øAslickproductions.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=5f0fck550j2m4m2fpbtkj2vkm1&action=profile;u=278;area=showposts;start=495e:/My Web Sites/Slick Productions - FFIV Message Board/slickproductions.org/forum/index45c6-3.htmlslickproductions.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=5f0fck550j2m4m2fpbtkj2vkm1&action=profile;area=showposts;u=278e:/My Web Sites/Slick Productions - FFIV Message Board/slickproductions.org/forum/index45c6-3.html.zxÇåg^ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÈ0P.Ô OKtext/htmlISO-8859-1gzip@øÕÔ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿTue, 10 Mar 2020 19:25:18 GMT0ó°° ®0®P®€§²ð®Æåg^ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ'*Ô  Show Posts - chillyfeez

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Messages - chillyfeez

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496
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Chillyfeez's Mods, hacks, research notes, etc.
« on: May 02, 2015, 07:54:51 AM »
I got to thinking this morning (ut-oh...): what about "true" confusion for monsters?

Why do we have all of these AI scripts wasted on what a monster should do if it's confused? Why not just have them do what player characters do - pick an action and a target at random?

Shouldn't be too hard to do... I've seen where enemy battle scripts are loaded into RAM. It would take a bit of a routine to make the game find the right set of possible commands, but it certainly wouldn't be impossible. From there, do an RNG to pick a byte within the monster's designated script area. Make sure it's less than E8 (otherwise generate a new random number), make sure it's preceded by a byte FB or higher (to be sure it's not the parameter to a targeting byte, or whatever - otherwise, as before, generate a new RN), "flip a coin" to determine ally target or enemy target, RNG to determine target(s) within that group, and... GO!

As far as game mechanics hacks I've done, the difficulty level is mid-range at worst, and the benefits to AI editing and gameplay experience would be fantastic!

I'm back to work today after my week off, but this'll be my next little distraction...

I'll do my best to assure it plays nice with my other hacks (because, you know... me).

497
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Final Fantasy II: A Threat from Within (The Preview)
« on: May 01, 2015, 07:13:05 PM »
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1)  I like how the opening events flow together, showing the ending of events of FF4.  At first I was waiting for it to start before hitting a button and realizing the telescope visual was playing.

Would you say that the long wait at the beginning is confusing? I know it will be for a first-time player playing with the volume down, but I'm hoping the bell sound will serve to clue folks in that, yes, something is happening...

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2) It's refreshing to start off as ninja rather than a Dark Knight. Ability to steal in the first fight? Sign me up!

3) Being able to hire a 2nd ninja for more looting fun? Oh boy! At this point I came across the staircase you mentioned.

Stealing will be a key element to acquiring some of the more rare equipment, too, as in ffix. I've altered the Steal ("pray I do not alter it any further" sorry, I couldn't help myself) routine so that when you steal from a boss once, all subsequent steals from them will yield cure potions.

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4) Is that new music I hear at the docks?? I had no idea that was possible, if so!

Well, I figured out how. I wrote a tutorial about it, most of which can be found here.
It is an extremely complicated process, though. Ya gotta really want it...

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6) I noticed the Eeny Meeny Miney Mo keys were really named after the song from FF8. I actually like the nod to FF8 a bit more lol.

Yeah... That's a remnant of half-changed info.
The original plan was Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec, but I had two reports from play testers who were completely flummoxed by the reference. Which, on its own, would have been fine with me, but then it came to light that the second player to report that was deaf. He literally had not heard and could not ever hear Liberi Fatali. Well, I don't want to ostricise players needlessly, so I changed to the more universal Eenie Meenie Miney Moe.

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8) The text box that displays when Palom and Porom join is blank.

Hmm. That's the first I've heard of that. I'll have to see if it holds true for my ROM...

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I've gotten to Mt Ordeals so far. Got iced by Shiva, but I'm pretty low leveled from just running to see what happens next haha.

So you chose to follow orders, huh? FYI, you can challenge the Eidolons without Palom and Porom, too, and the resulting battles and events play out very differently. When all is said and done, TfW will have at least two - possibly more - of these "epic choices."

You didn't say anything about it, so I'm wondering... Did you get a Limit Break yet?

