Messages

181

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Evasion Fix: AKA How an amateur fixed Square's mess.

« on: September 11, 2013, 12:35:16 AM »

Here's a few examples... I'm just scrolling through the list quickly through zyrthofar's editor:

1) Waterbug - It is weak vs lightning, but fixing "magic evasion" will require you to have Cecil inflict damage on it prior for Thunder to be used... or it would very likely survive the attack.

2) Alligator - It is weak vs ice, and you get a nice free Ice Rod in the dungeon you find the monster in... but the item magic would simply fail to work due to its low spell multiplier (it's 2, where the Alligator has a magic evasion multiplier of 3).

3) Ogre - Stealing MP from an Ogre is a pain in the ass. It has a magic evasion multiplier of 3... and Tellah's "optimal" Wisdom/Intelligence stat is usually @ 24 (spell multiplier of 9) and that would actually slow down his MP absorption...

I'm sure I could find more examples... but the point is that the game's stats aren't perfectly balanced for the "buggy" code.

 

4) Tinytoad - Edge's Flood would be ineffective, due to his low INT stat. The monster has naturally "high magic evasion", which limits Rydia to do magic damage.

5) Plague - The match would be a lot more interesting when it does have quite a bit of magic evasion to play with...

6) Most monsters that you could fight in the "Peninsula of Power" north of Mt. Ordeals would murder you... Palom would not have enough INT to damage them through their magic evasion... everything would rely on DK Cecil's Deathbringer.

7) Mechanical Dragon - That monster suddenly becomes an even bigger pain in the ass.

8) Fiend - Casting Mute on them is a pain in the ass... the MageMasher is the solution, but that might take a while...

9) Most moon creatures would be tougher to kill with Leviathan, given their high natural innate magic evasion and Rydia's INT isn't probably where it should be.... (especially with suboptimal equipment).

10) Octomammoth would make Tellah obsolete. Rydia would struggle to produce damage vs it with Chocobo.

11) Cagnazzo finished off with Tellah's Thundaga early in the match? Think again!

12) Rubicante wouldn't really be harmed by Rydia... unless it's just Chocobo while his cape is open... Edge's Ninjutsu is a wasted effort.

13) Odin's match would be that much harder...

14) Leviathan would survive a few Thundaras for sure.

15) EvilWall would be a nastier beast...

There we go.

182

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Evasion Fix: AKA How an amateur fixed Square's mess.

« on: September 11, 2013, 12:23:02 AM »

I'll just point out a few things...

The Wonderswan (WS) port subsequently ports many of the same behaviors for monsters... despite them keeping the stats for them. Don't ask me the logic to any of that.

With that said... I've already stated my case for physical evasion in the other thread... but magic evasion is a lot more complicated.

Trying to apply magic evasion to monsters is very... suboptimal. Monsters like the Behemoth would effectively be immune to all forms of magic if you used those stats (well, there are other ways to make that happen in the first place).

It would make the game a bit more hardtype-ish though.

You wouldn't be able to use Tornado on the Dark Dragon.... (not that he isn't easy to take down).

183

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Grimoire LD's Notes, Methods, and Hacks (Basic Attack/Defense Disassembly)

« on: September 10, 2013, 08:24:05 PM »

Now a note about weapon status inflictions... Status infliction works in a strange and frankly, incomplete manner. If it is intended to be the way it is it is heavily sided with the player over monsters. This is how it works...

$03/C842   AD 9C 26   LDA $269C  [$7E:269C]   A:0000   X:0680   Y:001A   P:envMxdiZC - Load Target's Physical Attack Percentage.
$03/C845   ED 29 27   SBC $2729  [$7E:2729]   A:004D   X:0680   Y:001A   P:envMxdizC - Subtract A by Target's Physical Evasion.

Then it is run through an RNG where it will spit out a number and if it falls in the success zone it will inflict the status (after a Lot of other checks...)

Now I checked the monster stats, they supposedly should have an Evade byte, location 29 Bytes into their stats, but they don't. The game never loads any monster's given Evasion, thereby this check is only really done when the player would be hit by an attack status. Here is where the problem lies... A weapon with 99% Accuracy will Always inflict its status if, the enemy is susceptible to it. This may go a way to explain why most of the Status Weapons have questionable accuracy. It seems like such a waste and in many ways it could unbalance the game. So here is my suggested fix....

It's just hit rate/accuracy vs evasion for applied status effects? That would explain a few things. My initial thought had to do with Agility or level, but considering that the Whip has a low accuracy factor and low accuracy status weapons are around (Fairy Claw, Ancient Sword, Slumber Sword), that would "screw with the numbers".

Of course, it still comes back to how evasion is everything...

With respect to monster stats, the game is probably NOT reading the evade byte... intentionally or unintentionally. It is consistent in their evasion being 0... but I don't think that is actually intentional.

For instance, Barbariccia and Cagnazzo have evasion modifiers applied with their stat changing code, so it's THERE.

It would also "imply" that you're supposed to "never hurt" any Flan type monster physically and damage variation would kinda exist (it wouldn't make the game that much harder, but the monsters would take less damage across the board).

