I added more ending categories when GreenBomber opened up the sub. I verified on English SNES all the requirements and ending priority from our Japanese friends. All the wrong info stemmed from copying the ending list in the English PSX strategy guide.

There was a problem that crept up. The Japanese site lists minimum requirements and our culture has been full endings with all ending scenes. I spelled out the full requirements, except I made an omission for Hierophant and Priestess: Full ending for each requires recruiting both Tristan and Rauny.

Partial ending is just Rauny for Male Opinion Leader and Tristan for Female. Rules didn't say you needed them both. Why the categories are separate. My bad, let's combine them.

The problem that causes is Any% runs with Female on standard Tristan route will get partial Priestess that wouldn't be counted in Priestess. That's not fair to @Sheex and @Spockrocket who followed the existing Priestess rules on Saturn. Is fair to someone who plays Valley of Kastro to recruit Rauny over less risky Balmorian Ruins. I have two suggestions then:

Combine Hierophant and Priestess like how Emperor/Empress and Sun/Moon are. Note: Tristan appears in Sun/Moon even if you didn't recruit him.

Partial Priestess, or a hypothetical partial Hierophant, is classified as Sun/Moon on the Leaderboard. Existing Priestess runs will be moved. Not fair having to erase Tristan for Moon when Male Lord can keep him and get Sun.

Then everyone submitting to Any% will also qualify for an ending category, if they choose to submit the run twice. Barring forgetting to recruit a character in World or Emperor/Empress.

Why would someone want to use AmaRecTV over OBS? If you're on ancient Windows XP or using an even more ancient 32-bit computer then that makes sense. The reasons I see floated to use AmaRecTV on modern computers no longer apply. I mean, we need detailed instructions on how to get it working with 64-bit OBS when OBS can record the capture card directly.

Um I've streamed SNES and PS2 with GVUSB2 directly into OBS in Windows 10 with no audio issues at 1 hour. I use "BTSC" for "AUD STEREO SYS", which is the default. Not sure if that matters. I also used s-video.

You say yellow but s-video on SNES looks so much better on streaming and recording. Even the cheap composite + s-video cables are good enough. Play in composite and record in s-video without needing a splitter.

Ahaha I found Taiwan thanks! Weird how countries aren't all in alphabetical order. Maybe that's my real request! I'll delete thread.

Okay to respond after 2 years? #PSP also has Composite and S-Video breakout cables. Here's the official Sony S-Video cable I bought for cheap from a Japanese merchant:

Nice life to use GV-USB2 for every console! I don't see any mentioning but GV-USB2 captures either Composite or S-Video with stereo audio and has options for NTSC, NTSC-J, NTSC-443 (Brazil?), 4 different kinds of PAL and SECAM. Captures every Composite and S-Video that exists, including 240p/288p. Works great with OBS.

I think most people know this but S-Video is way sharper than Composite. It's 2/3 the way to Component and RGB and, given streams being inherently compressed, I'd be surprised if you can tell the difference.

Easy to see the more clear and sharper text on the right and sharper merchant image. Small soldier icon also sharper. I zoomed down images 50% so 4x less pixels. Greater distinction at full-size.

I found a Twitch speedrun link from 2013 and it still works. Stream from Twitch, else broadcast your precorded video then make a clip of it. The clip will last I want to say forever.

Not saying Twitch is better for YouTube but it's another valid option without data restrictions. Maybe 1/3 of the runs of games I follow use Twitch links.

You can also pay for your own hosting plan, which isn't too much in this day and age. I used to store mp3's on my own hosting plan for my MySpace (lol).

Taiwan is a county last I checked and I think its citizens should be able to represent themselves. What's the deal? Are Chinese companies not going to run ads here if you add it?

What a clean run. You stay so calm when things don't go your way. I like your using Lans on Warren to save time and Hierophant after Princess on Randals. I'm sure having under 50 LUK on Opinion Leader helped with the neutral encounters.

I don't know why everyone recruits Deneb so early. With 70 ALI needed for the Sky Knights, you can get World with 40 Reputation.

I wish we had a way for streaming notification. Maybe that's a thing for an Ogre Battle Discord. I'd throw you or @Krayzar my Prime sub and at least would want to watch.

I'm testing the damage formula before making a calculator for it. Easy to load a save and advance the RNG with Joker, or use a Strength Potion or Promotion on a non-combatant, or Recruit at Town, or use a Dowsing Rod to pull a buried treasure.

