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Speedrunner's Tips

Started by Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas, 01, December, 2014, 12:36:24 PM

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Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

This topic's goal is to list every opportunity one may have to speed through the game, including glitches. Not sure if I'll ever go into detail of the actual gameplay, though.


Retreat Glitch: Use this when PP is below 6. If I remember correctly, this should change the current Map & Door number without actually changing the map as it is displayed. This allows you to access the doors from the entrance while in the same room. If you save and do a reset, you get to go out-of-bounds. (Since the retreated to room would display this time.) - Going north of the map will allow you to read map code data as though it is map data. I don't know if there are any decent ways/vulnerabilities to write to the tile you are on via an event or not, but if there is, I doubt it would be that easy.

Sanctum Warping: Either die, or restart game and hold certain buttons to warp to sanctum.

Avoid/Sacred Feather: Use this when your levels are high enough to stop the Battle Counter. If you get a battle, don't use Avoid in the room you are in, because your levels wouldn't be high enough for it to do anything. (I think.)

Ship Hover: The option in the pause menu will only use 2 PP once. But if you hold B you can fly and go faster, but it uses PP constantly...

Sand/Hover on the Map: When in use, doesn't increase Battle Counter.

Tilemap: Some tiles do not cause battles, like near hover pads in Jupiter Lighthouse.
Sometimes you can use psynergy next to the tile you need to use it on, even when you are at a different elevation. See Magma Rock.

QuoteQ: What is the item-dupe glitch I've heard of?
A: In the words of rockmanxv3:
"I'm confirming something somebody posted about but didn't quite realize what
he had stumbled upon. (Sorry, I don't know your name.)

MAKE SURE YOU SAVE BEFORE YOU DO THIS, I'VE DONE IT BUT IN A DIFFERENT WAY,
ALTHOUGH THIS SHOULD WORK.

While you're taking Trial Road, finish one of the things and get to the chests.
Open them, then drop anything droppable, doesn't matter at ALL what (DM note:
do this on the put-item-in-chest screen). Then go step on the quit switch. When
you get out, you should have all your stuff back. What's more, when you finally
BEAT Trial Road, you can go to the shop to buy duplicates of whatever you
dropped! If it works this way, you should be able to dupe whatever you want as
many times as you want. I haven't personally confirmed this, but the worst
thing that seems likely as that you won't be able to buy the dupes.

If you want to know how I did it, I made sure I had extra armor (Like really
cheap stuff.) and put them in the chests. At this point, I dropped everything I
wanted to dupe, then made it to the top and whooped up. Then I got all the
items I dropped back PLUS I could still buy the dupes at the shop. The above
way is better because if it works you should be able to dupe several times. (4
Golden Boots @.@)"

This glitch was confirmed by yours truly and several others.
Taken from a Faq, but I'm planning to shorten it in just a bit. ; Posting this in case having this allows you to have more stronger equipment to make battles faster? (Don't know, though.)

02000498 = Random battles counter (0x00100000+ will cause a battle.)
020004A4 = Avoid Counter
020054C8 = Random number
030011BC = Random number


If I missed anything, let me know.
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Salanewt

#1
I can't think of much else for an unmodified game, but I'm working on a series of utility patches like the "Faster Avoid" one that speed up some of the game's utility spells and could help with similar records. Especially Move.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

Okay. While that would be neat, I sort of doubt it helps the purpose of this topic, since unmodified ROMs must be used for official records.

It might be worth listing some battling strategies, maybe.

Oh, oh! Forgot one: Hold B in GS2 to quickly go through conversations. Tapping the A button might make it even faster.
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Salanewt

That's true!

But yeah, I find that mashing buttons is much faster than even holding B to speed lines up.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#4
Yeah, for GS2, anyway. I think I heard something about GS1 not letting you hold the B button to quickly skim through convos.... so more mashy mashy!  I wonder what GS3 does?
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Misery

Holding B makes the text go at max speed (of course, text speed should also be set to "fast"). In TLA it also auto-skips to the next text box, but you can skip it faster by pressing another button, so the fastest is to keep B pressed and mash A, I believe.

The item duping glitch has no practical application for speedrunning AFAIK, and the hover glitch with the ship definitely doesn't (flying is always faster). As for tiles that don't increase the battle counter, there aren't a lot of them, and you pretty much only enter them out of necessity, so... there's not much you can use that knowledge for.

