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16

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / React vs Elemental

« on: October 26, 2012, 04:11:39 PM »

Note: This is not about counter attacks... rather it is about a special type of script that is run when an elemental spell is used.

These scripts are rarely used in the game and are rarely noticed.

AFAIK, these are the only monsters that use them:
Spirit series of monsters (Spirit, Soul, Ghost) - react vs Ice
Mech Soldier and Beamer (found only on the Giant or Giant-based levels) - react vs Lightning

I'm not aware of any other monsters at the moment, so feel free to add if I missed any.

One of the cool things about "freezing" the Spirit is that the code says that they "do nothing". Think about the logic of being able to freeze a spirit. It's simply immobile.
So, it was a fun idea of mine to use the IceRod's innate spell on the monsters on Mt. Hobs. It worked nice. They simply stopped attacking altogether.
However, this "feature" or scripted portion was removed in FF4WS (and subsequently FF4A, which probably applies to the PSP version too).

In the Giant, you were supposed to be able to "shock the machines" and make them go haywire (FF4:TAY has an example of that).
However, it was limited to two monsters... but they were a fairly common bunch.
The script is pretty simple... just randomly attack monsters (including themselves) with their designated attack (Beamers with their Beam attack, Machines with Fight).
It works... but they eventually revert back to attacking you. I'm not entirely sure if there's some sort of randomized test to see if they stop running that script,
but I'm leaning towards a limited number that is generated (between 1 and 5?) that they will continue to run the elemental script before running their normal script behavior.

This operates very differently from Charm/Confuse status, where the game checks for the current status before running the script. The monster is compelled to run the attack script even it is attacking itself... multiple times.

The major difference between FF4 SNES and FF4A (probably includes FF4WS and FF4PSP) is that the elemental reaction script is applied correctly to all monsters in FF4A...
In FF4 SNES, it is only applied to one monster that the script applies to. For instance, a 3 Mech Soldier + 2 Beamer group will usually just have the back-most Soldier being affected by the script.
Of course, this is par for the course when it comes to many FF4 scripting bugs.

17

Gaming Discussion / FF4A/PSP - Edward's Trial, Rigged Intentionally or Stupidly?

« on: October 12, 2012, 12:24:48 AM »

I've complained lots about FF4A, particularly regarding how the trials suck... mostly regarding the story (because, they aren't really that great, outside of say Kain).

However, I remember one trial that is shockingly the worst above all else (feel free to disagree).

Edward's Trial is built poorly on a faulty premise... Edward may suck, but the game gives you all the tools to make his life a living hell.

1) Requirem Harp - Why put in a weapon only to be removed? It could arguably be a great weapon (better than the Blood Lance and Blood Sword).. assuming they got it working correctly the first time around. However, the mistake in doing this in the first place causes Edward to lose the weapon before the boss battle... IIRC. I guess it could be worse.... the designated special weapon for Edward, Apollo's Harp, is a very capable weapon vs Lunar Shiva... so this mistake can cost you when you are using Edward to fight...

2) Low HP - Edward has approximately the same HP growth as Rydia... and that's only slightly above the twins (Porom being the worst of the final party members, Tellah and FuSoYa trailing horribly). Considering that the boss, Lunar Shiva uses an attack that is primarily HP based (based on her current HP), this makes survival tough... except for the fact...

3) Red Armor set (FF6-ish armor) - It's great when armor provides elemental resistance. It's hard to argue against it. However, FF4 has been designed around elemental weakness in armor... and causes "fire resistance" to also create "ice weakness". Factor in that the boss is Lunar Shiva... well, you give the keys to killing Edward in one easy blow. Vishnu Vest is Edward's ultimate armor, however IIRC this is only acquired AFTER Edward's Trial location. This would normally addressed the Red Armor set's woes.. but most newbies won't figure that out. Maybe donating a Protect Ring would be helpful... probably. The other options are a freed up Black Belt and/or the DarkHood...

Now if only the Chant command weren't useless against Zeromus...

18

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF2/FF4ET: Forgotten Rubicante

« on: October 11, 2012, 02:03:41 PM »

I've learned this today, having watched a bit of FF4's PSP version...

Apparently, there is code there to react to summons for Rubicante. When hit by a summon, Rubicante proceeds to cast Ice2/Blizzara on himself. This doesn't seem to change whether or not the "cloak" status is active.

This code doesn't appear in FF2US or FF4ET. I don't quite understand why... (it's very similar to Scrmaglione's missing Slow counter vs Fire magic).

