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Flip: 2011-06-01 10:26:22 pm
Flip: 2011-06-01 10:22:33 pm
Flip: 2011-06-01 10:22:20 pm
1-Up!
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/ChronoTrigger.html

Any% Segmented run.

Verifier Responses

Quote:
Alrighty. Audio quality is fine, video quality is a little bit grubby but I'm not remotely bothered by it. Onto the run itself! Since the game already has a run (and it's kind of a good one, and is also on the Japanese version), I'm going to compare this run to the current one based on the time saved (or lost) at each juncture. The new runners' knowledge of RNG manipulation means that he should be able to completely plan battles in advance (not that inichi didn't), and there are still a few places where some plain old optimisation is possible, so an improvement to a run of this quality should leave no virtual stone unturned.

Segment 1: Saves time in the final battle by taking out the first enemy in one hit.
Segment 2: More optimal tech usage in the first fight, and improves the second with an extra crit. Doesn't heal at the end.
Segment 3: Saves ~5 seconds in the Yakra fight thanks to extra crits, and uses a menu trick to avoid being attacked when running near the end.
Segment 4: Extra crits in the Guard fights; these also let Chrono retain more MP for the next segment. Save time is a minute ahead of inichi's already!
Segment 5: The Dragon Tank fight is improved by ~12 seconds thanks to extra crits, more MP and less healing.
Segment 6: Deliberately runs into rats in Lab 16, using the messages that pop up to move over spots that world normally trigger battles. Buys an Auto Gun for Lucca at the end of the segment.
Segment 7: Defeats the Guardian ~20 seconds faster despite killing it after it revives the Bits, thanks to fewer AmpliFire counters early on and Lucca's new weapon.
Segment 8: Extra crit in the Bugger fight, but falls short of inichi's score in the race against Johnny by over 400 points. REJECT
Segment 9/10: The runner puts an extra segment in here, to allow the Acid to be defeated in two hits. No improvement time-wise to the 5x Alkaline fight, but it's hard enough just to get it to appear in the first place. The R-Series fight is also the same.
Segments 11-14: Basically the same as inichi's with some minor optimisations, because physical attacks aren't used much, and so RNG manipulation changes very little. Saves a few seconds against Zombor thanks to an extra crit on the upper half, and grabs the Magic Tab from the Kilwala at the top of the mountain.
Segment 15: Grabs three extra items on the way to the Masamune. Saves nearly half a minute against the big fella thanks to extra crits and abusing his charge-up time, meaning that the battle is completed without healing.
Segment 16-19: Optimises the Reptite Lair and saves 15 seconds against Nizbel because crits. The rest is the same.
Segment 20: Saves ~10 seconds against Flea (no Heals used) and ~8 against Slash. Frog also survives the Slash fight now.
Segment 21: Same as inichi's.
Segment 22: Mucho RNG abuse in the Magus fight allows the runner to make an improvement of 3/4 of a minute, and finish the segment 3 minutes ahead of inichi's time!
Segment 23: Same, minor fumble at the ladder before reaching the summit, only noteworthy one I've noticed in the whole run. REJECT
Segment 24-27: 'The grind' begins. Only notable difference (as far as I cared to notice anyway, although Ayla gets all the TP she needs this time) is that the runner switches out Marle for Lucca part way through the second grinding segment.
Segment 28: Nizbel II fight, same as before.
Segment 29: Improves the BlackTyrano fight by ~49 seconds, again despite the fact he reaches "0", mostly thanks to Lucca. Near the end of this segment is where the route starts to change significantly; rather than fighting the Golem, the runner walks all the way back to the time gate.
Segment 30-32: The runner heads straight to 600 AD to do the Sunken Desert quest and get the GreenDream. The Retinite battle is slightly slower than before, but this is understandable as Crono no longer has the Swallow sword. Ayla also Charms a Speed Tab off the core.
Segment 33: Lavos time! Nearly half a minute is saved over the course of the segment despite having inferior equipment, again thanks to in the inclusion of Lucca, as well as more prolific use of Dino Tail. Around 9 minutes in total were saved from the point where the route changed.
Segment 34: The final battles are slower (he turns the battle speed down to 5), but honestly it's amazing he was able to complete them at all. Without the Gold Erng Ayla's Dino Tail is weaker, and without the Lumin Robe she can't tank Lavos' hits, so Crono has to do it instead. The planning for the first fight is outstanding, and the final final fight is done incredibly smoothly; I assume the use of Ice Sword 1 (as opposed to 2) in the first battle is to save on MP in the second, because Crono nearly runs out by the end. Also probably where all those Speed Tabs come into play.

