There's a post on GameFAQs by Scared0o0Rabbit talking about a bug. I'll copy it here:
I've known about this glitch for like 10 years, so I'm surprised no one has submitted it before now. It involved putting enough items in your bag so that when you exit your bag the bag won't be showing on your inventory. The earliest point you can do this is with 17 items. If you transfer all 17 of your items into your bag and scroll down once, then exit your bag you'll be in a part of your inventory that has no items. From this point you can scroll up to see your items or... down. If you scroll down you'll find piles of items that you don't actually have. It's then possible to 'move' these items up into your actual inventory. Doing this trick you can get items you're not supposed to have yet as well as armor and weapons that are better than you can find early in the game. Take care when doing this trick because sometimes your party members will die or even disappear totally. If the main character dies doing this trick, then the game will be broken and you'll have to reset it.
Basically:
- Put at least 17 items in bag
- Have no more than 3 items in main inventory (bag included)
- Go into bag and scroll down
- Exit out of bag
- Scroll down and enjoy
Let's see... Scroll down past the end of your inventory, sometimes affects party members or main character, broken game... This is sounding an awful lot like the Pokémon Yellow run all over again, just without the save corruption, but definitely has the memory corruption by inventory overflow.
I myself don't have much interest in this, but since the bug is posted, and since the bug likely allows rampant and unchecked devastation of the game's sanity, I thought it might be of some interest for those who have time digging into the game's memory, and want to see if a normally long game can be beaten in a few minutes this way.
This glitch can do some pretty interesting things- but it is going to take someone really dedicated to figure it out.
Moving any "item" on any "page" cause multiple "items" to move around, massive messing with the memory addresses.
However, at one point, I was able to give the hero 35K experience. The game was farked, but it shows promise.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
I've figured out how to use this glitch to obtain from the beginning all of the required items, and I believe I can TAS this game in less than 10 minutes...
My route is as follows:
- in the first gargoyle "mandatory" battle, go to inventory, ready spellbook, cast help and the battle ends. This is faster than actually fighting them. Collect 17 items from around the castle and open the inventory. (<1 minute)
- Do the item glitch as outlined in the first post. when you do the glitch, you should find collections of leather helms that have absurdly high quantities. Readying these items will reduce the quantity of that item by one, and increase the item value of another item in a particular spot by one. The required items in this game (the vortex cube, 8 moonstones, garg lens, human lens, and the balloon) all have a value greater than 90, so it is important to use leather helms that have a very high quantity (higher than the value of the desired item). Once you have created the desired item, give it to another character (it may be erased by the glitch if you leave it in the avatar's inventory), and repeat a total of 12 times to get all the neccesary items. (If anybody wants to know about this in more detail, just ask). The spell "dispel field" is also required, but it doesnt seem to be obtainable with this method. (2-3 minutes?)
- Exit the castle through one of the sidedoors, and warp to moonglow. use the balloon to fly to the magic shop to the NW, and buy "dispel field."
- Warp to the three gargoyle shrines and talk to the statue at the end of each. Without fighting monsters this should take less than 1:30 for all three dungeons, but the shrine of diligence's second floor may provide some problems as I dont know if I can manipulate the daemons to not attack. (When doing real-time speedruns of this game I usually use a powder keg to kill everybody but the avatar, then use a ring4 to make the avatar invisible to the enemies. This would take extra time though and I wouldn't want to do it unless completely neccesary in a tas...)
- Warp to the tomb of kings, use the balloon to fly north, get off the balloon and dont bother to pick it up again, and use the "dispel field" spell to get past the barriers, then meditate at the shrine of singularity.
- Warp to the island of the codex and perform the final ritual.
Overall not too difficult with the exception of the item glitching (mainly just tedious) and the shrine of dilligence. I've started a TAS of this, but I know that not many people have played this game and I wonder if anybody would be interested in me continuing with it.
Completely incomprehensible TASes of RPGs seem to be well-received these days, though at ten minutes this would be moderately long for one of those (compare to Dungeon Magic or Knight of Diamonds, both of which are done in under three minutes). Still, I think it's worth a shot.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
My advice: Make a test run, and try to follow the route without bothering to optimize things. Use savestates just in case you mess up bad enough, and slow things down if certain parts need precision. If you can't get through it at all, even when going frame by frame on the trouble part, you might need to check a few things in your route. Would be a pain if you try "for real" and didn't anticipate the trouble spot.
After you confirm that it is possible, then make a real run, using the newly-gained knowledge of what to do.
