Final Fantasy VIII

2008-09-01 01:44:30 pm

Hello people, Brute from... ff7 here.
I happened to be lurking in this topic yesterday and saw that you are trying to get a better understanding of the game's REP (RE pattern). I was the one who, semi-accidentally, discovered that walking could remove REs in ff7 and from there on worked out the technique I often refer to as "REPm" (Random Encounter Pattern manipulation, aka walk-trick) which is used to simply remove unwanted encounters wherever possible.

Reading what darkwasabi wrote in his latest post about the pattern always being the same (except for on the world map) and that he had experienced an encounter disappearing after walking for a split second (instead of running all the way) got me thinking.
darkwasabi also said that the walk-trick from ff7 doesn't work in ff8 since walking only results in more REs. However this is exactly the case in ff7 as well, unless you know what you're doing walking (in ff7) will not result in less encounters but rather the opposite. All this made it sound like ff8's REP very well could work just like ff7's REP.

So, I got curious and decided to have a look at ff8. And from what I can tell after a quick glance is that the mechanics that handle RE occurrence in ff8 fileds seem to work just like in ff7 (although the absolute values of the variables involved differ). This means that REPm/walk-tricking should be possible in ff8 as well.

As for how to actually preform the walk-trick with success is unfortunately easier said than done and even with a full understanding of the trick one has to resort to trial and error from each save-point before he/she can know how to best perform the trick in the segment at hand.
It is because of this little inconvenience I put together an applet called the "REP Calc" which simply put does the trial and error for you. However, since the values involved differ from the two games this little tool would not work in ff8 unless modified. The reason I'm telling you about this applet is because now that I know that it could work with ff8 I may actually make it happen, that is however a mere possibility and not at all a promise of any kind.
Whit or without the applet It is however still possible to REPm since all the applet does is essentially to lighten the workload when trying to find out how to best REPm.

Hello people, Brute from... ff7 here.
I happened to be lurking in this topic yesterday and saw that you are trying to get a better understanding of the game's REP (RE pattern). I was the one who, semi-accidentally, discovered that walking could remove REs in ff7 and from there on worked out the technique I often refer to as "REPm" (Random Encounter Pattern manipulation, aka walk-trick) which is used to simply remove unwanted encounters wherever possible.

Reading what darkwasabi wrote in his latest post about the pattern always being the same (except for on the world map) and that he had experienced an encounter disappearing after walking for a split second (instead of running all the way) got me thinking.
darkwasabi also said that the walk-trick from ff7 doesn't work in ff8 since walking only results in more REs. However this is exactly the case in ff7 as well, unless you know what you're doing walking (in ff7) will not result in less encounters but rather the opposite. All this made it sound like ff8's REP very well could work just like ff7's REP.

So, I got curious and decided to have a look at ff8. And from what I can tell after a quick glance is that the mechanics that handle RE occurrence in ff8 fileds seem to work just like in ff7 (although the absolute values of the variables involved differ). This means that REPm/walk-tricking should be possible in ff8 as well.

As for how to actually preform the walk-trick with success is unfortunately easier said than done and even with a full understanding of the trick one has to resort to trial and error from each save-point before he/she can know how to best perform the trick in the segment at hand.
It is because of this little inconvenience I put together an applet called the "REP Calc" which simply put does the trial and error for you. However, since the values involved differ from the two games this little tool would not work in ff8 unless modified. The reason I'm telling you about this applet is because now that I know that it could work with ff8 I may actually make it happen, that is however a mere possibility and not at all a promise of any kind.
Whit or without the applet It is however still possible to REPm since all the applet does is essentially to lighten the workload when trying to find out how to best REPm.

Carcinogen

2008-09-01 02:11:37 pm

0_0

BrutalAl, I fucking love you.

darkwasabi

2008-09-01 02:52:16 pm

King of hearts

Well shit, I thought the walking trick was to just walk through an area you know you'll get an encounter in since every time I saw it, the person would walk through that entire area.

Where can I find this REP calc? Even better would be the formula you use to calculate REPs.

Maglok

2008-09-02 03:15:08 am

Dum die dum

Wow, that would be a nice breakthrough for FF8. Smiley

Keep us posted.

darkwasabi

2008-09-02 09:26:10 am

King of hearts

BrutalAl is the fucking man, he'd make Chuck Norris his bitch if he just felt like it. Lots of info has been uncovered about the way REs work, so here goes.

There are 4 values that are important:
stepID
danger value
the stepID's danger value limit
an offsync

Don't worry about offsync for now, it's not important in explaining how the process works.

