Pokemon Soul Silver Glitchless FAQ

      Pokemon Soul Silver Glitchless FAQ

Q: Is there a new route?
A: As of August 6th, yes!
See details here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0e9SVckdRs

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 location, 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, there is an encounter in Sprout Tower that is undodgeable otherwise.

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 value the RNG is on when releasing Raikou, so it's a bit trickier. What I do instead, is use the Radio Card to check the value. By seeing what Pokemon appear on what route on the 'Pokemon Talk' channel, you can determine the current value. And then by changing the radio station multiple times, the RNG can be advanced by a predictable amount, until the value I want for release Raikou is up.

There are also 2 different Raikous I can get. The former is harder to get, as it requires advancing the RNG by a very low amount, but it is better.

'Raikou 0' has IVs of: 27 HP, 31 Att, 21 Def, 28 Sp Att, 26 Sp Def, 24 Speed with a Mild Nature
'Raikou 1' has IVs of: 17 HP, 23 Att, 17 Def, 27 Sp Att, 20 Sp Def, 28 Speed with a Modest Nature

To help people coming into a run that's in the late game, if I catch Raikou 0, I'll try to nickname it . or , and if I catch Raikou 1, I'll try to nickname it I or J
(Not 0 or 1, they are too far down the bottom of the screen, so slow)

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: Do you manipulate any of the battles?
A: Technically no, there is no 100% strict forced manipulation of any battles. It is simply too difficult to hit a specific seed for battles, mainly because lag frames within the game are incredibly inconsistent. It is attempted in Rival 1, though, purely because it is the first fight it has the least amount of variance.

There are 2 fights that I use battle identification on, though.

Q: What are those 2 fights, and what is battle identification?
A: Battle identification is where I identify a battle seed based on what happens within the fight, and then act appropriately based on that.
For a video that explains it, watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg2gHySdyLU

The 2 battle I use it on are: Falkner, and Whitney.
No other fight is possible or worth it (fights are either too fast and they end before you can identify, or they just aren't worth it. The only exception is Red - but doing seed identification in Kanto requires 100x more work and has waaaay more variance, by the time you could identify Red the fight would be basically over anyway because you get less feedback in the early turns because you aren't attacking)

1) Falkner is because he has an AI quirk within he alternates whether to use Tackle or Sand-Attack on turn 1 in clusters of 152/153 frames (just over 2.5 seconds). Because Sand-Attack is really bad, you aim for Tackle clusters. Because of variance of lag frames you often aim for the central part of these clusters instead of a full 2.5 seconds.
I often refer to these clusters by the starting time of what I aim to start the battle at (so the "15 cluster" is starting the battle at 22:15 or just after)

But then because you are aiming for specific clusters of 152/3 frames - you know there is only that many possible fights. So any non regular turn (Burn/crit/miss/max roll) can really narrow down the possibilities (i.e. a tackle miss would narrow it down to 7 or 8 alone). Because that's a low enough amount to work with, I can sometimes identify Falkner seeds and act in a way to make the fights go better than if I just spammed Ember - though sometimes even if I identify the seed, the best option is to just spam Ember anyway!

2) Whitney is possible to use seed identification on because she has a good chance (1/3) to use the best seed identifier move of all - Metronome. Because Metronome calls a random move, it is an excellent identifier, instead of narrowing down by 1/16 for a critical it narrows down by 1/441 just on the move choice, which is almost always enough by itself to identify the seed.
There are some other ways to identify the seed without Metronome (i.e. uncommon multi hit Doubleslaps, Burn, Crit), but they are not as common as Metronome. All in all there's about a 50/50 chance I can identify the Whitney seed, assuming I make it in time for what I have mapped out!

Q: Why not use 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 (Lugia is faster by like ~5-10 seconds assuming you have great movement), so Soul Silver just wins out. Either can do the route perfectly fine though.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoGHriEfI6U

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: Why are you getting off the Bike and back on straight away?
A: This is for load optimisation, you can sometimes get faster loads by controlling the music by dismounting and remounting the Bike. See this video for a visual explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvpqT6kk7AA

Q: Do you catch any other Pokemon?
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: II want a 3:29 or lower

Q: What is with those split icons? What does A and B mean?
A: This is a grading system for all of my splits. I'm sure you are familiar with grades, A+ being the best then going down from there. So the idea is, if the split has an A+ next to it, my time there was really good and would be very difficult to beat. If it's a C though for example, it was quite poor, and I should be able to save time there pretty easily.

This way, everyone watching has more accurate information on where I can save time, and where I should be making up time. Also that all time loss is not equal, as losing time vs an A+ split isn't really that bad, whereas losing time vs a C split is really bad. It'll probably take a while for a lot of people watching to pick up the meaning so I will appreciate everyone who explains how this works (correctly) in chat to new people.