19

General Discussion / /Facepalm @ FF Wiki (especially regarding FF4)

« on: October 11, 2012, 12:44:45 AM »

Title speaks the truth.

I swear whoever edits the content there does not do any sort of fact checking or data diving. I was used to the days where FF4 guides were generally inaccurate when it came to equipment and stuff around that. At least then we didn't know better...

Now, while faced with like the 5th(?) FF4 reincarnation, we can't even get the fundamentals done right? It's not as dramatic as the DS version, but the PS/Wii port of the game should be more or less on par with what I've already written!!!

Back to your normally scheduled programming... 

20

Gaming Discussion / FF4 (all SNES+GBA) - How To Beat The CPU v3

« on: September 13, 2012, 07:23:40 PM »

I was thinking about this during some small discussions about the Giant of Babil, and this occurred to me.

One of the biggest interesting "lie" in FF4 is the fact that the Tricker monster (the floating yellow Imp/Goblin) you find in the Lunar Subterrane. It has nothing to do with the fact that it can kick your ass if you cast Lightning on it, but it has more to do with the "floating" aspect.

The property of "floating" for monsters is simply cosmetic. The actual property that causes them to "avoid Quake" is being weak to arrows/projectiles (Air/Wind) so to speak. This is also the ninja reason why the v1 undead version of Milon/Scarmaglione and the Electric Fish are immune to Quake.

So, back to the CPU battle. Those "floating" orbs are actually not immune to Quake. Of course this isn't exactly the most useful info... killing the two smaller orbs (Defender and Attacker) causes the big CPU to own you... twice!

One of the few rare things people have not considered is the reflect property of Float. This technique requires FuSoYa, but it works just as well when Rosa has learned Reflect (if not Float). First off, cast Reflect on any party member (or just put the middle target for simplicity). Then, cast Float on the next turn.

Ideally, you want to give Float status to the Attacker. You have a 1/3 shot of that happening... but it's not necessarily the end of the world if you get it on the Defender. Simply start over if Float status is applied on the CPU... you don't want it immune to Quake. Once you get Float status on either of the orbs, just cast Quake. FuSoYa should be reasonably powerful enough to help out in dealing damage in this battle.. instead of being woefully useless. Rydia's best spell is still Sylph, to counteract the effects of the Attacker's attack... but Titan is still a capable spell in this instance (she's better off with Quake though). Having FuSoYa useful should make it far easier to counteract the healing the Defender does, assuming you gave Float status to the Attacker orb.

Worthy of note from this research.. revived monsters don't retain Float status... which is very different from characters (they still keep the status while in a dungeon).

Hopefully, someone considers this to be a viable option instead of the slow and painful "kill defender and focus on CPU" method or the insane "dish out as much damage after both Attacker and Defender are gone".

21

Gaming Discussion / Contacting instructrtrepe? (About his FF5 Algo Guide)

« on: April 12, 2012, 11:21:22 AM »

Does anyone know offhand that his e-mail works?

I'll probably get around to trying out the e-mail in his FAQ, but the most important reason I'd like to contact him about is to dispute the fact that Jump does not consider critical hits. Believe it or not, critical hits work when using the Jump command (both in FF5 and FF5A).

22

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4/FF4A - The Lunar Dragon Code Fail

« on: March 02, 2012, 07:15:14 PM »

Does anyone watch the AVGN? Where does my rage begin? 

So, I was working on releasing a hack/patch for those that wanted to integrate Steal and Throw into their code. Of course the problem with working with that code that there's a very limited space in the code to add it in, so I had to create two separate patches. Unfortunately, it would be difficult to demonstrate without those commands available immediately to you, but I don't have the time to make it easy on you. Axing a lot of the useless states (mostly for Rubicante's Fire for Life is a wasted proposition) was needed in my hack...

Anyways, I had to create a headerless patch, since FF4ET by "distribution" seems to come w/o a header. That's an easy fix, so I opened up FF4ET, and apparently I was wrong on that. There were some changes in the section of code I worked with and it makes a lot of sense... FF4ET did change a few things, particularly for the Moon.

I was trying to compare the two and found something different... apparently enemy condition code 16 was changed in FF4ET. I did not even know when it was used, but apparently it was limited to one monster in FF4 (and not FF4ET), the Lunar Dragon. Also, the definition of this code was "if condition flag is 00 and physically attacked by a character". It's generally redundant since condition flag 0 usually implies that the battle is starting, which is its initial state. You can easily work around that... but anyways, the real reason for this thread is because of the Lunar Dragon.

