[Don]

Hello. I've recently been trying to figure out how the randomness in the ring attacks work, so I've been looking into it a bit. Especially in Egg Rocket. The randomness seems to have multiple factors, and I wonder if anyone else knows how it works, before I go further into researching it?

My current experiences with them are as such:

-You can always get a 40 ring box if you get into the first timed part at around 13 or 14 seconds and hit the ring box once the original timer would pass 20 seconds. Meaning with the timing I just described, you'll automatically get a 40 ring box, since hitting the change of scenery will trigger the timer to change at about 20 seconds.

-If you get really fast to the second ring box and wait 3 minutes, it will still give you the same amount of rings: 10 Rings. This also happens if you wait for 3 minutes (or any amount of time) without hitting any red springs. I assume that the first thing that randomizes rings in egg rocket is the scenery and timer change, which would also mean that there is some sort of pattern behind it that i don't quite understand.

Things that don't seem to be changing the randomization of rings is the amount of rings you have and killing enemies. At least, as far as I could tell.

This is not correct, however, if you die during a stage. Since that randomizes boxes again.

TL;DR There's a way to always get 40 rings in the first box of Egg Rocket and I assume that hitting the red springs (and possibly other things) randomizes rings with possibly a pattern. Randomization only happens after triggering it and waiting a certain time.

[hfactor66]

Interesting experiences and a very interesting theory, I might start experimenting in a similar fashion with Sonic Rush, because if there's a way to rig the ring boxes to give you the highest value every time, then perfect will become so much easier to accomplish. (I RA this game & while the random ring boxes do keep it interesting, when there's a ton of them in a level (3+) they're frustrating to work with because there's so many possibilities.)

I'll use the level LS2 as an example here. In theory, the probability of getting a 50 on all 6 random ring boxes in this level (1 in 5 chance for each, since you can get either a 1, 5, 10, 30 or 50) is 1 in 15,625, meaning that there's 15,625 different ways to add up these 6 ring boxes, including any ways to repeat getting the same total a different way. (example; let's say your total on all 6 was 215, you can get this in a number of ways. 50-50-50-30-30-5 is one, 50-50-50-50-10-5 is another, etc...) But, if there is a way to rig these ring boxes to make them give you the value you want consistently, this would greatly improve your odds of getting a perfect run, since you can consistently get the value you want.

I don't RA the Sonic Advance series, but I encourage you to keep working on this theory, as this could lead to figuring out how to rig the ring boxes to give you what you want consistently.

[Don]

In addition to what I've already found out, I have now confirmed on Neo Green Hill 2 that choice of character doesn't influence randomization. I thought that the randomization might be the same, so since you hit a trigger before the ? box on Egg Rocket I thought that was influencing it.

You'll always get 5 Rings from the first random box, no matter what, if you just spindash through it or get it without hitting what are unconfirmed triggers and red springs. From what else I've seen, a lot could trigger new randomization, the prime example being the red spring. But I did 2 entire runs of NGH2 without using red springs and the random at the end changed anyway, so i assume that either hitting checkpoints and/or the poles that let you swing higher change the randomization as well.

Also you have to give the randomization time, or else it will not happen. For example if you hit the red spring before the ? in Egg Rocket and instantly go to the random box within what seems to be like 10 seconds, the randomization will not have triggered yet. It is unconfirmed if you have to wait exactly 10 seconds (since it's hard to judge with the Egg Rocket timer shenanigans and what not) or within 10 second periods (I might be using a wrong word combination here so i will give an example - I do not know whether its 10 seconds from hitting the trigger or if it's changing at 0:10, 0:20 etc., assuming you hit the trigger before then)

It might also be 5 seconds, but 10 seconds seems to be more likely.

EDIT: The assumption above is probably wrong, as the randoms seem to change as soon as you hit a trigger and the Random Box is out of sight. However there seems to be a regularness to it that is hard to describe with words. If I get to it i might record it on emulator, because I don't have a way to record from my fat DS. Results are the same on both, so I expect it has to do with the games coding, not its version.

EDIT2: It seems that red springs only change the ring box if you go far enough, just hitting it turning around and hitting the ring box seems to only affect it sometimes. I really wish I could figure out how this entire thing works.

EDIT3: It appears that time is playing a roll in what random you get, but only if you hit some sort of trigger first. If you stand next to a random for 4 minutes and then get it, it will be the same result as if you got it directly. However if you do the same path that you know has triggers at 2 different points in time, you will get different results. Now the problem here is that I don't know what falls under patterns and what does not, because it seems that if you do 100% the exact same things in a couple runs, you will get the same result in terms of random boxes. That, however, is extremely hard for me to replicate.

[Don]

I just made an additional discovery. The random values are not assigned to the boxes themselves, but it is one value shared by all boxes.

I will attempt to stream this weekend to get the footage of all the similarities I've found, maybe there'll be a way to put all of this together and create some sort databank for people to look at; In case someone else feels interested in trying to find how the patterns in Sonic Advance work. All I can say, without a doubt now, is that it is not really random. It's nowhere close near as random as the ring boxes in SADX.