Wild Arms 4 - November 23, 2013

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UraniumAnchor

Edit history:

UraniumAnchor: 2013-11-23 01:04:48 pm

UraniumAnchor: 2013-11-13 12:13:44 pm

2013-10-29 09:01:54 pm

1-Up!

Game Page: Doesn't Exist Yet

Wild Arms 4 (Any %) (Segmented)

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to Kenneth 'Tide' Cheung!

Thread title:

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UraniumAnchor

Edit history:

UraniumAnchor: 2013-11-13 12:13:54 pm

2013-10-29 09:01:54 pm

1-Up!

Run Information

Wild Arms 4 (Any %) (Segmented)

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/wildarms4

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting. Verifications are due by Nov. 19, 2013.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

After 2 weeks I will read all of the verifications and move this thread to the main verification board and post my verdict.

Eternalspirit

Edit history:

Eternalspirit: 2013-10-31 10:21:22 am

2013-10-30 10:06:51 pm

Been looking forward to this. Smiley

So I see one issue in the first segment.. at the bottom of the video, you can see static garbage that is present the entire time. Is that something that can be corrected by adjusting the position of the video in the viewport?

djcj

2013-10-31 10:56:22 am

I'm not going to verify this run. As for the video quality, the video seems to contain flickering. I don't know how this could be fixed, nate should know that. Like Eternalspirit pointed out, there are ugly video artifacts at the bottom of the video that could be blackened out by i.e. overlaying a black bar.

UraniumAnchor

2013-10-31 11:31:34 am

Not a walrus

Looking at it, it's encoded by nate, and the flickering is probably just a matter of using a different deinterlacing method. For now ignore that and the garbage along the bottom since nate can almost assuredly fix that before it goes up on the site.

Eternalspirit

2013-10-31 11:48:16 am

Roger that. Smiley

Eternalspirit

Edit history:

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-17 04:04:07 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-10 01:37:41 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-10 01:37:17 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-10 12:18:31 am

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-09 09:55:26 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-09 09:37:36 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-09 09:17:37 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:57:20 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:50:40 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:48:16 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:44:35 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:37:19 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:36:39 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:34:27 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:34:14 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:33:54 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:24:31 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 09:11:09 pm

Eternalspirit: 2013-11-08 04:13:13 am

2013-10-31 07:18:07 pm

To be clear, these are NOT my official run comments.

TECHNICAL NOTES:

Overall: Lots of flickering/stuttering and consistent artifacting at the bottom of the screen.

Segment 10: The actual segment start isn't until about 12:33 in, everything before that is failed attempts and should be discarded.
Segment 17: Segment doesn't start until about 7:20 into the video, everything before should be discarded.
Segment 18: Segment doesn't start until about 8:47 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 21: Doesn't start until about 6:22 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 22: Doesn't start until about 15:57 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 25: Doesn't start until about 4:04 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 26: Doesn't start until about 17:57 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 27: Doesn't start until about 12:06 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 28: Doesn't start until about 8:09 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 29: Doesn't start until about 0:24 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 30: Doesn't start until about 1:34 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 32: Doesn't start until about 21:24 into the video, discard the rest. Also ends at about 32:50, everything afterwards should be discarded.
Segment 33: Doesn't start until about 26:02 into the video, discard the rest.

In segments 16-18, 20-23, 25-34 the audio is desynced by several seconds.

The desyncs are also not consistent (times are in milliseconds, and also not 100% accurate):
16: too fast, 2800
17: too fast, 2900
18: too fast, 1800
20: too fast, 1750
21: too fast, 2900
22: too fast, 1100
23: too fast, 2050
25: too fast, 3500
26: too fast, 3000
27: too fast, 2700
28: too fast, 2500
29: too fast, 4000
30: too fast, 1650
31: too fast, 3500
32: too fast, 500
33: too fast, 2800
34: too fast, 1400

RUN NOTES:

For anyone wondering about the runner constantly using accelerator after segment 1 (that's when the screen goes blue), while it does seem to slow down the gameplay, the runner is doing it to reduce the encounter rate. When you're in accelerator mode, you don't get into random encounters, but the accelerator gauge drains pretty quickly. Doing it the way the runner does it uses it pretty much as efficiently as possible.