Salanewt

Right. Hover ship would at best help if you're not strong enough to fight monsters, and there are only a few areas where sand would actually save time (the Hesperia desert is out of the way, and Airs would be finished, so the only other areas to use it in would be Yampi and a couple puzzle rooms).

While we're on the subject of utilities, how about teleport?
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Misery

What would be really useful to know for speedrunning is how success of running away from battle is determined. Running is always faster than fighting, but if you fail to run for just one turn, fighting is usually faster.

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#8
The Hover thing without flying was in the event that you're low on PP. (But you probably won't be?) Perhaps we need a Useless theoretical section.

Fleeing calculation already documented a long time ago...

Quote0811CE94 = Calculate chance of fleeing.
5000 + (2000*fleeFails) + (Relative Level * 500) >= Random(0,9999) , Oddly uses the "General" RNG.
Relative Level = Get the average level of all the PCs and subtract the average level of the enemies.

So that means you should always Flee if you're Relative level is 10 or higher. (And that there's a possibly from -9 to 10.) ; It's likely that Avoid will be the better option? (Unless its initiation is too slow, but it's probably not.)
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Plexa

#9
Disclaimer: I've worked on the GS1/GS2 speedruns more than anyone else. That said, I'm prone to being wrong about things! But these days I'm reasonably confident :)
Quote from: Misery on 03, December, 2014, 03:57:41 PM
Holding B makes the text go at max speed (of course, text speed should also be set to "fast"). In TLA it also auto-skips to the next text box, but you can skip it faster by pressing another button, so the fastest is to keep B pressed and mash A, I believe.

QuoteThe item duping glitch has no practical application for speedrunning AFAIK, and the hover glitch with the ship definitely doesn't (flying is always faster). As for tiles that don't increase the battle counter, there aren't a lot of them, and you pretty much only enter them out of necessity, so... there's not much you can use that knowledge for.
Not quite true! The current route gets two wild coats in Lemuria which are duped on trial road so that your party outspeeds all the mobs (except the Aka Manah and Wild Gryphons). We get 2 wild coats because the time it takes to get the extra coat from the fountain is less than the time it takes to dupe the wild coat an additional two times.

Quote from: Fox on 03, December, 2014, 04:55:24 PM
The Hover thing without flying was in the event that you're low on PP. (But you probably won't be?) Perhaps we need a Useless theoretical section.

Fleeing calculation already documented a long time ago...

Quote0811CE94 = Calculate chance of fleeing.
5000 + (2000*fleeFails) + (Relative Level * 500) >= Random(0,9999) , Oddly uses the "General" RNG.
Relative Level = Get the average level of all the PCs and subtract the average level of the enemies.

So that means you should always Flee if you're Relative level is 10 or higher. (And that there's a possibly from -9 to 10.) ; It's likely that Avoid will be the better option? (Unless its initiation is too slow, but it's probably not.)
In all the current runs, avoid is more or less useless. Here is a comprehensive list of it's uses:
GS1: between Bilibin Cave - second screen of Kolima forest after Mercury lighthouse
GS2: Indra after Kibombo and again after Tundaria (we Madra warp to Indra after collecting Burst and the prong). Airs Rock (because you do it after Aqua Rock (and before Briggs!)) Occasionally, you can use avoid immediately after Lemuria but that is not consistent (due to random encounters)

The fact that the fleeing formula depends on GRN is absolutely essential to the GS1 speedrun -- funnily enough we worked all of that out prior to me contacting you about the memory addresses for the random numbers. Nevertheless, you providing me with that information allowed me to write a script to display the GRN/BRN and work out far more sophisticated strategies for the game.

A great general resource for golden sun runs is my pastebin: http://pastebin.com/u/Plexa and the FAQs within that (amongst the other stuff like scripts and whatnot) here's some stuff you may not be aware of:

Infinite Climb Glitch: (GS1 only) http://pastebin.com/BMSfKkwG useful exactly twice in a speedrun, both in Altin. Allows you to open the menu while climbing a ladder (it's frame perfect btw). Upon saving/reloading it changes Isaac's Z coordinate allowing mostly uninteresting things - it does however allow you to skip part of a living statue cutscene and talk to spritz early dodging some annoying RNG problems (move interacting with objects is really inconsistent RNG manipulation wise). e.g.: http://www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/5797092?t=109m30s -- here's one kind of interesting application of the glitch for what it's worth http://www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/5802329 (bane is coded as if he's a log!)

