Posts for inichi

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Although I stopped making a TAS a few years ago, I think I should post this movie at least for future reference. Link to video Enjoy! Also, here is a movie file: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/977462709/chrono_trigger_fastest_crash_tas_inichi.smv
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Congrats, Keylie. As for the co-author suggestion, well, actually, I just lurked while you were working on your run. If you just refer to my WIP in your submission text, that's good enough for me. I'm really looking forward to watch Lavos Shell skip and the final battles.
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I can't watch those movie files now. My note says: 0x7e968c must be 1. 0x7e06db must be 0. Also, 0x7e0027 may be related to the glitch. I hope that it helps. Very impressed work, btw. Good luck on the final battles.
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Turska, thank you for adding me as a co-author of the submission movie. It's good to see my demo smvs can see the light of day by the emulator advance. However, the movie has two unoptimized sections compared to my demo. Crono's house You can move farther before Mom talks to Crono. Leene's Bell When you return the pendant to Marle, Crono and Marle must be on the same pixel. Otherwise an extra waiting time occurs when Marle joins in Crono. I wish I could fix them, but I've been away from TASing for almost two years and I've never used Lsnes. It would be nice if you can fix them.
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I have totally missed out this good news. Thank you all the people who voted here. I appreciate it. I have thought it is very difficult for RPG TAS to win public support because RPG TAS is generally boring for those who have never played the game. I'm glad to know Chrono Trigger is loved all over the world. And if this run has overcome the genre barrier and entertained even those who had never played CT, it makes me happy.
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Sorry for the late response. I have been away from the site for a while.
How does the menu trick work? Do you just open the menu at the specific time?
There is one frame window in a specific screen transition. If the X button is pressed there, you can enter the menu. Also, you don't need to mash the X button to open the menu. Instead of that, just hold down the button, and the game considers it was pressed on the right timing. It should be noted, however, that it doesn't work if you start holding down the button too early. I always start holding it down as soon as the screen goes completely dark. I'd recommend you to follow it because it is quite easy to grasp the timing.
What are the margins of error?
Once you get used to it, you can almost always reproduce it.
How do you skip inner lavos using sickles after Doors of Doom?
By changing the battle speed lower. Max speed Crono in Haste is twice as fast as Inner Lavos arms. However, the faster the battle speed is, the closer the speed gap is. Even TAS can't precede the sickles at the fastest speed. If you're having troubles with those sickles, you can try at lower speed. The same goes for this:
I'd just crit with Crono once, but that seems to let the battle go on for just long enough that Lavos casts flame battle. Oh well.
Slash would be slightly faster than Crono's critical hit, though it may make it difficult to get another critical hit in the next fight.
Why do you want the center bit to Time Change? Would it be faster if it just used a regular attack?
No, it wouldn't be. Contrary to appearances, Time Change is faster than the regular attack.
And, finally, where's the fastest place to grind levels? ;)
As mentioned in this post, Death Peak is a good place to level up. Black Omen is also good if your characters level up enough to handle strong techniques. The four enemies in front of the room with the teleporter will give you 2500+ exps in every fight. On a side note, I'd encourage you to try to skip the candy cutscene. Candy skip is a trick that can be reproduced not only by a tool, but also by human. The success rate is rather low; in my case, it is only once out of five times on average. However, since it will save a good 20 seconds, I think it's worth trying. I hope these tips help you. Good luck on your run.
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I just found a way to avoid it. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/226693190/Floating.smv By using the Pegasus Boots as near as possible to the stairs, you can prevent Link from getting back to the previous floor. Would this be a real timesaver?
Post subject: Re: #2204: Tompa's SNES The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past in 1:16:11.05
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NesVideoAgent wrote:
While floating you can also go through small walls, see Palace of Darkness…
One question: Would it be possible to use this trick in the centipede room in Ganon's Tower to go through the left lower walls as a shortcut? It seems to me that it would be faster than the current way because you can avoid the two blocks that you must push. Nice run, by the way. The instant Mothula fight is my favorite part. I'm also looking forward to a 100% run. :)
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Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but I just stumbled upon the glitch which allows you to skip the whole credits scene after the first K. Rool fight. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1369297013/credits_skip.smv By doing a team up one frame before you defeat K. Rool, you can avoid losing control of your character. After that, you can escape the stage by pressing the start and select buttons one frame before you can no longer pause the game. At this point, a flag that triggers the ending cutscene is already set, but that can be reset if you enter the boss stage again. The problem with the glitch is that the final Kremkoin, which is required to enter the last two stages, never appears once you use the glitch. So it probably wouldn't be useful for a 102% run. But who knows? Anyway, enjoy the movie.
