Nice WIP! I like the little things you manage to sneak in when they don't waste time.
A few questions though:
- it looks like you're setting battle speed to ~75% instead of max. Why is that?
- why do you enter the cafe at the end of the X-ATM092 sequence? Is it to avoid the FMV of quistis blasting the tin can?
- During the dancing scene, couldn't you manipulate a critical hit when Squall steps on Rhino's feet?
1. The ATB counter maxes at 4000 for 100% speed, and 8000 for 75% speed, 12000 for 50%, and etc. It takes two frames to step the RNG once, and most bosses/characters fill the ATB counter at a rate of about 150-200 per frame. Thus, at 100% speed, I get half as many chances to advance the RNG. In my first testrun, it was rarely sufficient time to get decent RNGs, and I'd end up waiting for too many enemy turns. 8000 seems sufficient to get decent luck, without spending too much time waiting.
2. What Dada said. It saves 1000-1500 frames, even with the forced/no escape battle. Additionally, with the step counter, that battle would have happened at the start of the training area, so it saves time to just take it there.
3. Unfortunately, Squall is trying to get lucky, but his luck stat is set to zero during the dance scene, so he has no chance of tapping that, at this point in the game. The side effect is that no criticals are available. Also, he is drinking champagne, not hot coffee.
Also, all of disc 1 is currently uploading (slowly) to youtube.
EDIT: All of disc 1 is up.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=D84DA56F8A1BA0DF
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.
Oh screw you!
I wanted to sleep and you post a run of a full disc! >:(
Really great work so far with this stuff.
It's awesome to see this game being run finally. :)
Going to watch all of this now..
Forgive my total ignorance but why do you get the triple triade cards of the characters?
Do they morph into something good?
The character cards become VERY useful items. One of them becomes a Holy War which makes your whole team invincible, for instance.
I think that this is a test run and that he'll figure out what cards save time and what cards don't, also.
Watch Section 2 part 2 closely. Around the middle, he's entering the menu for a while.
What he's doing:
- refine Curagas from Tents and Cottages
- Card Mod Gayla -> Mystery Fluid -> currently unused, probably for Meltdowns later
- Card Mod Forbidden -> Betrayal Sword -> needed later to get a weapon for Squall
- Card Mod Diablos -> 100 Black Holes -> 300x Demi -> +36 Mag for everyone
- Card Mod Quistis -> 3 Samantha Souls -> 180x Triple -> +70 Str for one char, +56 Str for another
- Card Mod Zell -> 3 Hyper Wrists -> 3x STR+60%
Thus, Laguna goes from 42 str to 124, Kiros from 51 to 160.
Compare the previous battle against a soldier: Laguna does 386 damage. In the battles on the cliff, it's ~1200 while Kiros hits above 2000.
Yeah I suspected that you can morph them to something usefull and that's how the people got so strong. But it's really hard to make out in a youtube video. Thanks for the explaination. :)
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
When pirohiko released his FFIII run, he included comments in the movie file. I extracted them from the FM2 and converted them to subtitles, then added that to the movie on Youtube. The result is very nice.
So if DarkKobold doesn't write subtitles for his run, I think I might as a test. :)
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I was thinking just now about how we should go about encoding this movie.
The problem: FFVIII switches resolutions a lot. Normal gameplay is 320x224, whereas any full-screen menu is 368x216.
I've done some tests with a real PSX hooked up to my PC via composite cable (sorry, but my S-video is broken):
Gameplay on a genuine PSX.
Menu on a genuine PSX. (Both images have overscan cropping turned off.)
Gameplay in the emulator. Sorry, I only have a ripped ISO of the French version available on my computer right now, but since they're both PAL I assume this isn't a problem.
Menu in the emulator.
I loaded all four images in Photoshop and resized the emulator images until they matched the "genuine" screenshots. What I found is, unsurprisingly, that they don't have square pixels.
The regular gameplay picture had to be resized to about 216.79% in width and 200.42% in height. The menu went to 190.34% in width and 200.42% in height. Obviously, these are only approximations. Nothing scientific here. And of course the sizes of my PSX screenshots are arbitrary. It's only the aspect ratio that matters.
