Secret of Mana

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2014-10-09 04:28:27 pm

2014-10-09 04:27:10 pm

What's that gemma?

Possibility: the "Robin Foot's spaced out!" message would have been appearing right around when the chest's windows showed up. If the GP window's text and the combat message text share memory addresses (the devs could have assumed those types of messages would never be displayed simultaneously), that could lead to an overflow.

RAM to watch: the text contained in the GP View window is 7EA1E0 - 7EA1E8. 7EA1E9 appears to be a null terminator.

That RAM is not apparently re-used very often; my file at the Mana Beast managed to go through the entirety of the Purelands and Mana Fortress without changing the values since showing up at Neko. The Status, Weapon Status, and Controller Edit screens borrow that memory, but I cannot find anything else that does. So the text itself is probably not at fault.
-----

I think what we're dealing with is a rare follow-up bug to the one that makes the screen, apparently at random, either have or not have a palette explosion as the GP window is loaded from chests (it often happens in Elinee's room, for instance). If we knew the technical information on why the screen freaks out, we might find some specific combination of apparently unrelated variables that would make the game do something crazy like what happened to BJW, rather than just something that gets immediately repaired as usual. Notice that a similar screen flash happens during BJW's anomaly.

Possibility: the "Robin Foot's spaced out!" message would have been appearing right around when the chest's windows showed up.  If the GP window's text and the combat message text share memory addresses (the devs could have assumed those types of messages would never be displayed simultaneously), that could lead to an overflow.

RAM to watch:  the text contained in the GP View window is 7EA1E0 - 7EA1E8.  7EA1E9 appears to be a null terminator.

That RAM is not apparently re-used very often; my file at the Mana Beast managed to go through the entirety of the Purelands and Mana Fortress without changing the values since showing up at Neko.  The Status, Weapon Status, and Controller Edit screens borrow that memory, but I cannot find anything else that does.  So the text itself is probably not at fault.
-----

I think what we're dealing with is a rare follow-up bug to the one that makes the screen, apparently at random, either have or not have a palette explosion as the GP window is loaded from chests (it often happens in Elinee's room, for instance).  If we knew the technical information on why the screen freaks out, we might find some specific combination of apparently unrelated variables that would make the game do something crazy like what happened to BJW, rather than just something that gets immediately repaired as usual.  Notice that a similar screen flash happens during BJW's anomaly.

Yagamoth

2014-10-10 04:56:37 am

INTJ

Here's some more information, for those that don't read the Gamefaqs thread yet:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/588646-secret-of-mana/69150657?page=16

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-10-13 03:08:06 am

2014-10-13 03:07:02 am

INTJ

I just found a japanese 1c RTA in 3:19:57... From 2010.. For reference, Musashis run was almost a year later on Youtube. I don't know whether people knew about that already, I certainly didn't ^^

Part 1) http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12460982
Part 2) http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12462229
Part 3) http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12464439
Part 4) http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12474115
Part 5) http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12474847
Part 6) http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12477402
Part 7) http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12477646

I haven't watched it yet, but I feel like this would've been very interesting to know about earlier. Maybe even some relevant things for today?

Musashi

Edit history:

Musashi: 2014-10-13 04:05:22 am

Musashi: 2014-10-13 04:05:16 am

Musashi: 2014-10-13 04:04:43 am

2014-10-13 04:03:26 am

But time flows like a river...

Yep it's the Hotarubi's run, I've already mentioned it in this thread before I even started my run. Tongue

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-10-13 04:10:21 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-13 04:10:06 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-13 04:09:52 am

2014-10-13 04:07:27 am

INTJ

Oh... That's Hotarubi o_o.. I did not realize that

Also I just checked, you technically did know about the Ruins Tomato-Man despawn on top of the stairs apparently, but you messed it up... That's why I didn't know about it Tongue

Edit: Did you translate his comments and notes?

Musashi

Edit history:

Musashi: 2014-10-13 05:01:33 am

Musashi: 2014-10-13 05:00:20 am

2014-10-13 04:59:27 am

But time flows like a river...