Lamakan Desert: Reveal/Retreat interact with each other really weird here. If you go into reveal, use the retreat glitch, then leave reveal the objects in the map are horribly messed up. In particular, there are sinkholes embedded into certain walls. If you trigger the fight in this sinkhole the game will send you to 0,0 afterwards (why? who knows) and you can fight the manticore from there. Useful in no save and quit runs, not in one which allows saving (which all the main categories do). (This was not useful in a run because you could get out of bounds using the retreat glitch and simply run to 0,0 and fight the manticore because for some reason he's just chilling at 0,0 the whole time you're in lamakan desert - e.g. www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/5797092?t=119m50s )

Reveal/Venus 1 Glitch: The first time you enter Venus Lighthouse (i.e. when you need to change the tunnel ruins path) encounters are disabled when you have reveal activated. Really weird, no idea why this is the case. This is the only dungeon which exhibits this property. e.g. http://www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/5797092?t=213m40s

GS2 "random" puzzles: You probably know this one. The puzzles are generated based on the character's name you currently have control over (normally Felix, but if you memory edit to get Jenna to one of these areas the puzzles will be based off of Jenna's name). ~~G is one option for a name which gives optimal puzzles (i.e. for trial road, since the others take the same amount of time)

GS2 reunion djinn: Isaac's party's djinn are generated based on the GRN seed when when their party is created (after you input Felix's name (or piers if you decide to name him)). With no save files on the cartridge the GRN is consistent. You can manipulate his djinn by clearing Felix's name multiple times (we do it 11 times at the moment to get granite flash ground etc).

Ankhol ruins glitch: I have no explanation, there are no other places where this works. http://www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/4600444 (although if you look into this please let me know!! I'm super curious about this)

Extremely early Iris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFvWDkaU0AE (and yeah you can get into anemos inner sanctum early as well)

Burst Glitch: Only works in Magma rock. For some reason, burst doesn't care about the Z coordinate. e.g. www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/4658865?t=240m30 (the whole dungeon is really fun too :) as is airs rock!)

Reunion Cutscene Collision Glitch: Reasonably well known glitch; activating the "first flight" cutscene with Felix on land instead of in the ship. Using it you can get to Mars lighthouse immediately, but it's not useful in a speedrun. http://www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/4670543
There are also OOB doors on the world map leading to one of 5 locations (Daila, Atteka Inlet, Yampi Desert (Alhafra Side), Sea of Time, Northern Reaches) which is also not useful

Misc. Collision Glitches: Probably sub-pixel perfect. If you have any idea why this happens I'm very interested! eg. http://www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/2218076 While this happens with switches (and interactive objects) often, it has happened in other places that haven't been recorded: In GS2 a friend of mine was somehow instantly transported to the middle of the head of the statue that spews out sand in ankhol ruins. In practice in GS1 (on console!) I was able to enter the conveyor belt in Colosso with the conveyor having no impact on my movement (i could move freely without being slowed/sped up or moved if i stood still)

And now *ahem* here's some flashy stuff thats incorporated into the speedruns:
- Here is every fight we take in the current GS1 all djinn run! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IL1nYfjHz2A0pMrCdXkYf_f7yfKfLpBrg2Cq-r5xn-U/edit?usp=sharing
- Flashy menus! www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/5779207?t=66m45s
- The assassin blade is really good: www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/5797092?t=195m40s
- More flashy menus! http://www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/5797092?t=200m25s
- 5 turn fusion dragon! www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/5779207?t=247m30s
- completely destroying Airs Rock www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/4658865?t=111m00s
- manipulating sunshine! www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/4658865?t=108m45s only because we need it for ....
- 0-light serpent! www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/4658865?t=167m40s
- manipulating the gs2 fountain because why not www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/4658865?t=213m0s (and then realising you're short one medal, doh)

EDIT: Almost forgot! Here are all my notes/files/everything I have for helping with GS2 speedruns: http://t.co/EdP1igLKEz

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#10
Oh wow, thanks for all this!