I was hoping for something more than just spawning whatever arbitrary items you feel like, such as pinpoint teleportation to the exact spots you need to be, having events done for you, or glitching away obstacles. Then again, if the glitch can't do that precisely enough, I should be glad that we can use the glitch at all. Having spare Vortex Cubes in your back pocket is certainly a good thing.
One question, though. Can you just transfer items from your party to one character, who then stuffs his bag with all that junk? No walking needed to loot various parts of the castle that way. Besides, it's not like they need their armor or anything... Is there anything that would prevent this from working?
Completely incomprehensible TASes of RPGs seem to be well-received these days, though at ten minutes this would be moderately long for one of those (compare to Dungeon Magic or Knight of Diamonds, both of which are done in under three minutes). Still, I think it's worth a shot.
It appears my initial estimate of ten minutes is going to be way off... I have found an extremely effecient method of utilizing this glitch and using frame advance I have managed to aquire all the neccesary items and leave the castle in 1:32. Sub 4 minutes seems doable at this point.
My advice: Make a test run, and try to follow the route without bothering to optimize things. Use savestates just in case you mess up bad enough, and slow things down if certain parts need precision. If you can't get through it at all, even when going frame by frame on the trouble part, you might need to check a few things in your route. Would be a pain if you try "for real" and didn't anticipate the trouble spot.
Thank you for this advice. I just did some real-time testing only to find out that the amulet of submission appears to be a required item to meditate at singularity. I can easily create an amulet of submission from modifying the bread that the character starts with, so its no big deal, but Im glad I caught it now while its early.
I was hoping for something more than just spawning whatever arbitrary items you feel like, such as pinpoint teleportation to the exact spots you need to be, having events done for you, or glitching away obstacles. Then again, if the glitch can't do that precisely enough, I should be glad that we can use the glitch at all. Having spare Vortex Cubes in your back pocket is certainly a good thing.
Yes, I wanted to use the glitch to trigger events as well, but it doesn't appear to be possible from the looks of it. Basically, each item has a value of 1-186; glitching an item with a value between 187 and 255 triggers a glitch item, most of which freeze the game and those that dont fail to produce any interesting results. Moving a glitch item around in the inventory also can produce effects, but it seems like only in the realm of character's stats as well as occasional character deletion. None of these things seem to be able to be helpful in any way. Instead, I found the values of the required items (vortex cube=94, moonstones=95-102, human lens=154, garg lens=156, balloon=168), and then I found the values of items which the character starts with, and was able to transform some of the starting items into special items within just a few seconds of game-time each. For example, the character starts with 6 torches, and there are 6 more torches in the castle. The torch has a value of 106. Therefore I can glitch the torch 4 times, each time takes only 6 frames and subtracts the value of the torch by one, until I have a moonstone (value=102). Now, since I had 12 torches, I actually have 12 of these moonstones. From here I give one of them to Dupre, and keep the rest in the avatar's inventory so I can glitch the item again into the next moonstone, and so on. I do a similar method transforming the scroll you find in the castle into the balloon, the human lens, and the garg lens. In the end, the avatar's inventory may be filled with extra junk, but Dupre has all of the required items in his.
One question, though. Can you just transfer items from your party to one character, who then stuffs his bag with all that junk? No walking needed to loot various parts of the castle that way. Besides, it's not like they need their armor or anything... Is there anything that would prevent this from working?
Yes, as I found out, the avatar, Iolo and Shamino combined all have 17+ items in their initial inventories, so I start my run by giving everything to the avatar so I can start the glitch before I even leave the garg battle. I still do need to take two items before I leave the castle though (the torches and the scroll).
I can post my WIP file shortly if you wish to see it, after I figure out how to do so. Though it isn't much more than just glitching in the first 1:32.
FRK, thank you, by the way, for posting this glitch and inspiring me to work on this.
Edit: alright, figured out where to upload it, please take a look, any criticism is welcome before I proceed.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1296677459/Ultima%20VI%20-%20The%20False%20Prophet%20%28U%293.smv
From this point, the plan is to use the moon orb to warp to the shrine of honesty, use the first balloon to fly SW to Xiao's magic shop (in my above post I said to fly NW from moonglow, but after checking the game map before running this segment, I've found this route to be the fastest), and buy dispel field and 2x black pearl (fortunately, the game gives you 200g to start, and this sets me back 190g). And from there its a lot of testing and manipulation to be had in the final 3 dungeons.
