Rare Enemies & Beats - (theory and testing results!)

[ChibiMyu]

I don't know how many people know this, but I've come across some interesting data that most people I've talked to seem interested to hear... and here it is:

For the past four days, I have seen 4 rare "hilde" enemies: Two hildeblue and two hildetorr. The connection? Both of the Hildbeblue came from vhard temple around the same time in consecutive nights. (110-119 beats) No surprise, the Hildetorrs in ultimate forest came around 880-889 beats in my HS runs. I've heard some people claim their magic number for rares as 550 (we've heard the beat theory before, haven't we?)

All these beat times have the same two numbers in the tens and hundreds place (ie. nn-, where the n's are the SAME number, and the "-" is any number. 226, 002, 118, 773, etc.)... which seems really significant to me. Could this be the beginning of breaking the code?

I decided to experiment and see if I could get Pal Rappies to show up in the Fake in Yellow quest during 330-339 beats (my offline clock is wrong, so I actually did this shortly after the last 880 hildetorr I saw). Well... unless you value the photon drop I got after piping up and down for 10 beats and killing some rappies out of frustration, I doubt you'd consider this a success... no pal rappies, but I'm not giving up yet! I've done this quest around the same time in the past BEFORE I was aware of the beats, and given up, only to go into the caves to find a Mil Lily! I can't gurantee that this occured between 330-339, but my playing times are pretty consistant on weekdays.

Maybe this is all just coincidence, but I think not. When my clock offline hits 440, I'm going to go questing again. I usually don't play around my dinner time, but I guess I could make an exception, and tommorow I'll let you know the results of my 330-339 Mil Lily hunt.

If anyone wants to help out, I'm guessing that Nar Lilies appear in Temple area around 000-009, but that's just a guess based on other occurances related to my consistent game times.

And I know someone is going to ask if I don't tell now...
vhard Hildblue #1 (oran) - Victor Axe
vhard Hildeblue #2 (skyly) - Mahu
vhard Hildetorr #1 (whitill?) - Antidote
vhard Hildetorr #2 (???) - club

More later!

-Kray

[DukeElrond]

Cool observation. *_*

I think that this post should be made sticky, and whenever someone sees a rare enemy, they should post the following information:

Enemy Found
Online/Offline
Area(#) - (Quest? Was Battle mode enabled?)
Difficulty
Section ID
Character Class/Level

If anyone thinks any more information should be included, just say so. (For example, how many rappies you've killed out of frustration prior to finding the rare enemy. http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif;)





<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Floogy33 on 2002-11-27 14:51 ]</font>

[ABDUR101]

Hey, wow...thats alot of work and some very interesting results.

This actually deserves to be put in the General forum, since it's not for specific items, but more along the lines of how and when to find rare enemies. =)

Keep up the great work ChibiMyu!

*moves to General Forum*

*edit*
I hate you typo...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ABDUR101 on 2002-11-27 14:39 ]</font>

[ChibiMyu]

On 2002-11-27 14:26, Floogy33 wrote:
I think that this post should be made sticky, and whenever someone sees a rare enemy, they should post the following information:

Enemy Found
Online/Offline
Area(#) - (Quest? Was Battle mode enabled?)
Difficulty
Section ID
Character Class/Level


Thanks, help would be good. Don't forget the time in beats. ^_^ I think that whether you are hunting in the temple, caves, or forest does make a difference as to when the rare enemies have the highest probability of appearing too.

[Sapphire87]

The thing I've noticed is that often times when you kill two enemies at the exact same time, they'll sometimes drop the exact same item. On one occasion, two Boomas that I killed at the same time dropped a couple of red handguns. This kinda makes you wonder about the beat theory as opposed to enemies just dropping rares on a total random basis. At this point, there isn't enough evidence to prove or disprove this theory.

[DirewolfX]

Well... seeds for random number generators are often taken from system time...

[DukeElrond]

That's true, but nothing like this was ever noticed in version 2 (unless the random number generator for GC is significantly less "random" than DC).

[sMaRtAzZ]

i think chibimyu is rite!!!

ok rite now i was going through vhard temple...and i started the tp trick where i always do...and at exactly 077 beats i saw a nar lilly! and that was only with 3 tp's....as usual it dropped a flowen's shield...no surprise there http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

[neko-chan]

On 2002-11-27 18:20, DirewolfX wrote:
Well... seeds for random number generators are often taken from system time...


Yup! Maybe only Barubary would be able to tell us how the random generation works in PSO >_>

*pokes Barubary*

[DJ_Monkey]

Hmm...sounds like a valid theory. Barubary, you have a new assignment. Break the codes to both the rare enemy generator and the item generator.

