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Highly Evolved
Still in verification process, although from what I heard it's leaning toward acceptance.  After that it'll be a couple months before posting.
I wonder if it's possible to do a glitched run of the game without tool assistance?

Basically, it's the old "Dream Ruby Bug".  It's basically a combination of two bugs.  I'll explain it here for anyone who is not familiar with it.

Normally, there are a few places in the game where you temporarily reduce your party size.  You do it in Assaram when you 'get your fortune told' or at Lancel when you agree to fight solo.
Bug: If your entire party is dead or paralyzed (numb), it will reduce your party down to the first member, whether or not they are dead.
You can reliably paralyze someone by using the Dream Ruby as an item.

Normally, the game checks what tiles your party members are standing on, and deals 2 damages to people standing on swamp tiles.  Because someone in the party may be dead, it also maintains a small 4-byte table to contain the party member order which excludes the dead people.  It also uses another small 4-byte table to store which tiles your party is currently standing on.
Bug: The game counts your total number of living party members to see when to stop within the small tables.  If your entire party is dead (0 living party members), it will go all crazy out of bounds.  It will check if 256 different party members are standing on swamp tiles, then deals 2 damage to each member who is standing on a swamp tile.

Normally, you have party members 0-3.  But if it damages an out of range party member, it subtracts 2 from a later stat from your party.  This is a 16-bit subtraction which will not go below zero.  If the value goes below zero, it pops up a "XXXX is dead" message window.
For example, damage guy #4, and guy #0 loses 2 max HP.  Or damage guy #27, then guy #1 loses a return destination, and guy #0 gains a bunch of return destinations.  Or damage guy #21, then guy #1 loses a little bit of EXP, and guy #0 gains 16 million EXP.  Or damage guy #57, and guy #2's third item changes to something else.

Code:
These are relative byte offsets from HP.

16 bit values:
HP: 0
Max HP: 8
MP: 16
Max MP: 24
Status: 32

24 bit values:
Exp: 40
Return Destinations: 52

8 byte values:
Name: 64
Inventory: 96
Magic spells known: 128


The effects are often random and unpredictable, but can be somewhat manipulated.  For instance, it always seems that one item in somebody's inventory will change by 2 every step taken.

You can intentionally manipulate the effects by using a link between the fairy water counter, and a counter used by the music playback.
Fairy Water counter is at address 0xAD.
Music counter is at address 0xD8.
If the value at 0xD8 is 01, 21, 41, 61, 81, A1, C1, or E1, it will trigger the effect of damaging the party member specified by 0xAD.  So stick 0x1B into the fairy water counter, and you get extra return destinations.

The real obstacle to doing this without tool assistance is knowing when the music counter will have the correct value.  You can easily force the fairy water counter to have whatever value you want.  By listening carefully and watching with a hex editor, you can learn what the music sounds like before you need to press the button to damage the corresponding guy.  But you may not be able to know how many "XXXX is dead" messages will pop up before it will check the character you are interested in.  It's easy to tell when you have the game running on a debugging emulator, but much harder on hardware.

Of course, after you glitch the game out like this, you end up with horrible max HP/MP stats on all characters, corrupted names, and they sometimes will not be revivable.
Highly Evolved
Ah, so it's not as easy as I had initially thought.

As it stands, it still would sit as another category, much like the two separate TASes.

And I know I've seen that username before...Dragon's Den?  I know you have the youtube vid showing the Dream Ruby glitch.
Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.
I've watched that TAS, the music note is actually a pretty obvious one to hit. It's the lower note in the town music, first bar of the phrase...I just can't remember if it's the tonic or dominant part right now. You know how it goes

actually I'm checking this in NSFPlug right now and that can show memory so I can double check in that.

hmmm...it shows it in rows, looking at the 8th nibble of the 00D8 row I can see:

B1 on approximately the 9th 16th note of the 1st bar of the loop
C1 on approximately the last 8th note of the 3rd bar
D1 on approximately the 3rd quarter note of the 5th bar

I'm going to stop there in case I'm looking at the wrong thing...my timing is probably far too imprecise for something like this anyway and this music counter value doesn't seem to rise at a steady rate at all either, it seems really arbitrary...maybe it's following the inner square voice which is hard to hear.