The save time at the end of seg 33 was 3:09, 13 minutes ahead of inichi. Accounting for the fact that the runner does his menu work at the start of this segment rather than the end of the previous, he loses a little over 2 minutes in total (mostly in the first fight), so the final time should come out to be 3:23. ...In a way it's kind of a shame that I know so much about this game. If I were still a newbie I'd probably be blown away right now Tongue

Still, I should stress just how impeccably planned this run is, and not just in terms of getting an extra crit here and there. Enemy attacks are manipulated to be spread out perfectly, such that in many cases he doesn't need to heal. Otherwise, they target exactly the right character he wants to tank the hit, and he always knows exactly what item/ability to use and when. Every chance to abuse the RNG was taken, even in long segments like seg 20/22, where getting a long-term beneficial outcome would have been difficult due to how long the fights take. This is what made the huge improvements to the end of the run possible. In fact, unless a serious strategical change is discovered at some point (or something is done with glitch abuse), I'd say this is about as good as it's ever going to get. I do hope a 100% improvement run is made one of these days though Smiley

Accept.


Quote:
I had no idea until reading the runner's notes (granted, through a translator) that you could manipulate how battles turn out just by when you choose to load up the save file. I don't know if inichi's run abused this as well, but it's still cool either way. Verifier #1 has more detailed notes than I'd ever be able to put together for this, so all I will say is that because there is no problem with the video or audio, there is no cheating, and this is a 10+ minute improvement over inichi's already tight run, it's an easy accept in my book.

It's pretty awesome that we've had a handful of runs submitted by Japanese runners lately.


Quote:
Sorry, this is going to be a novel. I compared this run closely with inichi's run. Here are the main differences between the two:
-Better battle manipulation. The runner loads each save at a specific time in order to get the battle outcomes that he wants.
-The runner holds down the X button to select physical attacks. Not only is this a faster way to select physical attacks, but it also allows him to leave the cursor on the tech or item menus.
-He avoids 5 more encounters than inichi did (the Truce Canyon battle three times, and two in Dactyl Nest).
-He switches in Lucca partway during the grinding at Tyrano Lair. This made the Black Tyrano and Lavos outer shell fights faster through the use of Lucca and Ayla's fire whirl double tech.
-At Zeal Palace, instead of going through all the cutcenes with fighting Golem and getting captured, he talks to the lady about planting the seed to make the Sunken Desert appear, and then immediately leaves.
-He doesn't pick up any sealed items (lumin robe, gold earring, or swallow).
-He does pick up more magic tabs, speed tabs, and mid ethers. The magic tabs increase Lucca and Ayla's fire whirl damage.

There were, however, a few things that were persistent problems throughout the run:
-There were many places where the runner should have moved diagonally and didn't; for example, instead of moving diagonally down right, the runner would move straight down and then straight right. This happened throughout the run, and I think it looks bad.
-There were many encounters that the runner avoided more slowly than inichi did.
-It also appears that at the End of Time, the runner didn't hold down the A button when walking into a pillar of light. Holding A will make the text box appear immediately, which saves a bit of time. However, I don't think inichi did this in his run either.

The runner's final time was about 13 minutes faster than inichi's, but because of slower final battles (due to not picking up the sealed items), it ends up being about 11 minutes faster.

Individual segment comments
Segment 1
Gave the bandana to Lucca and was able to kill the last two roly-riders in one hit each.