Quotehe's just chilling at 0,0 the whole time you're in lamakan desert
Reminds me of how all rooms in Superstar Saga that don't use non-scripted warps have one at (0,0), and it goes to room 0, which is a debug room. (I think it has to do with how warps are stored, a pointer to warps is stored to RAM, and so they use one "blank" warp that includes a "last warp" flag.) I have not figured out if there are any glitches in Superstar Saga that can give you access to this, though. ; Probably only a few rooms would be applicable, though, so no idea if things like the Fungitown Glitch could be applied elsewhere.

Quoteencounters are disabled when you have reveal activated
Hm... I wonder if Reveal is applied directly to the map in this instance? I guess I'll look it up some time?
Otherwise, reveal can replace tiles with other tiles, and tiles themselves have a flag for which collection of battles could occur. (You can assign a map/room two battle collections based on flag and door number, if you want, and map tiles pick which one to be applied... if the one being applied is 00, then no battles happen.),
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Plexa

Quote from: Fox on 22, January, 2015, 11:23:57 AM
Oh wow, thanks for all this!

Quotehe's just chilling at 0,0 the whole time you're in lamakan desert
Reminds me of how all rooms in Superstar Saga that don't use non-scripted warps have one at (0,0), and it goes to room 0, which is a debug room. (I think it has to do with how warps are stored, a pointer to warps is stored to RAM, and so they use one "blank" warp that includes a "last warp" flag.) I have not figured out if there are any glitches in Superstar Saga that can give you access to this, though. ; Probably only a few rooms would be applicable, though, so no idea if things like the Fungitown Glitch could be applied elsewhere.
That sounds more like the vale door (activate the retreat glitch, some doors will send you outside vale. We believe this happens because you look up a door that doesn't exist and rather than crashing it sends you to vale). In golden sun's case, the devs were lazy and store almost all of the sprites that are unused off screen somewhere - almost always at 0,0. e.g. in Golden Sun 2 you can see that the boat/felix's sprite is store at 0,0 on the world map when not used. Similarly, in areas like the northern reaches if you enter that using Felix as opposed to the ship (because buggy terrain allows you to do that) you can find the ship at 0,0. And one last example, Saturos/Alex are just chilling at 0,0 before the cutscene to fight saturos calls him to appear from behind the lighthouse.

Quote
Quoteencounters are disabled when you have reveal activated
Hm... I wonder if Reveal is applied directly to the map in this instance? I guess I'll look it up some time?
Otherwise, reveal can replace tiles with other tiles, and tiles themselves have a flag for which collection of battles could occur. (You can assign a map/room two battle collections based on flag and door number, if you want, and map tiles pick which one to be applied... if the one being applied is 00, then no battles happen.),
Seems likely, and they just forgot to add battles to the tiles that have this applied. Might also explain some of the oddness at lamakan as well/

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#12
@Retreat Glitch: Well, pretty sure both of us already know this, but I can still add this info here:


You could look at the current map and door numbers. These update even when you don't have enough PP. Which is the cause for why doors go to locations they're not suppose to go to. (Ex: The game thinks you are in the room you would have retreated to.)

02000400 = GS1's map and door number
02000480 = GS1's retreat map and door number.
02000420 = GS2's map and door number
020004A0 = GS2's retreat map and door number.

^ That's what I learned a long time ago....
So if there are more doors in the room you are in versus the room you would have retreated to... then...

Would this explain it?

(I probably should give that a quick test, but...)



Oh, and I saw your other topic label that "map" thing as "area"... if that's the case, then what do you call the number at... it was probably at 0200042C (GS2), but I forget. ; Relates to resetting the flags at 020000A0. (0x300-0x3FF), and may also relate to map names in some instances... I think?

--
I want to thank you again for showing the lua stuff... because I never bothered with that before.
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Plexa

Yea the map/area thing is exactly those addresses you listed. I set those up in the lua script a while back to work out every instance of where a retreat glitch might be useful. The criteria being that you need to be on a different map to the first map of the dungeon and you can find doors for every exit door that the first map contains. I think that if there are more doors in the map you are in versus the first map you get vale warps (or Madra warps in GS2) - for instance Venus 1 is almost all vale doors because the first map is the exterior area where all the soldiers are only has 3 possible doors (left to suhalla, right to lalivero, up to venus). However in Altmiller Cave there is a vale door immediately above where Babi is lying, I'll leave the technical data below, but the tldr is I think that's evidence for the door lookup not existing as opposed to an absolute number of doors in each area.