This leads me to enemy attack group set B3, the counter listings for the Lunar Dragon. So, here's a breakdown of this monster battle script (remember, this monster is deployed in a pair):
If condition flag = 1, cast Bio on other random monster in battle.
Otherwise, attack once, cast Flame (target's maxHP fire elemental attack), attack 3 times, Cast Breath on all targets, then repeat.

Counters:
If attacked by Summon magic, heal self.
If condition flag is 0 and physically attacked, Cast Wall/Reflect on all monsters, set condition flag = 1.
If alone, cast Flame.

Pretty simple right? Do you see the flaw in this code?

When the monster is out of Reflect status, they will keep casting Bio on each other. This doesn't hurt in FF4 since their Magic Defense is maxed out. It hurts a lot in FF2 (both versions) since that is reduced. What you end up seeing is that the monsters eventually kill themselves for the most part. The worst part of this is that it "appears" that the sole surviving Lunar Dragon decides to do nothing, but the reality is that there's no other living monster to target! It ends up doing nothing unless you attack it. This includes the act of Stealing (which is kinda surprising, but it shouldn't be).

  Fixed script.

Well, FF4ET fixes this. I need to verify the code, but it looks a lot like this.
Basic battle behavior:
If alone, Cast Quake (monster ver) twice, Cast Breath, Repeat.
If self has Reflect status, Cast Bio on other random monster
Otherwise, Set condition flag = 1, Cast Flame 4 times, then Cast Breath, Repeat.

Counter:
If attacked by Summon magic, heal self.
If attacked physically and condition flag = 1, Cast Wall/Refect and set condition flag = 0 (this might not be in the counter section)
If attacked magically, Attack.

I need to confirm the condition bits unfortunately, but that's the closest as I was able to get.

 
So, in FF4ET, it fixes the problems the original had. The monster will run something useful while alone, and it relies on the Reflect status to carry out its Bio attacks. Ingenius right? Unfortunately FF4A didn't copy this.

To be edited in the near future: How FF4A fucks this up and updating the FF4ET info.

 

This is how FF4A fucks this up...

FF4A Lunar Dragon's battle script:
If alone, cast Flame.
If condition flag = 1, cast Bio on other random monster in battle.
Otherwise, attack once, cast Flame (target's maxHP fire elemental attack), attack 3 times, Cast Breath on all targets, then repeat.

Counters:
If attacked by Summon magic, heal self.
If condition flag is 0 and physically attacked, Cast Wall/Reflect on all monsters, set condition flag = 1.

So now, it looks like we may have fixed said bug. Move it from the counter to being part of the main battle script should fix that right???
I don't think this is the exact code changes, but on paper it should operate close to the original w/o the bugs.

  Hell no, it's not fixed.

What happens:
The condition that Bio is to be used against the other keeps running. The condition flag is never really unset. The morons who did the port didn't quite figure this out like Square did with FF4ET (use the Reflect status conditional). However... it's worse than that.
Each monster seems to hold the condition variable separately. Why that seems to operate like that is anyone's guess... While one monster is doing Reflect and multi-Bio, the other one is operating on the base script. OK, I guess that's a nuance, but technically that's not what the original did at all. This is not the worst of it.
If you attack the same monster a second time, it manages to lose the ability to heal itself when it encounters Summon magic. I don't know how they are coding this, but my guess is that the condition flag is actually being incremented instead of being set to the value 1 (incrementing the condition flag was possible, the most notable example is the Octomammoth monster). There may have been two conditions where Summon and the condition flag were checked (where it was 0 and 1)... just not anything above 1.

Note: My last point could be wrong, but someone would need to decipher the FF4A battle code first to make better understanding of this fail.

It is truly amazing how the same game truly poops on itself with its own code. I can only aspire to whine at such mediocre port coding and poking fun at the really bad translation of the old battle code to the new one... Who the hell does proper Q&A on this stuff? I guess I'll never know.

23

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4 - Summoned "Quake Immune" Monsters Are Not Quake Immune

« on: March 01, 2012, 11:06:34 AM »

In my recent round of hack testing, I have found that monsters that would have been normally been immune to Quake (weak vs Wind/Air elemental) like Arachne, Clapper, or RockMoth are not immune to Quake when they are summoned. There is obviously something going on that prevents the code that gives them immunity to not work. Affects all SNES versions of FF4 and doesn't affect FF4A at all.

