zahlman

As I've recommended before: use a version control system to keep organized backups automatically.

>mfw this many of them actually exist >mfw I have enough things wasting my time without finding and reading all of these

Holy shit I've heard of people insta-promoting in Lyn mode, but you got Sain to lv 14 there? And then got him 2 more levels each on the next couple of maps in HHM... crazy. I'd have skipped both stat boosters to use the Knight Crest early but it looks like it's really worked out for you. Anyway. Ch 17 11-2/89 Pre-chapter stats: Hector 7.97 24hp 10/ 9/ 6/ 4/10/2 Becky 6.32 20hp 6/ 9/ 7/ 6/ 6/2 Lowen 7.64 28hp 8/ 5/ 9/ 4/ 8/2 Dorcas 11.10 38hp 10/ 9/ 8/ 8/ 4/2 Serra 5.57 19hp 3/ 7/ 9/ 9/ 2/7, and B staves already. Matt 11.57 24hp 6/ 6/16/ 7/ 5/0, still no res. Erk 10.83 25hp 7/ 9/12/ 6/ 3/8 Lyn 11.55 26hp 8/15/16/10/ 4/4 This took careful planning and a bit of rng opportunism, but no real abuse. Lowen needs the Steel Sword to do enough damage in a couple clutch situations. He collects the Hammer and Silver Sword, so he only brings in the steel sword, iron lance and a 17-use javelin. Becky also needs the steel bow to finish off Raven, after Lyn can't get the KO without messing things up. Lyn brings an iron sword so that Erk can get a little extra xp. Script: Ch 17x 5-5/89 Pre-chapter stats: Hector 10.13 26hp 13/ 9/ 8/ 5/13/ 5, got absolute hax level-ups last time. Becky 7.40 21hp 6/ 9/ 8/ 7/ 6/ 2 Lowen 9.69 30hp 9/ 5/10/ 5/ 9/ 2 Dorcas 11.89 38hp 10/ 9/ 8/ 8/ 4/ 2 Serra 6.78 19hp 3/ 8/ 9/ 9/ 2/ 8 Matt 12.28 25hp 6/ 6/16/ 7/ 5/ 0, STILL no res. Erk 12.53 26hp 9/ 9/14/ 7/ 3/10 Lyn 12.33 26hp 8/15/17/10/ 4/ 4 The RNG is ridiculous on this map. This script looks like such hax, but there are no explicit RN burns. A few things had to be tried to get it to work in my favour, since this is heavily dependent on dodging powerful enemies. But when it worked, it really worked. Lyn got a perfect level-up on EP 3 and another great one on EP 4 while dodging everything even though no longer on the forest tile. The basic strategy here is to get Lyn and Matthew into the two center forest tiles ASAP and have them dodge all the things (while Lyn also gets a bunch of MK crits). This requires them to hold back 1 tile each on turn 1 so that they don't trigger the Mooncalf Zone before they're ready. Originally I thought a 4-turn was possible, but the ranged attackers keep getting in the way and standing where they can't be attacked safely, requiring caution on turn 3 to thin out the field a bit more first. Horace's team can probably 4-turn this map effortlessly, and maybe 3-turn it with effort because promoted Kent can pwn stuff with hand axes. If I'd been smarter, I'd have focussed more exp on Lowen earlier (and less on Rebecca, lol) so that he'd be promoted before this chapter (ideally well before), but he's been doing badly the whole time which is really annoying. Canas was used as bait on EP 2 after transferring his Vulnerary and Secret Book. He survived the first hit with 1HP to counter with a crit, and died a warrior shaman's death to the next attacker. Awesome contribution for a cameo unit. In order to ensure that Lowen gets some exp and makes Lv 10, Serra needs to heal Lyn on turn 4 so that Lyn doesn't draw everyone. This leaves her vulnerable to one attack from the Killer Bow!Archer, who exactly OHKOs. Thanks to the ridiculous RNG, however, she dodges 72% display hit, and Lowen gets a great level-up to Lv10, allowing promotion after the chapter. The Devil Axe (probably fairly useless), Short Bow (kinda pointless but maybe a later strat will require a key crit before I get a killer bow, somehow... ?!) and Sleep staff (this will be awesome for Serra IF SHE EVER PROCS SOME DAMNED MAG) are obtained; the Lancereaver is ignored as it's way too far out there without a flier. After the chapter, a whole bunch of stuff is sold in order to buy things on the pirate ship: the Secret Book, Goddess icon, 10-use Lockpick, two of those Heal staves I stupidly bought in Ch13, and some low-use hand axes and javelins that will get refreshed. Script: Ch 18 5/94 Pre-chapter stats: Hector 11.41 27hp 13/ 9/ 9/ 5/14/ 5 Becky 7.40 21hp 6/ 9/ 8/ 7/ 6/ 2 Lowen 10/ 1.00 33hp 11/ 6/11/ 6/12/ 4 Dorcas 13.16 40hp 11/11/ 8/10/ 4/ 2 Serra 7.15 19hp 3/ 8/ 9/10/ 2/ 8, FFS. Matt 12.68 25hp 6/ 6/16/ 7/ 5/ 0 Erk 12.53 26hp 9/ 9/14/ 7/ 3/10 Lyn 14.72 28hp 10/17/18/11/ 5/ 5, very nice. This was not all that fun, but it was much less painful than when I tried to do it without a promoted Lowen. You board a pirate ship without a Paladin, you're gonna have a bad time. Merlinus is deployed because shopping. He serves as bait for the NW pegs, keeping them away until other stuff is dealt with, but survives long enough for all the shopping to be done. Those pegs are killed later, sacrificing the Elysian Whip and Vulnerary for a 5-turn clear claiming the much more important Guiding Ring and a Pure Water - getting both promotion items in 5 turns is beyond me. Hector also claims a Flux from one of the shamans after brutally OHKOing it with a Steel Axe, so he needs 2 slots free at the start of the chapter so he can hold onto the Flux and also a hand axe that he takes from Serra on turn 1. After the chapter, that Flux is sold, and Erk promotes immediately. I had to slow down a little compared to what's possible with Marcus or a really good Paladin because Lowen is just not cutting it. His path is obstructed on turn 2, and I really need Lyn (who takes 5 turns to walk to Zoldam) for the bosskill anyway. Also, if he rushes, the center area will have too many enemies and stragglers like Rebecca will get swarmed. He ends up doubling back for some turn 2 shopping while also contributing to a defensive formation that allows the less durable units to advance. Str-screwed Lyn just barely misses the 2HKO on Zoldam with a Silver Sword, so she needs to either rig an MK crit or get an assist from Lowen, which is what I did in the run I kept. I encountered some really weird RNG oddities on alternate runs, like a turn where Dorcas gets hit all three times (a merc and then the two NW pegs, who have been in pursuit the whole time) and dies if he wields an Iron Axe, but dodges the third hit with a Silver Axe, even though his evade ought to be the same and it's against the same enemy. The Silver Axe OHKOs the first peg which is the only real difference... it's almost as if they were getting a support bonus from each other o_O The shopping list: Vendor: 2 Thunder, 2 Mend. Armory: 2 Hand Axe, 2 Javelin, 2 Steel Sword, 2 Steel Lance, 2 Steel Axe, 2 Steel Bow. Script:

Oh hey guess what I'm not dead and also I did a bunch for this draft. I'm counting up all bonuses and penalties as I go, since it's not hard to undo a ring/gem bonus if the unthinkable happens. Also, I noticed yet another thing I missed when editing the OP, so that's taken care of now. The bonuses and penalties are all still the same (and that has been the "official" information); but I noticed that the rules summary text didn't match (even though Serra's flavourtext did). Lyn mode - zzz. Turn counts Prologue 5/5 Ch 1 4/9 Ch 2 4/13 Ch 3 4/17 Ch 4 8/25 Ch 5 4/29 Ch 6 4/33 Ch 7 6/39 Ch 7x 5-5/39 Ch 8 6/45 Ch 9 6/51 Ch 10 12/63 Scripts - each chapter is started from a hard reset, and each cutscene is skipped when the first bit of dialog starts: Notes: I managed to keep pace for the first 7 chapters, losing 1 on 7x, 1 on 8, 2 on 9 and 2 on 10. Posting Horace's turncounts really requires a team effort with both Kent (or Sain I guess) and Nils as far as I can tell, since without Nils or Florina, Lyn can't cross the river early in Ch10 and must walk to the throne at normal speed in Ch 9. Rath is definitely no Kent or Sain, but he got to XL 10 which means he can insta-promote in HHM. Florina could make Ch7 doable in 1+2 turns with a bit of RNG abuse, I think (Lucius can't OHKO Heintz with a crit, but maybe Lyn can double-crit?) Certainly within 2+2 - but I'm pretty sure 6 is minimal without her. She can probably only save turns on Ch10 if Lyn gets buff enough to handle Lundgren herself, which probably needs some RNG abuse for some Lundgren misses. Otherwise she'd have to ferry two units and wouldn't make up the rescue/drop tax. The 5-turn for 7x was fairly hard to arrange; the short bow crit was lucky, but probably not needed with a bit of additional cleverness (need to avoid letting enemy units block paths). I also had to try a crapton of different things for Ch10 to optimize movement and get a quick bosskill. Eventually I figured out that the key with this team is *not* to rush Rath (because he can't 1-2 range anyway), but let him pick up the village, and make sure everyone else moves exactly right, exploiting the weather timing, the northeast hut and the pattern of forest tiles. Matthew crosses the river early (since he's the only one who can without Nils or Florina) and distracts a bunch of units, racking up quite a bit of Exp. Under normal conditions, Ch6 can be 3-turned, but Serra just barely can't walk to the last switch in 3 turns, and it also requires either rescue-dropping Matt to get him closer to the Armorslayer chest, or skipping the Armorslayer. I missed the 2k gold village and used a fair amount of expensive stuff (the Lancereaver was clutch for Lyn), but was still able to use one stat booster while keeping enough funds for a White Gem. I ended up using the Energy Ring on my Str-screwed Lyn. There was some attack reordering to make things work right, but no explicit RN burns for Lyn's tale. END OF LYN TALE STATS Lyn 10.20 25hp 8/14/15/10/4/4 Dorcas 8.19 35hp 9/ 8/ 7/ 6/4/2 Erk 8.66 23hp 7/ 8/10/ 5/3/7 Serra 3.15 18hp 2/ 7/ 9/ 7/2/5 Rath 10.05 28hp 8/10/11/ 5/7/3 Matthew 6.66 20hp 4/ 5/14/ 4/4/0 Onwards, to HHM! Ch 11 6-2/67 Yadda yadda RNG burn. The stats on my Matt don't mess it up. Everyone knows how to do this (from a hard reset), but for completeness: Ch 12 4/71 May as well use silver with Marcus because it will be forever before anyone else can use a silver lance, and I'll have money and shops by then. Since I don't have Eliwood, I can sell the Rapier right away to get other useful things. This was a little tricky and needed a little RNG manipulation to work right. Oswin got a lucky crit on one of the brigands, which helped a lot. Ch 13 6/77 This required some RNG manipulation but I basically did what everyone else did. I was a little conservative with Marcus so that Guy could be recruited, which means he only got one shot at Boies (that might be unavoidable anyway?). That means he needed either a Silver Lance crit or a double crit with Guy's Killing Edge. Some reordering of attacks made this possible. I also had to try a few things at the beginning because when you start this chapter from a hard reset, you apparently get a really awful hit roll early on that effectively means you can't injure the Javelin!Cav on EP 1 even if you switch Oswin back to a Javelin. Also, because javelins and