Edit2: I am doing some real-time testing and I am having trouble completing the end game ritual... whenever I use the lenses it says "no effect"... hopefully I can find out the problem with this or else this is a major road block to completing this TAS...
Edit3: Okay... the "glitched" lenses I cannot get to work, but if I get the lenses the normal way (which would probably add as much as 3 minutes to the TAS) they do work... however, the glitched vortex cube with the eight glitched moonstones does work perfectly. There has to be some trigger that allows the player to place the lenses... now the trouble is to find out what this trigger is. A sub4 minute TAS seems less likely at the moment, but further testing is neccesary before ruling out the idea entirely. While I'm at it, I should probably test to make sure that the amulet of submission is the real requirement to meditate at singularity, and not the event of surrendering to Draxinusom (which would add approx 1:30 to the TAS). All things considered, depending on what I actually discover to be required, this game's TAS will be somewhere between 3:30 and 9 minutes. I'm hoping it's somewhere more on the low end.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit4 (I am assuming double posting is frowned upon on this site, right?)
Alright, after extensive testing done last night and this morning, I have slightly modified my route and I will have to redo some of my TAS to glitch certain items more appropriately. My modified route is as follows:
- ready the spellbook to the avatar, exit the inventory and cast help. don't do any glitching here.
- from the chest, collect black pearl, sulfer ash, and the torches, dont collect anything else. from the second chest, collect the scroll.
- exit through the ladder, and open the inventory. Give all* Iolo's equipment to the avatar, then give all* of Dupre's equipment to the avatar. (*all = most, certain equipment is too far out of the way). Move all of the avatar's equipment into the bag. The final five items to move into the bag should be the leather boots, the scroll, the ankh, the lute, and the torch in that order. Modify the torch 3 times for the first moonstone, each time giving a moonstone to Dupre. When the inventory modifier line grows to a length of 4, Drop a quantity of the second item so that the final quantity is 94, drop a quantity of the third item so that you have 40, and after Dupre has all eight moonstones, drop a quantity of the first item so that the final quantity is 51. Then use the 4th modifier item 12 times to create gargish text, which should be used immediately, then it should be used 5 more times to create a balloon (which you should have 48 of, but most of these should be dropped so that the avatar's carrying capacity does not exceed 60 (otherwise you wont be able to buy dispel field). Switch the leather boot and the vortex cube's positions, then either modify the leather boot 4 times or drop 4 of the corresponding items (will test to see which method is fewer frames).
- warp to the shrine of honesty, fly SW to the magic shop, buy dispel field, exit.
- warp to the shrine of diligence again, use the balloon and fly east. Talk to Beh Lem, ask him about "job" to get him to join you. Get back on the balloon, fly north to Valkadesh, immediately press B then ask him about "surrender." Warp to the tomb of kings and fly south, surrender to Drax, go south to pick up the broken lens, then run across the street and talk to Naxitilor about "lens." Then fly to the lenscrafter and talk to him about "lens."
- Warp to moonglow, fly NE, talk to the lenscrafter and get him to make you the human lens. You can talk to the lenscrafter up until about 650 in-game time units (measured by how many steps the avatar makes) have passed from the start of the game... I reach him at 632 units, just barely reaching him in time. Ready ring 4 on all 5 party members, then warp to the final 3 shrines and clear each.
- Warp to Singularity, meditate, warp to the island of codex and perform the end ritual. A longer route than I would have hoped, but I can still see this as a 6-8 minute run. As a bonus, the game should be over before midnight of the first day in game time.
Aaaaannd TAS complete, with a final time of 7:56 (28564 frames). I can't imagine any possible ways to improve upon this and will probably submit this soon.
I found a way to glitch dispel field into my inventory, which could theoretically save about 30 seconds of the run... the bad news is that the only way to glitch this spell puts it into a very glitched section of the inventory, and using items in this section seems to cause major corruption (destroying most characters/NPCs/character paralysis glitch) but I may try to find a way to get around this.
The method for glitching spells is different than glitching other items because each spell is actually the same item with a different invisible "quantity" value. A spell has a value of 184 and "dispel field" in particular has a quantity value of 15, so in order to glitch the spell I need to have the first item in my inventory (outside of the bag) to have a quantity of 184, and I need the first item inside of the bag to be a Door Shield (which has an item value of 15). But like I said, even though I can create the spell, currently the side effects of doing so seem too great to work with.
If anybody else wants more info or a video tutorial of this glitch, just ask, as I am going on hiatus for a while.