I recorded the damage from the same battle with 0 to 20 Jokers used right before it started and each result was unique. I then testing combinations of RNG advancement to duplicate a battle outcome:

• 1 Joker = 1 Strength Potion
• 2 Jokers = 1 Dowsing Rod = 2 Strength Potion
• 3 Jokers = 1 Promotion = 2 Dowsing Rods = 2 Strength Potions + 1 Dowsing Rod
• 4 Jokers = 1 Recruit at Town
• 5 Jokers = 1 Dowsing Rod + 1 Promotion = 3 Dowsing Rods
• 7 Jokers = 2 Promotions = 4 Dowsing Rods
• 8 Jokers = 2 Recruits at Town

Doing 1 Recruit + 1 Dowsing Rod, 1 Recruit + 1 Promotion, 3 Promotions, 3 Recruits, 3 Strength Potions all had unique results. Would be nice if each method advanced the RNG a consistent amount but we can't have nice things.

The one consistent observation was the order of operations doesn't change the battle. Same outcome with RNG mechanics in any order, even though the buried treasure is different depending on when Dowsing Rod is used before or after Promotion or Strength Potion or what have you.

Edited cause I got the encounter mechanic wrong. More units moving give better odds, not equal. Plus math was spotty.

Neutral encounter mechanics are here. Explains why I encountered twice as many Ghosts as Skeletons in Pogrom Forest with my test data - Ghosts have lower LUK.

Every 10 game minutes for an encounter check is 40 frames on fastest speed 3 = 0.67 seconds. There is first a 1-10 roll for which unit is checked to be moving and if so, rolled for an encounter. A full 10 units deployed and moving is 10x the encounters, if all are within the same LUK range.

We have some downtime on Sharom Border while units deploy so can take laps hunting Hawk Man. Conveniently tied for lowest LUK in the game at 42, giving a 10% encounter rate if #1 is rolled for Opinion Leader, or 15% if #2 is rolled with Witch as leader.

For just our Opinion Leader's unit moving, odds of neutral encounter within 240 frames = 4.0 seconds spent on ocean tile for 6 checks are 1 - (1 - 1/10×0.1)^6 = 5.85% with no manip. Witch also moving on Ocean, or Forest for Golem, and edited with enough kill power, is 8.70%. Odds of either are 1 - odds of neither = 14.01%. I don't like further 1 in 10 odds of item drop...then odds of useful item, but I thought of a backup strat:

1. After killing Hawk Man, Opinion Leader becomes level 2 after the Usar fight. This otherwise requires a Wizard kill on English SNES, PSX and Saturn releases and that takes a Tarot card and Tactics shenanigans. The level up normally doesn't matter since you don't get another level up at Sirius and get a guaranteed one at Debonair. Same level after Debonair.
2. The trick is you instead fight Kapella, who is 6 levels higher than level 2 Opinion Leader, versus 5 with Sirius, for another guaranteed level up. Now you're 1 level ahead the whole game. Is a riskier fight but potentially faster with this Tarot strat for Ianuki Lord:
3. Warren's hitrate on Kapella is 60%. Generic Wizard hitrate rises from 40% to 50% with guaranteed Mystic Mace equipped. If 60% Ianuki/Sonic Blade also hits, it's a 1 round kill. I calculated a 34% chance to no Tarot kill without Mystic Mace and 44% chance with. Going Forest over Lake delays Sunshine until Antalia and Zeteginea shops but Moonbeam from Dalmuhd Desert shop can work as one due the long stages.

Edit: I thought you were going for the level up at Usar by fighting the Cleric-Amazon unit but I realize now you were going for the long odds useful item drop from defeating. Does seem like the best guaranteed encounter that is still theoretically within manip range.

Dare I say this is the first potential use of Moon Tarot in a run and I like Death as backup.

So I guess the ALI + CHAR mechanic in the original was not intended to work like this.

Good call out. I completely overlooked the ALI + CHAR system being made for boosted EXP and unit counts. My biggest frustration in full campaign was trying to get sub-50 ALI to make Ninjas. Had to make a Fighter-Cleric-Gryphon in back death squad then spend forever hunting level 1 Pumpkins.

18 is more than enough, thank you. No undead level boosting in exchange for learning Japanese Tarot names.