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The latter. When the save process is over, the game sums up all the values in the saved addresses and overwrites it to a checksum address. Here are the checksum addresses: 307FF0,2u,Save file 1 307FF2,2u,Save file 2 307FF4,2u,Save file 3 When you reset the game and skip the pendulum scene, the game sums up those values again and compare it with the checksum address. If they are not equal, the save file is considered as invalid and a flag is set to make the save file appearance empty in the load screen. The game never touch the contents of the save file. It should be noted that the sum up process is done on a 16 bit mode. So if you switch items which place at an odd/even slot, say, 1st and 15th, a checksum will be still the same unless you don't save at different frames. Making use of this, you can go through the error check and duplicate an item. Here is a demo showing how to duplicate an item without making a save file empty. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1849726233/item_duplication.smv In this movie, I switch the 1st item and the 3rd item and reset on the timing that item numbers aren't overwritten. In that case, the checksum is the same with what is supposed to be; consequently the game can't detect any error. Thus, I manage to duplicate an item without making a save file empty. Also, when I was making the run, I didn't care the checksum stuff at all. The reason is that you can load an empty save file by simply pressing A and Up/Down key at one time in CT. If it had not possible, the item duplication part would have been much more complicated and bothersome.
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RT-55J wrote:
Just out of curiosity, what are the default values of the location bytes on an empty save file?
As Achelon86 said, all they are 96 (0x60). The second location byte should be 0 or 1; otherwise the game crashes as reported by Catastrophe. One thing I couldn't figure out is, though, that a bunch of memory addresses are overwritten at one time before it completely crashes. I really have no idea what causes it. Maybe it could be of some use. For future reference, here are all memory addresses whose values are stored in SRAM in order: 7E2400-29AF 7E2C23-55 7E0400-0F 7E0100-0F 7F0000-01FF 7E027E-7F 7E0290-A0 7E2C7C-99 The location bytes are 7E0100-01; the X-Y coordinate 7E0102-03; the storyline counter 7F0000.
xPi wrote:
which version should I use to watch these?
Snes9x 1.43 v14 or any later version.
part1 plays fine but the others just freeze up the game at movie start.
All the smvs except part 1 automatically pause at start, possibly because they were recorded from between a frame. So if the freeze should be actually the pause, you can resume by just pressing the Pause key. If not, sorry, I can't help you there.
second smv link (-16 seconds run) points to avi
Oops! Thanks for pointing it out. Here is a correct link. http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zz0qwwyjyid
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Thank you for your comments! I have managed to improve the last one by 16 seconds due to the route change. avi smvs (Total re-recording count: 990) I'd highly recommend you skip the first 2 minutes and 45 seconds because that part is almost the same with the previous one. Again, note that there is no way to verify the validity of the movie on account of the way it was made. Brief explanation: The idea is the same with the previous run, that is, directly jump to the Nu Ending by overwritting only the first location address. This time, however, I use Zenan Bridge, (20, 00), instead of Prison Supervisor's Office for that purpose. No save points are on Zenan Bridge. So, in advance, I save at the End of Time and corrupts the data on the timing that a savepoint flag is not overwritten. With the flag is on, the game considers as you are on a savepoint wherever you are, which allows you to save anywhere, including Zenan Bridge. Also, The End of Time save point doesn't work to get right to the Ending because its second location byte is the same with the Present Overworld one. There might be a further faster route, but I couldn't come up with the better one. I hope you enjoy the run.
Cpadolf wrote:
What is it more specifically that happens here,
Prison Supervisor Office's location bytes can be represented as (1D, 00); Present Overworld (F0, 01); Nu Ending (F0, 00). Note that the office's second byte has the same value as the Ending; the overworld's first byte the Ending. So if you save to a file whose location is the office in the overworld and reset on the timing only the first byte is overwritten, you can get right to the Ending.
and why do you have to go to the castle?