For every step you take, your stepID and your danger values go up. Your danger value is what determines if you go into a RE. If your danger value is greater than the stepID's danger value limit, you get into a RE. Your stepID is just the number of your step, it goes up by 1 for every step you take. Each stepID has it's own danger value limit. Your danger value goes up by 5 for every running step, and up by 2 for every walking step.

Here's an example:
stepID 1 has a danger value limit of 30
stepID 2 DVL is 40
stepID 3 DVL is 33
stepID 4 DVL is 37
stepID 5 DVL is 17

Each running step the danger value goes up by 5, so we start running

at stepID 1 your danger value goes up to 5
at stepID 2 your danger value goes up to 10
stepID 3 goes up to 15
stepID 4 goes up to 20
stepID 5 goes up to 25

25>17 so you get into an RE.

Now lets walk. Your danger value goes up by only 2 for each step.

StepID 1 goes up to 2
StepID 2 goes up to 4
StepID 3 goes up to 6
StepID 4 goes up to 8
StepID 5 goes up to 10

10<17 so no RE.

This is how you can use walking to avoid REs. Each step with walking though is much shorter than with running, so with running you might get out of the area at stepID 25, but with walking you'd get out at stepID 50. So unless you use it right, walking could make things worse.

The offsync that I was talking about goes up by 13 every time your stepID loops from 255 back down to 0. It alters your danger value limits somehow(haven't found out yet) so you don't have a set pattern every 256 steps.

There are only 2 ways to bring that danger value back down to 0, one is to get into a RE and the other is to save and reset. Saving doesn't save your danger value, but it does save your stepID and your offsync. Your stepID danger value limits seem to be set in stone and are only altered by the offsync. This is why you'd always get the same battles every time you reset.

The way the menu trick works is that while the menu is fading away, you can run, but your stepID and danger values don't go up. So it only postpones your REs.

BrutalAl is the fucking man, he'd make Chuck Norris his bitch if he just felt like it.  Lots of info has been uncovered about the way REs work, so here goes.

There are 4 values that are important:
stepID
danger value
the stepID's danger value limit
an offsync

Don't worry about offsync for now, it's not important in explaining how the process works.

For every step you take, your stepID and your danger values go up.  Your danger value is what determines if you go into a RE.  If your danger value is greater than the stepID's danger value limit, you get into a RE.  Your stepID is just the number of your step, it goes up by 1 for every step you take.  Each stepID has it's own danger value limit.  Your danger value goes up by 5 for every running step, and up by 2 for every walking step.

Here's an example:
stepID 1 has a danger value limit of 30
stepID 2 DVL is 40
stepID 3 DVL is 33
stepID 4 DVL is 37
stepID 5 DVL is 17

Each running step the danger value goes up by 5, so we start running

at stepID 1 your danger value goes up to 5
at stepID 2 your danger value goes up to 10
stepID 3 goes up to 15
stepID 4 goes up to 20
stepID 5 goes up to 25

25>17 so you get into an RE.

Now lets walk.  Your danger value goes up by only 2 for each step.

StepID 1 goes up to 2
StepID 2 goes up to 4
StepID 3 goes up to 6
StepID 4 goes up to 8
StepID 5 goes up to 10

10<17 so no RE.

This is how you can use walking to avoid REs.  Each step with walking though is much shorter than with running, so with running you might get out of the area at stepID 25, but with walking you'd get out at stepID 50.  So unless you use it right, walking could make things worse.

The offsync that I was talking about goes up by 13 every time your stepID loops from 255 back down to 0.  It alters your danger value limits somehow(haven't found out yet) so you don't have a set pattern every 256 steps.

There are only 2 ways to bring that danger value back down to 0, one is to get into a RE and the other is to save and reset.  Saving doesn't save your danger value, but it does save your stepID and your offsync.  Your stepID danger value limits seem to be set in stone and are only altered by the offsync.  This is why you'd always get the same battles every time you reset.

The way the menu trick works is that while the menu is fading away, you can run, but your stepID and danger values don't go up.  So it only postpones your REs.

darkwasabi

2008-09-02 09:29:53 am

King of hearts

I just thought of something. What if you ran, and just as the danger value goes up, you walk. So you'll go the distance as with running, but your danger value only goes up by 2 instead of 5!

I gotta test this out!

illuminated

2008-09-02 10:10:11 am

danger value...what's that? Can you actually get into more encounters by running than walking? I never heard of that.

darkwasabi

2008-09-02 10:15:06 am

King of hearts

Read my previous post, it's on the previous page so I can see how people might miss it.

BrutalAl

Edit history:

BrutalAl: 2008-09-02 04:41:15 pm

2008-09-02 10:56:24 am

Quote from darkwasabi:

I just thought of something. What if you ran, and just as the danger value goes up, you walk. So you'll go the distance as with running, but your danger value only goes up by 2 instead of 5!

