More Final Fantasy

[Cull]

I've been reading through Sullla's and T-hawk's Final Fantasy stuff, and want to know what emulators you guys use. Having never played the game myself(tried some of the newer versions, don't like them, the older ones seem a lot more fun though TBH), do you need the actual game to play on a emulator? And what are the best emulators, or the ones that you guys use?

These questions sounds pretty noobish, I know. Bear with me here.

[Sullla]

For emulators, I use SNES9x for Super Nintendo games; this appears to be the standard emulator in use for SNES stuff, and is widely available online. I use something called FCE Ultra for the older Nintendo Entertainment System emulation, but this is a much less standard program. I know that T-Hawk uses something else for Final Fantasy, something like JNes (?) There are a lot of them out there, and you can probably do well with many different choices.

Legally, you may only emulate games that you own, or else you are supposed to delete them within 24 hours after downloading. This isn't a problem for me, since I have old cartridges of Final Fantasy, FF 2/4, and FF 3/6 sitting around from many years back. I do not own Final Fantasy 5, although I don't think that's my fault since it was never released outside of Japan! I did purchase the Gameboy Advance remake from 2005, which makes me feel better there.

It's pretty easy to find copies of the original Final Fantasy in some form, since it's been ported or remade something like a dozen times by now. I'd grab it in some form, then download the ROM and not feel guilty. I won't explain where to find ROMs online, but with some searching they're pretty available. Heck, I've managed to acquire the original non-translated Japanese version of Final Fantasy 5 with online sleuthing!

[T-hawk]

NNNesterJ is my usual for NES games. I like it for FF1 because it can map speedup and screenshot functions to gamepad buttons, so you can do all that without moving your hands to the keyboard. http://www.zophar.net is a great source for downloading almost any emulator.

I technically don't own a legit copy of FF1 now, but I did buy it at full price when new, and then my sister gave away the cartridge to somebody while I was in college. I do have the FF5 GBA cart.

BTW, that "24 hours" rule is pure myth. Downloading a copyrighted work you don't own is infringement, period.

Anyway, while I'm here, yes I read through your Bare report, Sullla. Yes you're right that it's one of the easier solos. I did change my mind back about ten posts up in this thread, though.

[Deceptus]

Quick question - is the joke programmer room on the fan translated version supposed to throw you outside Tomera instead of back to the secret Lalilo Inn?

I checked out on this room and found, to my dismay, that I'm suddenly thrown to Tomera for some reason. I can't leave the village, because I checked up on the joke room just as I arrived in the Dwarf land, so Cid is off repairing the ship. And since Tomera seems to be completely isolated from any other means of locomotion than an airship, I'm stuck.

I do have a save-game from earlier, but it would take me a bit of time to collect myself and get back on the road. Just asking if everyone else has/had the same problem and whether I can leave Tomera by other means (maybe I overlooked some underground passage or so?).

(Also, Cecil's reactions to the magazine are hilarious.)

[Cull]

A question that popped it when thinking about solo runs: How excatly do you kill the other characters?

Do you let the monsters kill them or do you attack them or what?

[Sofis]

In the very early game, it is a good idea to equip the other characters with spare weaponry and have them commit suicide, because a pack of goblins or similar will take an inconvenient amount of time to kill even unarmored level one characters. Later the monsters can mostly be relied on to kill them off quickly.
But really, whatever works.

[Sullla]

With my new computer, I'm able to start doing some video recording and commentary videos. First up was my original monk Solo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSOW-uJkpOQ

I think this one came out pretty good, aside from some minor audio issues in the background. I'll add a link on the website this weekend when I have the time. Anyway, thoughts or opinions? I might do one or two others if there's interest. I still have a save file from my solo Bard class, although I don't have one remaining from the video I'd most like to do against Exdeath (solo Ninja, a test of pure skill, no luck).

[T-hawk]

Hey, pretty neat. Of course, your meticulous dissection of Exdeath (and everything else) is what's left me with no new ground to cover in FF5.

On the Ninja, do you still have a save file from your original nonvariant run? Any save with all or most of the equipment a Ninja would want; the Bare or Dragoon or Knight might also work. Then you can make just that one character master Ninja and kill off any others, to have your solo Ninja boss battle again.

On fast forwarding, how did you record the video? Was it with an emulator record feature, then playing that back through an encoder to AVI or MPEG while you voiceover? If so, then what the emulator is recording is your gamepad inputs, not external stuff like speedup. Try hitting the speedup button during emulator playback.

The speedup function will be required for anything involving a hidey Bard...

[Selrahc]

Anyway, thoughts or opinions?

Scripted or unscripted? You were umming and erring quite a lot. If you're working from memory it might be a good idea to have some notes on hand, if you're working from notes already then I guess you just need a bit of practice. It looks like you're recording the video and the commentary separately(?), which makes scripting an easier approach.

That would be my main complaint. From a content point of view it was a little dry, because you were obviously doing something fairly routine. From a technical standpoint the audio levels were all good, and the video was fine(maybe a little small). Very good for a first attempt definitely.

[Sofis]

I liked the video, very informative. You'd clearly thought through what you were going to say beforehand.

Regarding the vocal fillers Selrahc mentioned, remember that when commenting on a video, the video, being non-static, can carry interest on its own for a while. It's perfectly okay to be silent for a few seconds here and there.

On fast forwarding, how did you record the video? Was it with an emulator record feature, then playing that back through an encoder to AVI or MPEG while you voiceover? If so, then what the emulator is recording is your gamepad inputs, not external stuff like speedup. Try hitting the speedup button during emulator playback.

The speedup function will be required for anything involving a hidey Bard...

Hopefully using speedup during playback will not cause desync. My impression is that desync and its causes is basically dark magic and phases of the moon kind of stuff; it wouldn't surprise me if wearing the wrong kind of clothing caused desync, much less possibly actually relevant stuff like emulator speed.

Other options would be to speed things up in a video editing program, or bypassing the emulator input recording feature completely by using an external video capture program. The latter is probably a better option in case of bard trickery, as an hour long video file will be quite large before encoding.

Of course, your meticulous dissection of Exdeath (and everything else) is what's left me with no new ground to cover in FF5.

You could do some four character variants, you know. I've noticed that a lot of Sullla's strategies depend on having the right piece of equipment (Flame Ring/Angel Ring/Bone Mail). What happens when it's impossible or infeasible to equip everyone with what you want, and all the characters have lower levels to boot?