Secret of Mana

StingerPA

2014-07-25 10:32:23 am

I would think so too. That probably takes it down to about 15-20 seconds saved for 1c.

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-07-25 03:45:58 pm

Yagamoth: 2014-07-25 03:41:24 pm

Yagamoth: 2014-07-25 03:41:15 pm

Yagamoth: 2014-07-25 03:41:10 pm

Yagamoth: 2014-07-25 03:40:34 pm

2014-07-25 03:35:44 pm

INTJ

I think we definitely have to do more research on spawns & despawns. I mean, for example, I found a reliable method to despawn both, the flower and Rabite past the first bridge, when you just come out of Potos village. I haven't found how to reliably only spawn one or the other.

Here's a picture for reference:
http://i.imgur.com/uL4chry.png

If you hold DOWN + RIGHT, running into the last tree on your right towards the bridge (4B), you despawn both enemies. If you only hold DOWN walking past there, they spawn. Facing direction does not affect the spawns at all.

And here's a really weird tidbit:
- Standing on that flower (2B), waiting, nothing happens
- Standing one tile lower (3B), waiting -> The Rabite will eventually come up. So this means, that it is already spawned... Or more likely, it is going to be spawned as soon as the game gets to it.
- Walking down to the tile 4B, waiting for about half a second and then walking diagonally DOWN+RIGHT sometimes spawns the enemies, and sometimes doesn't
- It appears, that the longer I wait, the enemies are more likely to be there
==> It's arguably not about "likelihood", but more about processing time the game gets to load enemies

So here's my theory on how spawns work:
- The game is constantly under heavy load and can not always use the resources to load enemies
- By walking diagonally, the game has to calculate more (Preparing to load both, X- and Y-Axis tiles) and thus can not allocate as many resources to load enemies in time
- If you wait just out of sight (approx 12 tiles Vertically), the game gets enough time to load the enemies

So.. Is there any place where we spawn enemies instead of despawning them when walking diagonally?

Presumably, spawning the Rabite before the water palace is by NOT walking diagonally.. Or, by going behind the rock, we give the game enough time to load the Rabite

Edit: To reliably despawn the flower on the left side of the bridge (past the mushboom), use the rocks in front of the sign to align and hold DOWN+LEFT. Waiting for some time behind the rocks (1-2 seconds) makes the flower spawn anyway. But I guess, walking diagonally DOWN+LEFT gives the game a fairly heavy workload to calculate, unable to load the flower..

So, now that we have established, that all we need to test is the walking direction to influence spawns... When do we want to go over all areas to figure out better walking paths? Tongue

Edit2: I mean... If we can make the Mana Fortress reasonable enough by doing this to skip the final armor.. We would save a ton of time

I think we definitely have to do more research on spawns & despawns. I mean, for example, I found a reliable method to despawn both, the flower and Rabite past the first bridge, when you just come out of Potos village. I haven't found how to reliably only spawn one or the other.

Here's a picture for reference:
http://i.imgur.com/uL4chry.png

If you hold DOWN + RIGHT, running into the last tree on your right towards the bridge (4B), you despawn both enemies. If you only hold DOWN walking past there, they spawn. Facing direction does not affect the spawns at all.

And here's a really weird tidbit: 
- Standing on that flower (2B), waiting, nothing happens
- Standing one tile lower (3B), waiting -> The Rabite will eventually come up. So this means, that it is already spawned... Or more likely, it is going to be spawned as soon as the game gets to it.
- Walking down to the tile 4B, waiting for about half a second and then walking diagonally DOWN+RIGHT sometimes spawns the enemies, and sometimes doesn't
- It appears, that the longer I wait, the enemies are more likely to be there
==> It's arguably not about "likelihood", but more about processing time the game gets to load enemies

So here's my theory on how spawns work:
- The game is constantly under heavy load and can not always use the resources to load enemies
- By walking diagonally, the game has to calculate more (Preparing to load both, X- and Y-Axis tiles) and thus can not allocate as many resources to load enemies in time
- If you wait just out of sight (approx 12 tiles Vertically), the game gets enough time to load the enemies

So.. Is there any place where we spawn enemies instead of despawning them when walking diagonally?