As I stated above, it was required to use that save point to jump to the Ending, though it was proved to be slower.
and all that before it?
To advance the story. Unless the plot advances enough, you get stopped at the entrance of the castle. Entering Imp's house is the fastest way to move on the story line enough to go deep into the castle.
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I noticed Geiger's Snes9x Debugger allows you to reset on any timing, even between a frame. So, with a help of Geiger's Snes9x, I just made a demo movie making full use of the data corruption. The completion time is roughly 3 minutes, 41 seconds. Here is a download link to the movie. http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?dingh1nnuyz For viewers, I recommend you skip from start to 2:00 because that part is nothing special. The best part of the run is probably from 3:15 to 3:30: Marle betrays Crono, but he soon revenges himself on her in the best way. Note: Geiger's Snes9x lacks the re-recording function, so no smv file from beginning to end exists. To make the movie, I used the following method: First, using Snes9x 1.43, I recorded a movie to the point where I needed to corrupt a save file. Second, I made a savestate there and loaded it on Geiger's Snes9X. Third, I set a breakpoint on the needed timing, made a savestate there, and loaded it on Snes9x 1.43. Finally, I started a new recording from there. I needed to corrupt save data three times. Thus, four smv files were made. They were combined in making the avi. Here is a download link to a zip file that includes those four smvs: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ehmywbm0wtf For the record, the total re-recording count is 811. Also, for the above reason, there is no way to confirm the validity of the movie, but I don't care. The reason is this is just a demo movie to show the further possibility of Chrono Trigger TAS. Hopefully this movie will work as a good reference when a new re-recording Snes9x that enables the reset between a frame comes out in the future. I hope you enjoy the run. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here is an explanation of the movie. About data corruption -Chrono Trigger uses one byte for each X-Y position. If you reset on the timing that only one byte is overwritten, you can jump to a different position. I used this feature twice: 1)Overwrites (1F, 3E), south of Zenan Bridge with (4A, 50), eastern end of Guardia continent and jump to (4A, 3E), west of Melchior's Hut. 2)Overwrites (72, 1E), north western part of Medina continent with (23, 26), south of Guardia Forest and jump to (23, 1E), north of Guardia Forest. -Chrono Trigger uses two bites for location. If you reset on the timing that only one byte is overwritten, you can jump to a different location. I used this feature once: 1) Overwrites (1D, 00), Prison Supervisor's Office with (F0, 01), Present Overworld and jump to (F0, 00), the Nu Ending. Detailed commentary on the movie -Give Crono his default name because I found one character name would be slightly slower in the end. The same goes for Marle and Lucca, too. -Pick up Marle at Leene's Square. Without her, the game will freeze in Imp's house. -Save the game on a save file 2 at the south of Guardia Forest, (23, 26). -Save the game on a save file 1 at the south of Zenan Bridge, (1F, 3E). -Save the game on the save file 1 at the eastern end of Guardia continent (4A, 50) and reset on the timing only X position is overwritten. As stated avove, this is done on Geiger's Snes9x. The same goes for the other two as well. -Load the save file 1. Now Crono is at the west of Melchior's Hut, (4A, 3E). -Enter Imp's house. The storyline counter is incremented to the same value as you first reached Medina village, which allows you to freely explore Guardia Castle. -Save the game on the save file 1 at the north western part of Medina continent, (72, 1E). -Load the save file 2. -Save the game on the file 1 and reset on the timing only x position is overwritten. -Load the save file 1. Now Crono is at the north of Guardia Forest, (23, 1E). -Enter Guardia Castle. Since the storyline counter is enough, no one halts them. -Go to the Prison Tower. The Chancellor tries to take Crono to the jail because the flag is not set yet. The plot is, however, already at Medina Village, so only the knocked-out supervisor and Crono appear in the office. You can move him as usual. -Save the game on the save file 1 at the near save point (1D, 00). -Load the save file 2. -Save the game on the file 1 and reset on the timing only one location address is overwritten. -Load the save file 1 (Movie End). -Nu Ending. -The End.
