Pokemon Pearl any% FAQ

      Pokemon Pearl 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: Why do you choose Chimchar?
A: Because the Chimchar 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 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, and encounters.

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, and Chimchars starting stats

Q: What causes the resets?
A: I missed the initial seed. I have to start the game (after the intro) on the correct frame to get the initial RNG seed. There are a few ways to check whether I hit the correct starting seed, the earliest possible is to check my Trainer ID which should be 14093, so if my ID is anything but this I know I missed. However it takes a few seconds to check my ID, so for a run this short, I rather use the NPCs as a guide. So I look at the fat guy to the left of my house, if he's looking Up for a decent while and then turns left, I got it. Anything else, I missed.
The RNG for the seed advances every frame, so it is a frame perfect trick.

Q: Why don't you check Chimchars stats? What are Chimchars stats like?
A: Chimchars 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 Chimchars IVs are 29 HP, 31 Att, 24 Def, 30 SP Att, 15 SP Def, 31 Speed with a Naive nature. This is also important as it gives a Hidden Power of Grass with 66 Power, for Roark's Gym and Piplup.

Q: Why is your movement so strange in this run?
A: This is to manipulate the RNG, to get no encounters. You can't just find a seed that gets no encounters with a perfect Chimchar by just running straight through (again, game limitation; there isn't one), so I need to do specific movement to manipulate the RNG so that I can avoid these encounters.

Q: What encounters will you get?
A: If done correctly, none at all through the entire game. With the extended path, you manipulate the overworld all the way until Eterna City. We used to stop manipulating at the return to Jublife City after Roark, because there is a cutscene after the Double Battle with Galatic, where RNG is still running, and very fast, because Jubilife has a lot of active NPCs. So it was deemed near impossible to get a consistent RNG Frame after this cutscene, also because there's a separate RNG advancement during the cutscene (when you get the Fashion Case), meaning you need 2 windows where the RNG isn't moving, to both accept the case, and move out of the city.

And MK found one. There's a 19 frame window (30fps) to do this. It is possible to mash too fast during the cutscene, you need to lose at least 9 frames before accepting the Fashion Case. After that, you have as much buffer as you left behind to exit, assuming you do the movement afterwards correctly.

I then routed a path afterwards that gets no encounters, even in Eterna Forest. Getting no encounters in the Forest is particularly impressive, because there's a huge stretch of grass and there and no NPCs moving around, meaning RNG is only advancing from the grass, meaning you can't skip over encounters. But I found a path where I would only get 1 encounter, and specifically set up my Step Counter (which advances the RNG every 128 steps) to advance the RNG by 1 to skip over that encounter. Getting to such a point takes a lot of setup, hence why the movement right after Jubilife does a *lot* of RNG advancement, but it's still way faster than buying Repels, as going into a Mart takes 17 seconds. I still pick up a Repel right before Eterna Forest though, for when I go back to Jubilife after the Bike, because it's totally unfeasible to control to RNG perfectly while on the Bike for extended periods of time, especially while tweaking.

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 during the battles in the game, and every frame, so it isn't possible to manipulate at all (Battle RNG is different in Diamond/Pearl to Platinum/HGSS, in the latter you can do Battle manip, generally from a reset, but in this game it's completely impossible)

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 16x16 tile grids, 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. Once I get the Bike, I will be using this to put myself into the Hall of Fame and beat the game in about 3 minutes.

Q: Why Pearl and not Diamond?
A: Both are exactly the same for Any%, I just use Pearl.

Q: Why didn't you just heal there?
A: The AI in this game is random, in that it'll still randomly choose it's attacks even if it can kill. And because this particular run is so short, it's optimised to the point where depending on my time, I may have to take really hard risks to try and save some time, hoping the AI just chooses a less than ideal move.

Q: Why do you play as the girl?
A: The counterpart talks less to you if you are the girl

Q: Why do you name yourself and Chimchar '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? HM Slaves?
A: Nope, only 2 HMs used for the run are given to Monferno (Rock Smash and Cut)

Q: What is WR?
A: http://www.speedrun.com/pkmndp#Any (Alt: Look at splits)

Q: What is your goal time?
A: Ideally WR.

Q: What is with those split icons? What does A and C 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.