24

General Discussion / Congrats

« on: June 16, 2011, 12:06:05 AM »

I would've posted this earlier, but anyways congrats to the Mavs for pwning LeBron's new big 3. Nice to see Dirk+Kidd win the whole thing... but mainly that the Heat lose.  Congrats guys!

Also, congrats to the Bruins for beating the stuffing out of the annoying Vancouver Canucks. Soft teams should never drink out of Lord Stanley's Cup.

25

Gaming Discussion / Another FF4 Revision?

« on: May 26, 2011, 05:15:31 PM »

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/522596-final-fantasy-ii/59213374

There's some guy that claims to have another version of FF4, which is potentially a bug fixed version of the original game, but isn't the Easytype version.

So, what do you guys think?

There's only one major bug that I can recall that applies to the known revision of FF2US (Paralysis/Sleep + Stop, causing the game to effectively freeze or get stuck in some loop).

26

General Discussion / Continue FF4 Walkthrough?

« on: March 26, 2011, 11:56:36 PM »

The apartment I live in is going under major construction, so I'm forced to vacate for a few days (I'll still be able to sleep at home, not that it matters). My computer will have some obvious downtime because it'll be disconnected for the week.

I will probably bring a laptop to the local library with some free wireless, so I'll have some hard time to actually work on stuff (and snooze somewhere comfortably). So.. it's a matter of deciding to work on the hack (regarding Asura+Leviathan... and also to see if I can hack in countering when Sneak/Steal is used against a monster) or the walkthrough.

Here's a link to what I've been referencing (141 downloads? That's more than I thought) - http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=806.msg7765#msg7765

There is some hope that the walkthrough will be somewhat useful in completing the hack (but it's not for that purpose... it's only for FF4 for the most part) so that we kinda clear up most/all of the false misconceptions about the game and also introduce some insight/ideas to combating certain monsters...

So... please vote early and often (well, early is preferable).

27

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Monster Formations Used In Chests

« on: March 16, 2011, 01:06:26 AM »

There's a lump of formations that are exclusively for chest monsters... but I don't recall monster formation 0x1C5 used.... anyone want to figure this out? It seems to be a monster that would have been used in the Tower of Babil Eblan or Underground (Falcon) route...

28

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Grimoire Item - Random Summon Selection

« on: March 05, 2011, 03:05:33 PM »

I hadn't given this much thought since I never use the item.. but what are the probabilities for each summon that it would select?

The only valid summons AFAIK are the following:
Chocobo (random single target)
Mist Dragon
Titan
Ifrit
Shiva
Ramuh
Leviathan
Odin
Sylph (random single target)
Bahamut

The ones that are not applicable:
Asura (since the summon defaults to targeting the enemy, it's a tad impractical to cast... plus the extra randomness of her spell selection is the other problem).
All monster summons...
Goblin/Imp (it sucks, so who cares?)
Bomb
Mage/Mindflayer
Cockatrice

29

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4 - Multitargeted Poison Spell Breaks Many Rules

« on: February 20, 2011, 09:52:25 PM »

I find this very amusing while testing my hack for spell learning...

Well, we know that Poison/Venom the black magic spell sucks huge balls... but it always works even if the enemy is Undead or has Poison resistance (the boss bit is the only saving grace).

If we increase the damage of the spell AND make it multitarget all enemies only (like the Poison attack Dr. Lugae uses), some of the known rules do not apply.
For instance, the spell would work on monsters with the boss bit.. even if you configured the spell to NOT work on bosses!
Additionally when used on any monster that has Darkness elemental resistance, the Spell Multiplier is set to 1 for that target (the monster will not Absorb the damage even if that property is set).
The most amusing part is it also works against magically immune targets! (These are monsters with magic defense set to 255 initially.)

Clearly sloppy coding... but go figure!

 
Undead are not affected... it is Darkness elemental resistant monsters that are affected.

 
Edited title for spelling fail

30

General Discussion / FF4 - Zeromus's Final Meteor is Symbolic

« on: December 25, 2010, 12:29:07 AM »

As the title says, I'm sure this sounds obvious enough in some way, but I think this is worth a mention.

With the final HP that Zeromus has at this point, he proceeds to cast Meteor... with a spell multiplier of 1. At the usual level that you are to beat him, you will be easily evading that spell... unless Edge is crippled in the magic evasion department or this is FF4A with Yang's awesome magic evasion stat. I had thought about this a little bit with a post regarding a "no equipment run" and came to the conclusion after taking a deeper look into his battle script.

If I ever get back to finishing my hack (I really need to), that sequence will not be that retarded.... as I think I've found a way to make it very... thought provoking.