Watching segment 16, it really displays the runner's attention to detail and intolerance for mistakes when he discards an attempt I would have been fine with (minus the control pausing after Hugo). In the end, he gets a much better boss fight. Several other segment attempts are discarded for similar reasons.

Final save time is 5:04:54.

To be clear, these are NOT my official run comments.

TECHNICAL NOTES:

Overall: Lots of flickering/stuttering and consistent artifacting at the bottom of the screen.

Segment 10: The actual segment start isn't until about 12:33 in, everything before that is failed attempts and should be discarded.
Segment 17: Segment doesn't start until about 7:20 into the video, everything before should be discarded.
Segment 18: Segment doesn't start until about 8:47 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 21: Doesn't start until about 6:22 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 22: Doesn't start until about 15:57 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 25: Doesn't start until about 4:04 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 26: Doesn't start until about 17:57 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 27: Doesn't start until about 12:06 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 28: Doesn't start until about 8:09 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 29: Doesn't start until about 0:24 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 30: Doesn't start until about 1:34 into the video, discard the rest.
Segment 32: Doesn't start until about 21:24 into the video, discard the rest. Also ends at about 32:50, everything afterwards should be discarded.
Segment 33: Doesn't start until about 26:02 into the video, discard the rest.

In segments 16-18, 20-23, 25-34 the audio is desynced by several seconds.

The desyncs are also not consistent (times are in milliseconds, and also not 100% accurate):
16: too fast, 2800
17: too fast, 2900
18: too fast, 1800
20: too fast, 1750
21: too fast, 2900
22: too fast, 1100
23: too fast, 2050
25: too fast, 3500
26: too fast, 3000
27: too fast, 2700
28: too fast, 2500
29: too fast, 4000
30: too fast, 1650
31: too fast, 3500
32: too fast, 500
33: too fast, 2800
34: too fast, 1400

RUN NOTES:

For anyone wondering about the runner constantly using accelerator after segment 1 (that's when the screen goes blue), while it does seem to slow down the gameplay, the runner is doing it to reduce the encounter rate. When you're in accelerator mode, you don't get into random encounters, but the accelerator gauge drains pretty quickly. Doing it the way the runner does it uses it pretty much as efficiently as possible.

Watching segment 16, it really displays the runner's attention to detail and intolerance for mistakes when he discards an attempt I would have been fine with (minus the control pausing after Hugo). In the end, he gets a much better boss fight. Several other segment attempts are discarded for similar reasons.

Final save time is 5:04:54.

LotBlind

2013-11-10 10:58:24 am

34 segments with no run comments? Anything coming later?

Eternalspirit

2013-11-10 12:12:18 pm

To be fair, there isn't a whole lot to say about it. There are zero random encounters (minus ones where the runner was farming for something), and the bosses are pretty straightforward (though many of them are jerks).

In the Wunderweltraum (the place Belial takes you after you defeat Scythe), the runner farmed for a Tiny Flower, which puts the character who equipped it into Detonation mode for one turn. Detonation mode gives a character a bunch of status boosts:

- ATK +100
- DEF +100
- MAG +100
- RES +100
- HIT +100
- EVA +50
- RFX +100

This is used to try to manipulate turn order a little bit, as well as give the character with Detonation a bit of a damage boost.

At the Autumn River, the runner farms for a Full Carrot, which, if the characters who has it equipped goes first in battle (not 100% sure if they have to go first out of everyone, or just first out of the PCs), the Force Gauge gets filled to 100%. This is INSANELY useful in this run, because that allows Raquel (mostly) to get many turns in a row by using Intrude (Intrude gives Raquel an extra turn immediately after her current turn, without using up her current turn). Raquel also has insane damage, so this is used so she can annihilate bosses.

A few notes on the characters:

Jude's skills: He has an attack called Joint Struggle, which has damage determined by the number of characters in Jude's hex. This is why the runner tries to get as many characters into Jude's hex as possible during some battles.

Arnaud's spells: Blast, Hi-Blast, etc. do elemental damage depending on the color of the hex Arnaud casts it from (no color: non-elemental, red: fire, green: wind, yellow: earth, blue: water). This is used to exploit boss weaknesses a couple of times. There are a few occasions where stuff resembling Arnaud's spells are used in non-elemental hex, but this is because the runner picked up items that allowed him to do that.