Here's how the emulated screenshots stack up when resized to suit the genuine screenshot exactly:
So, it's not a simple matter of giving everything a 4:3 aspect ratio. It would be nice if the encoding gods could give their thoughts on this.
Link to video
I have no idea how this happened. I can't seem to reproduce it.
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.
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.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
BadPotato wrote:
Dada wrote:
So, it's not a simple matter of giving everything a 4:3 aspect ratio. It would be nice if the encoding gods could give their thoughts on this.
There some thoughts about this, in this thread.
Also humbly requesting for the pjm file, at least once in a while.
Question to DarkKobold: are you using the NTSC or PAL version?
Request: can anyone make a screenshot of the first dialog box in the game ("How are you feeling?") as it appears on an actual PSX connected to a TV, and also one of the menu? I want to rule out the possibility of my capturing software (my PSX is connected to my computer) improperly resizing the image. Even just a photo taken from the front of the TV would be great, since I want to know what the aspect ratio roughly is. Preferably an old CRT TV since I don't know if 16:9 LCD TVs would make a difference in this regard.
I don't know if we can figure out a nice, scientific way to encode both these resolutions (since aside from being a different size, the menu also appears to be slightly differently positioned; at least on my capturing software). I think we might be able to resize the regular gameplay to 1280x896 using nearest neighbor (x4 original), then crop the menu to 357x216 (take off 11 px from the left side), upscale it to 1428x864 using nearest neighbor (x4 original), then downscale it to 1261x864 using regular bicubic resampling, and then letterbox it to 1280x896, positioning it in the top left with a black background.
The menu is then positioned at roughly the same place as in the screenshots I took from a real PSX using capture hardware. The resulting movie can then simply be given the correct aspect ratio in its meta information. I don't know if there's a better way to determine these sizes, but it's a start. I'll give it a try later.
So, it's not a simple matter of giving everything a 4:3 aspect ratio. It would be nice if the encoding gods could give their thoughts on this.
There some thoughts about this, in this thread.
Also humbly requesting for the pjm file, at least once in a while.
Question to DarkKobold: are you using the NTSC or PAL version?
NTSC - Also, sorry it took so much harassing to get those things.
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.
A TAS I made of this game a few years ago (CD1 is missing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o513qzk4dLA
sound desync fixed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHgJ8x2V3rc
Proper Playstation TASing wasn't available yet so I was limited to using save states (one slot), slow motion and autofire, which is the reason why menus and such things don't look very TAS-like.
DarkKobold wrote:
I have no idea how this happened. I can't seem to reproduce it.
Darkwasabi, the one who made the best unassisted speedrun might know, I think he also managed to skip that at least once.
A TAS I made of this game a few years ago (CD1 is missing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o513qzk4dLA
Proper Playstation TASing wasn't available yet so I was limited to using save states (one slot), slow motion and autofire, which is the reason why menus and such things don't look very TAS-like.
DarkKobold wrote:
I have no idea how this happened. I can't seem to reproduce it.
Darkwasabi, the one who made the best unassisted speedrun might know, I think he also managed to skip that at least once.
nice job, given the tools you had.
Also, you should note that Darkwasabi used Fastspeed CD option on his PS2, so while you have the exact same ingame time, yours is much faster, by ~20%, from what I gather.
Also, it turns out that skip is useless, because the patrol never starts, without it.
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.
Also, you should note that Darkwasabi used Fastspeed CD option on his PS2, so while you have the exact same ingame time, yours is much faster, by ~20%, from what I gather.
Yeah, I vaguely remembered that there was something like that, so I mentioned it in the description. The Fastspeed CD only makes the loads between screens faster, right? But given how many there are it could still add up a lot of time.
I noticed that the sounds went all wrong when I uploaded it on youtube, so I'll upload a new version if I can get the sounds right.
Dada wrote:
Nice way to handle the Garden fight, nfq. I didn't know that all you needed to do was visit the Library, Training Center, Infirmary and Quad.
thanks. i have a memory about possibly being able to skip the infirmary too, but i could be confusing the memories from the testing i did there
Ugh, so, I've done testing/coding in the past week.