Remember that you have to start your uber slow Dragon Warrior step early to nail these...definitely practice this on emulator. (ugh that would be annoying to see if it even worked) Well, the only thing you NEED the messy memory manipulation for is to add Alefgard locations to your Return list. Items are done by scrolling the item IDs of things in your inventory so they transform into other things.

I wonder if anything game-breakingly bad could happen if you try to add lots of return locations by trial and error.
The TAS did some really strange thing where it managed to overwrite the number of active party members.  I didn't even know that was possible before dave_dfwm completed his TAS.  Normally you wouldn't have access to the other characters' inventories.

And it must be C1, not A1, not D1.  This is the game looking at a tile number, anding with 1F (to mask out the different rooms a tile could be in), then checking a separate table for swamp flags.  It just so happens that tile #1 has the swamp flag, so that's the tile we need.  And I don't think it would matter when you take the step, since it would be somewhere in the middle, after it has popped up a few "XXXX is dead" messages, you'd just need to dismiss the prompt at the right time.  I'm just speculating here, but I bet things would be more predictable if you reloaded the game, flew to Assaram, then ran down the fairy water counter without getting into any battles.  If you get an identical number of "XXXX is dead" prompts on an emulator as you do a console, then things are looking really good, but I highly doubt that would happen.  I don't think the fairy water counter is saved or loaded with savegames, so you need to re-use it every time you play.
Highly Evolved
We have had verification.

Game should go up in a couple of months, hopefully.
Question Darkwing.  What equipment and levels do you have at the end of each segment?  And do you bother picking up many of the treasure chests that you find? 
Highly Evolved
Wow, that's a long question to answer.

Let's see.

When I get to Romaly end of Segment 1, I believe I'm at level 4.  Fighters may be at level 5.  Everyone has starting equipment except the Hero has a Chain Sickle.

At Isis at the end of Segment 3, I have Iron Claws for all Fighters.  Hero stays the same.  Level is I believe 7.

End of Segment 4, no change in equipment.  Level is 12.  I need 12 so I can get close enough to level 20 in one shot in the Tower of Garuna.

End of 6, I'm at 20 so I can class change.  I have the Orochi Sword at this point, as well as an Iron Helmet.

End of 7, I've got the Cloak of Evasion and Zombie Slasher on the newly minted sage.  I don't get too much exp here, though I did get an unexpected metal encounter. 

End of 8, No change in equipment, just leveling and a few quest things.  24 and 19 were the level goals.  I think I was a bit short of this.

End of 9, maybe a level up, but it's just about beating the Necrogond.  Thunder Sword and Swordedge Armor is picked up for the Hero.

End of 10, I picked up two more Cloak of Evasions for the Fighters.

End of 11, I get the Sword of Kings.  Levels are fairly unimportant at this point.  Only important that I have Stepguard and Bikill.

End of 12, no equipment change.  I think I end up around level 30 for the fighters and hero, and 24 or so for the sage.  I do know that the Hero does not learn Healall.

I really don't pick up many chests.  I know I could pick up the Magic Knife in the Cave of Enticement.  I don't in the run though.  I don't know if the money gained (150) is worth the time spent to get it since I manipulate the monster arena for cash anyway.

No chests in the Cave of Enticement.  Only the Magic Key in the Pyramid.  None in the Cave NE of Baharata.  I did pick up the Training Suit in Norud's Cave in trial runs, but I found the gain is so minimal if not negligible that it wasn't necessary to get.

I pick up the Book of Satori and Iron Helmet in the Tower of Garuna.  The helmet is in the metal slime encounter area, so it's no problem picking that up.

Nothing in the Cave of Jipang.  Nothing in the Cave SE of Samanao except the Mirror of Ra.  The aforementioned Thunder Sword and Swordedge Armor in the Necrogond.