Segment 2
Inichi's strategy was to have Lucca take extra damage in both the battles in this segment so that she would die soon in the Yakra fight (which would stop him from doing his counterattack).  However, the runner doesn't have to worry about Lucca taking damage in this segment because he is able to manipulate Yakra to not do any counterattacks.  As a result, both battles in this segment are faster.  He kills the Naga-ettes with a fire whirl on 3 + flame toss, which is faster than two fire whirls.  He also picked up fewer items, used a new trick to slide quickly down one of the staircases, and didn't heal at the end.

Segment 3
Yakra fight was about 7 seconds faster due to no counterattacks from the boss.

Segment 4
critical on first Guard
I wonder why, in the second battle, he chose to kill the second guard with two attacks instead of a single cyclone. He had enough MP to do it, since he has 4 left at the end of the Dragon Tank fight, and it seems like it would have been a second or two faster.  Didn't pick up mid tonics from the knocked-out guards.

Segment 5
Dragon Tank was about 14 seconds faster due to better manipulation of criticals and less healing. Skipped a short cutscene that occurs when you run into the guards after going down the stairs.

Segment 6
Ran into two rats to save time, and even used the text box from one of them to avoid a nearby encounter more quickly. Bought a weapon for Lucca at Arris Dome so she could do more damage on the next boss.

Segment 7
Even though the bits got revived, the Guardian battle was still almost 20 seconds faster because of more damage from Lucca and fewer enemy attacks.

Segment 8
The Johnny race isn't perfect (it does actually go a bit faster if you stay in front of Johnny), but it doesn't matter because the race doesn't count on the in-game timer. The battle in Proto Dome is nice and fast. He ends this segment early in order to manipulate the first acid battle at the Factory.

Segment 9
Short segment; kills the acid in two hits, but I wonder if it's possible to kill it with a single critical from Robo.

Segment 10
Manipulates all enemies to be Alkaline so he can use cyclone without worrying about their counterattack when Acid is present. Not much to say about the R-series battle, although it made me sad that there were no idle antics while Robo was getting beat up.

Segment 11
The 3 encounters that he avoided in Heckran Cave could have been done a little faster (especially the first one), but it's only a difference of maybe a second. He also left the battle speed at 4 for this entire segment. Because of these two things, when I compared this section of the run with inichi's, it looks like inichi's is about 2 seconds faster.

Segment 12
Heckran was about 3 seconds faster, mainly due to faster command selections. I'm guessing he picked up the Taban Vest so Lucca would take less damage on the next few bosses, meaning less healing during those battles. While waiting for Taban at Lucca's house, he could have saved a tiny bit of time by standing further down the stairs. It also appears that he didn't hold A when entering the pillars of light at the End of Time, but instead just walked into the pillar and then pressed A. (Am I being too nitpicky? It's probably pretty obvious who I am at this point.)  However, he managed to avoid the encounter in Truce Canyon! This is one of the hardest battles to avoid in the run, so it's good that he managed to do it after a boss battle. (He does this trick two more times later in the run, but both of those are at the beginning of the segment.) When talking to the Chef, he saved about a second by making one of text boxes disappear quickly; I'd always done this by talking to one of the other NPCs, but he apparently does it by moving up and down, which is quicker.

Segment 13
Zombor fight used a different strategy, but was still about as fast as inichi's. However, at one point in the battle he has Lucca and Marle wait to do Antipode, which makes me wonder if he could have saved time by doing the waiting right at the beginning of the battle instead (because Antipode takes a lot longer when the boss is at the right side of the screen). Maybe this was done to manipulate the boss's pattern, though.

Segment 14
On the waterfall screen, the way he avoided the encounter was different and possibly slightly slower. However, he saved a bit of time on the screen with endless battles (hopefully you know what I'm talking about) by running straight through the second time (because those battles don't spawn the second time, so there's no need to try to avoid them). He also got the magic tab from the Kilwala.

Segment 15
Picked up a few items that inichi didn't (mid ether, speed tab, and gold suit).  Masamune was manipulated to spread attacks out so no healing was needed; the runner also avoided the boss's first charging phase by getting him to go into his second attack pattern right at the perfect time. This resulted in the battle being about 30 seconds faster.

