Pokemon Heart Gold Any% FAQ

      Pokemon Heart Gold any% 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: Is there anything different about this run from since your PB?
A: The route is quite a bit different! Rerouted this recently and found quite a lot more improvements than I thought I would.

Q: What is different about the route? How much time does it save?
A: It's hard to exactly calculate, but I would say all up the time saves are about a full minute, but the over arching strat changes are only about 45 seconds better, the other 15 seconds are pure timesave from better routing.

The core difference is skipping going to the Celadon Mart. This makes many things different because of the flow on effect of that core decision.
In order to do this, you need to buy everything at Goldenrod (X Items, TMs, etc). In order to afford everything, the mart is visited after Whitney instead of before.
Because you visit the mart after Whitney instead of before, Fire Blast is no longer worth buying. This makes all of the fights between Rival 2 and catching Raikou *much* different.
Because Fire Blast is no longer worth buying, getting the charcoal for money to sell is not worth doing.
Because you no longer get the Charcoal, RNG advances less, and as such it is better to visit Violet Center (which takes longer, but is better for PP/HP management) than Azalea Center.
Because you no longer have Fire Blast, it is worth getting extra Super Potions, not worth getting extra Ethers, and is worth getting Strength early for Rival 3.
Because you visit the mart after Whitney, you have less money after Whitney, meaning to afford everything required afterwards you need an extra item to sell for money.

The pure routing timesave are better RNG paths, mostly due to the fact that the last time I ran this, I was not utilising talking to Pokemon to advance. So the starting pattern is a bit faster, as is the Raikou manip.

Q: How low do you think this can go then?
A: 1:57 is definitely achievable, perhaps pushing towards 1:56. Under 1:55 is unrealistic, but getting close is not.

Q: What does 'Balance' mean in your splits?
A: It means my splits balanced to the new route, i.e. what my PB would've been if it was the same time on the new route. Basically look at these to gauge how far ahead/behind I actually am of my PB.

Q: Why do you choose Cyndaquil?
A: Because the Cyndaquil evolution family is the best for the speedrun. Totodile is very close for glitched, but still slightly slower.

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 start 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 and position, and the lottery so I win the Master Ball. In this run I also manipulate Pokerus, which I will get off the 2nd trainer battle.

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.
2) I can also 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 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, and only 1 encounter to Goldenrod (a Sentret to catch)

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: What encounters will you get?
A: I'll get a Level 3 Sentret on Route 29 after getting Poke Balls (which I catch as a Cut/Surf Slave). The Sentret also has Run Away as it's ability, which is used to run away from Sudowoodo after getting it killed to avoid double battles in Kanto, and also avoids Blue from using Roar/Whirlwind.

Q: You also manipulate Raikous stats? How is that possible?
A: You don't specifically know at what the RNG frame is when you get to releasing Raikou, so it's a bit trickier. What you do instead, is get encounters in Burnt Tower to tell you where the RNG frame is at, and then advance it the correct amount of times to hit the target Raikou. It's IVs are: 16 HP, 4 Att, 22 Def, 31 SP Att, 17 SP def, 4 Speed with a Rash 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 will get it to warp to that route, and be able to encounter it there.

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 beforehand, so catching him is easy.

Q: So why don't you just manipulate everything in the game?
A: 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, with variable lag frames, making it very unpredictable. In addition as mentioned, there are limitations on what you can get, there are only so many seeds you have to take the most desirable one. At this stage, with this route, we believe this to be that seed.

Battle RNG is actually manipulated for the last 2 fights however. To do so requires a save and quit, which is why it's only beneficial for those fights, because a save and quit takes so much time. It's only worth it for Blue as well, because you've already saved in front of the gym and part of the tweak to get inside early. Even with the save and reset hitting just one frame is incredibly unreliable, so several different "clusters" are mapped out, which are clumps of ~10 frames in a row, with all the fights mapped out. The idea is you identify which frame you hit by seeing your how HP you are taken to from the first defensive damage range, and then act accordingly from there. There are multiple clusters because seeds are determined by multiple factors, and one of them is the time, so minutes + seconds play into the generation of the seed, and because you don't want to potentially wait 59 seconds for the same one cluster to come around, several are mapped out.

Q: There are glitches in this run, yes?
A: Correct. Only one, but it is used extensively. It's quite well known, it's called tweaking.

Q: What is tweaking?
A: Tweaking is a glitch in all gen 4 pokemon games. The games are loaded by 32x32 tile grid, and by moving quickly over various load lines where these grids intersect, you can cause the game to load/unload certain collisions and character sprites allowing you to get to areas before you're supposed to.

Q: Why not Soul Silver?
A: Heart Gold and Soul Silver are the same for this run, barring that the encounter tables are slightly different. However in this run the only encounter is a Level 3 Sentret that is the same between both games, so either works exactly the same.
The reason I'm using HG over SS is simply that I use SS for glitchless, so this way I get to use one for each main category.

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

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: Just the Sentret for Cut/Surf, and Raikou. Nothing else.

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