Tell us the results after that...

[JordanLund]

I'm not Barubary, but I do have an inclination toward figuring things out...

So there are a few premises we're working with...

Premise #1: The timing of rare enemies is tied to beat time.

Premise #2: The timing of rare weapons is tied to beat time.

I set up a chart in Excel showing the beat time for every hour and half hour in my time zone (Pacific) and I found a few patterns that, if I were a programmer, I could use for random generation.

Items marked in Bold are a time when the first 2 digits of the Beat are the same... 44x 55x 66x etc.

Items marked in Italic are a time when the beat time ends in 0 AND it's even with the hour or the half hour.

If it's bold AND italic then both of the above rules apply.

I didn't mark any beat where the last 2 digits are the same as those would be much more common (and the only conversion applet I had did time to beats not beats to time. ;^)

Is this significant of anything? Who knows? The rarest ones are where it's a double digit and ends in 0. I'd check those first, but who's to say they don't apply to the Rappy species at one point and the Hildebear species at another point.

Beat GMT -8:00

375 12 Midnight
396 12:30
417 1:00
438 1:30
459 2:00
480 2:30
500 3:00
521 3:30
542 4:00
563 4:30
584 5:00
605 5:30
625 6:00
646 6:30
667 7:00
688 7:30
709 8:00
730 8:30
750 9:00
771 9:30
792 10:00
813 10:30
834 11:00
855 11:30
875 12 Noon
896 12:30
917 1:00
938 1:30
959 2:00
980 2:30
0 3:00
21 3:30
42 4:00
63 4:30
84 5:00
105 5:30
125 6:00
146 6:30
167 7:00
188 7:30
209 8:00
230 8:30
250 9:00
271 9:30
292 10:00
313 10:30
334 11:00
355 11:30

[Whatley]

On 2002-11-29 16:32, JordanLund wrote:

I set up a chart in Excel showing the beat time for every hour and half hour in my time zone (Pacific) and I found a few patterns that, if I were a programmer, I could use for random generation.



I don't think that would work, because the beats are not set to actual time. So one day at 6pm the beat could be 344 and then the next day at the same time the beat would be about 350. I have noticed this in DC ver2 when I would do battle tournaments every saturday at about the same time.

[FinalMasterM]

Nice work on trying to find a link between beat time and when rare enemys/items appear, but sadly, it's all random... and you could run into any rare monster or find any rare at anytime depeneding on the difficutly, area, episode and monster(s) you killed to get it.

[Maelkith]

about death and item generation-- 3 gilchics on hard in mines two, same sword strike, synchronous explosions and all in the same sqare yard of floor space (game estimate) yeilded 3 secret gears. i was amazed that three dropped all at once. they are rediculously common for redria but i usually only get one every 2-5 runs.

[MalambisBZ]

Note to self: Kill many enemies at the same exact time. http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

With my luck, I will be getting 6 trap visions at once.. yahoo!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: MalambisBZ on 2002-11-30 06:31 ]</font>

[neko-chan]

On 2002-11-29 16:32, JordanLund wrote:
I'm not Barubary, but I do have an inclination toward figuring things out...

So there are a few premises we're working with...

Premise #1: The timing of rare enemies is tied to beat time.

Premise #2: The timing of rare weapons is tied to beat time.


Nice work!!!

But the point is a little different. Let me try to explain. >_>

In order to produce a random event, such as a Booma dropping a Monomate or a Monofluid or nothing, programmers would have most likely created a routine that generates random values.

This piece of code produces random values but needs a solid, real base for working. The easily way to give to the random routine a base is using, for example, the numbers generated by the internal GameCube clock.

For example, I did this once, because I was making a Web site and the client wanted the home page to display random images every time it was loaded. In that case I used as base for my little random program the server clock, because it was the easiest way.

What I'd like to know from Barubary, or anyone else that had the chance to take a look at PSO code, is if he ever found out what is the base used by Sonic Team programmers to generate the random routine. It can most likely be the internal clock or the beats, but can be also something different. >_>

[VulpesMundi]

24 hours multiplied by 60 minutes is 1440 minutes in a day. 1440 minutes divided by 1000 beats is 1.44 minutes per beat. 1.44 multiplied by 60 seconds is 86.4.

Each beat is 86.4 seconds long. Calculate that into real time versus every beat if you wish. Just make sure you use GMT instead of your own time (12am GMT is 000 beat time). However, I still believe that everything about this game, beit items or rare enemies, is completely and 100% random.