Yulie: Essentially, she's the caster/summoner of the group. You rarely see her use her summons, but they follow the same formula as Arnaud's spells, with the exception that summoning on a no color hex does healing to the entire party.

And some stuff about status effects:

In this game, you don't apply status effects to characters, instead you apply them to a hex, and any characters within that hex are then afflicted by the status effect. The runner exploits enemy AI to keep them within a hex (usually one with slow down on it). I don't think Jeremy 1 is actually possible to beat without doing this at low levels without an insane amount of luck.

That's all I've got for now.

To be fair, there isn't a whole lot to say about it. There are zero random encounters (minus ones where the runner was farming for something), and the bosses are pretty straightforward (though many of them are jerks).

In the Wunderweltraum (the place Belial takes you after you defeat Scythe), the runner farmed for a Tiny Flower, which puts the character who equipped it into Detonation mode for one turn. Detonation mode gives a character a bunch of status boosts:

- ATK +100
- DEF +100
- MAG +100
- RES +100
- HIT +100
- EVA +50
- RFX +100

This is used to try to manipulate turn order a little bit, as well as give the character with Detonation a bit of a damage boost.

At the Autumn River, the runner farms for a Full Carrot, which, if the characters who has it equipped goes first in battle (not 100% sure if they have to go first out of everyone, or just first out of the PCs), the Force Gauge gets filled to 100%. This is INSANELY useful in this run, because that allows Raquel (mostly) to get many turns in a row by using Intrude (Intrude gives Raquel an extra turn immediately after her current turn, without using up her current turn). Raquel also has insane damage, so this is used so she can annihilate bosses.

A few notes on the characters:

Jude's skills: He has an attack called Joint Struggle, which has damage determined by the number of characters in Jude's hex. This is why the runner tries to get as many characters into Jude's hex as possible during some battles.

Arnaud's spells: Blast, Hi-Blast, etc. do elemental damage depending on the color of the hex Arnaud casts it from (no color: non-elemental, red: fire, green: wind, yellow: earth, blue: water). This is used to exploit boss weaknesses a couple of times. There are a few occasions where stuff resembling Arnaud's spells are used in non-elemental hex, but this is because the runner picked up items that allowed him to do that.

Yulie: Essentially, she's the caster/summoner of the group. You rarely see her use her summons, but they follow the same formula as Arnaud's spells, with the exception that summoning on a no color hex does healing to the entire party.

And some stuff about status effects:

In this game, you don't apply status effects to characters, instead you apply them to a hex, and any characters within that hex are then afflicted by the status effect. The runner exploits enemy AI to keep them within a hex (usually one with slow down on it). I don't think Jeremy 1 is actually possible to beat without doing this at low levels without an insane amount of luck.

That's all I've got for now.

Eternalspirit

2013-11-10 01:18:35 pm

Also, some boss notes:

Most bosses are straightforward beat 'em 'til they die, but there are a few bosses that have some gimmicks:

Hugo: System Chronos allows him to evade any attack, any time. You have to surround him so that he cannot move from one hex to another to evade.
Gawn: There is nothing to this battle, you just have to survive 12 attacks, then he runs out of ammo and the boss is defeated.
Farmel: It's not very apparent in this battle, but she switches between 3 stances where she takes either no damage, only physical or only magical (3 stances total). She also doesn't move.
Lambda: He has the ability to negate a lot of damage with a special attack he can use, but it's not apparent here because he gets owned.

Eternalspirit

2013-11-10 01:38:55 pm

OK, these are my official run comments:

A/V has several issues that I hope can be resolved.

As far as the run itself, planning and execution are nearly flawless. The final boss was a bit rough, but that guy is a jerk anyways. Easy accept.

UraniumAnchor

2013-11-13 12:13:40 pm

Not a walrus

Given that this run is long I'm pushing back the due date for another week, because I'd prefer more than one response.

Eternalspirit

2013-11-13 04:13:20 pm

Quote from UraniumAnchor:

Given that this run is long I'm pushing back the due date for another week, because I'd prefer more than one response.

Cool.

Any update regarding the tech issues? Smiley

UraniumAnchor

2013-11-13 04:27:30 pm

Not a walrus

Quote from UraniumAnchor:

Looking at it, it's encoded by nate, and the flickering is probably just a matter of using a different deinterlacing method. For now ignore that and the garbage along the bottom since nate can almost assuredly fix that before it goes up on the site.