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This is my favorite. Elton John In His Living Room
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Thank you for publishing! I also liked the screenshot. Maybe one of the funniest moment of the run.
Omega wrote:
I kind of liked this moment too (screenshot taken from the YouTube encode):
Yeah, that scene was hilarious. I myself laughed out loud when I first encountered it because it was totally unexpected.
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upthorn wrote:
inichiさん、PMで日本語で説明すれば、僕は英語まで訳すには助けてあげられます…たぶん。
お心遣いありがとうございます。upthornさんが日本語がお上手なことは、妖怪道中記の動画でupthornさんの字幕の素晴らしい出来を拝見した時から知っていました。おぼつかない英語で恐縮ですが、英語の勉強も兼ねているので、できるだけ英語で書いていきたいと思います。もし誤りや曖昧な表現等がありましたら、指摘してくだされば大変嬉しく思います。 Thank you for the offer. I'm afraid that my English is not so good, but this is also a chance of improving my English skills. So I think I'll try to write it in English as much as I could. I'd highly appreciate if you could point out a mistake or an ambiguous expression in the submission text. Also, I have known you are really good at Japanese since I watched the Youkai Douchuuki movie with your subtitle. It was awesome.
Derakon wrote:
How's the conversion of the DS version? I'd hope it's better than the execrable Playstation one if it's going to get a serious run made for it.
It's far better than the ugly PS port in every way. Loading time around battle is even shorter than the SNES one. Another good thing is that you can make all words appear at one time by just pressing the A button. Things are much different in the SNES version. For example, if a dialogue consists of 100 characters, you have to wait for 100 frames until all characters appear in the screen. I think this is a gigantic timesaver, especially considering how some cutscene in Chrono Trigger is heavily based on texts: Trial, Frog's flashback and so on. Now that DS TASing becomes possible, I think it might be a good idea to consider making a kind of glitchless all sidequests run in the DS version.
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Omega wrote:
inichi wrote:
Also, I even tested the glitch on CT DS. The result was... please do not ask:)
Now you got me all interested. Was the game broken completely?
Well, not only a save file I tried, but also other two files were deleted. And I couldn't restore them. So luckily I got a brand-new cartridge again:) Speaking of DS version, lots of bugs existed in SNES version, such as pause menu skip, are fixed. So, maybe a kind of glitchless all side-quests run could be made in DS version because it probably wouldn't require any arbitrary restriction of using glitch.
Kuwaga wrote:
Shouldn't method 3, phase 3 read Hide 1 Null 1 Hide 1 Bronze 2 Null 2 Bronze 2 Null 0 Hide 1 Hide 1 Null 0 Bronze 2 Bronze 2 ?
Thanks, I fixed it.
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Just added an explanation for most of the tricks used in the run. I hope my explanation is not broken, and also make it clear more or less what was going on in the run.
Omega wrote:
Do the glitches work differently in that version?
You can reproduce what I did in the run in the Japanese version as well. Also, there are some memory addresses that you can't access in the Japanese version, but can in the English version such as Crono's second speed value, though I can't find any use of it.
DarkKobold wrote:
Also, console vs. TAS save exploits will be enormously different - TASes can only reset consoles at the frame marker - a console can technically stop the code at ANY point during the save, opening tons of new possible exploits.
When I tested the glitch on console, I succeeded in overwriting an address for character's technique, which Snes9x should deal with between a frame. I might give it another try, looking for something interesting. Also, I even tested the glitch on CT DS. The result was... please do not ask:)
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Thank you all for your comments and positive feedbacks!!! And thank you FODA for the YouTube uploading. The quality was really nice. I just added an explanation for the item duplication glitch in the submission text. I hope this will make it clear what is going on in the first 3.5 minutes in the run. There are more contents to be added. Hopefully I will cover most of important ones in a few days. Also, Eternaljwh's analysis for the glitches is almost correct. I'm very impressed with that.
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Everybody, I've found a freaking awesome glitch!! That's an item duplication glitch. Yes, you can multiply any items, including tabs, as much as you want in Chrono Trigger. A huge timesaver, off course. Here it is. SMV: It seems Microstorage is temporarily dead, so I used MediaFire instead. Youtube Note: Make sure that your Snes9x 1.51 is 5 or newer version before playing the movie; otherwise, the glitch won't be reproduced properly and it will desync in the end. I'll probably add a further explanation on the glitch later.