The only monster that happens to be a special case is Zemus's Mind. It is the only non-Flan monster with 254 defense that would have benefited from the evasion stat.

184

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Power Command

« on: September 10, 2013, 01:51:39 PM »

It's a very easy change to make, really. FuSoYa may rush ahead of the group citing "There's no time! I cannot tarry!" or something to that accord and rush ahead of the party. Fight through the Giant as normal with Cid instead of FuSoYa but when you reach the Elemental Fiends have Cid get wounded by one of them and forced to take his leave from the party, then have FuSoYa join with the party for the CPU Battle then proceed as normally. It wouldn't be too difficult to make work correctly.

The match is already wicked easy with FuSoYa... doubling up on what Rydia does. The elemental battle already matches up with how Edge's Ninjutsu is aligned in spell damage strength. Cid's "best weapon" would actually be the Ogrekiller, as the Gaea's Hammer is Fire elemental and you get the added bonus of a shield during the match (Mythril Hammer is a meh weapon really).

In other news I have found all of the means I need to nerf Jump, making it take back row into effect (which shouldn't be too big of a deal considering that Jump and Focus both get bonus to accuracy it appears) and taking away all of the ill effects of using Charge. (Move it to... Berserk I guess? That's a status in need of some nerfing).

Is the accuracy bonus simply doubling of the level bonus? I had actually caught onto this while using the Blood Lance in testing... where the damage was far higher than anticipated. It initially made no sense to me as to why the Blood Sword was worse than the Blood Lance in testing... but it took a while to figure that out.

185

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Power Command

« on: September 10, 2013, 12:48:43 PM »

I just wanted to add that Cid is a bigger damage sponge than Yang, due to his poor defense multiplier and lack of evasion due to not equipping a shield.

I added the Power command to Kain through the Game Genie codes (he does have the command slots to test with) and eventually "dumbed down" his armor to crap levels. It seemed to show the proper result.

As for the "earlier discussion" about Cid and the whole Giant and FuSoYa thing... the FuSoYa thing reminds me a lot of the time you meet Tellah for the first time. You only briefly meet him, to use him in a more difficult circumstance later (Tower of Zot) where he shines... so the FuSoYa character most resembles that (plus he's still affected by the XP growth until the scripted Zemus battle screens).

Cid replacing FuSoYa would allow Edge to stay in the backrow with a Fullmoon and Thunder Claw to own everything in bliss. Even giving Cid like the entire Silver/Mythril weapon and armor set would be more than enough (Genji/Diamond would be better though - harvested from Kain's betrayal). The armor wouldn't dramatically make Cid that different really...

186

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Power Command

« on: September 10, 2013, 12:07:58 PM »

I have to wonder how similar the coding is in FFIVA. A straight port is not going to be perfect after all. It seems they somehow misplaced the Front/Back row calculations along with a host of other things. I also would not be surprised if they took out Charge reducing Defense because it is a really stupid idea. Yang is a frontline fighter with less than optimal defense to begin with. Kain on the other hand is a frontline or backline fighter with defense second to only Cecil (maybe third to Cid) that can use Jump which is infinitely better than Focus/BuildUp and not have to deal with being hit at all.

Though I have to wonder then why they would reinclude it in FFIV:TAY. Was the defense reduction in Complete Collection? I never really took notice of it before now.

Actually, I think I have an idea why to a degree. Using characters to attack Yang under the status doesn't seem to work... although I usually build my characters to maximize high multipliers with high evasion+magic evasion.

It's hard to notice this for Yang in FF4A, when you use a Hero Shield, Ribbon, and his other ultimate armors to boost it.

In some limited testing with Game Genie codes that "hack in" the command to FF2 v1.0 SNES, your defense reduction and magic evasion multiplier reduction seems to be in order.

Just remember that Yang in most of the original has really poor armor in addition to a weak defense multiplier. So the damage intake increase is there, but not really "out of the ordinary" for Yang.

187

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Power Command

« on: September 10, 2013, 11:35:20 AM »

I've seen proof in the game that Magic Defense Multiplier does not drop to 0 (With Yang I can understand how one might think it dropped to 0), however it does get cut in half with, surprisingly of all things, Physical Defense. I thought there had to be some kind of mistake, but I just tested it and indeed, it does cut physical defense in half.

$03/C740   AD 05 27   LDA $2705  [$7E:2705]   A:0000   X:0000   Y:0000   P:envMxdiZC - Load Status Byte 3 from Target's Data.
$03/C743   29 08   AND #$08   A:0010   X:0000   Y:0000   P:envMxdizc - Is the Target Charging?
$03/C745   F0 06   BEQ $06    [$C74D]   A:0000   X:0000   Y:0000   P:envMxdiZc - If not branch to 03C74D
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$03/C747   4E 05 39   LSR $3905  [$7E:3905]   A:0008   X:0000   Y:0000   P:envMxdizC - Divide Physical Defense by 2 (This is surprising if true...)
$03/C74A   6E 04 39   ROR $3904  [$7E:3904]   A:0008   X:0000   Y:0000   P:envMxdiZc - Divide 3904 by 2. (Possibly Magic Defense)

Come on Square! Why did you hate Yang so much to give him a skill like that? Well its easy enough to fix in any case. Just change the conditional in the AND to something else.