Presumably, spawning the Rabite before the water palace is by NOT walking diagonally.. Or, by going behind the rock, we give the game enough time to load the Rabite

Edit: To reliably despawn the flower on the left side of the bridge (past the mushboom), use the rocks in front of the sign to align and hold DOWN+LEFT. Waiting for some time behind the rocks (1-2 seconds) makes the flower spawn anyway. But I guess, walking diagonally DOWN+LEFT gives the game a fairly heavy workload to calculate, unable to load the flower..

So, now that we have established, that all we need to test is the walking direction to influence spawns... When do we want to go over all areas to figure out better walking paths? :P

Edit2: I mean... If we can make the Mana Fortress reasonable enough by doing this to skip the final armor.. We would save a ton of time

StingerPA

2014-07-25 04:42:13 pm

I like your theory, it seems to fit with how I've seen despawns work in this game.

I don't think we'll be able to despawn everything, but working on certain areas may be a good idea. Places like outside Gaia's Navel could benefit from more consistent despawns, even though it doesn't give us too much trouble as it stands right now. The ice country could be given another look as well. I'd essentially just start from the hardest rooms in the game and work through them, and leave screens where it's already simple for last.

StingerPA

2014-07-28 11:03:54 am

Another update has been made to the Boss AI pastebin adding Spikey Tiger and Blue Spike to the list: http://pastebin.com/rKKmvdVN

Nothing too much to note on Spikey other than that he has a 50% chance at the beginning to eat you or jump up, and then a 33% chance to come back down once he's up there.

Blue Spike is a bit more interesting because we have a trigger HP amount for the fake death animation. If we deal more than 1320 damage to him, he'll use the fake death animation. I'm too lazy at the moment to come up with the low and high damage rolls for him, but we can use this to figure out the number of Freeze (or another magic, but probably Freeze) casts we'll want to use to keep him from wasting time with this.

Yagamoth

2014-07-28 12:50:08 pm

INTJ

It was "Moppleton" who could print out maps of areas, right? That would be quite handy for all maps oô

StingerPA

Edit history:

StingerPA: 2014-07-28 11:56:58 pm

2014-07-28 12:54:56 pm

It's not too hard to do, just install the beta version of the rom editor he's working on. http://somedit.blogspot.com

I might work on that a little bit since there's tons of maps in the game that are relevant to this.

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-07-28 02:17:34 pm

Yagamoth: 2014-07-28 01:47:32 pm

Yagamoth: 2014-07-28 01:15:17 pm

Yagamoth: 2014-07-28 01:02:42 pm

Yagamoth: 2014-07-28 01:02:41 pm

2014-07-28 01:02:29 pm

INTJ

Oh.. That's him? Neat

Thank you

I just noticed, there seem to be random "door" triggers in the top left of some maps?.. I tested the one in northtown, but that didn't seem to do anything.

Edit: There can be Ghouls outside the 2nd temple o__o..

Edit 2:
I just found a way to enter the debug room... Unfortunately only with walk-through-walls cheat, but it's pretty neat anyways. At the destroyed mana-tree there seem to be some really weird triggers... If you look at it in the map editor, the area is huge. My guess is, that this area is basically overwritten and everything is being replaced once the pure lands are completed. So that explains that

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2014-07-28 04:28:06 pm

Crow!: 2014-07-28 04:27:58 pm

Crow!: 2014-07-28 03:51:51 pm

2014-07-28 03:47:38 pm

What's that gemma?

The Mana Tree is the same map as the entrance to Pureland; that way, the world map doesn't have to add some method to have two different landing zones for the same section, since Flammie puts you on same destination either way.

I made use of this a while ago when getting to Snow Dragon to practice that fight; land at Pureland with a casual file that's completed the game, then save warp to a file that hasn't cleared Pureland and you can enter the area even with a file that hasn't unlocked Pureland yet.

Which map number has the debug room?

