Pokemon Soul Silver Any% Glitchless FAQ

      Pokemon Soul Silver Glitchless FAQ

Q: What are you playing on, it is emulator?
A: No, I'm playing on a DS (phat) with a capture board installed allowing me to record game footage

Q: Why do you choose Cyndaquil?
A: Because the Cyndaquil evolution family is the best for the speedrun. Until you catch Raikou, that is.

Q: Why do you keep resetting and changing the time?
A: I need to use a specific time in order to use RNG manipulation, so I set the clock in such a way that I can use it.
 The timer counts down to when I need to reset for the correct second.

Q: What is RNG?
A: Random Number Generator, the thing that determines everything random within the game, such as stats, encounters and pokerus.

Q: What is RNG Manipulation?
A: RNG manipulation is used in this speedrun, which involves resetting on a specific second starting from a specific time, and hitting the correct frame for the correct seed after resetting. This allows for manipulating of the wild encounters, Cyndaquils starting stats, Raikous starting stats, Raikous starting position, and the lottery so I win the Master Ball

Q: What causes the resets?
A: I missed initial starting seed. There are 2 ways to check whether I hit the correct seed:
1) I check my Trainer ID. The one I am aiming for is 39391. I know if I get this ID, I hit the right starting seed, as that is generated at the same time. This is what I used to do, as it is the first thing you can do to check, but it takes ~3 seconds to check so I tend to instead...
2) I check the movement of the NPCs in New Bark Town. Because their movement is derived from the RNG, I can tell I hit it based on their movements. If the girl faces Down, then turn Right, Down, and then Left, I got it
If not I didn't hit the right seed, so I reset. The RNG for the seed advances every frame, so it is a frame perfect trick

Q: Why is your movement so strange at the start of the run?
A: Because you can't get the best possible results off the bat. The movement that I do is designed specifically to manipulate the RNG (from NPCs movement around me, and the like) so that I get my great Cyndaquil, Pokerus off the first trainer battle, and no encounters to Falkner

Q: Why did you just talk to your Cyndaquil?
A: Because it advances the RNG! This is used at the start of the run to skip over patterns that would have encounters, but also to make the RNG advance by decently significant amounts to accelerate getting Pokerus, otherwise I would have to run around a lot more in the grass, which would be slower. It's also potentially used during Raikou manip if I go for backup Raikou, as it's otherwise unhittable without resetting the room, which is slower than talking.

Q: Why don't you check Cyndaquils stats? What are Cyndaquils stats like?
A: Cyndaquils starting stats are the same every time RNG manipulation is used, and also quite decent using RNG manipulaton, but not perfect. The reason for this is because there are a limited amount of seeds you can RNG manipulate for, as you are manipulating so many things, it's literally a game limitation how good they can be. The Cyndaquils IVs are 4 HP, 23 Att, 21 Def, 28 SP Att, 5 Sp Def, 31 Speed with a Rash nature

Q: You also manipulate Raikous stats? How is that possible?
A: You don't specifically know at what seed the RNG is on when releasing Raikou, so it's a bit trickier.
What I'm doing instead is looking at the Radio Channels to deduce what the RNG is at that point, and then change the channels a certain number of times to advance it to the value I'm looking for.
For this route though, there are 2 Raikous pretty close to each other that can both complete the run. So if the RNG has advanced too much that I can't get the first one, I can just get the second one and continue (the first is ever so slightly better for the run)

The main Raikou's IVs are: 17 HP, 23 Att, 17 Def, 27 Sp Att, 20 Sp Def, 28 Speed with a Modest Nature
The backup Raikou's IVs are: 26 HP, 5 Att, 3 Def, 29 Sp Att, 13 Sp Def, 31 Speed with a Modest Nature.

Q: And then you manipulate it's position...how?
A: Well if I hit my target Raikou it always goes to the same spot, so if I make the same movement to down below Ecruteak I can manipulate the Raikou's jumps to go to where I want it to.

Q: And then how do you plan on catching it?
A: The starting seed, when I get my trainer ID, also starts a few other things in the game. One of them is the starting lottery number, and one of the reasons this seed is so desirable is that they line up, so I scoop up a free Master Ball before I catch him

Q: So why don't you just manipulate everything in the game?
A: 1) There are multiple RNGs at play, and not all of them can be controlled the same way. Battle RNG for example, advances just about every frame, including lag frames, making it totally unpredictable.
2) Some things simply aren't worth it, as they are limited by the amount of possibilities in the game. For example, having Cyndaquil be a Female would be better to avoid Attract on Miltank, but there are simply 0 seeds that have all the other requirements needed AND get a Female Cyndaquil, making it slower overall.

Q: Do you manipulate Voltorb Flip? How does it work?
A: Yes, I do. Voltorb Flip works off the Secondary RNG, not the main one that impacts encounters and IVs and such. The Secondary RNG advances only during the route between Union Cave and Azalea Town, because it is raining, and the rain advances the Secondary RNG.

Once at Voltorb Flip, I take specific patterns on the boards to manipulate future boards. The first thing you need to know about it Level 8. Level 8 is the highest level in Voltorb Flip, and as such where the most coins are. Accessing Level 8 is different to the prior levels, instead of beating the level 1 below, Level 8 is unlocked by having a continuous streak of 5 boards in a row, and all 5 of those boards having at least 8 panels flipped over. So after Level 5, I can jump straight to Level 8. Also note: The streak means you must win, except on the 5th board, so I actually quit out of that level and still get the jump.
Outside of that, the panels I flip also matter, as some panels do not advance the secondary RNG, where most do. The ones that don't are those that are on either a column or row that has no bombs.

Q: Why not Heart Gold?
A: Heart Gold and Soul Silver are the same for one key difference, the legendary Pokemon you must visit. Visiting Ho-Oh and Lugia take almost the exact same amount of time, but Lugia is faster by like ~2 seconds assuming you have good movement.

Q: Why do you play as the girl?
A: The counterpart does the catching tutorial, and the male does it faster, so it’s faster to choose the female for yourself.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI1-PJ7Sy1w

Q: Why do you name yourself and Cyndaquil 'I'?
A: Because it's faster to name them one character for text purposes, and the letter 'I' gives a nice spin as if the game was self-narrating

Q: Do you catch anything else? Mewtwo maybe?
A: I catch no other Pokemon in this run other than Raikou. I obtain 3 others, Abra (Teleport) and Dratini (Water HMs) from Voltorb Flip and Spearow (Fly) from the guard.

Q: What is WR?
A: http://www.speedrun.com/pkmnhgss
See: Splits

Q: What is your goal time?
A: There isn't too much time to save, so sub 3:35 would be really good.

Q: Are there any route changes in this run since the last time you ran it?
A: The last time I ran this category was Jan 2019, and there's been 2 changes since then.
1) I'm going to get 1 less Rare Candy, making the experience route slightly different. I used to use 2 before Jasmine and 4 before Will, I'm now using 1 before Jasmine and 4 before Koga.
2) I'm doing the manipulation for Raikou differently. Both using Radio manip before release (which is faster than the old encounter manip), and doing a faster location manip with the Bike on as well