Map 146 (altmiller entrance)
                   World Map - Door 1
                   Door 2 - Door 3
                   Door 4 - Map 147 Door 10

Map 2: Babi's room
                   Door 10 - Map 146 Door 4
                   Door 11 - Map 148 Door 20

Map 3: Room after Babi
                   Door 20 - Map 147 Door 11
                   Door 21 - Map 149 Door 30

Map 4: Squalls Room
                   Door 30 - Map 148 Door 21
                   Door 31 - Map 150 Door 40
etc

All of the doors lead to Vale, for what it's worth.

Just for fun here are two notable retreat warps;

- Mercury lighthouse has one of the worst (but at the same time, best!) map design of any dungeon. In particular, the final room of the dungeon (where you cast ply and rise to the top of the lighthouse) is actually on the first map of the dungeon. In the room where you get Mia, going into retreat mode and walking down the left set of stairs will send you to map/door 3A05 which just happens to correspond with the exit door from using ply on the statue AFTER you defeat saturos (causing a hilarious cutscene where Jenna's face is everywhere, and allowing you to beat the game without saving Mia)

- Going into retreat mode and saving/resetting can get you out of bounds in the first map of the dungeon (see my tret thread for an example). The out of bounds world is pretty crazy, some more than others. One skip this allows is the Vale Cave skip which saves ~30s in a normal run, but is notoriously difficult to pull off. Here is a map of the area you try to navigate (completely off screen, of course)

You start in the bottom left of this picture. Each grid corresponds to one x/y square as defined by my lua script which is basically the the space the size of a douse puddle. Doors are really weird OOB, sometimes you can only access them from one direction and other times walls are only partially solid (i.e. you can walk through them left to right, but not right to left). I may start another thread about this because there's some odd behavior I should document that you might be interested in.

Luna_blade

Quote from: Plexa on 22, January, 2015, 10:32:44 AM
GS2 "random" puzzles: You probably know this one. The puzzles are generated based on the character's name you currently have control over (normally Felix, but if you memory edit to get Jenna to one of these areas the puzzles will be based off of Jenna's name). ~~G is one option for a name which gives optimal puzzles (i.e. for trial road, since the others take the same amount of time)
Nope. Never knew that. I haven't played TLA more than one time though.
But how can it even be random? I also guess this only applies to a few puzzles in the game?
"Hear the sounds and melodies
Of rilets flowing down
They're the verlasting songs
Whispering all the time
As a warning that behind some rocks
There's a rigid grap even
Oreads fear the tread"

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#15
I didn't know names affected anything asides from how they appear in dialogue... Just tested just now, and it seems interesting enough.


(It's always possible to forget things, though.)
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Plexa

Quote from: Luna_blade on 23, January, 2015, 11:20:24 AM
Quote from: Plexa on 22, January, 2015, 10:32:44 AM
GS2 "random" puzzles: You probably know this one. The puzzles are generated based on the character's name you currently have control over (normally Felix, but if you memory edit to get Jenna to one of these areas the puzzles will be based off of Jenna's name). ~~G is one option for a name which gives optimal puzzles (i.e. for trial road, since the others take the same amount of time)
Nope. Never knew that. I haven't played TLA more than one time though.
But how can it even be random? I also guess this only applies to a few puzzles in the game?

Yeah it applies to three puzzles: Gabomba's broken circuit (which is on a timer so can't be sped up), the Gaia rock maze (which is always the same length, so at best saves a few seconds optimally) and the trials you face on trial road. The trial road puzzles actually do vary significantly in time, easily more than 30s difference between the best set and the worst set. So at present we optimize the name to give the best set of puzzles in trial road. After testing I found that ~~G is one of the shortest names that will set the right side of trial road to have the fastest possible set of puzzles. I say one of the shortest because using this document you can form any name which adds to 143 in hexadecimal and you'll have the same result - i.e. its the numerical value of the name and not the name itself which generates the puzzles. Some other names which which an optimal set of puzzles on trial road include B0ob and $Wag.

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#17
Um... Okay, delving into the code, here's what I find.

For Trial Roads:

0200A496 = All the characters in the name are added together, and another function is called. ; (Note to those interested in checking:  This is Map Code, so make sure you are in the room before viewing this in disassembler.)