The Physical Defense thing is actually real, since it seems to be far more noticeable in TAY. I don't use his Charging command at all in regular FF4 since his Agility tends to be awful early on, so the time to attack is bad. I used it a lot during Yang's Tale and make Yang be the tank over Ursula (she's a better character overall, plus free healing, despite being HP+Spirit based).

Yang's Magic Defense on its own doesn't really grow to 2, w/o actual help (stat grinding), and can go to 3 with a pair of CatClaws with optimized stats (FF4's Hero Shield can puts it over the top to 4 or 5).

I think though that there are some calculation oddities with the "Defense reduction". It's not really quite working in FF4A.

188

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Grimoire LD's Notes, Methods, and Hacks (Basic Attack/Defense Disassembly)

« on: September 09, 2013, 07:13:33 PM »

I don't know at the moment.

When I use the term "Defend", it's more related to the status (the command itself invokes the status).

189

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Grimoire LD's Notes, Methods, and Hacks (Basic Attack/Defense Disassembly)

« on: September 09, 2013, 05:17:28 PM »

Defend increases both evasion and defense?

I'm not entirely sure of that (I point to Tellah and FuSoYa for being wrecked so often).

Also, "resetting E4 and E3" reference is probably the simple act of "clearing" the accumulator (aka reset everything to 0).

 
I'm pretty sure being in the back row is more likely to increase evasion and/or defense.

190

General Discussion / Re: NFL season 2013-2014 week 1

« on: September 08, 2013, 10:49:58 PM »

My Cowboys are really showing improvement on offensive and defensive line play and defense.

O-line and D-line play was better... defense... that was suspect.

The pick six was a "gift" (RB clearly wasn't ready to get the ball for whatever strange reason) and only one of the two Giants offensive fumbles wasn't hard to get (the effort was there though). Then there was special teams fail...

At first glance, I though this game would just be boring. It started with 3 turnovers vs 1 turnover in the Cowboys favor, and only 3 points scored.

It got interesting though, but I wouldn't get so high on much else.

191

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Can the "life" effect be achieved on arbitrary spells?

« on: September 06, 2013, 12:25:35 PM »

Life can actually "miss".

Try "forcing" the Rubicante battle with the ultimate party and kill off a character. See what happens when you use a Fire elemental spell on him.

It is noted as it is being used as an "offensive magic attack" so magic evasion is applied. It is actually possible to miss with that spell in any case and it is most apparently related to having poor accuracy while being Blind. Try it, you will be surprised.

192

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Cry/Fake Tears Command

« on: September 05, 2013, 11:06:23 PM »

The original idea may be based on the original "Fear" spell in FF1.

Subtracting a fear value by 5 does very little unless it's dividing by 5...

I'm not even sure if this works on boss monsters like the Behemoth (yes, watch the Behemoth feel sad for Porom... not). It probably doesn't.

193

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Shadow Party Stats

« on: September 05, 2013, 11:01:58 PM »

That formula doesn't look logical at all. I'll look into doing the numbers myself, but it makes zero sense to make it that odd.

It would just make sense that the value is simply equal to Yang's STR or some variation on it. The numbers get more complicated when you factor in the Attack Multiplier.

194

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Shadow Party Stats

« on: September 05, 2013, 10:22:40 PM »

Mind you, my research on those #s from critical hits were generally done on the GBA port since he's easier to test against.

I'd suggest adjusting manipulating his attack power though the STR stat and see if that makes a difference.

195

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Shadow Party Stats

« on: September 05, 2013, 09:02:18 PM »

A good point. Bows have Awful accuracy virtually throughout FFIV. If you're not Rosa, you're likely not using a Bow. While the Wooden Hammer has a default 75% chance to hit, which while not showing as much damage as a Poison Arrow/GreatBow, is more effective because of the loss of accuracy and damage because of the formula of attacking with a Bow/Arrow.

The only time that has been addressed was during TAY where it was literally unified.

I'm kind of an idiot... completely forgetting the already 50% bonus Yang would technically get by his innate critical hit damage stat. That said though it does seem as if his critical hits in particular deal much more than others. At x2 multipliers he deals roughly 50-80 damage with a base attack of 27. With his critical hit ratio set at 50 almost every hit is a critical, going along with what was said about dual wielders counting that value twice, dealing upwards to 200 170-180.  If it's really only half of the power he would be dealing 120 maybe. There just might be something special in regards to Yang and critical hits...

I would suggest just hacking levels and stats, for the point of easy math amplification.

The critical hit attack bonus could simply be like LEVEL/4.

 
I reread my own FAQ and I wrote it was 50% of his attack power. It is possible that the Critical Hit Attack Bonus is literally the value of his LEVEL.