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-07-29 05:02:39 am

2014-07-29 04:42:44 am

INTJ

I've managed to get through the first part up to Buffy in the Mana Fortress without ever getting hit fairly reliably. I simply walk diagonally up+right or up+left over certain lines and pretty much no enemy shows up along the way. I'll now try from Buffy to the Slime

Edit; I managed to reliably softlock my game. When dealing the last hit to Dread Slime I started casting Wall on all my characters. That pretty much always lead to a softlock.. Except in one case, where it skipped all of the level-up boxes..

Yagamoth

2014-07-29 10:39:06 pm

INTJ

Oh, sorry, didn't see the question earlier: Debug room has map number... 10. Well, that's via SoM editor. "Trigger value 10", not quite sure what that means.

Also, I just found a few second timesaver: If we enter any menu which scales the entire screen (Stat, Weap. lvl, input config, Act), it cuts out the rest of the level-up announcements. Even with me going in the wrong direction in the ring-menu, it still saved time. So it's safe to assume, it will save around 1-2 seconds.

StingerPA

2014-07-30 12:15:29 am

Regrs has finished a pretty important boss: Dark Lich. Here's most of his post from GameFAQs.

Quote from Regrs:

Added Dark Lich to the list.

Dark Lich is an....interesting boss. He's both extremely complex and completely random. It's honestly impressive they pulled both those off at once. And to be so complicated he's still a structured boss. Makes me wonder why the special flower bosses are unstructured in the first place.

Interesting fact: There are two nearly identical copies of Dark Lich's arena. The first one is where the cutscene takes place, the second is where the battle happens. But both versions of the arena contain Thanatos, Dyluck & Dark Lich actors and have all the same triggers.

Dark Lich will alternate between using a skill and casting a spell whenever he is above ground. His spell attacks are all telegraphed. Every spell has a unique animation used only for that spell. His skills are telegraphed to a lesser extent. Gas attacks use one animation, everything else uses another. He has the largest repertoire of attacks in the game.

His body is just a background prop. The actual boss is the skull head and his hands(including the sleeves).

His Skeletal Hand attack ties the Mana Sword for most powerful attack in the entire game. (I'd actually rate it stronger since it has a 99% chance to cause Knocked Out)

I'm also sad to report that Dark Lich isn't actually a fan of heavy metal music. The head banging is caused by a simple lack of options. Dark Lich has no attacks while his head is peaking out of the ground, but can only hide his head if you are east or west of him. So he gets stuck. The reason for his head bang motion is because his movement script calls collision detection. He collides with you so the script tells him to reverse direction and move north. Then his movement script triggers again and tells him to move south. Repeat forever until you move. You can stand above him and cause the bug to happen as well. For reference, Spikey Tiger, Blue Spike, Mantis Ant, Metal Mantis & Death Machine(JP Only) all use the same detection, but have attacks to escape the trap.

Know any other random weird bugs? I find it more interesting figuring out why they happen then what they actually do. (Overcharging for example is caused by you utterly destroying the games expectations, that and weird math)

Also I added the Mana Beast's spell casting AI to the list as well. Not getting the rest of it for awhile since I have exactly 0 idea how Mode 7 works. But in terms of delaying him, dispelling is the best option since unless he casts Lucid Barrier(Which Dispel can't remove) he will waste two turns rebuffing himself before trying to attack. He'll actually waste 3 turns if he casts Lucid Barrier since it's not considered a buff in the way the game checks for them.

Also something that I'm not sure is well known or not but you might find useful. The message "Can't Undo Wall!" is mis-leading. It removes ElementalLevel+2 from the number of Wall uses every cast, then displays that message if the result is >0. So repeated Dispel castings will eventually bring Wall down.

Regrs has finished a pretty important boss: Dark Lich.  Here's most of his post from GameFAQs.

[quote="Regrs"]Added Dark Lich to the list.

Dark Lich is an....interesting boss. He's both extremely complex and completely random. It's honestly impressive they pulled both those off at once. And to be so complicated he's still a structured boss. Makes me wonder why the special flower bosses are unstructured in the first place.

