6 ms·
There's a weapon in Final Fantasy 9 which can only be obtained by reaching a lategame area in less than 12 hours of play time, or 10 hours on the PAL version du
by jsheard 1y ago
There's a weapon in Final Fantasy 9 which can only be obtained by reaching a lategame area in less than 12 hours of play time, or 10 hours on the PAL version due to an oversight. Alternatively you can just leave the game running for two years until the timer wraps around. Slow and steady wins the race.
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Excalibur_II_(Final_Fantasy_IX) https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Excalibur_II_(Final_Fan...
- zero_shift 1y agoOh yeah. The sword you pick up in Memoria. The problem there is that the PAL version runs slower; the way PSX games "translated" between the two video systems was just to have longer VSync pauses for PAL. So the game is actually slower, not interpolated
- reactordev 1y agoLonger vsync pauses but larger frame time deltas so it’s basically the same speed of play. The only thing that was even noticeable was the UI lag.
- fredoralive 1y agoErm. No, like lots of games during the era quite a lot of stuff is tied to the frame rate, so the 50Hz region game just runs slower than the 60Hz one as next to nobody bothers to adjust for it. The clock for the hidden weapon does run at the same rate for both unfortunately, hence it being harder to get in 50Hz regions.
- mungoman2 1y agoWouldn't a slower tick make it easier as you get more wall time to do the same challenge.
- fredoralive 1y agoNo? Wall time (that the challenge runs on) is unchanged, game time (Vsync) is running at 83% of full speed (50Hz vs 60Hz), so if something tied to frame rate (animation, walking speed etc.) takes 1 second to do on NTSC, it'll take 1.2 seconds to do on PAL etc.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- reactordev 1y agoIncorrect. I’m looking at the source code. It’s not perfect but it’s not just “slowed down to 50hz” like people claim.
- zero_shift 1y agoWhen you say looking at the source code, what do you mean here? AFAIK the source for FF9 PSX (and all the PSX ff games) has been lost as Square just used short term archives Also, FF9 does not run at a constant framerate. Like all the PSX FF games it runs at various rates, sometimes multiple at a time (example: model animations are 15fps vs 30 for the UI) In terms of timers, the bios does grant you access to root timers, but these are largely modulated by a hardware oscillator (Incidentally, the hardware timing component is the reason a chipped PAL console cannot produce good NTSC video. Only a Yaroze can support full multiregion play)
- reactordev 1y agoIt’s definitely not lost…
- zero_shift 1y agoWhat code are you looking at? FFIX for PSX would have been written in C (or possibly C++) with PSY-Q. It will not be one program - those games were composed of multiple overlays that are banked in / out over the PlayStation's limited memory. From what I know the PC release was a port to a new framework, which supports the same script engines, but otherwise is fresh code. This is how it can support mobile, widescreen, Steam achievements etc.
- anthk 1y agoFF VII-IX were reimplemented under a custom engine.
- reactordev 1y agoExcept I’m looking at the original source, not the remake, the crappy C/C++ Square engine. Not C# unity code. There are a number of timers and things used. But the claim that it runs slower is absolutely false. It’s just perceived that way because it’s “drawn” slower.
- debo_ 1y agoSo that's why it's called Excalibur 2!
- lelandfe 1y agoSo the invisible 12h timer runs during cutscenes. During Excalibur 2 runs, I used to open and close the PS1 disc tray to skip (normally unskippable) cutscenes. Never knew why that worked. (I also never managed to get it)
- p1necone 1y ago> Never knew why that worked. I'm guessing the game probably streams FMV cutscenes of the disc as they play, and the fallback behaviour if it can't find them is to skip rather than crash.
- jonhohle 1y agoI’m going to wager that the cutscenes are all XA audio/video DMA’d from the disc. Opening the disc kills the DMA and the error recovery is just to end the cutscene and continue. The program is in RAM, so a little interruption on reading doesn’t hurt unless you need to time it to avoid an error reading the file for the next section of gameplay.
- Insanity 1y agoThat’s a solid guess. And if that’s the case, that’s actually pretty good error handling!
- Jare 1y agoI recall that handling disc eject was an explicit part of the Tech Requirements Doc (things the console manufacturer requires you to comply with). They'd typically check while playing, while loading and while streaming.
- ad133 1y agoThis is a significantly better handling than the previous game (final fantasy viii). My disk 1 (it had four disks) got scratched over time (I was a child after all), and the failure mode was just to crash - thus the game was unplayable. The game had a lot of cutscenes.
- Gravityloss 1y agoAm reminded by this quote from Ferdinand Porsche: "The perfect racing car crosses the finish line first and subsequently falls into its component parts." Games fit this philosophy, compared to many other pieces of software that are expected to be long-lived and receiving a lot of maintenance and changes and evolve.
- WJW 1y agoThe Porsche quote reflects a wider design philosophy that says "Ideally, all components of a system lasts as long as the design life of the entire system and there should be no component that lives significantly longer. If there is such a component, it has been overengineered and thus the system will be more expensive to the end consumer than it needs to be.". It kinda skips over maintenance, but overall most people find it unobjectionable when stated like this. But plenty of people will find complaints when they try to drive their car beyond its design specs and more or less everything starts failing at once.
- doubled112 1y agoWhen the design spec seems to be a 3 year long lease I can see why people get bothered.
- signalToNose 1y agoConsumer protection laws prevents businesses following this to it’s extreme. For many businesses the ideal would be to just sell stuff that immediately breaks down as soon as it’s sold. It has the fulfilled its purpose from their point of view
- delichon 1y agoI run sous vide cookers 24*7, and they uniformly break within 90 days or less. But they don't like to admit their smaller duty cycle, so they don't, and keep sending me warranty replacements instead. I keep buying different brands looking for one with a longer life. I'll bet most people do that when their gadgets die, and purposely making products that die as soon as sold isn't often a successful business model.
- Forgeties79 1y agoLord have mercy fandom really has become unbearable with the ads and pop ups.
- coldpie 1y agoInstall an ad blocker.
- Forgeties79 1y agoI opened this on an iPhone which has fewer adblock options. Desktop is better locked down. Regardless I can still complain about how intrusive the ads are.
- coldpie 1y agoThere are many ad block options on iPhone. I currently use Wipr 2, but in the past I've used both 1Blocker and AdBlock Pro with success.
- JustExAWS 1y agoI just opened this my iPhone with 1Blocker installed. I saw no ads. It’s been around since iOS 8
- Forgeties79 1y agoNever heard of it, appreciate the recc! Edit: ah only works on safari
- mrguyorama 1y agoYou are on iOS. There is only safari. Any other "web browser" is just a skin over safari
- Forgeties79 1y agoYes I know everything is wrapped around safari. But I like having Firefox syncing across devices. Edit: ah forgot my vpn was off, usually clears all that up for me. Much better now
- elcritch 1y agoWe should rally together to force game companies to use 32 bit timers rather than 64bit ones so we can keep finding these fun little glitches. The time to protect overflows is now! ;)