Suikoden II Tool-Assisted Speedrun

If you are stuck in the Dunan Unification Wars; or wish for more details on the gameplay systems, this is the place.
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Omnigamer
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Suikoden II Tool-Assisted Speedrun

Post by Omnigamer »

So I've been thinking for a bit on potentially making a Suikoden II TAS before getting back into full runs again because I'm an idiot.

Just due to the ability to have absolute control over luck manipulation, I think there could be some pretty interesting routing choices to work through. To help reduce the tedium though, I'm looking at building up a few lua scripts to ease the endeavor as I go. I'm listing them here in case anybody else has additional input, but I'll go about actually building them up sometime in the future. Some are definitely possible, others would be nice but might not have an easy solution.

-Dialog input ready indicator. If there's some flag that gets set as dialog inputs become responsive to progression, it would save a LOT of time to have that available. Otherwise I can probably work off of visual cues, but automating the several hundred dialog boxes away would make it a lot more reasonable.
-Encounter indicator. I can easily set up something to determine the remaining grace period, but determining how many RNG calls before an encounter is a much trickier problem. I might be able to come up with something, but I might not.
-Upcoming encounter group indicator. Somewhat related to the previous bullet, but I still don't know the exact mechanic behind group selection. This would help in making sure that the few times I need a specific group, I can automate for it.
-Delay & test script. For battles, a lot of times I'll need to rely on abusing multiple critical hits or otherwise. This would be tedious to test extensively by waiting for following RNG updates, so I can instead pre-calculate the next 1000 or so RNG values and find the first one that meets my condition (KO of boss).
-Stat growth predictor. Similar to the above, if I can pre-process the RNG calls well enough, I can predict how many "good" level ups I can get for one or all stats, and find an optimal RNG value to use.
-War battle sequencer. War battles are tricky to manipulate because there's relatively few ways to affect RNG outside of performing attacks. Ideally, I'd limit attacks to just those necessary to advance, but exhaustively testing different options would be maddening. Having a script to go through and move units procedurally would help this, but may end up being more work than it's worth.
-Loading Zone indicator. I have my doubts that this is possible due to how the game is structured, but being able to see the exact regions that the game uses to initiate events would go a long way in potentially finding other skips.

There's a lot that would go into this, and a lot that would need to be newly tested, but I think it could be a lot of fun to see just how low the time could go. This thread is merely an announcement; I'd welcome any help or other support though. I'll try to stream my work as I make it and then periodically post updates back here.
Last edited by Omnigamer on Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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ninjaluc79
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Re: Suikoden II Tool-Assisted Speedrun

Post by ninjaluc79 »

Cool. I like that hypothetical Stat Growth Predictor tool. Since this is a speedrun, would the party be physical-heavy, magic-heavy, or a balanced one?
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Omnigamer
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Re: Suikoden II Tool-Assisted Speedrun

Post by Omnigamer »

Since I can have absolute manipulation of luck, it would likely rely heavily on crits + Kindness + maybe double beat. Double beat "feels" faster, but I won't know until I start configuring boss strategies around expecting crits. There are also some other drawbacks to getting it that might be better suited to getting Fury instead. Magic will still come in for clearing mobs, which traditionally is some mix of Blue Gate and Wind for the fastest spells. I may be able to manipulate physical multi-hits to take out medium-sized groups faster, but I think most often that would take more time than just casting a spell. This is all stuff that will get figured out after I start.
srd_27
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Re: Suikoden II Tool-Assisted Speedrun

Post by srd_27 »

Random idea, how about using the five squirrel unite attack to instakill all the bosses?

The unite attack animation itself is long, and you still have to spend a bit of time walking around the Greenhill's map to get the squirrels. But I guess you wouldn't need to do any other setups involving Kindness rune etc.
Omnigamer
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Re: Suikoden II Tool-Assisted Speedrun

Post by Omnigamer »

I considered the five squirrel unite specifically for the final boss, but there's just no way it can be optimal since you still have to deal with Seed & Culgan. Actually collecting them is fine, if a bit out of the way, but if you have all 5 squirrels in your party you have no other options for dealing with them quickly. Even so, the difference between that and a perfect Beast Rune would be only a minute or so, which is eaten up by going out of the way to collect them in the first place.

In terms of damage per second, physical attacks are king. Most attack animations are on the order of 2.5 seconds, and with crits and the right setup you can almost always ensure a 1-turn KO with minimal prior setup. That said it will differ a fair bit from the real-time runs just because consistency isn't an issue, so identifying when and where that comes in will be the challenge. For example, I'm considering re-implementing Kindness Early as a trade-off for 1T SDS, Abom, and Pest Rat. It's just a new way to look at things.
Omnigamer
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Re: Suikoden II Tool-Assisted Speedrun

Post by Omnigamer »

I just realized an entirely new tactic: critical hits will unbalance enemies. At least as far as I've tested, it is a 100% chance too (assuming you get a crit at all). This means that I can forego some of the other runes and still not have to witness boss attack animations. Figuring out the exact time tradeoff for different fights will take some doing, but it at least rebalances away from trying to pilfer a double beat early on.
KFCrispy
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Re: Suikoden II Tool-Assisted Speedrun

Post by KFCrispy »

crits cause "knock down" 100% of the time? for some reason I thought it was a low chance. i mean a lot of crits end up killing enemies, but there had to be times when i crit a boss and it did not cause knock down.
Omnigamer
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Re: Suikoden II Tool-Assisted Speedrun

Post by Omnigamer »

When I tested it, I could not find a situation where it did not also unbalance. However, even if it was probabilistic, manipulating it to happen is fairly trivial in a TAS setting.
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