Yes, I should have edited that in. Thank you! RNG advances each frame the game sits at the save screen. I find that if I spam B or whatever button as fast as I can, I can hit that first frame about 50% of the time.

I tried out Dowser/Dowsing Rod abuse since it can be bought at Fogel's stage shop for 25k goth. Is also a consumable from a defeated unit but that's going backwards. You buy Rods, save then hard reset and reload.

With same frame count until the file is loaded, you can get the same chain of multiple treasures using Rods to increase the viable seeds since you can spam it at your leisure while time is stopped in-menu. Every completed stage has the same treasures at same frame count. Different treasures from new stage most likely due to the RNG advancing to generate enemy units. Better to manip on a new map and save loading time.

In my 4 attempts:

1. Revisiting completed stages without recording the frame count at the save menu, I had a 49 frame window at 3 speed to hit X for menu (or Start to pause then menu) to use three Rods for Notos -> Thunder Helm -> Dragon Spear.
2. I created a new game and waited 1 frame at the save post-Warren's Castle with only 1 treasure at Sharom Border and a hacked Rod. I had a 39 frame window to hit X for Broken Sword before it became Thunder Charm.
3. A 2 frame wait at the save menu resulted in a 79 frame window to Rod out Iron Gloves before it became Battle Dagger. Not sure why it was that long a window or why the window varies at all.
4. Back to 1 frame wait at the save. I then thought about how to advance the RNG. We don't have Jokers to pull at the second stage and battling and drawing a Tarot at liberation are slow and limited.

What about generating a new character at the hiring menu? We can attempt to hire units at the base with a second unit, such as the one grabbing Star of Heroes. The unit can be full. Just go to recruit then X out at "It will cost 120 Goth to add this character." Each recruit is, I suppose, 5 RNG calls for Name and the +/- on HP/STR/AGI/INT stats. Or 2 RNG calls if game is smart and uses 8 bytes for 5 * 3^3 = 135 combinations on the stats spread across 0-255. HP has a range of 5 and rest have range of 3.

Now after one fake hire, the Broken Sword became Demon Ring! Using Rod after 2 fake hires, the Broken Sword became Euros! Same treasures if you really do erase then pay to hire. Can notice the slight pause when you select Recruit Character. Must be when the RNG works.

The greater point is if you can get the same frame count on the save menu or hard reset to Continue + save menu, you can speed through the RNG without spending goth and stop on the value of your choice. Test after each hire to find a useful buried treasure, temple reward or random encounter + drop.

Though random encounter trigger odds x 1 in 10 item drop from defeated unit x 1 in 32 for chosen consumable item is still ridiculous. The time for 67 LUK Witch to trigger neutral encounters has come. Witch is Phantom Lord's 2nd unit so guaranteed with that start.

Certainly seems plausible to manip one thing in Sharom Border when the RNG on SNES doesn't advance on the overworld or inside a menu, unless you use an RNG item.

I could see Crown manip on Devil that has to complete 2 extra stages over Any% for more battles to gain value. Speeds up the Galf battle without using a Tarot even with Norn not as the leader. Plus you are definitely not getting the free Crown at Shalina that requires 75+ Reputation.

That's sweet you can get Wyrms in deep sea / ocean in Warren's Castle. I thought was Chime-only. Given time to load and exit a cleared stage + load two battles, I think the best move is manip a Charm/Persuasion Spell to use on the level 7 Wyrm in Slums of Zenobia. Make the time up with Wyrm having a much faster attack than Gryphon.

Best battle to manip anything is probably either level 3 Hawk Man in deep sea of Sharom Border or undead in Pogrom Forest, that also as the guaranteed Mystic Mace. Both can be triggered on normal pathing. Opinion Leader-Warren unit KOs Hawk Man no issue and the extra EXP gets OP a level up at Usar. But I know, you have the manip the encounter and the drop and avoid a worst case battle. Might cost you everything else you want to manip.

I found that the RNG advances slower on slower game speeds. One game minute on normal pace of day is 12 frames on speed 1, 8 frames on 2 and 4 frames on 3. So if you need precise timing, dropping speed from 3 to 1 on Overworld gives you 3x the frame window. Then speed back up after you do the pathing.

Or rather all others got nerfed. I was routing for higher Opinion Leader levels and noticed something: 53done's OP levels up in the Usar fight. This is impossible in English SNES unless you also kill a Wizard. Japanese TASer vibtration uses Lans in the Warren Fight and his OP still levels up against Usar.

