still be possible to do something in ice cave or ordeals pillar maze by jumping into some other controlled memory, but I haven't found anything.
Is it possible to jump to the ending of FFII from FFI in Final Fantasy I & II?
Hrm, maybe. My quick read is that FF1+2's boot code comes from FF1, it just calls into an extra menu in bank 6 (probably originally debug code) at the last step. Choosing FF2 copies a little program onto the zero page which programs the mapper to swap banks 10-1f and jumps to boot FF2. So what you'd have to do is select banks 10-1f, then figure out where in FF2 to jump. That'd take a dozen or so instructions, which might be tricky... a TAS might be able to do it with a little loop to copy them from the joypad or something.
It might make more sense to just go look at FF2 instead. I would not be surprised if it has a similar glitch to the one in FF1.
Very interesting. I wonder if there is some way to hack it to turn off random encounters.
Another idea I had was triggering the ending by triggering the fight vs Chaos. If you make it so that Chaos comes up in a random fight it won't go to the credits afterwards. But if you hack Garland as an npc into Coneria and talk to him then it works. Only thing is there is a flag for the first two times you talk to him. Each time is actually a separate npc entry that disappears after talking. Then again, maybe you can just trigger the 'fight Chaos for the win' event. If this is possible then I think the fastest way to win would be to use the MUTE spell. The fight would be long but possibly still the fastest way to get to the credits.
In case you hadn't seen, Gyre cleverly figured out a way to do the NPC hack, which is way faster than the credit warp: http://www.twitch.tv/gyre_/c/6175077 Combined with his fear technique, this is now seeming pretty optimal... unless we're totally missing a one-trip hack? I would love to be surprised. :-)
Edit: I think the codes Gyre's used are ad56a3b0/aa4c8593 and adaa83b0/4ca090.
I'm about ready to be done with FF1 and move on to other projects, maybe another classic RPG.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
This is probably as fast as it gets. As far as getting down to one pass, it looks like if you could beat Chaos then all you would need is the NPC glitch. A starting party would not have any instant kill methods available. Attacking would take a long time even if you can find a way to survive.
I wonder how viable it is to set up the party such that it is Thief, Thief, White Mage, White Mage, with names as follows:
Thief 1: Payload 2 part 1
Thief 2: Payload 1 part 1
WHM 1: Payload 2 part 2
WHM 2: Payload 1 part 2
The thing I need to figure out is this:
Because WHM1's name is only three letters (4ca090), there's something that needs to go in the fourth letter slot. If that thing falls within the (J) character table, then it might be viable to make the party noted above and swap the two Thieves and the two White Mages after payload 1, leave the Castle and return, meaning no save.
So far, my efforts have been: "try a space. Payload one. Swap the characters. Do another set of 35 up/down stairs. Game freezes on entering the menu."
Depending on what that area of memory does with regard to character names, it might save time, it might still require a save (but less overall name entering time), and if it works, it might be the fastest the game can get down to.
Entering the character change menu (pressing select) overwrites 30x and 31x, so you can't run the planned payload anymore. Damn. (312 to 315 are now 98 78 98 78 and 310 is 00. So much for that.)
Edit: However, I don't even know if character swapping puts the names into the right place, so there's also that.
Edit: According to the hex editor, the "null character" value is FF, is the space in the lower-right. So, my thought about using space is "correct".
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
I threw this together to check the rough lower limit of gyre's route. Got 7 minutes. Could probably shave more frames, I didn't optimize fully.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21327940307283526
If anyone wants to use this as a starting input framework to create a run for submission, feel free.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Inzult wrote:
If anyone wants to use this as a starting input framework to create a run for submission, feel free.
Done. That was actually pretty well optimized, I only found 5 more frames of improvement.
True wrote:
verify pending run?
The run has several soft resets but in this case no precision is necessary. If anyone gets all the hardware it should be possible to figure something out.
Nice job putting this together! It's amazing how few non-lag frames there are in the run. The delays in TheAxeMan's version are optimal as far as I can see.
I got the pastebin of the codes and route, but I still don't see dpad inputs in the form of up 1, down 3 left 1. I saw it as u1, l3:d1, etc. Also, I'd like to do a TAS of this game where I hide the 4 fiends. In the current (1:09:57) TAS or something, there was a no encounter rom... How do I disable random encounters in FFHackster?
DJ Incendration
Believe in Michael Girard and every speedrunner and TASer!
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
DJ Incendration wrote:
How do I disable random encounters in FFHackster?
