Overflow-FFVII

[Terminal Est]

I shamelessly plundered this from Gamefaqs.

4. What is Overflow?

Terence, a well respected veteran and game hacker, provided us with the following info after a movie was placed on Youtube showing Emerald Weapon was killed by Vincent in one blow:
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First off, once you hit 65535 kills, it doesn't increase anymore. There's no overflow *there*.

You don't need to do 22 million damage to cause an overflow. There are two main dangers where overflow can occur. The first is right at the start where your Base Damage is applied to both the Power of the attack and the enemy's Defense. If this damage goes above 262,144 damage, an overflow will occur. ('Check 1')

The second danger occurs right when Random Variance is worked out which is after all the things like Berserk, Frog, Critical Hits and the like have been added. If the damage before Random Variance goes above a random value from 524288 to 559094, the damage will overflow. ('Check 2')

If the damage overflows (and assuming that it doesn't overflow by enough to go back into positive numbers again - that *can* happen with low enough Defense and high enough Power/Hero Drinks), the damage will be negative.

Negative damage is not the same as positive healing. Negative damage makes FF7 think: "Oh, you did so much damage that his HP overflowed and he now has more HP than before the attack. I'd better fix that." Instant death.
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Overflow can not be done to Ruby Weapon, because it's defense is too high.

Overflow can be done on Emerald WEAPON, and it can be done with both the Death Penalty and the Missing Score.
Just feed the character 4 Hero Drinks, and have the use Deathblow or a Critical Strike while their weapons are buffed up.
Kill like 15k enemies with the Death Penalty, or put like 2 million AP in the Missing Score, this will do the trick.
Alternatively you can also Berserk them.

[Miss Lockheart]

I knew this could be done with Death Penalty, but I've never heard of it being used with Missing Score!! It makes sense with Death Penalty if you kill enough enemies to strengthen the weapon, but Missing Score, that's new to me

But then I didn't figure on the use of Hero drinks- I only heard that if you killed enough enemies with Vincent, Death Penalty would be powerful enough to make a glitch kick in, causing overflow.

Wow so how would you get 2 million AP on Missing Score?

[MidgarFanatic]

Quotes from another thread:

Originally Posted by Terminal Est

Sort of like the player who discovered how to destroy the Emerald Weapon with Vincent alone, in one hit.

Originally Posted by Miss Lockheart

The Death Penalty glitch (SPOILERS ARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!!)-You know how Death Penalty gets stronger with the amount of enemies you kill? Well apparently if you get Vincent to monopolize enough on the killing eventually he will come to a point where he is doing 9999 damage with that gun. Regardless of his strength. Go beyond that with the number of kills (god knows how many, I can imagine thousands), and instead of doing 9999 damage he does an amount that comes up as a scrambled set of figures, finishing everything off in one hit. Including big beasties like Emerald Weapon

LOL, oh man I have to see this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cXfeCC6_ac

That is interesting I must say. I guess that really isn't cheating, the player obviously had taken the time to achieve this ability, he earned it.

As for the language in the original faq posted here… it’s all very technical isn’t it? Sometimes I’m better off not knowing how it works… preferring to just be content and amused that is does. But it does tug at my curiosity.

Originally Posted by Terminal Est

Negative damage is not the same as positive healing. Negative damage makes FF7 think: "Oh, you did so much damage that his HP overflowed and he now has more HP than before the attack. I'd better fix that." Instant death.

So it's a little difficult for me to wrap my head around this one... so negative damage is what exactly? The damage is so high that the computer is confused into thinking that the remaining HP of the monster is less than zero... resulting in instant death? Is this right? I don't know... but in any case, it's pretty weird. An interesting footnote in the FFVII fanatic's universe indeed.

[Terminal Est]

Oooh, I cannot really answer your question, as I have never done this...I have discovered it yesterday. XD

Ten years later, and people still find things with this game...I completely love it.

I am guessing that negative damage, as I seem to understand it, is as if the enemy's defense had not registered the damage done or caused by this gltich, (Because the damage is much too high and completely breaks through the defense, but being a glitch, defense forgets that it is overwhelmed and ''does not react''.) and since instant death ignores physical defense, it is calculated as such. but as a glitch, NOTHING is calculated aside from the outcome of said damage, and the game automatically perceives it as instant death.

But I cannot be so sure, as I have never done this before. Seems kind of cheap to try though. XD

I do not consider it cheating though. If the game programmers have neglected a bug, then it is their problem-it is not like we are using Game Sharks. Kind of like the weapon duplication trick we spoke of before for FFIV-I do not consider this cheating as it is in game-but, this does not change the fact that it is cheap as hell. XD

[JET73L]

Ah, so it;s a (non-easter egg) glitch, not a strategy. Oh well.

[Terminal Est]

What, did you think that this would have been humanly possible?

[JET73L]

Eh, some characters have secret oves that can be activated through a special in-game event after getting certain other abilities, I was hoping it would be something more like that, or a weakness the WEAPON had, rather than a calculation glitch.