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3286

Gaming Discussion / Secret of Mana - Enemy Type Bonuses... Lies?

« on: January 10, 2008, 03:48:03 PM »

I'm still doing the SOM Hardtype hack (but I'm pretty sure I could verify this with SOM w/o the hack), and I'm finding that the weapons that supposedly have bonuses.. don't seem to exhibit any. The damage is on par with other weapons with the same attack power. It doesn't appear to create increased critical hits, nor does it ignore enemy defenses.

The Dragon Ring does nothing against Dragons.. all the varients, including the "Dragon Worm" in the Pureland.

I've effectively come to the conclusions:
1) It affects hit rate only, which I doubt.
2) There are no bonuses. Remember this game was originally going to be for the fabled SNES CD, and I'm betting that these attributes never were finished properly coded in.

The only weapon/armor bonuses that apply are of the status variety, including increased critical hits.

3287

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Kick Command

« on: January 10, 2008, 12:56:34 PM »

Damage to all targets: Attack Power * Attack Multiplier / 4
Does no damage to monsters of the Flan type
Factors against target defense
Attack is not considered physical (nor magical)
Non-elemental attack, regardless of what is equipped on the arms

3288

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Dark Wave Command

« on: January 09, 2008, 10:49:43 PM »

If someone could verify the numbers, that would be appreciated.

HP Loss: MaxHP/8
Damage: Attack Power*Attack Multiplier/2
Does not factor against defense/magic defense
Non-elemental based attack

Edit: Revised formula, damage has variation, but it becomes less obvious as you have a higher damage and attack multipliers.

3289

SPC - Hard Core / Re: SPC Core info

« on: January 09, 2008, 06:25:54 PM »

IIRC, pSXAuthor has mentioned before that the sound hardware on the PS is a better version of the SPC found on the SNES. In theory, you should be able to do almost the same stuff on the SNES's SPC just as you would on the PS. Sony is responsible for creating the SPC core on the SNES, and the PS one is effectively SPC++ IMO.

3290

Pandora's Box / Re: Videos

« on: January 09, 2008, 05:53:59 PM »

If you blew yourself up, would you still be alive afterwards?

Yes! Just remember to give it a very low probability of survival. 

That's one of the things that always bugged me about blue magic.  A lot of enemy attacks are only useful because enemies are expendable -- another group of them is just 10 steps away, whereas if your party dies once, you lose.  Even if you just lose a member, he gets screwed out of the exp (and if you cast exploder, that's really unfair seeing as how he did all the work  ).

In FF5, they had more specific uses.. although on the other hand I felt they were not very good against regular enemies for a random/fun kind of way. FF6 makes this worse, given when you are able to obtain the Lores. There was one hack (I think the most recently released FF3/6 hack on romhacking.net) that redid the instances where you obtained the Lores, and did a pretty good job IMO. You could learn forcefield earlier, before even going into the WOR.. and a number of other Lores.

I can't find that patch. >.> you sure it's rhdn?

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/294/

Honestly, I never bothered with Strago, Gau, or Relm in FF6.  Relm was glitched, and I didn't want to spend the time on the Veldt with Strago and Gau trying to learn all the crap.

I love Strago, but moreso Relm for the magic power they have.. sure their attacks suck, but I don't mind given that Magic Evade (fixed or unfixed) is still godly IMO. Also, Gau is a fun character if you know what you want to do with him. I'm still not a fan of a near uncontrollable character (it's much better in FF2/4 IMO).

Here's a suggestion, have it cost all HP and MP.  Because in reality it is still rather cheap to just revive him and have him blow up again for unblockable damage.

It'll be considered.

There's the reality, but there's also the praticality that Exploder in general sucks at. I kinda like the idea of Exploder being more of a Dark Wave type of attack.. sacrifice life to inflict damage. That would have more value than it currently does, and it is hard to make it suck if the benefits outweigh the HP loss.

3291

Gaming Discussion / Re: SOM Hard Mode Hack

« on: January 09, 2008, 05:46:54 PM »

yeah, too bad they couldn't have improved the AI of your teammates also.

I often say it's the most often mentioned idea ever and I agree.

On the other hand, it would be hypocritical of me to say it is easy, but really, it is not.

3292

Pandora's Box / Re: Videos

« on: January 09, 2008, 05:25:34 PM »

If you blew yourself up, would you still be alive afterwards?

Yes! Just remember to give it a very low probability of survival. 

That's one of the things that always bugged me about blue magic.  A lot of enemy attacks are only useful because enemies are expendable -- another group of them is just 10 steps away, whereas if your party dies once, you lose.  Even if you just lose a member, he gets screwed out of the exp (and if you cast exploder, that's really unfair seeing as how he did all the work  ).

In FF5, they had more specific uses.. although on the other hand I felt they were not very good against regular enemies for a random/fun kind of way. FF6 makes this worse, given when you are able to obtain the Lores. There was one hack (I think the most recently released FF3/6 hack on romhacking.net) that redid the instances where you obtained the Lores, and did a pretty good job IMO. You could learn forcefield earlier, before even going into the WOR.. and a number of other Lores.

3293

Pandora's Box / Re: Videos

« on: January 09, 2008, 04:30:24 PM »

It's still fucking useless. Suicide attacks almost always are. >.>

I think maybe inflicting Life3 before the attack death would make it a little more viable.. and perhaps disabling it under a near death status.

That would make it better... but really, it just seems like a whole lot of useless effort to make one attack useful.