Basically, the reason to get chests in an RPG speedrun that aren't quest items is to either sell them or use them in battle.  I am never in need of gold in this run outside of buying the Iron Claws.  The grinding I have to do gives me enough gold for what I need.  Now, if there ends up being better strategies, and gold becomes necessary, than there may be some chests you need to get.
Nother question yet again Darkwing.  Where in the Garuna Tower is the best place to find Metal Slimes?  I can't find that information in any of the walkthroughs!
Highly Evolved
Top three floors. 

You may enjoy the stuff that 1whoistornapart from Gamefaqs has. 

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dd9gtxg8_0c97n5fzm
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd9gtxg8_4cw5pjd8c
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd9gtxg8_7ftpqjxc9
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd9gtxg8_5rjmhqqdj


Edit:

Specifically, for your question:

LIST 86 - Tower of Garuna (4F, 5F, 6F)
Config: 0  3-Chance: 0%  4-Chance: 0%

16.3743%  1  Garuda (Stingwing / Metal Slime / Sky Dragon)
8.18713%  2  Stingwing (Garuda / Metal Slime / Sky Dragon)
8.18713%  3  Metal Slime (Garuda / Stingwing / Sky Dragon)
11.6959%  5  Sky Dragon x1, (Garuda x3, Stingwing x3, Metal Slime x7)
8.18713%  6  Garuda x2-3
8.18713%  7  Stingwing x4
8.18713%  8  Metal Slime x3-7
8.18713%  9  Great Beak x2-3
16.3743%  10 Garuda x2-3
6.43275%  11 Sky Dragon x1
Highly Evolved
Now on site!


whee!!!!
There's a word for that
Segments 7 and 9 are missing! Cheesy
Highly Evolved
Are they? 

Another thing to hit Breakdown with.  I've had trouble just accessing the video.
Haters gonna hate
Those files are indeed not on the server, or at least not anywhere they're supposed to be.  I'll ask nate about it, this'll get fixed.
Highly Evolved
BAH, you replied here just as I was in the process of PM'ing you.

Uh, you can ignore the PM then.  :-[
Haters gonna hate
For those not following (or unaware of) the thread in tech support all files for all qualities are now available, sorry for the delay.
Highly Evolved
Thanks, guys.  Great work as always.
Highly Evolved
Segments 7 and 9 are still backwards, so until that is reversed, download 9 after 6 and 7 after 8, or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 8, 7, 10, 11, 12.

EDIT:  Scratch that.  Part 7 is actually Part 8.  Disregard this until I can figure out which is which.
100% runs=great to watch
:head asplodes...for once a reason OTHER than the run being freaking awesome:  Tongue
Highly Evolved
Okay, it's in sequence.  Download at your leisure 
100% runs=great to watch
The run was indeed awesome and well worth watching!  8)
Highly Evolved
All right, reviving topic since I've been working on improving the run.


Finished a practice segmented run at a time of 4:52:09 with a throw away final segment which should be 4 minutes faster to even be considered an acceptable segment. 

Will go for sub 4:40 when I start recording.
I look forward to the results.  At this point I think you've heard all my suggestions and questions.
Highly Evolved
I suppose I should keep the same format I did for the run 4 years ago, so here goes.  I'll use the same timing method I used back then, which is slightly slower than how SDA times.

Segment 1

SDA run:        27:09
Practice run:    23:50
Current run:    21:39

Segment 2

SDA run:      6:09
Practice run:  7:18
Current run:  4:25


A lot of the time is using the correct message speed, as Booty pointed out to me.  The other time gained is that I'm not using the soldier equipment trick to get cash.  I'm skipping the chain sickle until Romaly.

With the second segment, I found some nice battles to manipulate for the casino.  Got an x18 and an x27 in a five battle span.  Let's me get an Iron Spear instead of a chain sickle.  Will help slightly in the next couple of segments.  I need the exp from Kanave anyway, so the extra 200 gold will get me a few more battle that I'd need anyway.
Willing to teach you the impossible
Doing this in the NES version?

Do you plan on leaking any of your videos to Youtube?