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Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Is your way the fastest way??? hmm Well anyway, see if there's any benefit to getting lots of instant-win battles. It helps if the enemy's facing away from you so you get the extra attack.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 4/29/2005
Posts: 1212
Well, I'm not REALLY going to go for the fastest time possible. I know the game well, but not THAT well, only been playing it for ten or so years. ;3 I'd rather give people a time to beat if they want to, heh. Besides. Even with Skip Sandwiches and avoiding all unecessary fighting, I doubt the game could be beaten in less than five to ten hours. I'll also probably buy the Bazooka for Jeff seeing as how I'll probably have enough cash without avoiding fights. :3 Well, that's all I gotta say. -Goes to watch DragonBall Z.- n.n
Joined: 4/1/2004
Posts: 83
Location: Canada
hey dude, dont fight every battle, every once in awhile, you will find a real good spot to level up for awhile, just go to certain places and level up a few times, just cover it up, say in a dungeon, get everything while fighting everything, that way it wouldn't look sloppy either. Just a suggestion ^-^ but hey dude, i uhh, kind of want to do my secret of mana run first, just got the inspiration to work on it. I bet i can get it to look real good. I was thinking of how i could use all 3 chars at once real fast in boss battles, make them look real cool. Earthbound is a real short rpg anyways, so no worries, it won't take long. when i was in grade 7-9 i owned the original cart and beat it at least twice a week, it only took me 7 hours to get through the game with all my chars at level 78-85. sorry dude, but i can give you tips over aim and stuff in the meantime. Edit: I forgot, i never use skip sandwhiches, so i think this game can be beaten in potentially 4-6 hours if you skip all the unnecessary things, which i always get just for the power. So if i can beat it around 7 hours without skip sandwitches and getting almost everything i could, i believe you can do it within 4-6 hours.
When scores are drawn, who will you die for?
Wren
He/Him
Joined: 4/11/2005
Posts: 196
Location: Michigan
Well, this might be futile... but this is a revival. Anyone up to this task??
<i>A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.</i>
Former player
Joined: 5/4/2005
Posts: 502
Location: Onett, Eagleland
This is one of my top 5 games in my book, i'd love to see a speed run of it and im also hoping someone can revive this. I've beaten it over 20 times but don't feel I could do a good enough job doing a speed run. I have enough trouble getting that stupid sword of kings when I actually want it as it is =/. For anyone who cares, Mother 3 is being released the 20th of this month :). EDIT: Whoops, thought it was April already, April 20th is Mother 3's release date.
I think.....therefore I am not Barry Burton
Former player
Joined: 9/1/2005
Posts: 803
Pasky13 wrote:
For anyone who cares, Mother 3 is being released the 20th of this month :).
The 20th of this month has already passed, 11 days ago infact. In regards to the actual subject of a tas of this game, I can't really see it being a feasible task, given the massive length of the game. For movement though, I'd imagine using teleport alpha and crashing into something only frames before teleporting would be a potential fastest movement method, with the only downside being the mp cost per use.
Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332
I think the first step is for someone (maybe someone who's beaten the game 20 times ;)) to do a "benchmark" run. The current non-TAS run is apparently a little over 9 hours, so if someone were able to beat it in about 8, that would give everyone else something to shoot down... er, shoot for.
Wren
He/Him
Joined: 4/11/2005
Posts: 196
Location: Michigan
I'd like to hear some ideas on the optimal path, and what items are worthy to buy. Armor is valuable considering it isn't really possible to avoid damage. Gaining levels too early will likely waste time, considering the rare worm thingies in the deserts. I don't have it in me to TAS a game, I know that now. I tried to TAS this game awhile back (about 4 months ago) but quickly lost interest in it. However, I have commented on this game a lot (read back a few pages). So there isn't much more I feel I can say until I hear more input from others. Does SDA have a page about this game?
<i>A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.</i>
Player (105)
Joined: 1/30/2005
Posts: 564
Location: Québec, Canada
I think I might be up for the task. I know this game as much as I know Illusion of Gaia, and I played it just as often. Plus, I might be the one who knows the most about it, TAS speaking, since I already tried my luck with it a while ago. Ever since the new Memory Watch feature was incorporated into Snes9x, I feel the need to TAS more than ever before. As a proof, you can check the speed at which my IoG100% run is growing. All in all, after I finish IoG100%, I will start working on this game again. Either that, or I'll do Super Widget first (which shouldn't take more than two weeks). Sooner or later, I'll end up doing Earthbound.
