Topics

46

General Discussion / RIP Ed McMahon

« on: June 25, 2009, 07:48:33 PM »

Leno should have posted this first. 

I don't remember him much except for Star Search and the millionare sweepstakes thing he does (and most recently, the cash for gold scam IMO).

47

General Discussion / I Hate Brett Favre

« on: June 25, 2009, 02:31:49 AM »

If the news story from the station in Minnesota is true, just watch the J E T S season 08-09 repeated, except with potentially more disappointment.

Leno, I'm calling you out. 

This is a lock of the year... this team isn't going to win the Super Bowl with Brett Favre. PERIOD. END OF STORY.

48

Gaming Discussion / FF4 - Final Lunar Subterrane Equip Makes No Sense

« on: June 21, 2009, 01:46:41 PM »

Hopefully it will bring me out of my boredom of the game at the moment, but here's an interesting thought.

I was reading about a Gamefaqs post about how Rydia dies so easily vs Zeromus... and I didn't believe that was entirely true or fair. The prime reason for this is that many people make the mistake of equipping Rydia with the Heroine Robe/Minvera Bustier. This piece of equipment boosts pretty much the essential physical attributes (+15 STR, +15 AGI, +15 VIT/STA) but also cripples the others (-15 WIS/INT, -15 WILL/SPR). In essence, you are trading one issue for another. This armor is actually awesome for Rosa (even better than FF4A's misguided attempt to add the White Dress as her ultimate armor).

So, it got me thinking... with all the unfinished stuff about this game... was it possible that Rydia was supposed to become young again?

As we know, Rydia discusses about how time ages differently in the Land of Summoned Monsters (or Phantom Beasts or whatever you prefer to call them). This is obviously is compounded with the fact that she "never" learns Cure2/Cura when she comes back.

The two ultimate armors (in FF4, not the Advance port)  that are provided for Rydia and Rosa in the Lunar Subterrane are the Heroine/Minerva Robe and White Robe. Given what we know about how things work, I would actually believe that the White Robe was intended for young Rydia and not so much Rosa. Rosa's stat progression will give her enough natural healing power (Cure4/Curaja isn't tremendously powerful IMO) that would totally favor the Heroine Robe. Rydia with her increased magic power with the White Robe would be much better at fighting Zeromus... even though the Sorceror/Light Robe provides greater benefits to her magic defense (+5 WIS/INT, +5 WILL/SPR vs the White Robe's +15 WILL/SPR).

Is it possible that the armors were tweaked poorly or was there some legitimate chance that Young Rydia was meant for Zeromus? Remember that there are very few equipment differences between Young and Older Rydia. Remember, Older Rydia gets to have a number of strength boosting equipment, but Younger Rydia has greater access to White Wizard equipment (Staffs and the White Robe).

49

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Spell Behavior for 49-93

« on: March 29, 2009, 12:10:51 PM »

This info just dawned on me, and after testing, this makes a lot of sense.

If an enemy uses spells 49 through 93, the spell selected is almost always (number-48) that targets all enemies (the characters) by default. If the spell has an overriding profile, such as Flare (the twin spell), the spell's data is used instead, but the graphics inherits that of Cure4. Cure4's spell index is 17, Flare's index is 65, and the different between them is 48.

This phenomenom is most notable in the Dark Elf's battle script, where it exclusively uses this behavior in its battles script.

I accidentally stumbled on it while trying to make the dolls use Edge's Image spell instead of Blink, but caused the monster to cast Sight instead (which is explained by my findings).

50

Game Modification Station / FF4 - Fixing Physical+Magical Command Counters?

« on: March 19, 2009, 12:18:40 AM »

I had some thoughts on this and wondered if anyone thought this was a good idea.

I've mentioned before that there are some issues with counters... where certain physical (Aim, BuildUp) and magical (Remember, Sing) commands are not treated as such in the counters. I believe a way to fix this is to integrate them as part of the counter sequence code. I will have to test this for myself, but this will hopefully fix their oversight in behavior...

51

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF2/4/4ET - Berserk for Near Infinite Arrows

« on: March 05, 2009, 11:04:46 PM »

This borders along the same lines as the near-infinite arrow trick, except you combine this in conjunction with Berserk.

It is noted that arrows themselves are decremented when it is the character's turn. So if the final arrow is used in a battle-ending blow, it is not decremented.

Combine this with Berserk, which prevents you from taking input, you can make any arrow wielding character pretty much work on an awesome budget, until their turn manages to come back up via Dispel, Black Hole, Death, and Stone statuses...

52

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Killing Dark Elf W/o TwinHarp

« on: February 20, 2009, 12:37:10 AM »

I got around to testing this myself, and found that the Dark Elf and all it does is come back to the Crystal Room with him not disappearing.

