Ramsus's slow and steady beta test

[Ramsus]

Some Pre-Game notes:

If you're using Linux (or even Mac OS X) and you have a headered ROM, all you have to do to create an unheadered copy is used the dd command with the skip option:

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$ dd if=ctrom.smc of=ctunheadered.smc bs=512 skip=1

Then if you're using snes9x or zsnes, just rename the patch to match the rom's name, and it'll get auto-patched. For other emulators, I suggest using uCON to apply the patch:

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$ ucon i rom.smc patch.ips

For best results when hardpatching, keep a copy of the unpatched, unheadered ROM (call it ctunheadered.smc), and make it a habit to copy it as ce.smc before patching.

Also, the SRM saves produced by Snes9x and bsnes seem to be interchangeable, but zsnes for Linux will cause the game to glitch if you load saves from the other emulators. This might have something to do with ZSNES being 32-bit and the other two emulators being 64-bit applications on my system.

Prologue:

Pretty straightforward. I think I've seen this segment a thousand times now. Not a whole lot to say here, other than it's a bit wordy and drawn out for just the beginning. I've yet to find any real bugs here.

Legacy of Zeal:

The only way I can describe this segment is "tedious". The game hasn't even really started, and already I'm trying to build levels, buy up items, and avoid needless or difficult fights -- and even then I still barely manage to scratch by through this part of the game. At level 5, it still took me 15 tonics and 10 minutes just to beat the Golem, and even the regular enemies get to be too much of a pain when they're in groups. Even with OmniSlash, you need lots of items to survive.

The real difficulty comes from the fact that Magus is solo, can't heal himself except with items, and has no group-targeted attacks. The only ways to make up for this would be some higher stats (Magus at level 7 would be fine, and still consistent with the idea that he's gotten weak) and a better weapon (to ease the Golem boss fight), or weaker enemies with weaker techniques (such as changing the first Golem boss's 1/2 attack to a 1/4 attack), otherwise it just feels tedious and drawn out, and I think a lot of casual players will just lose interest and quit due to the lack of story elements up to this point.

On the plus side, I didn't really find any bugs here. However, I thought it was a bit awkward that Magus's "Steal" tech still has the text, "It was the thought that counts," come up randomly, since it no longer fits the animation/character. I'm also afraid to waste turns using the Steal technique at this point in the game.

To be continued...

*Last edit: Added some pre-game notes.

[Ramsus]

Double Trouble:

The gameplay in this segment felt pretty balanced, and the story started picking up quite a bit. I didn't find any bugs either. Also, the creative re-use of the game's limited tilesets is pretty impressive.

Beneath the Azure:

The only bug I found was a small glitch after one battle that left Marle running around in the middle of the map. Other than that, I ran into one particular fight right before the save that definitely gave me some unexpected trouble (resulting in a gameover).

The only other thing to point out is the lack of any transition between Robo meeting Magus and them leaving to the gate. They're just suddenly in a cave, and it's a bit awkward.

Also, the game shows King Zeal's name in battle, which kind of kills all the foreshadowing past that point.   JP NOTE: haha whoops!

Finally, Lucca says you can change party members with the X button, but on an SNES controller, it should be the Y button.  JP NOTE: Hrm...as lenophis pointed out the buttons can be remapped.  Did CT original specifically say "Y" button? or did they use some sort of pronoun?  Double NOTE: Cool, if CT NA says Y so can we.

REPLY: The only real constant is the SNES controller layout, which is used to do the bottom mappings in most SNES emulator option menus/config files, so it'd be better to refer to it as the Y button to be consistent with what the SNES emulator calls it. (For those readers unfamiliar with the SNES gamepad, the SNES Y button is in the same spot as a Square on a PSX controller or an X button on an XBox controller). That way, we can just say, "check your options to see which key is the Y button" when people ask which one that is..

Looks like that's what they called it in the CT NA release:

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OLD MAN: ...So there you have it.

   Don't forget.  Press the Y Button to
   switch party members.


[Agent 12]

I plan on raising his starting level to 5.  The only reason I haven't yet is I have to use CTEC to  do the change which has a history of corrupting the rom.  So I have to make the change, make a patch, see what bytes were changed and manually go change each byte 1 by 1.   Easy enough to do that I haven't made my own program to do it, but hard enough to do that I haven't done it yet

As for golem boss.... I can't change the 1/2 HP attack to 1/4 unless it's already in the game that I dont know of ?  Would you say swapping that attack completely with another attack would take the fight from to hard => to easy?

[Ramsus]

Yeah, taking away the HP reduced by 1/2 attack from the Golem boss battle would make it a lot easier to do playing solo. Especially if the villagers gave you more mid-tonics, because then you could get in a series of 2-3 turns of attacks between each healing turn.

Murmers of Red:

I didn't bother jumping to 1005 AD to see if the present was altered as well, but I'll do that on my New Game+. However, things are really getting interesting in this segment's part of the story.

Some notes:

• Robo's name is hardcoded in one spot (see attachment).
  
• You can run from all the scripted battle in the Dorino Fields
  
• Minor aesthetic bug: After giving the recon guy a tonic and coming down to the main path, I got into a fight where Glenn was standing right on top of an enemy (see attachment). The same thing happens with the Hench next to the the bottom exit of the next area, only this time Crono's standing right up on him.  JP NOTE: This ons is really hard to fix since the enemies can really be anywhere on the screen
• There's no save point at the end of the cave before you fight Kasmir. (I'm not using savestates).
  
• After Crono and Marle take the injured soldiers back, if you advance a screen then go back, the exciting music switches to normal forest music.
  
• During the long dialog about the different sides, it'd be better if Glenn were locked in place each time he talked to each of the Captains (with the closest thing to a thinking pose that he has), and also if he gave short responses to each side's argument.
  
• Leaving the screen in the middle of the dialog makes it start over the next time you activate it. Just make the entire part a cutscene.
  

In the end, I sided with the Mystics...

[ZeaLitY]

Cool; are you using the NTSC filter to simulate an old SNES-TV setup? I should do that on my next playthrough. It'll feel interesting.

[Ramsus]

Yeah, I'm using the NTSC filter. I really wish they had this back in the day, when there was still new stuff to play like Star Ocean and Seiken Densetsu 3. I also just set up a screen capture shortcut that takes the screenshot from bsnes, resizes and crops it to 320x240, asks for a comment for the filename, then saves it in a dated folder. That way, I can just drag and drop them over to the rabbit server and post them straight here after each segment.

I just hit Ctrl+Print Screen and type a comment.

EDIT: I'm putting this playthrough on hold for a few weeks so I can try and get a pay raise by adding French to my official list of proficient languages and finish up my reverse engineering and assembly language studies. Expect some minor progress in the meantime and a more complete playthrough in the latter half of April.

[Ramsus]

I'm trying to find this Snes9x showstopper bug, but so far everything from Josh's srm game works.

However, I did find that you can run away from the Coyopa? boss battle.