I figured out why. In the original Super Famicom release, EXP gain is calculated as if the enemy is 2 levels higher than in all other releases: English SNES, both PSX, Saturn and Super Famicom Nintendo Power.

The implication for speedrunning is your characters get an automatic level up if the enemy is 4 levels higher in original Super Famicom, whereas it's 6 in the rest. Tarot kill EXP for OP is also not nerfed in the original.

You might like to know that the original Super Famicom has boosted enemy unit counts on all but 4 stages, making it badly designed since a causal playthrough will power level.

I played ran original Super Famicom through Island Avalon to confirm the leveling. Here's the breakdown for any% with identical routing:

I hijacked Dragondarch's formatting. Level in the box is level after the battle ends if the character survives. Gryphon also benefits. Can live or die in Usar fight, doesn't matter. Will gain 1 level for surviving Gilbert or Sirius and 2 if it survives both. In all other releases, Gryphon only gains 1 level if it survives both Gilbert and Sirius.

Is a faster Warren's Castle clear and a 1-2 level advantage significant enough to put original Super Famicom in its own category?

I'm not sure. There was always going to be a best version to run, Japanese text was always faster and Dragon's Haven/Heaven is unaffected. Game is much more popular in Japan and is very playable in Japanese.

But yeah, Tarot cards are more powerful, damage dealt is ticked up and damage taken is ticked down. Extra AGI on Tristan/Debonair is nice. I have no evidence of any change in damage formulas.

3 years later, I haven't found my C&C CDs. The iso I could find online is a later version that removed infinite minigunners. That does bring up the question of what other differences there may be. Is a risk to buy the game used and hope it's the right version but we'll see.

I did buy a 2 GHz Windows XP laptop for cheap. XP has a Windows 95 compatibility mode so that would be sweet if I can run the game without an emulator. Got the VGA computer monitor ready to go.

Updated with new timing on name entry to 3:37.034!

• Start: 1:33.516, first frame after name entry where the screen starts to fade
• End: 5:10.550, first frame that shows 0 HP for Boss on the UI

Ha thanks for pointing out there is a category for Japanese International Edition. I totally overlooked it. My mistake.

I'd like to see Japanese 1.0 runs and that's great there is a full video guide in English. I didn't realize limit break growth was increased for later releases.

Every source I found on first page of Google results says Japanese International is the same as the North American release except for the language. Not that anonymous wiki edits and forum posts have to be correct. I presume there could be bug fixes or more subtle changes only noticeable in speedrunning.

Where does the English PSX disc strategy fail or become suboptimal for Japanese International disc? I mean besides from use of Turbo. Comparing #1 runs, I see the Japanese Guard Scorpion fight is much faster and only needs 1 limit break. I don't know if that's due to better RNG, slower routing before the fight, or any tangible difference.

The cultural difference is interesting. Like Japanese shoot em up leaderboards allow Turbo, whereas it's typically considered cheating on English boards.

Hi Dragondarch, welcome back!

I recorded on PS2 on Dragon's Heaven that my capture card or OBS deinterlaces to 30 fp. VSDC seems to redo the deinterlacing and put back into 60 fps. Music off so I could discern when death sound plays. 22.6 MB file:

• Damage numbers fully appear from Hermit at 1:40.266.
• 30 frames later / 500 milliseconds, damage number(s) and attack name, if attack has a blue bar name, both disappear.
• 19 frames later / 317 milliseconds, the HP bar updates to 0.
• 2 frames later / 33 milliseconds, the pixel decay on Albeleo and death sound start.
• 288 frames later / 4.8 seconds, Hermit is fully over and WINNERS is displayed.

If two runs are off by 1-2 seconds, they're going to be retimed anyway using the same start and end points. At least I would. I like runner's choice of 0 HP update or death sound, STR card issue aside. Defeats Ianuki time save.

Seems a battle loads 18 frames / 300 milliseconds faster with music turned off. I think a mute run could be rejected under suspicion of splicing versus needing an explicit music on rule.

That's a good point for accessibility making rules easy to understand. I can't think of a compromise solution that is worded concisely. WINNERS doesn't show on SNES or Saturn Diablo.

Thanks Spockrocket for being supportive of 0 HP / death cue! No apologies needed. Everyone followed the rules. I'm okay with no retimings for existing runs that result in a longer time, barring a tiebreak or what is decided for bizarreluck's run.