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Vykan12 wrote:
Are there enough tabs available in a single playthrough to max out everything Chrono and Marle need to optimize beating the final boss?
I didn't use any tabs on Crono and Marle in the setting up run because the glitch maximized the speed stats for them. That was good enough for me because, as LagDotCom said, only the max speed stats were strategically needed. I just added a few lines about it in the submission text.
dave_dfwm wrote:
Even though there were high damage hits, I still thought the enemies had more HP, but maybe I missed something in the submission text.
Oh, and I forgot to reply this in my last post. I added tables giving how enemies' HP were decreasing for every attack at each boss section. You might want to check them out.
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Thank you all for watching and the feedback!
gocha wrote:
By the way, Super Ultra Mambo-Tango-Foxtrot long level-ups in SRAM making movie is a sort of (semi)automated play?
It was done manually at 400% speed with the help of auto-fire, auto-hold and macro function. Initially, I was planning to use a Lua script there. However, facing with Lua script feature was missing in v1.51, I had no choice but to use a somewhat tedious way. :(
ShinyDoofy wrote:
It's just that I found it very strange for an 11 hour run to only have 4125 rerecords.
Many rerecords were not necessary for the setting up run because the aim was not reaching fastest time, but making SRAM for the new game+ TAS from scratch and showing SRAM is valid. @bkDJ: Thank you for the quick encode! Nice work as always. :)
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Saturn wrote:
If I may ask, do you mean you found even faster boss strategies in the meantime than in this testrun of yours?
Yeah. Dragon Tank will be at least 400 frames faster than the test one due to far better critical hit luck manipulation. Magus battle will be also improvable by 30 frames or something by swithcing some attacks. However, some boss battles definitely will be slower than the test ones. That's because I will skip many bosses, eliminate all the leveling up, and thus I have to face with non-skippable bosses with much weaker party members.
ShmoeBeast95 wrote:
Just wondering but inichi, on your speedrun did you just kept restarting until you got a good battle?
Yes. But, not to get a good battle but to get the best battle. :)
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
Yeah, actually the only thing that makes me come down here to the SNES thread is when I see there's a new post by Inichi.
Thanks. Now that I've submitted the new game+ run, I'll try to update the status of the any% run more often from now on.
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Hi, ShmoeBeast95. I'm glad to see you are interested in making Chrono Trigger TAS.
ShmoeBeast95 wrote:
Alright, I'm doing a test run for this. I just started and I have no clue how to manipulate luck.
All right. Then let's get started with critical hit manipulation since it's easier to explain and grasp than enemy's behavior one. -Critical hit mechanics When a battle starts, $7EB3E6 has the same value with $7E29AD. Every time the party member attacks with his/her weapon, a value that corresponds to $7EB3E6 is taken from a random number table. Here is the random number table. --- x0 x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7 x8 x9 xA xB xC xD xE xF 0x B1 CA EE 6C 5A 71 2E 55 D6 00 CC 99 90 6B 7D EB 1x 4F A0 07 AC DF 8A 56 9E F1 9A 63 75 11 91 A3 B8 2x 94 73 F7 54 D9 6E 72 C0 F4 80 DE B9 BB 8D 66 26 3x D0 36 E1 E9 70 DC CD 2F 4A 67 5D D2 60 B5 9D 7F 4x 45 37 50 44 78 04 19 2C EF FD 64 81 03 DA 95 4C 5x 7A 0B AD 1F BA DD 3E F9 D7 1A 29 F8 18 B3 20 F6 6x D1 5E 34 92 7B 24 43 88 97 D4 0F 35 AA 83 68 27 7x A8 D5 BE FA 14 31 AF 10 0D D8 6A CE 23 61 F3 3D 8x A4 08 33 E3 A9 38 E6 93 1D 1C F0 0E 87 59 65 82 9x BC FF FE 7E 8F C1 1E F5 CB 49 02 32 09 C4 8E C6 Ax 2B 40 A7 17 76 3B 16 2A C8 FB B2 58 A5 15 AE 25 Bx CF 46 C7 48 B4 0A 3F C9 06 85 51 89 62 4D 12 8C Cx EA A2 98 4B 79 6F 5C 47 30 1B E7 C5 22 9C E8 96 Dx 3A E4 7C E0 69 A1 B7 05 39 74 01 9F BD C3 84 FC Ex 77 86 13 4E BF F2 53 5B ED 21 8B 6D C2 41 B6 DB Fx 3C D3 28 EC 2D E2 9B A6 42 52 57 5F E5 AB B0 0C Each weapon is given a certain value as a critical hit rate. For example, Crono's Slasher is 10, Frog's Masamune is 23. A critical hit happens when that value is less than or equal to the last two digit of the value taken from the random number table. Also, $7EB3E6 is incremented by 1 every weapon attack. Suppose now $7EB3E6 contains $01, and you have Crono with the Slasher attack several times. Let's see how it goes: 1st attack: $CA -> 202 ->2 2 is less than 10, so Crono's attack is always a critical hit. $7EB3E6 is incremented by 1 and contains $02. 