Yes, I call that Advanced REPm, it works in ff7. You can run 95% of the step length and then walk the rest 5% and the game will register it as if you walked all the way. This is really hard to pull of though since you have no way of really knowing exactly when the stepID will increase.

I discovered a difference between the two games in how they handle different frequencies of REs on different filedmaps.
In ff8 the danger value always increase by 5 when you run and by 2 when you walk, what's different from one field to another is the distance you have to travel to increase the stepID.
In ff7 the distance is always the same regardless of fieldmap but instead different fieldmaps increase the danger value by different amounts per stepID increase. Also the ratio between walk/run in ff7 is 1/4.

Without too much thinking both these differences sound unfavorable for ff8, meaning that walk-tricking in ff8 might perhaps not be as "powerful" as in ff7, but of course still doable.

[quote="darkwasabi"]
I just thought of something.  What if you ran, and just as the danger value goes up, you walk.  So you'll go the distance as with running, but your danger value only goes up by 2 instead of 5!
[/quote]

Yes, I call that Advanced REPm, it works in ff7. You can run 95% of the step length and then walk the rest 5% and the game will register it as if you walked all the way. This is really hard to pull of though since you have no way of really knowing exactly when the stepID will increase.

I discovered a difference between the two games in how they handle different frequencies of REs on different filedmaps.
In ff8 the danger value always increase by 5 when you run and by 2 when you walk, what's different from one field to another is the distance you have to travel to increase the stepID.
In ff7 the distance is always the same regardless of fieldmap but instead different fieldmaps increase the danger value by different amounts per stepID increase. Also the ratio between walk/run in ff7 is 1/4.

Without too much thinking both these differences sound unfavorable for ff8, meaning that walk-tricking in ff8 might perhaps not be as "powerful" as in ff7, but of course still doable.

darkwasabi

2008-09-02 11:30:19 am

King of hearts

Right now I'm looking for an emulator or plugin that allows me to either view the RAM values in realtime, or allows me to move one frame at a time. Pausing and unpausing isn't too convenient...

What does GarlandG use for his FF7 TAS?

Maglok

2008-09-03 02:50:59 am

Dum die dum

Nice explanation Wasabi, but what happens in areas like the core where you fight Bahamuth? That is totally based on the light right?

Another thing that popped into my head is, what exactly does Enc-half do? Make your danger level go up 2,5 when running?

asd

2008-09-03 06:52:53 am

Quote from darkwasabi:

Right now I'm looking for an emulator or plugin that allows me to either view the RAM values in realtime, or allows me to move one frame at a time. Pausing and unpausing isn't too convenient...

there's a new emulator on tasvideos that has frame advance. and you can use l spiro's memory hacking tool to view the RAM, but i don't know what use that would be if you have the rep calc.

darkwasabi

2008-09-03 12:16:51 pm

King of hearts

Frame advance was for me to know exactly how far to walk and run to do the advanced REPm(run, then walk to only get 2 to danger value instead of 5). It seems as though pSX emulator they talk about doesn't have frame advance feature.

Enc-Half doubles the distance you move to increase the stepID. Enc-None freezes your stepID.

DateHell

2008-09-03 01:23:10 pm

po0oq

Quote from darkwasabi:

It seems as though pSX emulator they talk about doesn't have frame advance feature.

according to this link, they do have frame-advance for the modified psx emu, which is available here

quote from the 'howto.txt' inside that zipfile:
"Comma will be used for Frame Advance"

sfd

2008-09-03 02:01:48 pm

nah, that's probably some weird emulator... here's the correct one: http://fceu.googlecode.com/files/pcsx-rr-v0000006.7z

spacebar is the frame advance key.

here's the thread where it's from: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5316&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=80

darkwasabi

2008-09-03 04:09:08 pm

King of hearts

Thanks, this works great.

If it's even possible, how do I use L. Spiro's Memory Hacking Tool for it? The way I see it the RAM is emulated inside the emulator so I can't directly look for any values in an emulated RAM.

darkwasabi

2008-09-04 09:18:22 pm

King of hearts

So far this REPm calculator has been extremely useful in predicting and altering my upcoming encounters. I set it up so that I've eliminated 4 REs all the way up to where you meet Rinoa. I've wasted time doing the menu trick along with Advanced REPm and an extra save that I didn't normally have. Those together can't amount to more than 30 or 35 seconds total, while each battle takes a minimum of 20 seconds if you run away immediately with no interruptions. That's about a minute saved up 'till that point in the game just by avoiding some REs.