The desync is probably fixable as well. Was there something else I missed?

Eternalspirit

2013-11-13 08:34:03 pm

Quote from UraniumAnchor:

Looking at it, it's encoded by nate, and the flickering is probably just a matter of using a different deinterlacing method. For now ignore that and the garbage along the bottom since nate can almost assuredly fix that before it goes up on the site.

The desync is probably fixable as well. Was there something else I missed?

I don't think so. Do you guys want me to look at the videos again after the issues are fixed?

UraniumAnchor

2013-11-13 08:40:31 pm

Not a walrus

Nah, they probably won't get fixed until just before they go on the site, assuming nothing stops the run from going up.

Eternalspirit

2013-11-13 09:16:14 pm

Sounds good!

Hopefully someone else chimes in on this run. It really was quite a good run. Smiley

LotBlind

Edit history:

LotBlind: 2013-11-17 01:12:15 pm

LotBlind: 2013-11-16 11:22:13 am

LotBlind: 2013-11-15 12:21:18 pm

LotBlind: 2013-11-14 12:21:19 pm

2013-11-14 11:05:16 am

Thank you Eternalspirit for all your notes! They were quite useful.

TECHNICAL (additions to Eternalspirit's notes)

Flickering and green bar present in some segments but in others I forgot about it completely. Not a major issue IMO.

Segment 9 - 12 or so seconds of waiting in-menu before the save file is chosen should be cut off.

Quote from Eternalspirit:

Segment 16: Segment doesn't start until about 7:20 into the video, everything before should be discarded.

Watching segment 16, it really displays the runner's attention to detail and intolerance for mistakes when he discards an attempt I would have been fine with (minus the control pausing after Hugo). In the end, he gets a much better boss fight.

Eternalspirit is talking about segment 17. Segment 16 is fine apart from its desync.

FINISHED COMMENTS BELOW

It seems the runner is using an advanced technique of avoiding encounters involving jumping as much as possible and toggling the accelerator on and off in between every jump. Through most of the run. Impressive stuff!

Fights generally go very well even though you can see the margins aren't great for not getting stomped by some bosses.

Per-segment comments vv

4 - I think the accelerator was used more times than necessary after the boss fight as there was a lot of "sand" left on exiting the screen.
5 - Same here on a few screens. I suspect the runner's use of the technique had gotten quite mechanical by this point... 3-second mistake at 7:00.
6 - 1-sec mistake at 2:32.
15 - 1-sec movement mistake at 1:06.
19 - 1-sec mistake 11:26.
20 - 4-sec mistake at 4:21. One of the worst-looking ones. 1-sec at 4:37. I guess the runner had tried getting two lamps with one bomb in the room at 5:50. Maybe they're just too far apart. 1 sec at 12:00. Overall one of the segments that looks improvable though not by much. Maybe the boss fight has lots of randomness.
23 - 1-sec mistake 4:40?
28 - 1 sec 9:15
29 - <1 sec 6:34
32 - The Riesenge fight at 22:43 comes extremely close to 2-hitting it. This can be done and it's at the start of the segment though the segment also has other tough boss fights in it. It probably saves around 8 seconds to the recovery strat used in the run. So this is another segment that could be improved I guess. Another boss fight near the end comes tantalizingly close to a 1-hit so if someone can figure out how to increase the damage output just a little they could save some more seconds.

Segmentation is quite modest with no easy menu-heavy segments or such done separately.

All in all I think accelerate-jumps would be best left until most of the gauge has drained to consistently get the most of it, but maybe I'm not able to wholly grasp the mechanics for getting encounters. Besides the runner was using it very efficiently in most screens.

So most mistakes falling into the 1-second category this is such an obvious, such a glorious accept.

ACCEPT!!!

And oh boy if there ever was a run thoroughly explained... I decided I'll post this before finishing reading the comments because it's a no-brainer for an accept.

Thank you Eternalspirit for all your notes! They were quite useful.

TECHNICAL (additions to Eternalspirit's notes)

Flickering and green bar present in some segments but in others I forgot about it completely. Not a major issue IMO.

Segment 9 - 12 or so seconds of waiting in-menu before the save file is chosen should be cut off.