Interesting fact: There are two nearly identical copies of Dark Lich's arena. The first one is where the cutscene takes place, the second is where the battle happens. But both versions of the arena contain Thanatos, Dyluck & Dark Lich actors and have all the same triggers.

Dark Lich will alternate between using a skill and casting a spell whenever he is above ground. His spell attacks are all telegraphed. Every spell has a unique animation used only for that spell. His skills are telegraphed to a lesser extent. Gas attacks use one animation, everything else uses another. He has the largest repertoire of attacks in the game.

His body is just a background prop. The actual boss is the skull head and his hands(including the sleeves).

His Skeletal Hand attack ties the Mana Sword for most powerful attack in the entire game. (I'd actually rate it stronger since it has a 99% chance to cause Knocked Out)

I'm also sad to report that Dark Lich isn't actually a fan of heavy metal music. The head banging is caused by a simple lack of options. Dark Lich has no attacks while his head is peaking out of the ground, but can only hide his head if you are east or west of him. So he gets stuck. The reason for his head bang motion is because his movement script calls collision detection. He collides with you so the script tells him to reverse direction and move north. Then his movement script triggers again and tells him to move south. Repeat forever until you move. You can stand above him and cause the bug to happen as well. For reference, Spikey Tiger, Blue Spike, Mantis Ant, Metal Mantis & Death Machine(JP Only) all use the same detection, but have attacks to escape the trap.

Know any other random weird bugs? I find it more interesting figuring out why they happen then what they actually do. (Overcharging for example is caused by you utterly destroying the games expectations, that and weird math)

Also I added the Mana Beast's spell casting AI to the list as well. Not getting the rest of it for awhile since I have exactly 0 idea how Mode 7 works. But in terms of delaying him, dispelling is the best option since unless he casts Lucid Barrier(Which Dispel can't remove) he will waste two turns rebuffing himself before trying to attack. He'll actually waste 3 turns if he casts Lucid Barrier since it's not considered a buff in the way the game checks for them.

Also something that I'm not sure is well known or not but you might find useful. The message "Can't Undo Wall!" is mis-leading. It removes ElementalLevel+2 from the number of Wall uses every cast, then displays that message if the result is >0. So repeated Dispel castings will eventually bring Wall down.[/quote]

Yagamoth

2014-07-30 12:30:10 am

INTJ

Neat.. I didn't know about the undo-wall-message. But I knew about it removing charges from HHS

The alternation between an ability and casting a spell is nice to know, and I'll also have to pay more attention as to which moves he makes. Not sure that's useful, since there is probably no way to manipulate it, but it's something.

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2014-07-30 09:36:18 am

Crow!: 2014-07-30 09:34:06 am

Crow!: 2014-07-30 09:33:57 am

2014-07-30 09:32:54 am

What's that gemma?

This code appears not to work:

Code:

 If (Mana Beast Does Not Have Wall Status) Then
      Select Self.
      Cast Spell: 'Wall' On Target.
ElseIf (Mana Beast Has No Buff Effects) Then
      Select Self.
      If (25% Chance) Then
         Cast Spell: 'Defender' on Target.
      ElseIf (25% Chance) Then
         Cast Spell: 'Lunar Boost' on Target.
      ElseIf (25% Chance) Then
         Cast Spell: 'Speed up' on Target.
      Else
         Cast Spell: 'Lucid Barrier' on Target.
      End If
Else
      Select Closest Opponent.
 
      If (Target Has Wall Status) Then
         Cast Spell: 'Dispel Magic' on Target.
      Else
         If (1/3 Chance) Then
             Cast Spell: 'Lucent Beam' On Target.
         End If
      End If
 End If

The Mana Beast never casts those buffs. My guess is that Wall itself is registering as a buff, so that any time the game checks if a buff is active there already is one. Amusingly, if that code DID work as stated, the Mana Beast would never cast Lucent Beam, instead electing to continuously spam buffs that get reflected onto your party.

Which, as far as a speedrunner is concerned, would ironically be wildly more annoying than Lucent Beam, as the spells would come out 3x as frequently and would hit a random target rather than one you can control.

