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 2 years ago?
A: The route is largely different

Q: What is different about the route? How much time does it save?
A: It's hard to exactly calculate, but I have a rough write-up of it here: https://pastebin.com/tbzBUfai
Tl;dr, No Fly/Charge Beam/Hidden Power, plus Magnet/Pokerus. Much harder last 3 fights (Lance/Blue/Red), riskier E4 on Thunder PP, but save time throughout the game. Estimated somewhere between 1.5-2 minutes.

Note: This is compared to the old route, my current PB uses this route.

Q: So then where can you save time over your PB?
A: The 2 places I lost the most time where at E4, and Red. I can save just over a minute on both. Every other split was about average, possible to lose and gain time on all of them.

Q: How low do you think it can go then? Sub 2??
A: Sub 2 is potentially possible yes, but it would probably take a super good run. I think my goal atm is a 2:00:XX, which would still take a really nice run.

Q: Why do you choose Cyndaquil?
A: Because the Cyndaquil evolution family is the best for the speedrun.

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 the trainer ID. The one I am trying to hit is 39391. If I don't get it I know 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.
Note: In future attempts I will be resetting without looking at the ID, by checking the position of NPCs in New Bark Town, as they always move the same way on the same seed, I can use them to verify without using the couple of seconds to check my ID. But for now I'll use my ID, as it gives me the information faster.

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 2 encounters to Falkner (both of which I want)

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: The encounters can be manipulated because the RNG does not change if your movement is perfect; so if you just move correctly you wont get encounters on the first route. The Guide Gent at Cherrygrove complicates things do to the textboxes, but if done correctly, I'll get a Level 2 Sentret right at the start (which I kill for experience) and 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.

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 then run around to get it to show up on an RNG Frame so that Pokerus spreads to it as soon as I catch it.

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 table is slightly different. As such the only difference is the very first encounters at the start of the run. Whilst the second Sentret is exactly the same between the games, if I were to play on Soul Silver, the first Sentret I kill would be a Lvl 4 instead of a Lvl 2, so I would lose a turn as defeating it would take longer.

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. Nothing else.

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