Messages

991

Game Modification Station / Re: New FF4 Hack Announcement

« on: December 20, 2009, 02:41:05 AM »

Oh, he was definitely wearing the Cursed Shield, I didn't know (and still not quite sure, other than increase Strength) what the shield did. I agree as well on that it works a lot better in the narrative to have Cecil face actual difficulty Because of his class. Though on second though... maybe I should have dequiped Cecil there, eh well, over and done with.

The point of the shield is to reduce all damage from all racial enemy types. It also provides elemental absorb, but that wouldn't really do you much good unless you wanted it to. For that tradeoff, you lose some stats. STR is increased for balance reasons (and a slight incentive to use it). Unlike all the shields in this game, it provides 0 evasion... so it's intended that Cecil not be able to evade a thing (unless you prefer him naked, in that case,  ) although the boss was designed to pretty much break through most evasion stats at the time.

992

Game Modification Station / Re: New FF4 Hack Announcement

« on: December 20, 2009, 12:56:06 AM »

The Mt. Hobs+Ordeals increased difficulty was mainly intended to point out how flawed DK Cecil is supposed to be. Between both areas though, the Bombs were the most threatening for the most part... which never made sense to me on many levels.

The most important script reuse though were with the Ghouls... I've always felt the undead should be more swarming (although, it was the beginning of tweaking actual behavior than anything initially).

Milon Z. has 13000 HP... he has two different "modes", but that's something to think about. I think with the healing vs Cecil (as in, just sucking him dry), his effective HP would increase at a min of 50%, but I didn't actually bother with numbers on that.

The Cursed Shield should have been the goto equipment though...

993

Game Modification Station / Re: New FF4 Hack Announcement

« on: December 19, 2009, 01:34:46 AM »

Well so far I am indeed enjoying myself with this. The changes you made for Remedies being only really chest finds (unless you're willing to dish out 5000 GP for one), and having the rest of the battle items won from encounters was a Great idea!

As it stands I am currently about to (re) fight the OctoVamp, wow did he throw me for a loop. Magic Fists is an interesting experiment, and I think it really helps out Rydia at the start, and against foes that lack an elemental weakness. The training has been rather harsh, I love what you did for the Imps and the nasty counter with Jump on the Larva was top notch! Also I managed to beat the Mist Dragon with only Kain standing and 13 HP remaining, haha! That was a lot of fun. Also I like that you made the enemy Summons a bit more obtainable. As it stands I have both the Imp and Roc Summons (still not sure why you made Imp 13 MP...) but there should be some reason for it, heh. Well, I'll post again once I have more updates on progress.

Heals weren't made 5000GP... it's more like 800 IIRC, but it wouldn't be needed at this stage of the game.

Magic Fists is the same thing used by the Rod, so making it accessible seemed like a good idea. It's a tad better than the level 1 elementals, but still not better than the Chocobo.. so it works fine.

Phew, what a boss... I finally beat the OctoVamp, though I'm not sure if it's how it was intended... I fought him originally at Level 15, and he wiped me out, very quickly, this at first was because I didn't know about his endless Thunder combo (which I thought I could use to my advantage, was I sadly mistaken) then I realized that Anything that was done had him counter with an 80-110 Drain, I tried everthing. At first I tried to Berserk Cecil (with those nifty PowerDrink's you were so kind to put on SandHags) and have Tellah and Rydia use the Immensely useful Cure staves to keep everyone at full HP, unfortunately that didn't work, it was basically an endless loop by that point I couldn't make an impasse, I noticed no status ailments worked on him either,  so after about 10 or so attempts, I went back and trained till level 18 with great success, except this time, I held to my previous Berserk Cecil, Tellah and Rydia as Healbots, strategy, thankfully Cecil could deal a healthy amount of damage to him, on occasion he would deal upwards to 340 Damage, and then... hit of 70 and have the Drain push us back into the negative... well on Damcyan!

The idea was to make the squid go faster and defensively stronger... not the other way around (I like easy boss battles, but not to the that extreme). Grinding is involved as the min requirement is that Rydia reaches level 13 or so (Cecil ends up past level 16 if you grind properly), but a lot more ingenuity is involved though.