Segment 16
When he could first move at the party, he chose to go down and around Ayla instead of just going above her, which cost about 2 seconds.

Segment 17
Pretty much the same as inichi's.

Segment 18
Nizbel was about 15 seconds faster due to more critical hits. There were a couple new tricks in this segment that save a bit of time. First, when you try to leave Ayla's hut, normally she stops you for a second; however, if you talk to Ayla first then exit while the text box is still up, you don't get stopped. The second trick was while the Masamune is getting repaired; I'm still not quite sure how it works - I think you have to talk to stand by and/or talk to Lucca and Melchior at the right time - but this cutscene was about 5 seconds faster than inichi's.  He picked up speed tab from the elder's house in Medina and ended this segment early so he could avoid the Truce Canyon encounter.

Segment 19
The cutscene-heavy part of the run - nothing important.

Segment 20
I still wish I understood how the Flea battle works. Here it took longer for Flea to get stuck where he doesn't attack, but he also never did his "charm" attack; I'm guessing the runner avoided it by having Crono and Robo attack at specific times. This combined with not needing to heal HP or status effects made the battle about 11 seconds faster.  Slash was about 8 seconds faster, mainly due to less healing. Frog also survived the battle, but it doesn't make a difference.

Segment 21
Took about 4 seconds longer to avoid one of the outlaws, and also lost about a second avoiding the very last encounter.

Segment 22
Beautiful manipulation on Magus: He did fire every time, and Lucca was given a magic tab so she would do more damage. About 45 seconds were saved here.

Segment 23
He avoided two encounters in the Dactyl Nest that inichi didn't. (By the way, one of the previous verifiers said that he fumbled at the ladder near the end, but he actually did that movement on purpose to avoid the encounter there.) He opted to take the long way around to avoid one of the rock enemies, but I guess that's understandable given the difficulty of avoiding all the battles here. He equipped the bandana on Ayla, which turns out to be very helpful in the next few segments.

Segment 24
He saved maybe a second by moving around the first monkey a little more quickly and finding a way to avoid hitting switch to make the enemies fall in the hole. However, the first time he went through the screen before Nizbel, he could have saved a bit of time by moving diagonally at the beginning.  It was a pretty smart move to equip the bandana on Ayla for the grinding section; because of this, he can select falcon hit right away and he doesn't have to worry about the enemies moving far apart enough that he won't hit all four with the default selection.

Segment 25
Here, the grinding differs from inichi's in that the runner switches in Lucca after Marle learns Ice2 (instead of leaving Marle in the entire time).

Segment 26
Same as inichi's, except for Lucca being in the party.

Segment 27
At the end of this segment Lucca was level 29 and Marle was level 28, compared with levels 27 and 30 in inichi's run. The tech points that Lucca received, though, was much more important, as will be seen later on.

Segment 28
Nizbel was almost the same, except he did one less attack, making the battle 4 seconds faster. The Tyrano Lair is one of the hardest places to avoid encounters, but there were still some places where the runner could have moved diagonally and still avoided them. He switched in Lucca instead of Marle for the next fight.

Segment 29
Even though the Tyrano did his flame attack, this battle was about 47 seconds faster because he killed Azala faster, did fewer spincuts, and fire whirl has a shorter animation than cube toss. The runner opted to do some shopping at Enhasa and pick up the speed tab at Kajar. Then here is the route diverges from inichi's: After talking to the lady with the seed in Zeal Palace, he immediately walks all the way back to the gate and heads to 600 A.D. This also means he doesn't get any of the sealed items that inichi got (lumin robe, gold earring, and swallow). Before this segment, the run had been about 2-3 minutes ahead of inichi's, but after this route change that lead was increased by about 10 minutes.

Segment 30
A short segment to avoid the hard-to-avoid encounter in Truce Canyon. For reference, the runner's time is 2:45 compared with inichi's 2:57.

Segment 31
He skipped a few of the treasures and charmed a speed tab from Retinite's core. Retinite was about 13 seconds slower because Crono didn't have the swallow. He then gives 1 magic tab and 3 speed tabs to Ayla, which makes her quite the powerhouse in the final segments.