Well, you have to consider what makes it crappy in the first place. Then you also have to double check for imbalance. There are some positive properties that Exploder has over a number of spells, including...

1) Not dependant on spell power
2) Damage ignores enemy defense/magic defense
3) Cheap casting cost

The clear negatives..

1) Death, no duh
2) Too dependant on HP, to the point where other spells surpass in power unless you level up or use HP boosting equipment
3) Enemies benefit more than your own guys.

3294

Pandora's Box / Re: Videos

« on: January 09, 2008, 03:42:20 PM »

It's still fucking useless. Suicide attacks almost always are. >.>

I think maybe inflicting Life3 before the attack death would make it a little more viable.. and perhaps disabling it under a near death status.

3295

Pandora's Box / Re: Videos

« on: January 09, 2008, 02:53:47 PM »

Or maybe in addition to dying the caster can leave battle (like with sneeze). That way you can't just Explode - Life - Explode - Life - Explode...

You don't want to do that. That's what makes Spiraler and Pep Up (FF5's was better to an extent) next to useless.

What is needed is a hidden status effect type that prevents one from using it... like counting down the number of commands processed by said character to reallow the spell to be cast (or something like how Morph operates), or a timer.

3296

General Discussion / Re: Is there a "Zelda Classic" for FF?

« on: January 09, 2008, 02:23:26 PM »

Well, there's always the classic algo in multipliers or FF1 extra damage (although, that method is borked for the most part until the Advance version AFAIK, and unfortunately doesn't scale IIRC).

I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to here.  I know the Ninja gets screwed late in the game because his hit% caps at 255, so he no longer gets additional hits.

I was explaining what a number of games deal with elementals/resistances.

3297

General Discussion / Re: Is there a "Zelda Classic" for FF?

« on: January 09, 2008, 12:15:28 PM »

Most of the equipment is going to be rebalanced anyway, so I'm not worried that class abilities will unbalance things.  I'd like the middle game (Castle of Ordeals and Ice Cave) to be less "difficult" and more "challenging", the endgame to be less easy and more interesting, and the beginning to have much less grinding, especially at Elfland.  I like a lot of what Square did in the FF1/2 remake for GBA (though they messed up a few things too).

You mean less insane/imbalanced (Sorcerors), but more appropriately challenging. The FF1 remake made the game significantly more easy than the already buggy FF1.

One thing I want to do away with is number limitations.  You can have more than 9999 HP or 999 MP and you can do more than 9999 damage.  The sky's the limit.  Somewhat related to this is how I want to handle weaknesses and resistances, but more on that later.  I've gotta go.

Well, there's always the classic algo in multipliers or FF1 extra damage (although, that method is borked for the most part until the Advance version AFAIK, and unfortunately doesn't scale IIRC).

So with resistance, weakness, absorb, etc., I wanted to use a sliding scale similar to what FF8 did with its junctioning system (don't worry, no GFs and no drawing in my engine).  Basically, equipment effects can be cumulative.  You start with a value of 100 for each element, meaning that you take 100% damage (normal) from that element.  If a piece of armor provides 50% resistance to fire, your fire value is now 50, so you take half damage.  If you wear several pieces of armor that provide resistance, the value keeps decreasing until it goes negative, and then you absorb fire damage.  This opens up the door to all kinds of neat equipment effects, and combining them creatively in your party.  I really liked the mechanics of this system in FF8, but the whole magic draw and junctioning stuff, and the total lack of equipment made it completely uninteresting.

I wish I got to play FF8 on PC (then again, that would require its own miracle). 

Cumulative equipment could work I guess.. it seems Diablo-like, minus the cap.

3298

Gaming Discussion / Re: FF2/4 Asura - Unpowered, Overpowered, or Perfect?

« on: January 08, 2008, 11:05:05 PM »

Oh. Well, if she does Protect, then at least there's some gratification that it stacks with itself. Ok, for summoning, she's really helpful if you need a big heal because of Big Bang. The healing doesn't seem to be often enough, though. Maybe I'm just unlucky?

Well, as I tried to explain in the post (which apparently going through in one eye and out the other  ) her probablity of healing is far better in FF2 than FF4. I find her too underpowered in FF4 to justify the 50MP cost (multitargeted Protect is not good enough IMO, although, IIRC, Protect has a hit rate probability that it relies on - which is important to note early game).

3299

Gaming Discussion / Re: FF2/4 Asura - Unpowered, Overpowered, or Perfect?

« on: January 08, 2008, 10:39:27 PM »

I'm talking about her summon spell for battles.. not her battle (because that's wicked easy w/o Reflect anyways).

3300

Gaming Discussion / Re: SOM Hard Mode Hack

« on: January 08, 2008, 10:36:58 PM »

I got as far as the witch's castle before I started getting constant game overs. After that, I decided to cheapify it by giving myself 999 HP because I was dying in one hit from everything. Seriously, those things hit way too damn hard.

Well, it seems a bit too emu geared, as your AI companions are more often than not obstacles.

It helps a lot to range and evade. Also, telling your AI companies to not engage (aka keep away at bottom of the screen) helps a lot.

Spiky Tiger involved some luck.. you need to actually spend for Neko's Chocolates (or pray the eye monster drops a Chocolate or two) and Cup of Wishes and try to hit from long range with your main character.

One of things that you may notice is that your evade is crap.. but that's because they seem to have removed/disabled the evade bonus for equipping any piece of equipment on your bod.