Yeah, honestly I didn't notice it. Tongue

For the comments, no, I didn't, I've asked Touch-Me when he was doing his TAS for some parts, but he told me it was hard for him to translate it all, finally he said to me "just learn japanese". Cheesy

He just gave me some links long time ago, but I think everyone know them, with ressources/glitches and explanations.

http://www.ric.hi-ho.ne.jp/cheap_restaurant/GAME/SEIKEN2/ => Here the guy managed to beat the game with lvl 5/1/1, I know he's explaining some parts about leveling, about equipements and bugs, tbh using a translator wasn't really useful to translate it, so I didn't get into it, the guy managing this webpage is still active, maybe he added new tricks or so, but my japanese skill is not good. Tongue

http://i-njoy.net/sd2_top.html => He was talking about this website in his TAS submission (the one managed by CJ), I don't know if you can find something useful in.

I think there is another website with a lot of ressources in japanese, but I don't remember it. :[

Yeah, honestly I didn't notice it. :P

For the comments, no, I didn't, I've asked Touch-Me when he was doing his TAS for some parts, but he told me it was hard for him to translate it all, finally he said to me "just learn japanese". :D

He just gave me some links long time ago, but I think everyone know them, with ressources/glitches and explanations.

http://www.ric.hi-ho.ne.jp/cheap_restaurant/GAME/SEIKEN2/ => Here the guy managed to beat the game with lvl 5/1/1, I know he's explaining some parts about leveling, about equipements and bugs, tbh using a translator wasn't really useful to translate it, so I didn't get into it, the guy managing this webpage is still active, maybe he added new tricks or so, but my japanese skill is not good. :P

http://i-njoy.net/sd2_top.html => He was talking about this website in his TAS submission (the one managed by CJ), I don't know if you can find something useful in.

I think there is another website with a lot of ressources in japanese, but I don't remember it. :[

Yagamoth

2014-10-13 05:07:33 am

INTJ

Oh.. Yeah, that's one thing I wanted to ask - how does the exp cancelling work that you can beat the game at level 5 / 1 / 1? 0.o... I mean, I did a solo Girl playthrough at some point, Sprite and Boy both level 1. But the Girl was always higher level than that?

Musashi

2014-10-13 05:29:55 am

But time flows like a river...

I don't know, I think everything is in the guide, all you have to do is translating it or finding a guy who is fluent with japanese. Tongue

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2014-10-13 08:44:20 am

Crow!: 2014-10-13 08:43:27 am

Crow!: 2014-10-13 08:05:22 am

2014-10-13 08:01:20 am

What's that gemma?

Using Google Translate, and cross-referencing my experience with the Wall Glitch to make sense of the strange babbling that is Google Translate's version of Musashi's link, I think that if the person credited with killing a particular enemy is at zero HP when the enemy dies, the experience points are not awarded. With magic, this isn't too hard to set up.

Between Bramblers and Pumpkin Bombs, and the fact that damage can be stacked on Tropicallo, you can avoid Tropicallo's experience if you recruit the Girl in Pandora.

Incidentally, I suspect that if he used a level 13 or so Bow/Arrow (the one that wraps around the screen), he might be able to kill Spikey posthumously, thereby reducing the level he completes the game at to 2.

Also, although he doesn't seem to do it himself, you could save warp a file that just got Flammie into the Mana Fortress, thereby allowing you to complete a few bosses without worrying about whether you get EXP or not.

PinkPajamas

Edit history:

PinkPajamas: 2014-10-13 05:12:08 pm

2014-10-13 05:11:14 pm

I can read Japanese. I'm not too familiar with the current knowledge outside of what's used in runs. I'll write out what was said in the experience avoidance section.