hand axes do 1 less damage each than iron lances and iron axes, respectively, I couldn't 2HKO that cav with any combination of Oswin, Bartre and Dorcas, so they *all* had to attack. If Dorcas hadn't been screwed by 1 point in Str then I wouldn't have this problem. I did manage to keep Serra and Hector together for each turn but the last, where it's impossible because Marcus is blocking the spot in front of the throne. Script: I skipped 13x. It's not worth 3 turns for the village gold and random vulneraries and experience. I think everyone agrees on that. :) Ch 14 4+3/84 I took the Marcus penalty obviously since the rain makes this brutally long otherwise, not to mention the difficulty of dealing with that many units without real powerhouses on the blue team. So I thought this would be easy since Horace always seems to zzz through this on every mode, but. Apparently Marcus needs a speed proc in order to ORKO a bunch of enemies here (he can't double and the Silver Lance leaves them with 3-6HP), and he only got HP from the level-up on Boies. So that was really annoying. I'd hoped I could steal a Vulnerary with Matt, but I needed him to head south promptly and score a Killing Edge crit to finish the map. The south village was saved obviously, which means I get a Mend staff and a Vulnerary (thanks, Prissy, now enjoy your seat on the bench). I also managed to keep Serra and Hector adjacent for the whole chapter. Pre-chapter stats: Hector 5.08 23hp 9/7/6/4/10/1 Becky 2.73 18hp 5/6/7/4/3/1 Lowen 3.47 24hp 7/5/8/3/7/1 Dorcas 8.55 35hp 9/8/7/6/4/2, neat pattern. Serra 3.61 18hp 2/7/9/7/2/5 Matthew 8.52 22hp 5/5/15/6/4/0 Script: Ch 15 8/92 Pre-chapter stats: Hector 5.51 23hp 9/7/ 6/4/10/1 Becky 3.03 19hp 6/6/ 7/4/ 4/1 Lowen 4.72 25hp 7/5/ 9/3/ 7/1 Dorcas 9.33 36hp 10/9/ 8/7/ 4/2, got an awesome level-up last time. Serra 3.83 18hp 2/7/ 9/7/ 2/5 Matthew 9.30 22hp 6/5/15/7/ 5/0 Erk 9.08 24hp 7/8/11/5/ 3/7 Matt goes out with just a Killing Edge and a Lockpick, since he'll be stealing the other Lockpick in addition to opening both chests, and he needs to use the first Lockpick for the turn 1 regrouping since the start area is dangerous for Lowen. The Dragonshield is pretty much unobtainable without Marcus (or Oswin?), I figure. But I do get both chests and keep Hector and Serra together fairly well. My turn 1 regrouping requires Matt to start out with a Lockpick, but he steals the other thief's Lockpick too. He starts out with just that and a Killing Edge, in order to have inventory space for everything. Script: Ch 16 10-22/80 Pre-chapter stats: Hector 6.66 23hp 10/8/ 6/4/10/1 Becky 4.71 19hp 6/7/ 7/5/ 4/1, who knew she'd get almost half her exp on THAT level? Lowen 6.23 27hp 7/5/ 9/4/ 8/1 Dorcas 10.31 37hp 10/9/ 8/7/ 4/2, can't win 'em all... Serra 4.58 18hp 3/7/ 9/8/ 2/6, and starting to charm Hector pretty effectively imo. Matthew 10.22 23hp 6/6/16/7/ 5/0, seriously, no res yet. Erk 10.41 25hp 7/9/12/6/ 3/8 The bad: pretty much my entire team seems to be RNG-screwed overall. The good: Dorcas already has A axes and is thus able to start using the Silver Axe right away. Also, I get Lyn back and she indeed has a White Gem. LYN I LOVE YOU Lowen avoids carrying a vulnerary because he doesn't want it stolen on turn 1. I guess I could rig this so that Hector gets the bosskill instead with a Wolf Beil crit (he 2HKOs exactly, but Bauker has throne healing), but Hector never has problems getting exp in HHM so I'd much rather help Lyn. I think I lost a turn here compared to Horace. Again, I don't have Kent, and I kinda got held up early on (it's not very nice of those cavs to be wielding swords). I got some unnecessary crits that I couldn't find a way to make better use of, too. On the plus side, Matt stole a vulnerary. Script: Preview: I've worked out how to do Ch 17 in 11 turns and save the soldiers for a Red Gem (it was quite hellish, since among other things, Hector can't ORKO the boss and others are even worse - not to mention that really only Lowen can get to the boss ahead of Hector), but I haven't posted it since I'm still seriously considering actually doing 17x. Ch 18 looks to be hell with this team and I don't want to take the Marcus penalty if I don't have to; but that means I want Lowen promoted before the chapter, not during. There's also some rather nice loot in 17x and I'm not exactly swimming in gold.