Segment 32
The shopping was same as inichi's, except the runner had to sell more items because of the extra shopping at Arris Dome and Enhasa.

Segment 33
The first big difference here is that the runner brought Lucca instead of Robo and used fire whirl instead of twister, which worked out well because of Lucca's higher speed and magic. The next big difference was that on the Black Tyrano phase, he waited for Black Tyrano to chomp Ayla before killing Azala so he could use dino tail. Before Giga Gaia and Lavos Shell, he healed Ayla just enough so she could survive their opening attacks and still use dino tail. The whole Lavos Shell section was about 40 seconds faster, and the time at the final save was 3:09 (compared with inichi's 3:22).

Segment 34
Because the runner didn't have the lumin robe or the gold earring, Ayla wouldn't be able to tank hits. He got around that by turning the battle speed down to 5 instead of 2; this way he was able to kill the left arm before the second laser beams attack and even kill the boss before it did shadow doom blaze! The final two battles were almost TAS-like, in that the runner would heal someone right before they'd get hit. Even though this segment was slower than inichi's (mainly due to Ayla's dino tail doing less damage without the gold earring), the final time was about 11 minutes faster.

Final verdict
This was a very well-planned run, and the battle manipulations were superb. It was amazing that he was able to defeat Lavos without picking up any sealed items. I still feel like inichi's run had better movement and battle avoidance, but it's probably only a difference of a few seconds. My verdict is an accept.


Quote:
Well dang, I was about 80% through the verification of this run when the above verifier posted. To avoid redundancy, I'll just say that the run is superb and extremely well planned and manipulated.

Audio/Visual is good and better than inichi's run. The runner was able to use a load screen trick to manipulate battles to go exactly how he wanted them to. This is most evident by him only healing in battles right before that character would take damage. This causes battles like Masamune(where he never heals), and the Final Lavos battles(only heals right before a character would be killed) to be possible and planned out.

The big time-saver in the run is that he skips the Pendent in 12,000 B.C., and therefore skips getting the Swallow/Lumin Robe/Gold Earring. This causes the final battles to all be a little slower but the time saved from not getting the Pendent and those items far outstrips that.

The time appears to be about a 3:23, about 11 minutes ahead of Inichi's time. Small movement errors aside, the run is amazing and an easy Accept.


Quote:
Audio/video quality are fine.  Runner has impressive knowledge of encounter hitboxes (did a couple of battle skips I didn't know were possible) and RNG manipulation through game load timing.  Definite route improvement over the previous run by skipping the Pendant sidequest.

I don't really have anything to add to the above verifiers' segment-specific comments, and saw very few flaws in the run.  I vote to accept.


Quote:
This run is really, really awful. It is so awful that, in fact, I'm just gonna have to go ahead and accept it.
(Yeah.. I really don't have anything useful to add that wasn't already said.)


Decision: Accept

Reason: It's a tight improvement.

Congratulations to 'bay!'
Thread title:  
My feelings on The Demon Rush
It turns out Bay doesn't want his runs posted because he's getting burned out from speedrunning. Sad

If anyone wants to download this run within the next month or so, PM me or Flip for a link.
Edit history:
Tranquilite: 2011-09-19 02:11:31 pm
While I don't understand why getting burned out should stop an existing run from being posted, I agree that - regardless of reason - the runner's wishes should be respected. Sad
Everything's better with Magitek
Aww. Sad
from red to blue
wat
Willing to teach you the impossible
Yes I want!!! PMing now
We all scream for Eyes Cream
I might as well say it here. If bay happens to read this, I'm not accusing, I'm just saying it for fun.


The Magus fight...looks like TAS. That's how good it was. Tongue
Professional Second Banana
I couldn't get past how the runner knew the RNG mechanics well enough to manipulate battles via the frame he loaded his save files on - a true loss for SDA...
can this video still be found?
Yes, a cucco riding the ground.
According to Mike, the runner doesn't want it to be posted. I'm going to respect his wishes and not upload it.