There are a few ways he listed to not gain experience:
Have the character you killed the boss with die immediately after the last hit.
-Use energy absorb repeatedly on a zombie or demon(?) dying to reverse absorb. (I think that's what it's saying. Maybe it means to overflow zombie HP or to multi-target a zombie and non-zombie. It doesn't mention overflow)
-With 2+ characters kill the boss and die at the same time
-It's easier to kill with magic as you die
Kill an enemy immediately after it does self targeting support spell (wall, saber, protect, quick, etc.).
-The timing is very strict.
Kill an emeny with reflected magic (what you guys call the wall glitch?).
Kill an enemy while everyone is at 0 HP.
-Can avoid game over by using the midget mallet.
-You can't do physical damage at 0 HP but magic damage works
-Can be done if the sprite and another character are at 0 HP w/o reaper (third character is reapered) and a finishing blow with magic.
-You lose support magic while at 0 HP (sabers, etc)
-Use the midget mallet repeatedly to avoid getting reapered
-Use a cup of wishes if you don't get healed after the boss
-You can only gain money with this method (not that it matters because blat)

The experience that is gained is on Mantis Ant, 22 rabites to get sword to lvl 1-96 (lvl 2), Spikey (lvl 5), and the frog ball thing before Undine (no level up). The rabite grinding was to overcharge the sword and kill frog ball before transformation gaining 160 less EXP totalling in 138 EXP less. I'm not sure why the EXP couldn't be completely avoided against the frog ball.

I've been reading other things but most of it is stuff we already know. Equipment trashing, weapon overcharge, save warping, damage cancelling etc. I'll look more into the other miscellaneous things later.

I can read Japanese. I'm not too familiar with the current knowledge outside of what's used in runs. I'll write out what was said in the experience avoidance section.

There are a few ways he listed to not gain experience:
Have the character you killed the boss with die immediately after the last hit.
-Use energy absorb repeatedly on a zombie or demon(?) dying to reverse absorb. (I think that's what it's saying. Maybe it means to overflow zombie HP or to multi-target a zombie and non-zombie. It doesn't mention overflow)
-With 2+ characters kill the boss and die at the same time
-It's easier to kill with magic as you die
Kill an enemy immediately after it does self targeting support spell (wall, saber, protect, quick, etc.).
-The timing is very strict.
Kill an emeny with reflected magic (what you guys call the wall glitch?).
Kill an enemy while everyone is at 0 HP.
-Can avoid game over by using the midget mallet.
-You can't do physical damage at 0 HP but magic damage works
-Can be done if the sprite and another character are at 0 HP w/o reaper (third character is reapered) and a finishing blow with magic.
-You lose support magic while at 0 HP (sabers, etc)
-Use the midget mallet repeatedly to avoid getting reapered
-Use a cup of wishes if you don't get healed after the boss
-You can only gain money with this method (not that it matters because blat)

The experience that is gained is on Mantis Ant, 22 rabites to get sword to lvl 1-96 (lvl 2), Spikey (lvl 5), and the frog ball thing before Undine (no level up). The rabite grinding was to overcharge the sword and kill frog ball before transformation gaining 160 less EXP totalling in 138 EXP less. I'm not sure why the EXP couldn't be completely avoided against the frog ball.

I've been reading other things but most of it is stuff we already know. Equipment trashing, weapon overcharge, save warping, damage cancelling etc. I'll look more into the other miscellaneous things later.

Yagamoth

2014-10-14 01:58:09 am

INTJ

Wow, thanks a lot for your help Cheesy

The absorb thing is probably simply a way to kill yourself. If you have a moon enchanted weapon and use it against certain enemies, you inflict damage to yourself. I actually don't know about absorb magic from Undine

Very nice information. This kind of challenge run sounds like a lot of work o.o.. Could be interesting though. I didn't know about being able still cast spells at 0 HP or avoiding the reaper via Midge Mallet. Might have some use in a 1 controller run.

Also, they already knew about equipment trashing? To which extent? Do they specify any use?