498
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Final Fantasy II: A Threat from Within (The Preview)
« on: May 01, 2015, 03:05:27 PM »
Great, Bahamut ZERO! I'll be interested to hear your feedback (good and bad - don't hold back).
Some changes have been made since Grimoire's recent play testing, but I haven't put a new patch out. I'm slowly but surely tackling everything Grimoire found.

A word of warning - don't go down the staircase in the Eblan Barracks. It will eventually lead to a training room that doesn't exist yet, so right now it leads to getting stuck in the northwest corner of Baron Town...

499
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Grimoire LD's Notes, Patches, and Hacks (A Working Job System!)
« on: May 01, 2015, 12:27:26 PM »
Actually, you're right about Asura.

I think in my testing, I looked into other summons that change their sporting, and when I observed a few that all change in the same way, I assumed the pattern extended to all summons. Silly me, thinking that anything in this game actually made sense, right?

So... I guess I'll have to look into that one at some point.

500
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Final Fantasy II: A Threat from Within (The Preview)
« on: May 01, 2015, 11:24:41 AM »
So I had a good idea for the "float cancelling" item.
It's the Lead Shoes. Instead of being a "key item" type of thing, which originally did not show up in the inventory, it's a usable item in battle. Palom and Porom will give you one, but they will also be for sale in the Mysidia item shop (which isn't accessible until you get the boots from them anyway, so that won't mess with the story).
I also worked in some code that makes any floating battle participant automatically weak to the Air element. Which, silly enough, was not the case by default (it just so happens that most flying monsters have the "weak to air" bit set).
This little subroutine replaces the normal weakness (not "very" weakness) check opcode:
Code: [Select]
$03/E395 AD 04 27    LDA $2704  [$00:2704];Load Status Byte 2
$03/E398 29 40       AND #$40             ;Check if floating
$03/E39A F0 05       BEQ $05    [$E3A1]   ;If not, skip the following
$03/E39C 4A          LSR A                ;Divide A by 2 (making it 20, the value the weakness byte would be if target was weak to air)
$03/E39D 0D 20 27    ORA $2720  [$00:2720];Combine "20" with target's existing weakness byte
$03/E3A0 60          RTS                 
$03/E3A1 AD 20 27    LDA $2720  [$00:2720];Load target's weakness byte
$03/E3A4 60          RTS                 

Between the Lead Shoes and the Float spell, the player now has control over a target's weakness to Air and vulnerability to Earth.
Obviously, this gives reason to the Raven miniboss casting Float at the beginning of the battle, and casting Quake in the middle, as was the original plan for this battle script.

That will make the Raven battle quite a bit trickier, so I'll have to playtest and possibly adjust its stats a bit now...

 :edit:
Oh, Grimoire, I was going through my notes from your recent playtesting and I discovered something you asked that I never answered (had to confirm first)
Yes, Sight, when used in battle, is the new Scan. I always thought it was pretty stupid that they were two separate spells, since the original Sight has no use in battle. The spell space formerly used by Scan is now one of the three Holy spells. My White Magic list has Holy1, Holy2 and Holy3, giving White Mages a bit more of an offensive toolkit, and still keeping in line with the lore I'm employing in my story.

501
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Grimoire LD's Notes, Patches, and Hacks (A Working Job System!)
« on: April 30, 2015, 09:43:48 PM »
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If I can ever grasp what Chillyfeez did with changing Summon Monsters, I would even plan on changing Imp, Bomb, Roc, and Mage summons for something else to mix it up.  Ideally I would also like to turn Asura into different summons, but that would involve finding out what causes her summon formation to cycle through her masks in the first place, which sounds like a lot of work.

Lemme know if I can help you understand it. It's mind-bendingly complicated at first, but once you get a grasp of it it's not so bad.

Regarding Asura's changing, it's essentially the same principle used by sylph, Odin, bahamut, any summoned monster that changes its image during the summon. She has three different sprite arrangements, and the AV routine controls the rotation between them.