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
If your eyes bother you, an easy thing to do is to take frequenty eye strain breaks. Also, depending on the browser that you use, you can hit CTRL++ and CTRL+- to change the size of the text. That makes it easy to read even if your eyes aren't in focus. I'm not sure that fighting the 2nd and 6th bosses is really an issue. The game doesn't actually require that you fight them to progress. You can just ignore them and then come back later in the game when you are at a much higher level. I don't remember if this holds for the other bosses. I think that some are required. I know this because I played through the game once just running through. After beating the 8th boss, I realized that I had completely forgotten about 2 and 6. Needless t o say, they didn't put up much of a fight. I think that you probably should power level a little on those worms. The extra offense and MP should help. Also, fobbies + fire = lots of exp. Also, I think that it might be fun to see someone simulate teleport beta using teleport alpha since you can press buttons that fast in a TAS.
Joined: 11/16/2005
Posts: 46
If you are not going for the fastest time possible, then I would doubt your run will be accepted at all. Remeber, TAS means Tool-Assisted Speedrun Otherwise you are just playing the game with tools...
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
>If you are not going for the fastest time possible, then I would doubt your run will be accepted at all. That is not necessarily true. For longer runs, I think that it is a bit more forgiving on accepting them for not being the fastest possible. The most important thing is to be entertaining. Still, you should try to be as fast as possible. If you can get a few extra tricks in there too, it is that much better.
Joined: 9/7/2005
Posts: 144
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Wren wrote:
Does SDA have a page about this game?
No, no run at SDA. So...
Dromiceius wrote:
The current non-TAS run is apparently a little over 9 hours, so if someone were able to beat it in about 8, that would give everyone else something to shoot down... er, shoot for.
Where did you find this? Is that the record on Twin Galaxies? I find them a little hard to believe, since they don't have video proof... at least, I haven't been able to find a video on the site. EDIT: No entry there either...
This guy are sick.
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
There's no reason to doubt the records. If they're on the Internet, they must be true!
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332
First post of the thread:
Dan_ wrote:
First off, the fastest time I've heard of is 9:17:41, but that was with fast-forwarding through long speeches and such. However, I believe that, depending on how well randomness can be manipulated, I can get quite a better time than that.
Former player
Joined: 5/22/2004
Posts: 462
That time was found at a thread over at the Starmen.net forums quite a while ago. There wasn't any proof of it, but it seems like a reasonable time to me. At least it's a benchmark to shoot for.
Joined: 4/29/2005
Posts: 1212
If you can avoid all random battles, I feel the run could be done in at least 6-8 hours, far less than 9.
Player (105)
Joined: 1/30/2005
Posts: 564
Location: Québec, Canada
Avoid ALL random battles..? ... It could be done, but the way the game generates the enemies is pretty tricky. It's like if it had "zones", which upon entering it, it generates a (not so) random amount of enemies. The trick is to find out where each zone starts, and to manipulate the game into generating 0 enemies everytime. It's feasible ... but it's highly time-consuming (unless SOMEONE happens to find the memory adress for the amount of enemies generated in the next zone? :D) When I start working on this TAS (which should be in less than a month), I'll do what I can to make it as enemyless as possible, but like I said, it's pretty time consuming. I'll need all the patience I can get :)
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
All right, great! I hope this movie ends up looking good.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Former player
Joined: 5/4/2005
Posts: 502
Location: Onett, Eagleland
Halamantariel wrote:
Avoid ALL random battles..? ... It could be done, but the way the game generates the enemies is pretty tricky. It's like if it had "zones", which upon entering it, it generates a (not so) random amount of enemies. The trick is to find out where each zone starts, and to manipulate the game into generating 0 enemies everytime. It's feasible ... but it's highly time-consuming (unless SOMEONE happens to find the memory adress for the amount of enemies generated in the next zone? :D) When I start working on this TAS (which should be in less than a month), I'll do what I can to make it as enemyless as possible, but like I said, it's pretty time consuming. I'll need all the patience I can get :)
Can't each zone be found using PK Hack? It has a map editor in which you can set enemy placement I believe: http://pkhack.fobby.net/download.php
I think.....therefore I am not Barry Burton
Post subject: Earthbound Mechanics discovered! Found, needs perfecting
Joined: 5/11/2006
Posts: 71