It isn't like a hardcoded thing afaik, things just start not working right eventually because of hardware limitations. What contributes more to the area of a rectangle - the width, or the length?

>Complaining about personal bias >Talking about hats while rating Joshua icwudt. Joshua is pretty solid, seems sturdier than a lot of other GBA swordies. It's hard for me to give him a bad grade when Eirika is >7 overall. You get an Armorslayer on his join chapter which mitigates the Rapier advantage somewhat. 6/10.

6 space Warp gets you across the first mountain range in a couple of specific spots on Ch20, and also gets you from one specific spot SE of the center island actually onto the island. Neither of those are possible with 5.

Woot, I'm finally starting this. Planning for Lyn mode: I only have Dorcas drafted in addition to the freebies, which will be less than pleasant. The Energy Ring would be nice for Lyn, but to use both the Angelic Robe and Energy Ring while still claiming a White Gem is quite difficult; I'd need to scrape up basically everything (including stealing some Vulneraries in 7x) and still be careful. Also, I know how to get the Armorslayer in 6 normally and still 3-turn it, but it requires a rescue-drop, so that's ruled out. The Energy Ring thus effectively costs a turn in 6, probably several turns in 7x (I'm not sure my team can even get through it in 5 turns anyway) and a bunch of pain everywhere else... not worth it. The Angelic Robe will probably go to Matthew so that early-game sucks less. I will be adding all the penalties and bonuses as I go, and tallying up the bonuses as the end, so this might seem a bit 'sandbagged' because apparently I changed my mind. Anyway, onwards! Every chapter starts from a hard reset, even in Lyn Mode, because yay consistency. I have wind affinity, of course.