This code appears not to work:

[code] If (Mana Beast Does Not Have Wall Status) Then
      Select Self.
      Cast Spell: 'Wall' On Target.
ElseIf (Mana Beast Has No Buff Effects) Then
      Select Self.
      If (25% Chance) Then
         Cast Spell: 'Defender' on Target.
      ElseIf (25% Chance) Then
         Cast Spell: 'Lunar Boost' on Target.
      ElseIf (25% Chance) Then
         Cast Spell: 'Speed up' on Target.
      Else
         Cast Spell: 'Lucid Barrier' on Target.
      End If
Else
      Select Closest Opponent.
 
      If (Target Has Wall Status) Then
         Cast Spell: 'Dispel Magic' on Target.
      Else
         If (1/3 Chance) Then
             Cast Spell: 'Lucent Beam' On Target.
         End If
      End If
 End If[/code]
The Mana Beast never casts those buffs.  My guess is that Wall itself is registering as a buff, so that any time the game checks if a buff is active there already is one.  Amusingly, if that code DID work as stated, the Mana Beast would never cast Lucent Beam, instead electing to continuously spam buffs that get reflected onto your party.

Which, as far as a speedrunner is concerned, would ironically be wildly more annoying than Lucent Beam, as the spells would come out 3x as frequently and would hit a random target rather than one you can control.

StingerPA

2014-07-30 11:33:43 am

Found something today that I think is useless (as in, no more useful than what we can already do): you can use items when you hit rope poles to walk through walls. It creates the same effect as when you cast and hit a rope pole. This means we could technically use rope pole walking before getting Undine, but considering the only available rope pole is the one in the haunted forest, I'm pretty sure we don't get any added utility.

StingerPA

2014-07-31 02:07:40 pm

Progress has been made toward the sub 2: http://www.twitch.tv/stingerpa/c/4790616

Really solid run up until Dark Lich. Both he and Mana Beast trolled me, and while I should've played the Mana Beast a bit better, it's acceptable for now. There's still a lot of places to improve, so I'll keep at it.

Yagamoth

2014-07-31 03:30:53 pm

INTJ

Nice, congratulations oô

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-08-02 09:24:39 am

Yagamoth: 2014-08-02 01:38:09 am

Yagamoth: 2014-08-02 01:26:05 am

2014-08-02 01:20:08 am

INTJ

Concerning armorless Mana Fortress: Since boss RNG resets and is separate from normal RNG, in theory, if we reset when entering the Mana Fortress, we probably could manipulate Buffy to do always the same - resulting in favorable "RNG".. Just a thought..

Edit: Nevermind.. The time you spend in the menu already is part of the boss RNG. So the most we could manipulate is the initial landing on Buffy I guess

Edit 2: That's actually not too unreasonable.. If you reset at the start of the Mana Fortress, Buffy will do the following sequence of moves if you don't menu inbetween AND don't move (+ Boy and Girl selected):
1) Fly Up
2) Come Down
3) Jump down (slides across the wall a bit to the right)
4) Jump to the left
5) Slash attack (=Or grab)

So... We can get a good initial RNG, that's something. The overcharge glitch has to be delayed until Buffy jumps to the left, else he can decide to do other things. Then move the Sprite over to the left. Also, just -after- Buffy decides to jump to the left is a good point to start casting Slow Down with the Sprite + initiate the overcharge. Simply remember to move off to the right off the starting position, else the charge gets cancelled with the button.

Also, you can't hit Buffy with the Girl at all to make him stay. Too much armor.

Concerning armorless Mana Fortress: Since boss RNG resets and is separate from normal RNG, in theory, if we reset when entering the Mana Fortress, we probably could manipulate Buffy to do always the same - resulting in favorable "RNG".. Just a thought..

