02-28-2014, 02:59 AM
Hey, I just recently noticed the trivia about the 64 floors thing on the Final Fantasy 4 page and noticed that there's.... quite a bit more to it than the trivia states. Significantly more, in fact.
So the trivia states...
While it is true that it can freeze the game, it isn't necessarily the glitch itself that does it. See, the game actually keeps track of the "floor number" you're on by increasing and decreasing a counter every time you go through a entrance or exit, with every exit in the game being labeled "IN" or "OUT"; which as you can imagine increase and decrease the counter respectively. However, you can force the game to continually increase that counter by going through exits that lead to each both labeled "IN", such as some of the staircases in Dawrf Castle. The game underflows the counter back to 0 at 64, however, and going through an OUT door causes the game to count negative, which... it just can't do. So in a panic it begins sending you to maps by reading data straight from the RAM.
As this video, which first documented a way to beat the game through warping from only about halfway through the game (first uploaded to Niconico, so that's why it's in Japanese lol), shows, manipulation of party data and locations of vehicles and the like can lead the "random maps" the game sends you through to be not so random at all! However, without the proper manipulation of these values it can send you to rooms that just crash the game or cause it show garbage and softlock that way.
So in a sense, the current trivia isn't really wrong... just not completely correct. It should probably read something more like...
... and then continue on with the Ogopogo's Examiner bit. Just a suggestion, it's probably fine how it is now since it's truely about the Ogopogo's Examiner part of it, but there's always that little bit extra that one could be interested in ;)
Speaking of that, this website over here documents the RAM values that go into the coordinates for each map, etc., etc. (It's in Japanese though, and note the webpage is also encoded in Shift-JIS so if your browser doesn't change that automatically you'll have to change that) The top-left corner of Iforgetwhattown is the coordinates Map 0, X 0, Y 0, so that's why you see that so much in that video :P
So the trivia states...
Quote:It's possible for certain copies of Final Fantasy IV to freeze if the player goes back and forth between doors 64 times.
While it is true that it can freeze the game, it isn't necessarily the glitch itself that does it. See, the game actually keeps track of the "floor number" you're on by increasing and decreasing a counter every time you go through a entrance or exit, with every exit in the game being labeled "IN" or "OUT"; which as you can imagine increase and decrease the counter respectively. However, you can force the game to continually increase that counter by going through exits that lead to each both labeled "IN", such as some of the staircases in Dawrf Castle. The game underflows the counter back to 0 at 64, however, and going through an OUT door causes the game to count negative, which... it just can't do. So in a panic it begins sending you to maps by reading data straight from the RAM.
As this video, which first documented a way to beat the game through warping from only about halfway through the game (first uploaded to Niconico, so that's why it's in Japanese lol), shows, manipulation of party data and locations of vehicles and the like can lead the "random maps" the game sends you through to be not so random at all! However, without the proper manipulation of these values it can send you to rooms that just crash the game or cause it show garbage and softlock that way.
So in a sense, the current trivia isn't really wrong... just not completely correct. It should probably read something more like...
Quote:Because of the way the game keeps track of what floor you're on in the SNES version of Final Fantasy IV, it is possible to underflow the floor counter and force the game to send you to maps based on the game's RAM values. Because of the random or otherwise variable nature of these values, one who would accidentally come across this glitch could potentially softlock or even freeze the game.
... and then continue on with the Ogopogo's Examiner bit. Just a suggestion, it's probably fine how it is now since it's truely about the Ogopogo's Examiner part of it, but there's always that little bit extra that one could be interested in ;)
Speaking of that, this website over here documents the RAM values that go into the coordinates for each map, etc., etc. (It's in Japanese though, and note the webpage is also encoded in Shift-JIS so if your browser doesn't change that automatically you'll have to change that) The top-left corner of Iforgetwhattown is the coordinates Map 0, X 0, Y 0, so that's why you see that so much in that video :P