OMG you're going to single-turn the entire game? Or just cut your previous turncount in half? ;) You get a minimum range of 5. That said, there are places where you can do stuff with a range of 6 that you can't with 5. (And of course having a really long range is nice for final, and in general.) In my entry on the leaderboard, I got Natz to 12 Mag (in addition to Saleh being a sexy beast) just in time for it to be useful on Ch 20. And yeah you kinda have to staff-spam Saleh, and find someone else to do combat. I definitely lost turns in that other draft by not putting enough effort into this.

Yes, there is. You yourself are calling it an RNG; what do you think the G stands for? That's how RNGs work. The reason you get consistent behaviour is that the RNG is seeded with the same value each time you reset. The rest of the sequence is still generated, though. It's not stored somewhere. It's determined, one number at a time, as they're needed, with math. Based on a combination of what I can figure out from Hex's documentation, and playing around with the VBA disassembler, the routine in question starts at xBDC in the ROM and goes all the way to xCA6 (i.e. about a hundred opcodes long). Good luck sorting through it :) The actual RNG state is held in ROM at 0x3000000, i.e. the very beginning of IRAM. 6 bytes are used, with a seed of 71 36 EA 90 96 14. AFAIK the code is identical for all three GBA FEs.

He got Franz and Vanessa and Saleh in a SOYO. I lol'd.

Hell yeah. I can't draw worth shit but I can hack things together. I wouldn't count on me for that if I were you, though.

aslkdfja dammit. All I need is 5 a mics.

Because you stop and reset after someone dies, so obviously the one who died was the last one in.

lalala 27, also Asperger's is totally over-diagnosed. People try too hard to make neuroatypicality into some kind of, you know, condition, because they don't know how to deal with it. :/

Youngest of three. By, like, a lot. And I'm already considerably older than most of y'all, so yeah.

Yeah, that's the current version. It's been a while. You could try sending me the MIDI so I can play around with it and figure out what's going on, but past experience tells me I realistically won't get back to you on it. :P

What?!

Because it's easy to measure. WRT restarts and RNG abuse, I really should just make that patch I've been thinking about :P

Is this new content reflected in the link in the OP? o_O

BTW sorry I still haven't looked at that MIDI issue for you... I've been kinda... out of sorts. x.x

FTFY. Also, I added a little bit of convenience: you can use '<beat count>:<tick count>' as well, e.g. '48:0' = 48 beats. What everything you're trying has in common, that's different from how the error message has it: -l <whatever>, -e <whatever> and/or -b <whatever> come before the offset and filename. The [] are to indicate things that are optional. The <> are to indicate "this is a description of what you should put here, not literally what to type". These are standard conventions for describing a command. As for the 'humming', it's possible you have an older version that doesn't get the looping quite right, and causes notes from the previous loop to get 'stuck'. Or something. Try it again on a clean ROM?

No. Basically: - it finds the bounding box of the contents of each frame (so big sparkly effects with tiny dots spread far apart are Bad) - those contents are chopped into pieces of the size that the GBA can actually use for sprites - it attempts to find a sheet that has room for all those sprites, while attempting to find and reuse identical sprites already on the sheet (this almost never actually works unless you are very careful with your animation because it really has to be an exact match) - if the sprites for a frame can't fit on a single sheet by themselves, or if the overall animation needs too many sheets, the whole process barfs Actually it's a little better than that; it can ignore empty space in the middle of the sprite... it tries to overlay sprites at various sizes, biggest to smallest, until it's set up enough to cover all the non-empty 'tiles' of the bounding box of the actual image. Big sparkly effects are still Bad, though. Trust me. It's nowhere near as efficient as it could be if you actually created sprites and then designed animation frames in some kind of editor, specifying a position and transform for each sprite. But it's not bad. Anyway, for debugging purposes, I suggest taking frames out until it fits, and then seeing just how bad it is.

I'd reserve a ranking of 0/10 for units that are as bad in FE7 as Wendy or Sophia are in FE6. I don't think anyone in 7 really qualifies by that benchmark. 1/10.