Invisible Viki

A forum to ask questions if you are stuck in the The Gate Rune Wars; or wish for more clarity on the gameplay systems.
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Pyriel
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Invisible Viki

Post by Pyriel »

I was watching the VOD of Z3R01337's Suikoden speedrun from this year's RPG Limit Break, and he showed off the Invisible Viki glitch during an exhibition. I'd completely forgotten about this bug, and seeing it again prompted me to investigate.

The glitch is easy enough to activate. There's a mysterious spot near the top left of the room at coordinates (11,11) that you can stand next to, and it will behave as if Viki is there to talk to. There are two little stones, one slightly larger than the other, that can be used as a reference. If McDohl's knees are just to the right of them, you should trigger the hotspot on the map.

Image
Image

The mysterious part about this is that it only works if Cleo is in the last position in your party, i.e. rightmost and/or in the back row.

This happens because a reusable buffer is used around 0x8018B400 to hold the positions of various objects you can interact with. Once Viki is recruited, she will stand at (22,8) on the map, and these values will appear in 0x8018B400 and 0x8018B401 respectively. Before she's recruited (and possibly only when the basement is entirely empty) those bytes will contain leftover data from the map transition. With most formations, this will either be zeroes, or else values corresponding to unreachable coordinates. However when Cleo last in the party, it just happens to contain (11,11). A spot on the map we can reach quite easily.

I'm not 100% certain what it is about Cleo that causes this, but I'm reasonably certain it's her portrait data. A torrent of different data goes through that buffer as the transition occurs, and the offending bytes originate from a segment of data being decompressed by a similar algorithm to what they've always used for sprites.
srd_27
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Re: Invisible Viki

Post by srd_27 »

There's also this screenshot of someone talking with invisible Anji. Wonder what's in his party that might've caused this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Suikoden/comme ... en_if_you/
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Pyriel
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Re: Invisible Viki

Post by Pyriel »

That thread also mentions Gremio in McDohl's bedroom, which I think I've heard of before. It makes sense. When I saw what was causing the game to think Viki was present, I wondered how they managed to not have that error all over the place.

I wonder if it's confined to the castle, or if it can happen to other characters who only appear conditionally on certain maps. Bringing the right formation to Neclord's castle, for example, might allow you to recruit Pesmerga without making a return trip.

Edit: It seems to be confined to the HQ. At least, having random coordinates for Pesmerga didn't create any spots I could actually talk to. I wonder what they did differently in those locations.
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DreamyWarrior00
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Re: Invisible Viki

Post by DreamyWarrior00 »

Saw a screenshot when someone spoke to Sylvina and Eikei's portrait came up instead.
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