What would be some interesting information for us in the videos for the various potential minor manipulations during the areas or bosses. It seems to have comments during the run in the video, the black bar with green chars at the bottom... Not sure if that's actually comments though. I can pick out various points of interest from the run when I get home or so, since it's more than 3h worth of footage ^^;

Again, thanks a ton for your help PinkPajamas Smiley

Wow, thanks a lot for your help :D

The absorb thing is probably simply a way to kill yourself. If you have a moon enchanted weapon and use it against certain enemies, you inflict damage to yourself. I actually don't know about absorb magic from Undine

Very nice information. This kind of challenge run sounds like a lot of work o.o.. Could be interesting though. I didn't know about being able still cast spells at 0 HP or avoiding the reaper via Midge Mallet. Might have some use in a 1 controller run.

Also, they already knew about equipment trashing? To which extent? Do they specify any use?

What would be some interesting information for us in the videos for the various potential minor manipulations during the areas or bosses. It seems to have comments during the run in the video, the black bar with green chars at the bottom... Not sure if that's actually comments though. I can pick out various points of interest from the run when I get home or so, since it's more than 3h worth of footage ^^;

Again, thanks a ton for your help PinkPajamas :)

PinkPajamas

2014-10-14 03:12:46 am

I imagine I could translate the notes on the video. It'll take time but it'll be a nice way for me to keep up on my Japanese.
They have a whole page on equipment trashing (装備バグ on the first link), but on the low level challenge page they used the bug specifically to increase cup of wishes to 8.
The second link there has a page of a lot of interesting bugs. I'll focus on that when I've got time next.

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-10-14 07:47:16 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-14 07:46:37 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-14 07:46:27 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-14 07:24:25 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-14 06:21:30 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-14 06:16:46 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-14 06:04:04 am

2014-10-14 03:19:28 am

INTJ

ok, thanks a lot Smiley

Do you happen to find a date when he posted that?

Edit: Hatorubi actually knew about item duplication o_o.. I just saw he had 5 Medical Herbs in Southtown. I wonder why he didn't multiply faerie walnuts on the fly instead. But the japanese players definitely knew already about that (Which explains why touch-me so casually mentions those things in the TAS notes o.o)

Does anyone know who came up with charge-preservation? I only learned it from Luigimeister. No idea whether he invented that or he knew it from somewhere.

Edit 2: I just thought about something. How much money do we need in total? If we only need to sell 4 or 6 BLATs (= 2 or 4 left over), we might be able to simply get rid of the last 2 by trashing. In theory we buy 1 more armor for potentially 1 more trashing for potentially 1 less selling.... I don't think that's worth it. But maybe someone else can make something out of that thought

Edit 3: If you happen to kill both eyes on the Doom Wall, you can use Slow Down twice to stop the Doom Wall from casting the special attacks before he opens his middle eye again. You may want to look into the strategy he uses to defeat the Doom Wall with overcharge attacks

Edit 4: Hatorubi actually already used magic on the Watermelon :P.. He uses Shade, I wonder why he levels that... I remember Musashi leveling that too though. Mana Beast?

Edit 5: The Hexas strategy is also quite interesting. I think you can reliably manipulate certain overcharge attacks with the AI overcharge.

ok, thanks a lot :)

Do you happen to find a date when he posted that?

Edit: Hatorubi actually knew about item duplication o_o.. I just saw he had 5 Medical Herbs in Southtown. I wonder why he didn't multiply faerie walnuts on the fly instead. But the japanese players definitely knew already about that (Which explains why touch-me so casually mentions those things in the TAS notes o.o)

Does anyone know who came up with charge-preservation? I only learned it from Luigimeister. No idea whether he invented that or he knew it from somewhere.

Edit 2: I just thought about something. How much money do we need in total? If we only need to sell 4 or 6 BLATs (= 2 or 4 left over), we might be able to simply get rid of the last 2 by trashing. In theory we buy 1 more armor for potentially 1 more trashing for potentially 1 less selling.... I don't think that's worth it. But maybe someone else can make something out of that thought

Edit 3: If you happen to kill both eyes on the Doom Wall, you can use Slow Down twice to stop the Doom Wall from casting the special attacks before he opens his middle eye again. You may want to look into the strategy he uses to defeat the Doom Wall with overcharge attacks

Edit 4: Hatorubi actually already used magic on the Watermelon :P.. He uses Shade, I wonder why he levels that... I remember Musashi leveling that too though. Mana Beast?

