So, there is one thing I want to add to this research.

When I was mapping out all those cards way back when, there was an odd variable I found that loved to change the final card: manually dismissing the Quest logo.

I have no clue why this affects anything, but my research was fairly inconsistent until I just stopped dismissing it altogether, and let it dismiss itself after however long it takes for it to do so.

Wouldn't the Sharom Border manip require a frame perfect exit of the save screen after Castle of Warren, though?

Realistically, you could also cut out the extra level gained from the undead unit in Shangrila. 18 is more than enough for Diablo.

We have a channel in the 7th Saga rando discord. I just added the link to the SRC page itself.

I just went with the death sound because it's easier for me to sync up with a sound effect than a visual cue. But it looks like both the sound effect and the HP bar changing happen at basically the same time.

As for waiting for a card animation to finish, I'm not entirely sold on it. I'd rather have it be something consistent rather than having a couple fringe cases with certain cards. That would likely lead to some confusion with new runners.

I currently don't have the time to make a detailed post about my thought process right this moment - currently in the middle of a long work week - but I'll make one once I've hit my days off next week.

Yeah, that's been known for quite some time, actually. Just very precise to hit the early platform, then not have to double back on any of your jumps afterward.

Primarily hasn't been done for consistency reasons, especially since you just had to do early platform in the red caves, which is already difficult enough.

Honestly, considering the Gryphon isn't really a main source of damage, the time spent re-entering Castle of Warren would probably negate any possible gains that would have.

A Crown I can't see being especially helpful either (at least in any%) due to the fact that if you're using a Princess for the extra round of attacks, you have to give up using the opinion leader, which would mean they'd fall very far behind on levels, which in turn would mean that Tarot cards would quickly become useless unless you wanted to stop and grind the OL up at some point.

A Crown might be useful for 100% though, since we give up on the OL about halfway through.

Charm I could see being useful as a replacement for a Fool or, weirdly enough, might actually be better used on Gilbert to steal a Wyrm.

Edit: Watched the video. The amount of setup required to even get those items is going to cost way more than the time they could possibly save. Even sending Warren out early, you'd need to have him ready to hit the boss right after you get the Chime (or the Charm from the 2nd fight), or else it'd be much too large of a time loss.

Also, doesn't this require that you have the correct seed going into the stage? Was this manip from a reset + load, or did you come straight from Castle of Warren?

It is a significantly different version, actually. While it looks similar, it plays completely differently, and while it doesn't have any of the NES version glitches, it does have it own set.

As an aside, I'm the only one I know of that's actually tried to run that version, and I never got any runs that I was actually happy with, and I prefer to at least have one run up if we're going to create a board for it.

I was thinking you could get the required items at any point you wanted, but more than needed. K's would be allowed since there's a few you can't avoid, and they don't actually help you. No other pickups would be allowed.

I can see the argument for allowing you to pick items up but not use them, but as you said, having to avoid them could lead to some interesting routing.

If you're down for playing around with it a bit, I'd love to hear the results.

Yup. 1 Ladder in stage 7 and 3 pairs of Wings in stage 8.

Also I agree with Hirexen that damageless probably shouldn't be it's own category, for the same reasons he stated.

As of right now we haven't made a definitive decision on whether we'll allow the Switch version. The main reasons being that we don't know whether the Switch version handles lag properly, or whether it runs at the same framerate.

One of the big things I'd be interested in is how the RNG affects (Joker) card pulls after loading a save file. With what research I was able to do way back when, I know it's similar to how the initial set is determined, in that it uses the frame counter to set a "seed," but beyond that loading different save files produced different results, despite loading on the same frame. It really felt like it was using something from the save file itself to mix things up.

Accessibility is my main point of concern here. Considering Ogre Battle is a pretty niche game, the less barriers to entry, the better.

(Also, to my knowledge, PS1 games generally have the fastest loading if played on PSP. And unfortunately, not every model of PSP has AV output capabilities)

As a mod for other games, the thing to note here is that consoles are sometimes separated when one version is clearly faster.

Especially in this case where the PSX version is quite expensive, that really ought to be the case. (Add in that running on a PSX emulator is inherently slower than PS2 FDS, so that rules out doing things that way)

I have literally no coding knowledge, actually. All of my findings have come from sheer testing, sometimes via brute force lol

Resetting does put the seed back to it's initial state (otherwise I would have had to power cycle in between every attempt), but I don't know how loading a save file affects that. There could easily be factors that could shift the seed around (possibly pulling data from the save files themselves).

It could theoretically possible in real time to do the manip on Castle of Warren, save and reload, then try and manip Sharom from there, since the save file (should in theory) be identical every single time.

The letter you enter for your opinion leader's name actually shifts the RNG seed forward or backward in a manner I don't understand lol.

The manipulations I use require ! as the name so the frames line up for the seed I want. Other letters would put it in a different spot, and I'd have to redo the entire thing.

Seed manipulation is technically possible, but the game uses other values to determine the actual RNG you get. Having 2 different save files at different points in the game and loading them on the same seed will yield different RNG results, which is easily observed by pulling jokers from the army management screen immediately after loading. My guess is that's probably using some character stats, maybe number of units, goth, or some other nonsense to slightly change what RNG we're actually getting after the seed is determined.

The other issue is that enemy units on the map call the RNG to determine their movement, and they call it fairly frequently. You'd have to be absolutely perfect in your movements to get the same result even if you could get everything else to line up.

Actually, you're wrong about the name entry not affecting RNG. When you select your gender, the RNG is seeded, based on the frame you hit the button. Sitting on the name entry screen still advances the frame counter, which in turn can change which seed you get when you select your gender after.

So yes, how long you take to enter your name DOES affect your starting RNG.

(As an aside, I'm of the opinion that all categories that start from the title screen should have a consistent "time start" point. I don't care if it's the title screen, the name entry, gender entry, or when the world map loads for the first time, but there's literally zero reason to have every category except one start on the title screen, and that one starts after name entry.)

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