502
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Developing FF4kster: a comprehensive editor for FF4
« on: April 28, 2015, 10:26:06 PM »
Just a quick report. I fixed the errant trigger - also checked all other triggers to make sure there was no repeat of that bug - and FF4kster still crashes when I try to open my ROM.
 :sad:

NO!
I missed one!
It works!
 :happy:

503
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Grimoire LD's Notes, Patches, and Hacks (A Working Job System!)
« on: April 28, 2015, 06:33:11 PM »
That's awesome!
It feels much more authentic when the game is actually tracking progression for the player.
Nice work!

504
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Developing FF4kster: a comprehensive editor for FF4
« on: April 28, 2015, 06:19:30 AM »
Huh, that's odd. I've never edited Bahamut's cave or intentionally referenced an event call 87. Wonder how that happened...
I'm not gonna be home most of the day today, but I'm excited now to fix that and give it a whirl. Thanks!

505
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Grimoire LD's Notes, Patches, and Hacks (A Working Job System!)
« on: April 28, 2015, 06:07:28 AM »
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I've heard that windows and menus are the worst parts about hacking... anything.
What, like you heard of some guy one time who drove himself crazy trying to expand command and spell names? I'm not familiar with that story...

But, seriously, there's actually a fair amount of space after the character's name and handedness. Finding a way to use it would require custom assembly, but shouldn't be too hard.
The biggest deal would probably be telling the game how to know the job level. I think I thought that was being stored by that second byte. I know I could examine your code to figure this out, but how does it know which spell to add when a job levels up? That'd likely be the key.

506
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Developing FF4kster: a comprehensive editor for FF4
« on: April 28, 2015, 05:42:44 AM »
No, it crashes before "done."
I have changed spell color names. Well, I've changed the name of "Call," and I've changed its length, too. Could that be it?
Easy enough to change that back and see. I'll try it this evening.

507
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Grimoire LD's Notes, Patches, and Hacks (A Working Job System!)
« on: April 28, 2015, 12:14:01 AM »
Is there any way for the player to know how close they are to the next job level?
I bet the Status screen could be reworked to include that information. Cuz, you know, I know you want more stuff to do, right?
;)

Also, it looks like jobs now have two bytes of stored data each... Does that mean you've worked out  way for the game to fully keep track of job progression even when the job isn't equipped?

508
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Developing FF4kster: a comprehensive editor for FF4
« on: April 27, 2015, 07:49:25 PM »
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The "finishing touches" are as follows:
Flag moon creatures (look at the formations in the lunar encounters and flag each monster contained in them as being "lunar" so that the correct script will be displayed)
Set event map links (look through the triggers and NPCs and assign the events they launch the corresponding default preview map)
Read spell color names (the text in the rom that normally says "Black", "White", and "Call" for the menu)

Hmm... Any thoughts about what might make the game crash at that point?
-I have played around with spell names quite a bit, but have left the color orbs of the normal player spells alone. I have added color orbs to the beginning of a few enemy spells.
-I haven't touched any of the lunar formations, though it's entirely possible that I have used monsters that exist in lunar formations in non-lunar formations.
-while I've changed a lot of event triggers within maps and as associated with NPCs, all of that has been done with FF4kster (older version that doesn't crash when loading my ROM)

509
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Final Fantasy II: A Threat from Within (The Preview)
« on: April 27, 2015, 03:33:06 PM »
Oh, good. Thanks for that.

So, I'm going through my list of things I want to polish up (thanks in no small part to your notes).
Just wanted to report that your fix for Thrown weapon graphics works like a charm. The custom Kunai image is showing up as intended. Right palette and everything!

 :edit:
I'd also like to report how sad I am that I'm now at 777 posts, but the images aren't working, so I don't get the Lucky 7 graphic
 :bah:

510
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Developing FF4kster: a comprehensive editor for FF4
« on: April 27, 2015, 02:39:45 PM »
So, if it gets through reading all of the data fine, but then crashes (crashes, yes, doesn't even hang anymore) when it gets to "Applying finishing touches," can you think of any particular implication that might have?

For the record, my FF4kster download isn't corrupt. It loads vanilla just fine.

Also, I know I'm attempting to use FF4kster for something it really isn't meant to do (edit a very messed-with ROM), so I'm not upset if I can't get it to work. Just thought I'd let you know what I get to see if you have any insight. Obviously if I can undo whatever it was I did that broke FF4kster compatibility, that would be dreamy.

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