Edit 5: The Hexas strategy is also quite interesting. I think you can reliably manipulate certain overcharge attacks with the AI overcharge.

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2014-10-14 01:02:00 pm

2014-10-14 12:58:52 pm

What's that gemma?

Regarding blats: I've thought for a while that there are theoretically seconds to be saved in 1p2c by selling only a couple blats, then finishing your Neko shopping by buying a single instance of some consumable you don't actually need or want (candy or chocolate, most likely).

You'd then have an inventory that looks something like this:

Rope (is Rope)
Cup of Wishes (is Blat, using it will crash the game)
Medical Herb (is Cup of Wishes)
Royal Jam (is Medical Herb)
Barrel (is Royal Jam)
Candy (is Barrel)
Nothing (can't use Candy)

You'd save the time spent selling like 5-6 instances of Blats, at the cost of needing to buy one Candy and having to train yourself to select the item one index after the item you want, rather than pointing at the item you want.

PinkPajamas

2014-10-14 06:12:35 pm

Instead of copy-pasting large blocks of text I'll just use a document for translation stuff.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_5Sqicb0PJgRq4blLFjIKyB2FsYUnrft7rMG9m8-b5Q/edit?usp=sharing
A handful of fun tidbits here.

luigimeister

2014-10-14 07:01:46 pm

Likes SoM far too much

http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=425&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=660 since Yagamoth hasn't posted this yet, I guess I'll do it. HHS apparently found a way to beat the game right after Undine and potentially right after Potos. Probably TAS only, but we're still waiting on a video.

Yagamoth

2014-10-15 04:59:47 am

INTJ

Quote from PinkPajamas:

Instead of copy-pasting large blocks of text I'll just use a document for translation stuff.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_5Sqicb0PJgRq4blLFjIKyB2FsYUnrft7rMG9m8-b5Q/edit?usp=sharing
A handful of fun tidbits here.

Thanks a lot Smiley

The softlock thing seems extremely severe... But it being triggered by pressing select also explains a lot, since I think both me and Stinger generally disable a 2nd controller and/or switch character at the end of a fight. Them needing to have fliers for that thing is quite ugly.. I pity those devs o-o

I knew about party members disappearing (they get set to invisible because they are supposed to be inside the belly of the Tanpole, but I didn't realize you could retain that status by beating a boss at a certain time... I wonder whether that's a difference between the US and japanese version... Usually when you get healed after a battle, the invisibility is removed as well. Thinking about it, Snap Dragon is an exception to that rule. So is most likely Tanpole/Snapfish, or whatever it's name is. Never thought about that. Also, using a barrel can prevent the healing and healing animation from removing the invisibility.
=> There might be potential time to save if we find an application to have a member invisible after Tanpole. I can't think of anything yet though
Minotaur and Spiky Tiger is new though.. Never thought of that. I'd guess it would also go for the Great Viper, since he can also swallow party members briefly. Stuff to test =)

The Girl actually gets removed from the party at the ruins though. There is the possibility to softlock, if both the Boy and Sprite are dead at this point.

