Posts for StarrlightSims

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638650265920797831 Resynced the file for Bizhawk v2.9.1. All that needed changing was a couple of stylus co-ordinates for the matchstick puzzles (on pre-release of 2.10, you have to overcorrect for them to get to the right spot on the screen when moving, whereas 2.9.1 seems to move to the actual point pressed on the screen). Also went through and added/removed frames so that everything else syncs properly.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
Thanks for checking, I'll see how easy it is to sync for 2.9.1, shouldn't be too hard to get working as only RNG puzzle is before that point anyway
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
My bad, I just downloaded the latest version of Bizhawk on GitHub, I’ll check if it syncs with previous version when I get home, if not happy to delay it til release of newest version.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
Hey, just to clarify why the ending point is at that point in RTA speedruns (obviously, RTA and TAS often have different rulesets so doesn't impact the decision made here). With this game, there is a story progression to the game, and a post-story state, where the game considers the story of the game to be complete. This can be confirmed by the appearance of the Level Select menu in the Common Room. Whilst playing through the story, there is no level select and the game puts you through to the next level straight away. After you have beaten the story and the game flags that, the game then gives you the level select screen so you can go back to levels where you missed collectibles. When you do the save corruption, the game puts itself into a post-story state, so technically the game counts the story as complete. However, cause of the save corruption, the file won't remain unless you save the game again. Therefore, the intended reasoning of going into the Training level is that it is the shortest level that then allows you to save the game after, thereby putting the game into a permanent "end-game" state, where the story is marked as being complete permanently. It's less about all levels being complete, and more about the actual flag of story progression being set. This was something that was voted on by the RTA community, and this timing method, and the allowance of SC in general, is still talked about here and there, but the consensus was to use this timing/end-time method. Also, something that wasn't mentioned in the movie comments I don't believe? was that this SC only works if there is no SRAM already on the game, so the corruption has to be done from a completely clean cartridge for each file.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
The warp works based on the last full game screen you've seen (more or less, if you hit certain triggers it'll update), so it can only take you to the full screen images. The reason it just so happens to work for this run is that the intro images are 1-8, and then the game counts to 9, which correlates with the Ron gives you a Wizard Card screen. Every different full image screen into Flippendo would have to be tested to see, but some of them don't advance so just take you to the same screen (For Example, if you complete Flipendo normally, then do the Flipendo Glitch, you just re-see the end of Flipendo and the game carries on normally. The reason the Quidditch warp works is because when you turn on the game to start off, the stored scene that the game has is the Results screen for the first Quidditch Match. So, you can start a new game, get to a save book, save and reset, and then do the Flipendo warp to then go to end of first quidditch.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
If it ends up working on other objects, like the Wingardium Leviosa stones, you could potentially skip most of the Black Potion Challenge at the end of the run. Also, you can technically use the same warp method but instead of warping to the End Game, you warp to the end of the First Quidditch Match, which skips like 15 minutes of the run.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
I tried to get this to work for a bit and couldn't get anything, nice to see it does work though, easy yes vote!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Could you provide the RAM addresses? It may help to look for possible improvements.