0200AC30 = generatePuzzleOrder(checksumOfName) ; Seems to place the calculated number in the General RNG. (030011BC) At the end of the function, it also looks like the random number is restored back to what it was before the number was placed there.
0200244C = List of 8 puzzles, and it seems that the calculated number is for picking which slot to put the next puzzle in. (Starting from putting in "0000", finishing at putting in "0007"...)
0200DBE0 = Another 00 to 07 array. I think these are checked against the numbers at 0200244C listing. ; From what I've studied, in simple terms, if puzzles 0, 2, 3, and 7 are all on one side, then the puzzles are reassigned.... (Maybe those puzzles have a significant advantage/disadvantage versus 1, 4, 5, and 6?)
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Plexa

#18
That's very peculiar that 0, 2, 3 and 7 are impossible? I've timed out all the puzzles and the set that I get is definitely the fastest possible set, but I've only ever gotten it to appear on the right side as opposed to the left side. I'll go away and test this quickly to see what I get, I'll return with my results!

Update:

Okay I sat down and worked things out. The rooms are assigned by the first number in the array being the first room in the left path, the second number in the array being the first room in the right path, third number in array is the second room on the left path and so on.

The rooms are:
0 = Move/Whirldwind puzzle with long vertical movement paths for the pillars
1 = Melting frost pillars puzzle
2 = Move/Whirlwind puzzle with short movement paths
3 = Pound puzzle
4 = Burst puzzle
5 = Rolling log puzzle
6 = Scoop puzzle
7 = Sand puzzle

The fastest set of puzzles would be any permutation of 0, 2, 4 and 6.

Banning 0 2 3 and 7 seems really odd. The pound puzzle is REALLY slow, however the sand puzzle is pretty fast (its only marginally slower than 2).

Update 2: Actually, if the left/right alternation holds true for the check memory addresses. Then it would be 2, 4, 6 and 7 being banned from being together. Now that *could* be the fastest set of puzzles on trial road - or at least the perceived fastest list. The sand puzzle is intuitively shorter than 0 or 2, but when you actually time it it is marginally slower because the sand cast time/come out of sand cast time and the whirlwind cast time are really long. But since Moapa's movement is frozen during the casting of psynergy its plausible that in terms of 'game time' the sand path is shorter than 0 or 2.

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#19
QuoteAnkhol ruins glitch: I have no explanation, there are no other places where this works. http://www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/c/4600444 (although if you look into this please let me know!! I'm super curious about this)
I looked this up... and it appears that some used data isn't overwritten at the end of Map Code.

02000080 = Some flags here to say that the switch event thingy activated... (This gets reset back to whatever values you last saved them as when you reset.) ; (Note that this is room specific, so going to other rooms will change the meaning of these flags. Aka: Switching rooms clears these flags... (0x200-0x2FF), while switching Areas/Towns clears 0x300-0x3FF)
0200C024+ = It appears this may be the real cause of the glitch, since it doesn't seem to get reset back.... and it holds information on the state of the sand/etc.

So in conclusion, you only need to save once, activate the switch, and soft reset.

--
So are there any other places where usable data is left at the end of map code and never reset back?
1. Might be interesting to know if any of them would be abusable with the use of the function that converts branch links from relative and absolute. -- Unlikely, though, because the value would need a pattern of something like F000 F800 - basically 1111.0***.****.**** , 1111.1***.****.**** , I think. -- So that brings me to #2.
2. Might also be interesting if you save, then you leave the room to load a larger map code file (So this data changes)... and do a soft-reset to return back to the room... if this happens to be some type of potential exploit. At the same time, one should also remember that the select a file/etc. screens have map code files of their own, so this might limit some potential exploiting...
3. If the data falls around 0200A74C, then it could be potentailly exploited via the Password system. (Ankhol sands don't fall in this range though.)

As for Ankhol Sands, might be worth seeing if you can get those pointers pointing to other RAM data somehow...? (Assuming the code follows them, and edits stuff.) Those pointers seem fixed, so won't work.
--
Usable data I notice that stay in mem with soft-reset... or get cleared with hard-reset:
0200EFC8 = 121 = Gambomba Statue = At the top/puzzle room... (Most likely useless.)
--


To help with finding the end of the map code file for the currently viewed room:
02030010 = This address holds a pointer to the events table in map code, and usually it is at the end of the file, so scrolling pass it should allow you to see potential data....
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)