Edit: Nevermind.. The time you spend in the menu already is part of the boss RNG. So the most we could manipulate is the initial landing on Buffy I guess

Edit 2: That's actually not too unreasonable.. If you reset at the start of the Mana Fortress, Buffy will do the following sequence of moves if you don't menu inbetween AND don't move (+ Boy and Girl selected):
1) Fly Up
2) Come Down
3) Jump down (slides across the wall a bit to the right)
4) Jump to the left
5) Slash attack (=Or grab)

So... We can get a good initial RNG, that's something. The overcharge glitch has to be delayed until Buffy jumps to the left, else he can decide to do other things. Then move the Sprite over to the left. Also, just -after- Buffy decides to jump to the left is a good point to start casting Slow Down with the Sprite + initiate the overcharge. Simply remember to move off to the right off the starting position, else the charge gets cancelled with the button.

Also, you can't hit Buffy with the Girl at all to make him stay. Too much armor.

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2014-08-02 09:42:30 am

2014-08-02 09:16:49 am

What's that gemma?

~~What happened to 4?~~

You can save warp into the Buffy fight itself with no negative repercussions, so that would be safer than just assuming you don't mess up and have to use a Cup of Wishes during the first Mana Fortress segment. Also, savewarping into the Buffy fight doesn't involve the game hanging for half a second to load music (you just get a silent boss fight).

Yagamoth

2014-08-02 09:25:56 am

INTJ

If you warp into Buffy the Dark Lich Cutscene will glitch out... Or was it some of the switches not working later? One or the other. Not sure, but I'm reasonably certain you can't complete the Mana Fortress after savewarping inside it.

Crow!

2014-08-02 09:41:19 am

What's that gemma?

For the Thanatos X Dyluck scene to work properly, you have to either beat Buffy and Dread Slime, or you have to beat Dread Slime 3 or 4 times (I forget which). Nothing else breaks, and warping into Buffy counts for beating Buffy.

StingerPA

2014-08-02 12:25:41 pm

I just tested the savewarping into buffy strat. It won't work because when you press the switch leading to Dread Slime, the bridge doesn't extend the whole way.

Yagamoth

2014-08-02 10:58:07 pm

INTJ

Right, that's what it was.

On a different note - Stinger, there is no reason why we wouldn't switch back to the Sword for the damage on the Dark Lich, right? I mean, it even gives us an additional point of agility for better hit chance. It's small, but since the Boy has to have the Sword equipped after the fight anyways, there is no harm in equipping it during the fight.

Further, there is no reason why you wouldn't switch controllers. As in, controller 2 is now charging and controller 1 controls the AI during the Dark Lich fight. In case the Headbang occurs, it's much easier to set up without an AI player interfering Tongue

StingerPA

Edit history:

StingerPA: 2014-08-02 11:04:17 pm

2014-08-02 11:02:39 pm

I did the sword swap in my recent PB, and it's noted in the Boss FAQ, but that's a good idea about swapping the controllers. I got the headbang, but because he targeted my AI character, I messed it up and nearly lost the run.

Yagamoth

2014-08-03 08:39:31 am

INTJ

Managed to get a decent run done skipping getting the armor. Overall I lost around 20 seconds to the Mana Beast, because I had to do some additional damage prevention-spells, but I gained about 20 seconds over my previous Buffy because I could manipulate a good early pattern and built up on that. A few scary parts, but overall nothing bad happened. It definitely gets a lot more intense. So yeah, 1 minute saved by skipping armor, now I'll always have to do that in my runs Tongue

PB is now 2:03:45, so that beats your old pb by 6 seconds ^^

StingerPA

Edit history:

StingerPA: 2014-08-03 12:20:07 pm

StingerPA: 2014-08-03 10:38:20 am

2014-08-03 10:25:58 am

Congrats, I'm looking forward to watching it and comparing to my new PB. It sounds like you didn't actually save time in the Mana Fortress from skipping the armor since you only saved 20s on Buffy and lost it on the Mana Beast. I'm thinking the real time gain will wind up being less than 30 seconds because of the additional precautions we'll need to take.

Edit: First thing to note is that when doing the blat glitch, you only need to sell 8 blats instead of 16 if you're skipping armor.

Edit2: You landed at the Mana Fortress 47 seconds ahead of me when comparing from Mech Rider III's death. Assuming you did the pandora barrier skip like I did, that would translate to a maximum of 54 possible seconds to be saved through skipping armor.