2nd attack: $EE -> 238 -> 38 38 is bigger than 10, so Crono's attack is always a normal hit. $7EB3E6 is incremented by 1 and contains $03. 3rd attack: $6C -> 108 -> 8 8 is less than 10, so Crono's attack is always a critical hit. $7EB3E6 is incremented by 1 and contains $04. ... This goes on forever. Nothing other than a weapon attack increases the RNG. The thing is, it is impossible to get a critical hit for every attack in Chrono Trigger. If you mainly use a character who has a higher critical hit rate in a battle, you can increase a number of critical hits. Although this is a useful technique for almost every battle, I don't want to call it luck manipulation. To me, it's just following the fate of critical hits in a better way. -Critical hit manipulation So the only way to manipulate critical hit is to change a starting value in $7EB3E6. That is to say, to change a value in $7E29AD because, as I said earlier, $7EB3E6 always contains the same value with $7E29AD at the start. As you can see in the table, all the values are listed in a random order. That means, if you get a starting value with lots of values that promise a critical hit behind (e.g. $2E), you can increase a chance of a critical hit for the next battle. There are two ways to affect $7E29AD: 1) Load a data on a different timing. When you load a data, it contains the same value with $7E0D00. $7E0D00 is incremented continually when the game waits for the next frame, so this is the most promising way to manipulate critical luck. It costs at least 400 frames to save and load the game, and it can be used in only limited places unless you use Save Anywhere trick. However, You can get any starting RNG for the next battle with this method. 2) Use a different strategy in the previous battle. When a battle finishes, it contains the same value with $7E0026. As with $7EB3E6, $7E0026 has the same value with $7E29AD at the beginning of a battle, and it is incremented every attack in a more flexible way. That means you can change the final value in $7E0026 by changing actions, which leads to a different starting RNG and a critical order in the next battle. Unlike the first method, this is rather hard to deal with because changing actions has little effect on the final result. However, it usually takes less time than saving and loading. Sometimes you will find it useful. To sum up, all the critical hit manipulations are done not in a battle but before the battle in Chrono Trigger. Enemy's behavior manipulation is basically the same with critical hit one, but is more complicated. I think I will post some texts on it in the future. For the time being, I suggest you keep a watch on $7E0026, $7E29AD and $7EB3E6, and you can see how they works and how they are terrible for TAS:) Oh and one thing. As a reference, you might want to watch my Chrono Trigger test TAS, which misses some known glitch, but still contains some good boss strategies in it. Hope this clear up your question to some extent. Good luck on your run. Almost forgot. I'll be submitting the new game+ run in a few days. Actually I finished it two days ago. But sadly, I'm not a good writer, especially in English. So please give me a few days to write up submission texts:)
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (48)
Joined: 3/11/2007
Posts: 94
Location: Japan
Lord Tom, you don't need the password to access Mayhem. Just start the 1 player game and press select button three times on the level selection screen, then you can get right to Mayhem level 1. As for the actual run, it seems well thought-out and flawless. In particular, your level 8 solution caught my eye. I never knew that a Lemming could land and even be a Digger on such a tight spot. Simply awesome. Looking forward to seeing the next WIP. Keep on good work!