The Snowman freeze is something I learned about the hard way during last AGDQ in the practice room Tongue

Pandora rope thing is indeed quite neat too ^^

Dark Lich disappearing is the first time I hear about that. I'd guess this has to do in terms of how he vanishes/reappears underground. Interesting

Once again, thank you for translating. There is potential already Smiley

[quote="PinkPajamas"]Instead of copy-pasting large blocks of text I'll just use a document for translation stuff.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_5Sqicb0PJgRq4blLFjIKyB2FsYUnrft7rMG9m8-b5Q/edit?usp=sharing
A handful of fun tidbits here.[/quote]

Thanks a lot :)

The softlock thing seems extremely severe... But it being triggered by pressing select also explains a lot, since I think both me and Stinger generally disable a 2nd controller and/or switch character at the end of a fight. Them needing to have fliers for that thing is quite ugly.. I pity those devs o-o

I knew about party members disappearing (they get set to invisible because they are supposed to be inside the belly of the Tanpole, but I didn't realize you could retain that status by beating a boss at a certain time... I wonder whether that's a difference between the US and japanese version... Usually when you get healed after a battle, the invisibility is removed as well. Thinking about it, Snap Dragon is an exception to that rule. So is most likely Tanpole/Snapfish, or whatever it's name is. Never thought about that. Also, using a barrel can prevent the healing and healing animation from removing the invisibility.
=> There might be potential time to save if we find an application to have a member invisible after Tanpole. I can't think of anything yet though
Minotaur and Spiky Tiger is new though.. Never thought of that. I'd guess it would also go for the Great Viper, since he can also swallow party members briefly. Stuff to test =)

The Girl actually gets removed from the party at the ruins though. There is the possibility to softlock, if both the Boy and Sprite are dead at this point.

The Snowman freeze is something I learned about the hard way during last AGDQ in the practice room :P

Pandora rope thing is indeed quite neat too ^^

Dark Lich disappearing is the first time I hear about that. I'd guess this has to do in terms of how he vanishes/reappears underground. Interesting

Once again, thank you for translating. There is potential already :)

doicm

2014-10-19 11:26:37 pm

A new TAS got uploaded yesterday, which some of you may have already seen: http://tasvideos.org/4463S.html

Secret of Mana in 08:57.66 by HHS. I didn't get a chance to watch it, but I did look through the notes. Pretty insane stuff, it sounds like.

Crow!

2014-10-20 01:21:17 am

What's that gemma?

I fiddled around with HHS's method a bit. A very large number of the events you run include some sort of "return" function, which if executed will cause the game to get back to the Cannon Travel guy's normal routine.

Random experimentation eventually gave me the "cannon off to Southtown" event, which was pretty funny, since the initial cannon scene played out normally since I was already in a Cannon Travel room. Most importantly, I got to have gogogogogogogogogogogogo argue with gogogogogogogogogogogogo!

Attachment:

gogogogogogogogogogogogox2.png

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-10-20 01:50:40 am

2014-10-20 01:44:28 am

INTJ

Haha, that's amazing. I also found that one option to fly to Southtown, but didn't go through the Sewers ^^

I'm currently trying to come up with a "marathon friendly" setup or something like that. I managed to get the end of game screen in the Dwarven Village inn, where it's very easy to reset the number of options-address via going into the save-screen. Optimally we'd be able to do it at the canon guy too, but that's a oneshot-thing. So my plan for now is: Try canon-guy setup. If that fails, fly over to Gaias Navel and run through the cave to get into the Dwarven-Village-Inn for multiple retries. We could also include a setup to multiply barrels somewhere for quicker retries (assuming we buy 3 at Neko. 1 to try at the canon guy and then the 2 to multiply). You can also retry by simply loading the savefile (Although I didn't try yet, whether that actually works in the end.. I guess it should?)

Btw. Crow, can you help me understand how to get from the RAM addresses mentioned to the script-table? I can't quite make the connection o-o

Haha, that's amazing. I also found that one option to fly to Southtown, but didn't go through the Sewers ^^

I'm currently trying to come up with a "marathon friendly" setup or something like that. I managed to get the end of game screen in the Dwarven Village inn, where it's very easy to reset the number of options-address via going into the save-screen. Optimally we'd be able to do it at the canon guy too, but that's a oneshot-thing. So my plan for now is: Try canon-guy setup. If that fails, fly over to Gaias Navel and run through the cave to get into the Dwarven-Village-Inn for multiple retries. We could also include a setup to multiply barrels somewhere for quicker retries (assuming we buy 3 at Neko. 1 to try at the canon guy and then the 2 to multiply). You can also retry by simply loading the savefile (Although I didn't try yet, whether that actually works in the end.. I guess it should?)