[quote="Eternalspirit"]Segment 16: Segment doesn't start until about 7:20 into the video, everything before should be discarded.

Watching segment 16, it really displays the runner's attention to detail and intolerance for mistakes when he discards an attempt I would have been fine with (minus the control pausing after Hugo). In the end, he gets a much better boss fight.[/quote]

Eternalspirit is talking about segment 17. Segment 16 is fine apart from its desync.

FINISHED COMMENTS BELOW

It seems the runner is using an advanced technique of avoiding encounters involving jumping as much as possible and toggling the accelerator on and off in between every jump. Through most of the run. Impressive stuff!

Fights generally go very well even though you can see the margins aren't great for not getting stomped by some bosses.

Per-segment comments vv

4 - I think the accelerator was used more times than necessary after the boss fight as there was a lot of "sand" left on exiting the screen.
5 - Same here on a few screens. I suspect the runner's use of the technique had gotten quite mechanical by this point... 3-second mistake at 7:00.
6 - 1-sec mistake at 2:32.
15 - 1-sec movement mistake at 1:06.
19 - 1-sec mistake 11:26.
20 - 4-sec mistake at 4:21. One of the worst-looking ones. 1-sec at 4:37. I guess the runner had tried getting two lamps with one bomb in the room at 5:50. Maybe they're just too far apart. 1 sec at 12:00. Overall one of the segments that looks improvable though not by much. Maybe the boss fight has lots of randomness.
23 - 1-sec mistake 4:40?
28 - 1 sec 9:15
29 - <1 sec 6:34
32 - The Riesenge fight at 22:43 comes extremely close to 2-hitting it. This can be done and it's at the start of the segment though the segment also has other tough boss fights in it. It probably saves around 8 seconds to the recovery strat used in the run. So this is another segment that could be improved I guess. Another boss fight near the end comes tantalizingly close to a 1-hit so if someone can figure out how to increase the damage output just a little they could save some more seconds.

Segmentation is quite modest with no easy menu-heavy segments or such done separately.

All in all I think accelerate-jumps would be best left until most of the gauge has drained to consistently get the most of it, but maybe I'm not able to wholly grasp the mechanics for getting encounters. Besides the runner was using it very efficiently in most screens.

So most mistakes falling into the 1-second category this is such an obvious, such a [i]glorious[/i] accept.

ACCEPT!!!

And oh boy if there ever was a run thoroughly explained... I decided I'll post this before finishing reading the comments because it's a no-brainer for an accept.

UraniumAnchor

2013-11-16 12:27:35 pm

Not a walrus

There are some comments from the runner attached now. At a quick glance they're... fairly detailed.

Eternalspirit

2013-11-16 12:37:31 pm

Those comments.. o_o

LotBlind

2013-11-17 01:12:34 pm

Finished comments edited in.

Eternalspirit

2013-11-17 04:03:52 pm

Thank you for your correction regarding segment 17 Lotblind! I am also quite happy that you decided to accept this, as having played WA4 myself, I can tell you that these bosses can get very, very trolly, so for the runner to have been able to beat the game as efficiently as he did in this run is quite amazing to me.

UraniumAnchor

2013-11-23 01:05:03 pm

Not a walrus

Posted.

Tide

2013-11-23 03:21:51 pm

Insanity Prelude

Awesome. Thanks for verifying since I know its probably not easy to find 5 hours of free time! Comments should explain *everything* (it was written with the intent to help people who haven't played the game understand what was going on), but if you have other questions, just let me know.

I'm working on a single segment for this in preparation for a 2014 charity marathon. I've already managed to beat the Japanese RTA time by 19 minutes. Maybe when I have more time, I'll submit a SS run.

Eternalspirit

2013-11-23 03:51:56 pm

Quote from Tide:

Awesome. Thanks for verifying since I know its probably not easy to find 5 hours of free time! Comments should explain *everything* (it was written with the intent to help people who haven't played the game understand what was going on), but if you have other questions, just let me know.

I'm working on a single segment for this in preparation for a 2014 charity marathon. I've already managed to beat the Japanese RTA time by 19 minutes. Maybe when I have more time, I'll submit a SS run.

I honestly didn't think a SS of this game was practical, to be honest.. so much boss trollage, it's at least on par with FF1.