Passing Out in the Glacier

[Ite]

How does this work? I've played the game 35 times and every time my experience in the Great Glacier has been completely different. Once I had free reign to visit every map and then some. Sometimes I pass out before I can even get Alexander.

So what's the deal? Is there a timer? Does it matter how many steps you take? Which paths you take? Is it just random?

I know touching the hot springs gives you more time, but how does that work?

Thissus been bugging me for a while.

 

[Lym]

I can't remember where I read it, but I think Cloud passes out once you've taken a certain amount of steps.

I'll give a link when/if I find that.

 

[Lym]

Sorry for double-posting. I read that at gamefaqs (Absolute Steve's walkthrough). But apparently it's after 544 steps and you can reset the counter in a few ways.

 

[Splintered]

I don't think I've ever gotten Alexander without passing out first.

 

[Frostwave]

I had to use a guide to get Alexander. Maybe I could have pulled it off eventually without the help, but I got impatient. ._.

Snow lady makes me laugh.

 

[ForceStealer]

I always thought you had a half hour and the springs reset it. So that number of steps thing is news to me. I can normally get Alexander (though I didn't on my most recent playthrough), but to this day I have still never found the Added Cut materia.

 

[Joker]

I have no idea how I end up at the Hot Springs - I just sort of wander around until I get there.

Strangely, I've never passed out in any of my ~5 playthroughs that got to that point. Weird.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Absolute Steve has a great walk-though on gamefaqs where he actually maps out the entire layout of the Great Glacier. He also confirms that it is the number of steps you take that determines when you will pass out. Just in general, he has most of the calculations for things like the dating game as well.

 

[Ite]

- Glitch: You cannot pass out in the 'Base of Gaea's Cliff' field just outside
Mr. Holzoff's house. This allows you to increase the counter past 32767, causing
it to overflow. When this happens, the counter goes into a negative figure and
the game no longer recognizes the counter as being higher than 544. This results
in an immunity to passing out in the Great Glacier.

- It takes very long to make the counter overflow and there's no real way to
tell whether you've overflowed it already other than by extensive field testing.
However, if you're set on completing this tedious task, remember you can always
save your game at Mr. Holzoff's house. You can't set foot in the Great Glacier
until you think you've reached overflow.

- For the NTSC version of the game you'll have to run around for approximately
145.5 minutes (not seconds!), while you'll need to run around for about 174.6
minutes in the PAL version. It doesn't hurt to add 10 minutes to these amounts
so that you know for certain you've overflowed the timer.

HOLY COW!!

 

[Shademp]

Overflow in FFVII is fun. If you fight more than 32767 battles, Chocobo Sage will never give you any chocobo breeding hints even if he hasn't mentioned them all to you.
This is because he starts remembering new stuff depending on how many battles you've been through after his last hint, and when the value goes above 32767 overflow occurs and from then on he believes that you've battled a negative number of times.

The battle counter goes back to zero when you fight your 65536th battle though, so after that Chocobo Sage will finally acknowledge your number of fights and then start giving you new hints.

Not that anyone ever goes through this many fights but it's still a fun fact.

 

[Ite]

That's interesting. I wonder why in both cases it's 32767. That seems like an arbitrary maximum number. You'd think it would be 99999 or something.

 

[Shademp]

That's interesting. I wonder why in both cases it's 32767. That seems like an arbitrary maximum number. You'd think it would be 99999 or something.

It has to do with programming stuff which I can't properly explain.


Something about bits, and 2^15 = 32768... Bleh.

*not a fan of even the most basic programming knowledge*

The same mechanic applies with the sleeping man near the Mythril Mines btw. He won't give you any new items if the battle counter is above 32767. New-born Chocobos will also refuse to ever become ready for mating when the battle counter is this high.

 

[Tetsujin]

That's interesting. I wonder why in both cases it's 32767. That seems like an arbitrary maximum number. You'd think it would be 99999 or something.

Pretty sure that has to do with memory and bits and stuff. Like how the limit in old games for stuff was often 255.

 

[Dana Scully]

What Shademp says is basically correct - computers (including consoles and the like) work with a binary system (a base of 2 - 1s and 0s, aka 'on' and 'off'), not a decimal system (base of 10, which people are used to IRL).

32767 (2^15-1) is the maximum possible value of a signed 'short' variable. A short is simply incapable of going any higher than 32767, hence the overflow glitch.

I'm actually kind of impressed the game doesn't just crash.

In the case of 255, like Tetsu mentioned, that's based off 2^8 (256). That's why old games were called 8bit/16bit games respectively.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

FFVII lacked caps on a lot of things. Both Barret's (via the Missing Score, 8 mastered Knights of the Round, and 2 Hero Drinks) and Vincent's attack power (via killing a lot of things with the Death Penalty) can become so high that damage overflows past the normal 9999 limit, and even kill Emerald WEAPON in one hit.

In Vincent's case, you can actually make damage overflow onto him and kill him too.

I've also heard that there's technically a limit on how much gil you can have, and that if you make a certain amount, it will return to 0. Never seen anyone actually demonstrate it, though.

 

[Dana Scully]

Well, considering you can definitely have several million gil, that means they would have had to use an integer - which limits at either 2,147,483,647 (2^31-1) or 4,294,967,295 (2^32-1), depending if it's a signed variable or not.

Which is a lot of gil to get before it starts to overflow.

In Vincent's case, you can actually make damage overflow onto him and kill him too.

That's fantastic.

 

[Shademp]

GarlandTheGreat got a few videos uploaded on these matters.
EXP, Gil & Battle Counters overflow.

Through battles, EXP can't go beyond 999,999,999. You'd have to cheat yourself to a higher value for it keep on accumulating to 4,294,967,295 and then reset to zero at 4,294,967,295 + 1.
So those aiming for a "perfect save file" can rest knowing that the normal cap lies at 1 billion minus 1.

Gil will go back to zero at 4,294,967,295 + 1, but only when you gain gil via battles. Gaining gil via shops won't reset the counter.


And perhaps one of my favorite FFVII related videos on youtube... How long until the timer resets?

Spoiler

After playing for 136 years, 36 days, 6 hours, 28 minutes and 16 seconds.

EDIT: Here is another example of overflow, uploaded by yours truly.