Btw. Crow, can you help me understand how to get from the RAM addresses mentioned to the script-table? I can't quite make the connection o-o

Crow!

2014-10-20 03:40:33 am

What's that gemma?

Cross referencing our 3 ASM disassemblers that have been helping us:

Moppleton refers to the "chest shaking" event as event 0x02.
Regrs says that this event begins at C9/0828.
HHS says he wants to execute C91096.

The Save screen puts the total number of dialogue choices to 0, which is buggy. When you press right, you'll immediately select option 0, whereas pressing left works normally. You can select whichever option you want by pressing left, but it takes forever.

When the "table pointer" at 7EA1D5 is 0A8C, I get event 0x23, by Moppleton's standards.
When it's 0AB8 (have to press left a lot to get here), I get the second half of event 0x23.
I got smarter, and used a cheat to set 7EA1D4 to FF so I could have better control of the cursor.
When I select option 5, for a table pointer of 0874, I get "Revived Mana Sword!", which is either event 0xA or event 0xB in SoM Edit.
Upon further exploration, I believe that I'm poking around in event 0x8 at this point, either branching to portions of the mana sword revival or not depending on where exactly I start within the event.

So, what's going on is, the "table pointer" tells the game which action within an event the game is currently processing. Option selections apparently work by putting a bunch of event commands in a row, and letting the user increment a pointer (moved 2 bytes at a time) to which byte will be interpreted as the next command. If your pointer lands in text data, the option selection event is re-called, again with 0 total options, so you can keep doing the same thing.

Annoyingly, Som Edit doesn't list the cartridge address of the event code that it displays (presumably since that might change when you build a modified version), so I don't have a reliable way to tell you how to find a particular event you want. But, in general, you should be able to start executing the event code of any event 0x8 or higher, either from the start or from the middle if you so desire. The exception would be if you eventually hit a string of 256 non-text event actions, in which case you couldn't access any events which begin after that.

Cross referencing our 3 ASM disassemblers that have been helping us:

Moppleton refers to the "chest shaking" event as event 0x02.
Regrs says that this event begins at C9/0828.
HHS says he wants to execute C91096.

The Save screen puts the total number of dialogue choices to 0, which is buggy.  When you press right, you'll immediately select option 0, whereas pressing left works normally.  You can select whichever option you want by pressing left, but it takes forever.

When the "table pointer" at 7EA1D5 is 0A8C, I get event 0x23, by Moppleton's standards.
When it's 0AB8 (have to press left a lot to get here), I get the second half of event 0x23.
I got smarter, and used a cheat to set 7EA1D4 to FF so I could have better control of the cursor.
When I select option 5, for a table pointer of 0874, I get "Revived Mana Sword!", which is either event 0xA or event 0xB in SoM Edit.
Upon further exploration, I believe that I'm poking around in event 0x8 at this point, either branching to portions of the mana sword revival or not depending on where exactly I start within the event.

So, what's going on is, the "table pointer" tells the game which action [i]within an event[/i] the game is currently processing.  Option selections apparently work by putting a bunch of event commands in a row, and letting the user increment a pointer (moved 2 bytes at a time) to which byte will be interpreted as the next command.  If your pointer lands in text data, the option selection event is re-called, again with 0 total options, so you can keep doing the same thing.

Annoyingly, Som Edit doesn't list the cartridge address of the event code that it displays (presumably since that might change when you build a modified version), so I don't have a reliable way to tell you how to find a particular event you want.  But, in general, you should be able to start executing the event code of any event 0x8 or higher, either from the start or from the middle if you so desire.  The exception would be if you eventually hit a string of 256 non-text event actions, in which case you couldn't access any events which begin after that.