I wasn't the one who did the RAM searching, so I don't have them on hand unfortunately, I can ask the person who did the looking though. Also, on a related note to the category split, it's also possible to use this to skip from Flipendo straight to the end of the first Quidditch match by saving and resetting, so that would also be a thing to look at, as that cuts ~15 minutes off the published TAS as well
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
As a clarification for how the warp actually works, all of the full screen images are on the same screen, just with a different value assigned to them, so for example the 8 story cutscenes at the start of the game are scenes 1-8. After this point, the counter moves to 9, and then in a normal progression of the game, once you collect all 6 stars in the challenge, the game counter updates to the correct number for the Flipendo end screen. However, because the game never has the opportunity to update before you touch the end-level trigger, the game instead takes you to scene 9, which happens to be the end-game scene where you get given the final card.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
https://youtu.be/lpauJRAhwPs New Wrong Warp to end game cutscenes
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
We think we may have worked out part of it, it seems that there are copies of the map stored OoB which explains the collision stuff. For the void outs, there seems to be a set point OoB that you respawn at if you void out
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
Time to revive a 5-year dead thread https://youtu.be/on4Uw_9joz0 We in the RTA community recently discovered this video of getting OoB using Pause Buffering. We have learnt that: 1. It only works on doorways that are on the bottom edge 2. It only works on doorways with space below Whilst messing around with the glitch, Myelin was walking OoB in the Potions Classroom (Very Far OoB) when the game refilled his health completely? We have no clue how this happened but we havent been able to replicate it on video, but this may be an indication of further memory shenanigans which may lead to new timesave? Edit: There seems to be random invisible collision and void outs all around the OoB area, but the camera gets stuck so there's no way of seeing anything atm
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
Getting back into working on this, trying to find the point in the data where it says whether an attack will be a critical hit, but struggling to use RAM watch to actually find the section, seems like every time I think I have the right part its not, if anyone has any experience with using RAM watch it''d be greatly appreciated https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vt7qiW6tHYKxhrwb1KsWPL7TCzqf20oG/view?usp=sharing Here's a state if anyone feels like messing around with it, the fight starts with a non-crit, but if you flash the help menu twice (Press A whilst holding B), it makes it a crit
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
I'm trying to do an encode of a DS TAS using MeGUI, but I keep getting this error? https://imgur.com/a/WeQo8LN Not sure what the issue is?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
Restarted work on the TAS, finished the route which is a decent amount faster than the route I was using before, thanks to better testing of all the puzzles. Hardest part about TASing this is coming up with quick shapes for writing letters/numbers, as the detection system in this game is sometimes great and sometimes broken.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
Yeah, I know it's a thing that is common in a lot of games. What's interesting is that this game has main collectables, similar to stars in Mario, that you need 36 of to beat the game. Most of these are spawned into the map after you complete the objectives. Knowing that the NPCs work in this way in this specific game may mean that these collectables are also kept OoB until used, so it would be a case of finding them OoB
Post subject: Animaniacs: The Great Edgar Hunt
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
Was searching for some new glitches in the game, and came across some NPCs that were located OoB. They are characters that come into the scene a bit later on, but are stored OoB until they are needed it looks like. Potentially, this could lead to finding more stuff that has been stored OoB near to where it loads?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
It works that way for the first battle, and then after that you can either manipulate it using the encounters on screen, or if you reset the game you can actually reset the seed, so by resetting just before a boss battle, you can actually manipulate the RNG, which is helpful for both TAS and RTA.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
After some recent testing, the RNG in this game finally seems to make sense. The way RNG seems to work is that the frame you press Start on the first main menu determines two seeds that the game can choose between, and then the frame on which you select Load Game/New Game then determines which of those 2 seeds the game selects. Therefore, if we press start on the right frame, we should be able to completely predict what will happen in the battle. In the overworld, the only thing that seems to affect the RNG is the number of frames that the random enemies are on screen. In battle, the only things that effect RNG are which spells you choose each turn, and opening the help menu. We can open the help menu for the same amount of time by holding down a and b, so it closes as soon as it opens. So, it's a case of finding a good seed and then working out a battle from that seed. Now it's a case of finding good seeds, which is going to take forever.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
https://youtu.be/To3emY6dK8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d87gfWxKD8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12_lbpRhxY0 Just posting these here in case anyone wants to update the TAS in the future
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
So just done some further testing into the RNG for the game, and what I found was that if you press New Game on the same frame every time, no matter what actions/flags/movement you do afterwards, and no matter how many frames pass, the Monster Book fight is exactly the same, so it seems that RNG is set from pressing New Game, still need to do more testing though.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
I'd love to see an any% TAS of Animaniacs: The Great Edgar Hunt!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (18)
Joined: 5/31/2013
Posts: 42
Finished routing in which puzzles are the fastest, and completed Chapter 1 https://youtu.be/DMP0oPtPMlk