I've finally integrated a working Analog plugin into the PSXjin code... but it actually slows down the loading of FF8 - essentially guaranteeing a longer run. All of this has something to do with vibration. I'm going to keep trying, but at the moment, my options are:
1) No Analog (No Rinoa skip)
2) Faulty Analog (inability to skip text boxes at the exact frame)
3) Working Analog (Slower load times)
4) Working Analog with no Vibration (more time beating my head against the wall of PSXjin, possibly never fixing it)
Also, I tested using Laser Eye with Quistis instead of Renzouken against Ifrit. It turned out much slower, and harder to manipulate. Even at Crisis Level 4, she only does around a max of around 370 damage. Plus, her HP is higher than Squall's, making Crisis Level 4 take longer to get.
Link to video
Even if I did better manipulation, I doubt I could get it faster.
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.
1) No Analog (No Rinoa skip)
2) Faulty Analog (inability to skip text boxes at the exact frame)
3) Working Analog (Slower load times)
I think the one which loses less time would be best option. Probably #2... I don't know how much slower the loading times in #3 is.
Watched your video. You could try a combination of both laser eye and renzokuken. Squall would almost become critical if you just laser eye him once. I think getting critical hits was hard in this game. Is it just a matter of right timing?
Have you tried if it's faster to take down the HP by drawing fire, because with luck you can do 150 HP damage? I did that in my TAS.
1) No Analog (No Rinoa skip)
2) Faulty Analog (inability to skip text boxes at the exact frame)
3) Working Analog (Slower load times)
I think the one which loses less time would be best option. Probably #2... I don't know how much slower the loading times in #3 is.
The issue with #2 is it makes TASing more of a pain in the ass. I think after a rest I will try and fix PSXjin more.
nfq wrote:
Watched your video. You could try a combination of both laser eye and renzokuken. Squall would almost become critical if you just laser eye him once. I think getting critical hits was hard in this game. Is it just a matter of right timing?
Critical hits are easy - I have a script that tells me exactly when to get them. Essentially, luck manipulation is performed by 'switching characters'. Hitting circle causes the character to 'switch', even if only one character has full ATB. However, even if a Limit Break is impossible, the game computes crisis level (and therefore consumes an RNG)
nfq wrote:
Have you tried if it's faster to take down the HP by drawing fire, because with luck you can do 150 HP damage? I did that in my TAS.
!!!!!!!!! I hadn't even remotely thought of that !!!!!!! Awesome!!!! According to the battle mechanics FAQ, which has become my bible, you can do up to ~1.75 times the normal power of the spell using draw/cast as opposed to cast. I abused this in my diablos fight, to deal nearly 50% damage with Demi.
Thanks!
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 mentioned drawing the fire earlier in this thread (page 3). Since you missed that you probably missed what I said about renting the car too. That could also be useful if money doesn't become an issue. Demi is very useful in Diablos, yeah... though I think it was still the longest fight in my TAS.
I noticed you had a video about NORG on your channel. Have you started doing Disc 2 yet? Would be interesting to know how much faster your run is. I had 3:22 ingame time when I accessed the menu with Zell in the prison.
Gameplay on a genuine PSX.
Menu on a genuine PSX. (Both images have overscan cropping turned off.)
Gameplay in the emulator. Sorry, I only have a ripped ISO of the French version available on my computer right now, but since they're both PAL I assume this isn't a problem.
Menu in the emulator.
I loaded all four images in Photoshop and resized the emulator images until they matched the "genuine" screenshots. What I found is, unsurprisingly, that they don't have square pixels.
The regular gameplay picture had to be resized to about 216.79% in width and 200.42% in height. The menu went to 190.34% in width and 200.42% in height. Obviously, these are only approximations. Nothing scientific here. And of course the sizes of my PSX screenshots are arbitrary. It's only the aspect ratio that matters.
Here's how the emulated screenshots stack up when resized to suit the genuine screenshot exactly:
So, it's not a simple matter of giving everything a 4:3 aspect ratio. It would be nice if the encoding gods could give their thoughts on this.