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-10-20 04:40:29 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-20 04:06:38 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-20 04:05:44 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-20 04:04:20 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-20 04:03:15 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-20 04:01:27 am

Yagamoth: 2014-10-20 03:59:12 am

2014-10-20 03:59:03 am

INTJ

Still trying to wrap my head around this.. Thank you for your explanation

Btw. don't forget this list:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/l328ub6gu17t8i6/somscpt.txt
^ Seems useful for looking up stuff oô

I realized the thing with pressing left working, but pressing right resetting back to 0. I tried to simply see how far I could get by never triggering an event and interestingly enough.. I think I looped around somehow?... I got "past" the Water Palace event where you meet Luka for the first time, went past the trapped Guards in Elinees fortress and came back around to the Water Palace somehow. My goal would've been to see, whether I could trigger the entire ending cutscene. But that seems really, really "far" away... ?

Edit: Actually, checking with the somscpt.txt - apparently the entire cutscene event is in multiple separate parts, far apart from each other... So that might be just pure coincidence that I stumbled upon that similar event

< = Press Left
B = Press B
B => X closes = Hold (or press) B through X number of options

Code:

Getting to the The End-Screen:

Start: Hold Left + B to initiate glitch
B
<
B => 19 closes
<
B => 7 closes
<
B => 1 close
<
B

I can now optimally clear SoM under 10 minutes, if I don't get it first try, it's probably still under 20 minutes (Need to get a backup plan going which costs about 5 minutes to set up). Still, I'm looking to get to the "real" credits sequence... Which according to the somscpt.txt is around "CA4D95"... Whatever that means

Still trying to wrap my head around this.. Thank you for your explanation

Btw. don't forget this list:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/l328ub6gu17t8i6/somscpt.txt
^ Seems useful for looking up stuff oô

I realized the thing with pressing left working, but pressing right resetting back to 0. I tried to simply see how far I could get by never triggering an event and interestingly enough.. I think I looped around somehow?... I got "past" the Water Palace event where you meet Luka for the first time, went past the trapped Guards in Elinees fortress and came back around to the Water Palace somehow. My goal would've been to see, whether I could trigger the entire ending cutscene. But that seems really, really "far" away... ?

Edit: Actually, checking with the somscpt.txt - apparently the entire cutscene event is in multiple separate parts, far apart from each other... So that might be just pure coincidence that I stumbled upon that similar event

< = Press Left
B = Press B
B =>  X closes   = Hold (or press) B through X number of options

[code]
Getting to the The End-Screen:

Start: Hold Left + B to initiate glitch
B
<
B => 19 closes
<
B => 7 closes
<
B => 1 close
<
B
[/code]

I can now optimally clear SoM under 10 minutes, if I don't get it first try, it's probably still under 20 minutes (Need to get a backup plan going which costs about 5 minutes to set up). Still, I'm looking to get to the "real" credits sequence... Which according to the somscpt.txt is around "CA4D95"... Whatever that means

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2014-10-20 04:23:04 am

2014-10-20 04:16:58 am

What's that gemma?

The "C" at the start of an address says that this memory is found in the cartridge somewhere. The rest is an address in hex, with the first byte of the cartridge being C0.

CA4D96 is 0x13D00 more than C91096. Each time you can press left then B (while dodging events), you progress by 0x00200, while each time you just press B, you progress by 0x00002. If you were to press left twice then B, you would progress by 0x001FE.

So, if you can do the equivalent of 158 Left -> B actions while dodging events that the game interprets sensibly, you would find yourself in the start of the credits sequence.

[EDIT]: Sorry, it's 158 MORE Left-B actions on top of what was done to get to the game ending action.

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-10-20 04:23:50 am

2014-10-20 04:17:57 am

INTJ

Wow... That's a lot of work Tongue

Thank you ^^

Edit: Which would be a total of ~162, give or take a few lower ones

Yagamoth

2014-10-20 10:03:53 am

INTJ

Proof of concept run done on console:
http://www.twitch.tv/yagamoth/c/5333550

So yeah. Someone can grind that to sub 10 if he/she wants to ^^