Talking to him for a second time invokes the same battle again...

I guess that the Dark Elf was right... the Earth Crystal gives him "the everlasting life".

53

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Dark Elf's Script

« on: February 18, 2009, 07:14:38 PM »

I keep thinking it's some sort of error, but it's probably some sort of redirection going on with the spells (kinda like how Comet works, except that's pretty broken).

Anyone have any ideas on what's happening there?

54

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Non-Monster Offensive Magic Targeting

« on: February 18, 2009, 06:47:48 PM »

It's strange, but I don't understand why non-monster magic that targets an enemy by default always single targets them. Spells like Quake and Meteor have to be manually targeted to hit all targets for some freaking reason.

55

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Auto Battle Script Location?

« on: February 18, 2009, 06:43:11 PM »

See title.

I was wondering how Cecil was ever able to execute his FireBomb and Lit-Bolt scripts.. while it doesn't seem doable by an enemy for some reason...

56

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Chained Attacks

« on: February 09, 2009, 07:12:01 PM »

This thread is to designed to help those that are reworking the battle scripts for monsters... there is some relatively important information that you need to know.

For those that are not aware, chained attacks are attacks that monsters execute uninterrupted, to do more than one attack/command during a monster's turn.

1) Chained Attacks cannot be used for counters. The game freezes up and/or causes strange behavior in any attempt to do that.

2) Some attacks do not combine well. For instance, casting Slow and Virus (I forget which order) may produce 0 damage from the Virus attack.
As a tangent, order does matter. Combining a physical attack with a spell will work if the physical attack is the first in the sequence...

3) Targeting of an attack is "remembered" for the next spell/attack in the sequence. For instance, if you've targeted all characters for a magic attack (Big Bang), if the next spell in the chain is Remedy (1/10 HP healing), you have to retarget that spell to the monster in the sequence or you will end up healing the characters instead.
Additionally, it is a bad idea to lead off with a spell that is multitargeted (such as Big Bang) and end with an attack... because it is not normally possible to make a regular physical attack to all characters (special cases like Kick are like the exception, not the rule). Failure to do this will cause the game to freeze.

57

Game Modification Station / Sing Improvement Hack

« on: February 09, 2009, 02:21:14 PM »

I'll get around to writing the readme for this.

Obviously, Sing sucks, so to make it more useful, I gave Sing the complete set of uncontrollability statuses.. which means replacing Mute with Stop, and the no-spell with Hold.

Remember that these "songs" rely on their original spell information, so this means that they are powered by Wisdom and Will Power to determine success.

Changing Frog Song/Toad is pointless, given that the spell is linked to the status, and that would prevent any other spell than Toad from working anyways.

Ignore the messages for Stop and Hold, since they are just cosmetic.

Stop:


Hold:

58

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Physical Status Attacks - Applied in Reverse

« on: February 06, 2009, 08:06:11 PM »

I started noticing this in my hack...

The determination that a physical status attack is applied onto a character/monster is if the existing status is applied already...
If the "weakest" status in a multi-status physical attack is not active, it is applied along with the other statuses, even when they already active.

For instance, a monster that can inflict Poison+Curse attacks a target that already has Poison status.. Curse status can be reapplied to said target.
If the same monster attacks a target that has Curse status, Poison status can't be reapplied.

To properly put this in perspective, I wrote in a different post that I was able to apply Darkness status (via a weapon) and then apply Charm status (with the Charm Harp) afterwards, despite Charm status having a lower priority than Darkness. So, it's actually very easy to reapply weaker statuses such as Charm, Sleep, or Paralyze with physical attacks to monsters that already have Piggy, Toad, or Mini status already applied to them...

59

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Revived and Still Cursed

« on: February 05, 2009, 06:57:42 PM »

It never made any sense to make how Curse status had an item that you could use after battle, especially when Curse does not persist after battle.

During my hack testing, reviving a character that had Curse status in the same battle apparently revived them with the Curse intact... which begs the question...

Was Curse intended to be a persistant status?

I believe the answer to this question is yes.

 
Clarified my statements better.

60

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF2/FF4ET - Show Command Makes Missing Command "Show" Up

« on: February 05, 2009, 11:59:36 AM »

I had originally thought it was a bug introduced by JCE's hack (my bad), but it's actually a clear oversight by the guys who made the changes.

After Hide and Show are used, a bank command slot seems to be "selectable" and it causes the character (in this case, Edward) to be "stuck" if that blank command is selected.

This is an issue with the battle menu code when coming out of hiding, where it isn't updated to allow for only 4 commands (or whatever commands that are listed) to be selectable.

FF2US:


FF4ET:


This affects both versions of FF2US and FF4ET.