Board of Slick
Library of the Ancients => Final Fantasy IV Research & Development => Topic started by: Bahamut ZERO on July 01, 2015, 03:11:26 PM
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The last day or so, I've been playing around with Encounter Rates and Trapped Chest triggers, trying to figure out how they tick.
ENOUNTER RATES:
Now, I notice that when it's set to 0, there are no encounters for a map. I also notice that at least a couple of dungeons are set to 8, wheras a few others (near the end of Lunar Subteranne) is set to 4. I figure "Okay, I'll set Watery Pass to 16 instead of 8 to cut the encounter rate in half!" but upon testing, it didn't really seem to do much of a difference. Setting it to 1, however, certainly made the place much more annoying to traverse, lol.
I understand that the Random encounters are well, random, so I set the ER number to 123. A little bit of a difference (or perhaps I was just lucky?) but not a whole lot. In the editor this number can go up to 255 - but can it really be set that high? Do the higher numbers even mean less encounters (like I assume based on looking through some of the other maps)?
TRAPPED CHESTS:
Now this one kind of confuses me, though I think I have some sort of grasp of this. When you set up a Trapped Chest trigger, you're allowed to use formations 449-512. I've been playing around with it, seeing which formations will or won't work with the map I'm putting it on (Watery Pass 4F). At first I tried setting up a new formation (506) to use (3 Souls, and 2 Skulls), but when the fight starts I'm fighting a Medusa, Gorgan, and Steelman instead.
Now that I think about it, since it's limiting me to a certain chunk of formations, perhaps half of them are used for the Overworld, and the other half of them are used for the Underworld/Moon.. it would make sense of why my formation acts the way it does. Back to experimenting.
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Re: encounter rates...
I haven't played too much with these, but if I had to take a wild stab based on what you're saying, I'd bet it only looks at the lower four bits of that byte, so the only actual entries would be 0-15. Anything beyond that would be a repeat, so 16 would be a second instance of 0, 17 would be 1, etc.
But that's just a guess...
Re: trapped chests...
Again, I'm just speculating, but it's almost definitely something to do with Underworld/Overworld agreement. Could it be that, if you're in the Underworld it uses 449-512, and if you're in the Overworld it uses those values minus 256 (193-256)?
I bet Grimoire knows this... He'll probably have a more informed answer when he sees it.
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Re: encounter rates...
I haven't played too much with these, but if I had to take a wild stab based on what you're saying, I'd bet it only looks at the lower four bits of that byte, so the only actual entries would be 0-15. Anything beyond that would be a repeat, so 16 would be a second instance of 0, 17 would be 1, etc.
But that's just a guess...
Aha! I'll try lower numbers and see how it goes!
Re: trapped chests...
Again, I'm just speculating, but it's almost definitely something to do with Underworld/Overworld agreement. Could it be that, if you're in the Underworld it uses 449-512, and if you're in the Overworld it uses those values minus 256 (193-256)?
I bet Grimoire knows this... He'll probably have a more informed answer when he sees it.
Hmm not sure about that, as formation 476 (1 Blackliz) seems to work fine, tho that's the only premade formation I've gotten to work so far.
Granted I've yet to test more formations out yet as I got sidetracked by the realization that I can use un-named palette options, and promptly began testing each one out anc giving them names for the editor lol.
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What we need to spend a lot on a daily basis
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What we need to spend a lot on a daily basis
Oh boy, I llove riddles. What's green and red and can go 80mph while singing?
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i think that it is sometimes very helpful
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Sorry, the answer was "Michigan J. Frog in a blender". Good guess though. :P
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Alright, time to get back on topic lol.
ENCOUNTER RATE UPDATE: It seems that higher numbers equal out to higher encounter rates. Setting the ERs of the Watery Pass maps to 200 results in a battle roughly every 1-3 steps. It makes me wonder if the game jumps to a number this high after running away from a battle, as on a normal map if run from a fight, you're pretty much guarrenteed to get into another batter after 1-3 steps.
Time to test some low numbers and see what happens!
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Areas with the super high encounter rates are surprisingly a lot of the Tower of Babil Underground (if/when you enter from the underground side) "mini-rooms" (excluding the ones with the save spots, I'm talking specifically about the ones that have treasure chests and like 1 room that doesn't have them).
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Not sure if it'll help but I've got a utility that lets you edit some map properties, which includes encounter rates.
http://www.jce3000gt.com/ff4mpe.php