FFHackster doesn't have any way to do this. There are a few ways you could hack it. The easiest is probably just to set all the numbers in the encounter sequence so none of them trigger an encounter.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
On the Game Resources Page it explains how the table works. The $F100 address is the RAM address offset, not the ROM address. Using a hex editor, search the ROM for that table and change all the numbers to FF. That will turn off random encounters everywhere.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
I'd recommend going on IRC where someone should be able to help you out interactively. There is usually a good crowd there that will be able to give great advice on anything related to TASing. They can recommend a good editor and get you going. If you haven't done IRC before the fastest way to get going is the web client: http://webchat.freenode.net/
Not sure how interesting this restriction will be, but it is a thought. "No run away." For sake of rules interpretation, selecting run is allowed, but successfully running is not.
Save-reset trick will be a side-stepping of the proposed rule in the effort to avoid encounters without technically running away. This will only for the overworld, at least, so I'll leave it up to others to decide on whether to include "no reset" on top of "no run away."
I'm curious what the implications are for never running away. Sure, you'll get more levels. You'll probably manipulate fewer enemies where possible for faster fights. How avoidable is damage with the limited RNG? Will it be worth it to have more than one standing character? Does this restriction give better variation for this game?
At the moment, I find this thought interesting. I have no intention of following through with the thought, but I would share it in case someone else finds it interesting as well.
I'm making a full run with the stairs glitch. I got to the Dwarf Cave. Check it out in my user WIPs (userfiles). Help is needed. Also, Gyre, will you please help me out with the Credits Warp TAS I'd like to make (for a Game End Glitch branch?)
DJ Incendration
Believe in Michael Girard and every speedrunner and TASer!
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
A "no-run" run is definitely nicer to think about than do. Or watch. It would be really long, maybe on par with the 3-hour speedrun record and probably look a lot like it. If you watch Gyre you see him spend a lot of time buying tents and using them to skip the outer world battles. Since mages hardly get any spell casts magic is essentially useless. Except for WARP which would become important enough to drag an otherwise useless pointy-hat around. Its skips would be worth a lot and you would get enough XP to use it. The mage would also whip out some magic at crucial moments but most of the time he is going just going to add a few seconds to every round of every battle. So the party would be one or two fighters and a black mage, like the current realtime WR route. Maybe start with three and then drop to two and one as they become less useful. But wait, you would need to do Ordeals and transform to get WARP. That adds a lot of time but it might be worth it since the Zeus Gauntlet would also be very important. Maybe it could be interesting but it wouldn't be near the top of my list.
My restriction idea is "magic only". The rules are that you can only use magic or run. No fighting or items in battle. The party would probably be two or three black mages. I'm sure it's possible with TAS-level manipulation but there would be a lot of details to work out. The main factor would be preparing for the final dungeon. Would it be worthwhile to resort to CONF as a boss-killer? A big unknown is how to level up fastest. You could actually rush through pretty far with only level one and two spells. Perhaps it might be worthwhile to have a white mage or two just to power-level the black mages on undeads.
A stupider toy idea of mine is "TheAxeRun". The only weapons that can be picked up and used are axes. Plus at least one of every axe in the game must be collected - there are only four of them and the fighter can equip them all without promotion. I think it would end up similar to the any% TAS but with bloody fights or clever tricks to beat the end game bosses without the Bane Sword. With armor a lone fighter or two could tank most of the fights. Or bring a white mage to MUTE or RUSE. If we restrict the character classes to those that can equip axes then the fighter could get promoted and use them. It would be neat to limit things to only fighting and say that the fighter is more of a berserker.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Yes, the instant kill spells would be best. But TOFR has 6 boss fights and many difficult "can't run" battles. BANE is level 5 so you would need two mages at 15 or three at 13 to hit all the bosses with it. RUB is level 6 and can't be used until level 16. And these levels need to be obtained before entering TOFR since there is no way to recharge magic after entering. A lot of experience to gain when the rules make it more difficult to win fights. On the other hand the right fights can lead to powering up pretty quickly. Which reminds me of another point about the "no-run" idea. The experience and gold gain is very uneven between enemies. In particular the most numerous early game battles are fairly worthless. So you wouldn't gain as many levels as you expect.
About the credits warp, sorry but I don't know much about the stairs glitch. You could try messaging some others who posted about it earlier and reading up on it. If you don't know much about assembly level debugging you might want to generally learn about that. For that you are better off with FCEUX than Bizhawk. No emulation differences for this game.