I'm not actually that far in the game, I'm testing all this out with an emulator first. My real save is at Dollet Beach. Thankfully I don't have to redo the whole run because you can't practically use these techniques to save you time in Fire Cavern. You'd have to do the Advanced REPm perfectly(I'm talking about holding walk for a frame or 2) for 22 steps to avoid just one single battle there. Maintaining a rhythm is extremely hard even while holding down the walk button for a little bit giving yourself a margin of error. Doing it perfectly is out of the question. Not doing it perfectly will give you another battle at the end since you didn't travel as far by walking.

So far this REPm calculator has been extremely useful in predicting and altering my upcoming encounters.  I set it up so that I've eliminated 4 REs all the way up to where you meet Rinoa.  I've wasted time doing the menu trick along with Advanced REPm and an extra save that I didn't normally have.  Those together can't amount to more than 30 or 35 seconds total, while each battle takes a minimum of 20 seconds if you run away immediately with no interruptions.  That's about a minute saved up 'till that point in the game just by avoiding some REs.

I'm not actually that far in the game, I'm testing all this out with an emulator first.  My real save is at Dollet Beach.  Thankfully I don't have to redo the whole run because you can't practically use these techniques to save you time in Fire Cavern.  You'd have to do the Advanced REPm perfectly(I'm talking about holding walk for a frame or 2) for 22 steps to avoid just one single battle there.  Maintaining a rhythm is extremely hard even while holding down the walk button for a little bit giving yourself a margin of error.  Doing it perfectly is out of the question.  Not doing it perfectly will give you another battle at the end since you didn't travel as far by walking.

fasd

2008-09-05 04:28:26 am

Quote from darkwasabi:

If it's even possible, how do I use L. Spiro's Memory Hacking Tool for it?

at least it works for the n64 TAS emulator. people use it all the time. i don't know much about it though.

Quote from darkwasabi:

So far this REPm calculator has been extremely useful in predicting and altering my upcoming encounters.

i thought the calculator only worked for ffvii. could you upload it on savefile, rapidshare or something so i and other people can check it out?

Lag.Com

2008-09-05 06:02:38 am

sda loyalist

MHS will work on anything, that's much the point. Using it to find memory values, you might want to try walking around a bit then searching for 'long's, 'short's or possibly 'byte's that go up. I'm fairly sure that's one of the built-in functions.

darkwasabi

2008-09-05 05:39:28 pm

King of hearts

It doesn't matter since I can use PEC with it anyway. No sense in wasting time figuring it out when I can use this.

Anyway the REP calculator is more like a chart than a calculator, but Brutal Al uses it to calculate so I see why he named it so. I'm only going to upload the one I made because it's much more suited for FF8(it's basically the same thing as Brutal Al's version). Brutal Al sent me a modified version of his REP Calc for FF8 but since it was made for FF7 it had a lot of useless code left over that only confused the hell out of me.

All it is is a simple chart that compares your danger value to that stepID's danger value limit. The whole list of limits was found by Brutal Al. It's in Microsoft Excel format.
http://rapidshare.com/files/142956493/FF8_limits.xlsx.html

darkwasabi

2008-09-05 05:55:36 pm

King of hearts

I forgot to mention a couple of things...

Green is the only value you should be modifying. Notes are just my notes I used to so I can know exactly what to do. Skip means I used the Advanced REPm, menux# means I used the menu trick # times to postpone the stepID so I can save at a good time. BS! just lets me know that I avoided a RE.

The RAM addresses for danger, offsync, and stepID are these:

danger: 8005F0FE
offsync: 8005F150
stepID: 8005F151

I just use PEC(playstation emulator cheater) and hit ctrl+h to go into the search.

Carcinogen

2008-09-14 02:12:44 am

I got the Japanese version of FFVIII last thursday.

First thing I noticed right off the bat is that Quistis doesn't give you your GFs when you meet her at the front gate, and you HAVE to get them from the terminal.

Just because I like this game so much, I'm considering recording a tentative runthrough (not too much luck manipulation) and uploading to Archive.

I've got a pretty good idea of how Disc 1's gonna happen. Got 8 segments planned up to the Forest Owls' Base, after meeting Rinoa. I'll give it a shot. =]

ShadowLaguna

2008-09-20 02:00:08 am

THE GAME!!

Do you still have to sit through those boring tutorials in the Japanese version?

Anyway, good luck with the run.

Carcinogen

2008-09-20 12:25:04 pm

Actually, no, you don't have to sit through so many tutorials, and the dialogue is very different.

The timer in the Fire Cavern doesn't end after you beat Ifrit either, so you get to skip that tutorial, and it's MUCH easier to obtain the best SeeD ranking for judgment. Just wait until the last possible second to talk to the guys at the front of the cave. =D

ShadowLaguna

2008-09-21 04:13:50 am

THE GAME!!

Wow, there's gonna be a lot of difference in ending time between the Japanese version and the other versions then. Cheesy