Ever made a basic random dice roller program or even just a simple random number generator? You don't need it to be anything special. It just randomly pulls up a number between point A and point B from what you programmed into it. I believe that's how Sonic Team programmed the item tables for PSO. You kill a critter or an item box and it generates a number, say, from 1 to 100. Let's say it pulls up 38. The system then drops item 38. Yeah, the coding is going to be a little more complicated than that, but the premise is still just as simple. And of course their system is going to have a much grander scale. Likely thousands of possibilities with the more common items appearing quite a few times on the same table and the really rare items only appearing once.

Another good example of why I think this is how they created the item tables can be seen with Meseta drops. They actually generate a random value themselves whenever they drop (with the exception of bosses who always drop a pre-set amount when they drop Meseta). If you watch, there's a certain range at which Meseta will drop which changes depending on the difficulty. Boxes and every different critter have their own individial value range. Boxes tend to hold the lowest value while the toughest critters tend to hold the highest.

Even the weapons and armor in the shops are randomly generated within a certain range based on both the character's level and the difficulty setting. For example: currently with my 80-something character I find only 3 star HU/RA and 2 star FO weapons (not counting the specials) for sale in the weapon shop, and from 5 star to 8 star armor for sale in the armor shop. The really interesting thing about this is that it will never have two exactly identical items in the weapon, armor, or tool shop at the same time. Sure, sometimes you'll see two Dragon Frames in the armor shop, but if you look closer one might have 0 slots while the other has 2. In this case it's not only randomly generating what to put in the shop from a specific range, but it will also mark what's already there and not repeat it. This actually tells me that its possible that each individual variance in the items is listed on the item table separately. Just speculation, really.

If you really want to do some research, then try this sometime. For at least an entire week schedule a repetitive action to do everyday beginning at the same time. For example: try going thru Fake in Yellow five times each day (without using the TP trick) starting at 500 beats. Make sure you note the time you start each and every run so that on the subsequent days they're all started at the same time. Pause five or ten beats between runs to ensure there's no overlap. Keep track of the special items and rare critters you find during these runs and catalogue each and every one of them at the beat time you found them. I guarantee there will be no pattern.

And to the person who got seriously lucky with three Secret Gears, that's all you got was lucky. I have killed literally hundreds of thousands of critters simultaneously in this version and the Dreamcast versions and I have never once seen critters drop identical items. And I'm willing to wager if you looked closely at all three of those Secret Gears they'd each have slightly different DFP and EVP stats, which means they were all generated separately and just happened to hit the floor at the same time. Do you still have them so you can check?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VulpesMundi on 2002-11-30 08:01 ]</font>

[mystic_knight]

A friend of mine found:
Nar Lily
Offline
Cave 1 - No Quest
Normal
Greennill (sp?)
Ranger 12
732 beats

[Maelkith]

this may be a fools errand as the processor cycles may be generating new variables. the game could be generating new items by tenths or even thousandths of a second. like a really big, really fast wheel of fortune for example.

its possible that your therory holds water if the item tables change according to beats, but only if there is a favorable time for drops programmed.

[ancalagon]

i know it is probably coincidence, but for the past three days i have been doing runs through the forest on hard difficulty, and most of the time i get nothing,not even a monomate. but, for some strange reason, i get a MUSASHI at about 8:30 central time zone in the us. i will have to check further for a pattern in this, but it is probably just luck...

[MalambisBZ]

It's probably 100% random like VulpesMundi said. I'm just wondering if the random item is selected from the item table when the monster is spawned, or when it dies.

In Diablo, each class of monster has a different list of treasure classes which it can drop, and the % probability of each.
http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/d2/monster/baal_crab_hell.html
That's the the drop list for Baal, he has 6 (I think) drop checks. He drops 6 items (unless nothing is selected) from that list.
Each of the treasure classes has multiple items within it.

They are both Action/RPGS, so they could use the same general principles for item drops.

[CrashCat]

Really, if the RNG did take its seeds from the system clock, it could go as far as using seconds, or even whatever smallest unit the clock has. Essentially you would have to figure out what second of what day would yield a random number seed that gives the same output number out of the RNG to get any use out of it, and it would be nuts to try to go down and hit that monster spawn at exactly that second. Of course it's possible a programmer might WANT people to figure it out and then use something coarser like the beat clock, but there's usually no reason to. On the other hand, most games wouldn't give you an indicator like a Section ID outright, if they wanted to use your name as part of the lookup tables they would just do it and not tell you http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

[Ghen]

CrashCat: Do you post at p2p and waterthread?