Yay I feel so special. I read the 9-page earthbound topic that was talking about a speed run, and one thing that kept plauging everyone was the fact that: a. can't time critical hits (they don't go by frames... kinda) b. hard to force item drops c. monster pattern is weird Those were three big problems (aside from the time, the runthough, etc). I decided to post here because that thread is over a year old with a lot of junk in it, and I'm not personally running through this game so I thought if anyone wants to or is doing one, this might help. Its not perfect but its a start! Ok, after reading that previous thread, it was discovered that critical hits can be forced, not by frame-timing (such as in FF6), but rather by moving the cursor/hitting B/selecting enemy. I discovered that this is both true and false. Here's the magic number: 7e0026 (1 byte) I just figured this one out after lots of trial and error, and it's 12:41am so I only have 1 working value right now: 147. This value always forces a critical hit from Ness with a set value (ie, always a certain damage depending on your weapons/stats). The TIMING of this value is the bad part. Yes it's true that moving the cursor changes the value to something random (B-button acts as two cursor movements). But here's the nasty part... Example: You click attack (number jumps 'randomly', recreates with save-states). You click again (to confirm your choice) and the real hell starts. Your value starts to go haywire, because it 'randomly' jumps PER LETTER OF TEXT (per frame too, but after the last letter it stops, thus it's really dependent on the Text). That means the longer the monster's name the more number jumps we get (also recreated via SS's everytime). When the words: "Ness Attacks!" shows, the final number is reached. This number determines if you land a SMAASH or not. Here's where it starts to get weird. This magic number also works on Paula, but NOT on Jeff/Poo. So this number at this value will always give N/P their critical smashes. And if that wasn't enough, this number (147 in my test case) also determines if an item drops or not. Using a forced value of 147, I was able to make any monster drop an item, regardless or what it was (crows with cookies or starman ghosts with goddess ribbons). I'm not sure if this was forcing 'common' or 'rare' drops with this value. I have yet to test the other values in the 255~range to see what they result in, but I'm pretty sure that more than one gives you the critical hit. What really blows my mind (as if this rng wasn't strange enough), is that supposedly GUTS determines your critical hits, perhaps it makes the window of criticals wider? Before I go to bed, here's another really weird number to tinker with: 7e0024 - This determines the monster's next battle command. With this on a fixed value, the crow would *always* peck me for 8. Or the snake hit me for 4 (every time). But since the programmers were smoking something when they made this game, this number has one freaky problem - it's dependent on the above mentioned Critical/Gift value. For example with JUST this number fixed, monsters will always do one type of action (in this case, crows just 'huge grin'). However when this was combined with the 'always critical' value, all the crows would peck me for 8. Bottom Line I see lots of potential for these values if anyone is making a run. The biggest problems as of now are that I've only found ONE working critical/gift value (I'm positive there's more, or at least more criticals-per-guts ratio). The other problem is actually manipulating these values, which due to the game's hippy programmers, jumps randomly right up until the actual attack. This isn't so much of a problem when you consider save-states, but the choice of a character's name or whatever makes the rng that much more difficult to work with. Perhaps someone can refine this or put it to good use. I'm going to bed! (Morning update: I realize that this entire thing may or may not be useful to someone. I apologize if this is stupid and a wasteful thread. Maybe if I could nail down more values, it'd be worth something) CK
Samus taught us that a girl doesn't need brains to be successful. Brains are giant, evil, and vulnerable to missiles.
Player (105)
Joined: 1/30/2005
Posts: 564
Location: Québec, Canada
I've done some testing after reading your findings, and I think what you've found is something MUCH MUCH bigger than manipulating SMAAAASH and item drops. I've locked the value to 147 as you've suggested, and what I found is that I've never seen so much enemies lying around in my whole life! It may affect the amount of enemies that appear. Maybe not the amount, but if an enemy appears at that spot or not, and the game sets it to ALWAYS yes. Just play Onett from the very beginning of the game with this value on. I've never seen that much enemies at that place. I think you've found one of the base variables used for this game's random number generator. Hell, you might have found THE only value the rng uses! Either way, I salute you. Great work on finding this! And continue your work to find more things! I could really use all this information when I start working on this TAS again (in a not-so-far future) EDIT: I also noticed a lot more of Magic Butterflies ... some where I never knew there could be one! Oh, and it's not the only rng value, because sometimes I miss (Just missed). Thought this might help you in your quest for breaking down Earthbound's rng! :)
Wren
He/Him
Joined: 4/11/2005
Posts: 196
Location: Michigan
Yay! This makes me sooo very happy. I really hope the RNG for this game is busted and that a great TAS of it actually happens. I am so sounding like an Earthbound TAS token fanboy... hell, who am I kidding? I am..
<i>A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.</i>
XkyRauh
He/Him
Joined: 6/9/2005
Posts: 171
Location: Southern California
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought Jeff couldn't get critical hits? I don't know about Poo, but that might explain why this magic number isn't affecting Jeff...
Joined: 5/4/2005
Posts: 20
This is true, Jeff can't get critical hits, and as I recall, slingshots can't either.
[URL=http://www.sererre.net/dd/]daily deviations[/URL]
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