Drops in general are made easy because all the good stuff were normally useless or not as valuable as it could be. Some drops however were made intentionally harder because of the value it has.

The summon drops are available early (though, I have tweaked what has been dropping since then). They are needed more in some instances, but I think I've given them the "right" MP cost. The Imp summon was reworked, so it's actual value is appreciably lower until you understand how it works. It's the same algo used for the Needle attacks that those monsters use.

994

Game Modification Station / Re: FF4 Battle Scripting Tips

« on: December 18, 2009, 08:40:39 AM »

Yeah, I daresay FF4 allows you to be more creative than FF6, though FF6's system is definitely more powerful. Another simple thing I really like is how you can override a spell's targeting - this is something I always wanted to do in my scripts in FF6, but it's not possible.

There are some consequences attempting to override a spell's targeting in this game. I forget off the top of my head what... I do recall two instances:

1) I think I used Dispel instead of Black Hole in my modded Magus Sister battle because the overridden targeting did not go the way I expected... it didn't target every sister for some reason...

2) Spells that are normally splitting don't react the same when "unsplit" (or was it the other way around???). I forget how this works, but the damage dealt is far lower than it should, it uses a multiplier of 1 or so when it shouldn't...

  The second issue applies more to monsters targeting themselves... probably a consequence of the first issue.

2nd Fixed the multiplier bit in point #2.

995

General Discussion / Re: Gamefaqs + eternal stupidity

« on: December 18, 2009, 08:31:05 AM »

http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/gbadvance/qna/930370.html?qid=52 

 

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/snes/qna/554041.html?qid=3829 - Finally, a logical anti-ebmid response. It's missing the magic defense aspect (since high magic d reduces the impact of Tempest as well).

996

General Discussion / Re: NFL season (2009-2010), week 4

« on: December 17, 2009, 11:34:28 PM »

Rest in peace, Chris Henry. He died this morning, caused by the injuries sustained yesterday. He was one of the punch lines on the Bengals because of how frequently he was arrested. But late last year and coming into this season, he was focusing on turning his life around and it appeared that he had done that.

Yea, that is disappointing. I mean the Bengals gave him a second chance and that worked out, but I'm not sure how this will help the team in the long run, given Carson Palmer's woes... still a tragic death nonetheless.

997

General Discussion / Re: NFL season (2009-2010), week 1

« on: December 17, 2009, 06:27:06 PM »

Week 15 schedule:
Colts @ Jagaurs (Thursday, division)

Colts - Colts will be most vulnerable here... short week and it's an away game... but I don't see the Jags getting back into it quite yet..

Cowboys @ Saints (Saturday)

Saints - The Cowboys December slide will continue...

998

Game Modification Station / FF4 Battle Scripting Tips

« on: December 17, 2009, 06:00:15 PM »

I'm not sure how this will apply to FF4A (noone has decoded that stuff yet, so I can't comment on the feasibility there), but this should help people try to work against an archaic system.

Despite being relatively archaic, the battle script system can be modded to react to a number of commands (like Steal/Sneak). This is very similar to FF6 where this is a common occurrence. You would have to specifically modify the list of counter/reaction list for this to work.

Another feature is that you can have enemies run special scripts due to the current status. FF4A definitely takes advantage of this (I'm not sure FF6 or FF5 does them in their scripts). So if a monster has Mute/Silence status, it could use an attack that ignores said status... like making a TinyMage to use the MomBomb's Explode spell while under Mute.

One of the unfortunate limitations of the system is that you can only have one attack per counter. It is impossible for example to execute the double hit as a counter. There are a few ways to work around this...

Cagnazzo's battle script involved modifying a variable that starts to trigger a different battle script sequence... now this can lend to a host of things...
1) The appearance of a specific enemy can trigger a different battle sequence altogether. This is "different" from having solo enemy or single group formations... For instance, I've written it so that the presence of the IceBeast would change the battle script run by a Chimera. In fact, if you wanted to, you could run a fixed-mix of counters that a monster can run.

If you have spent any time with the Soldier-Officer battle script (the save Rydia boss battle), the "Provoke" spell as I call it can allow you to do really cool things. In the battle, it is used to tell the Soldiers to attack. The Soldier's counter script "responds" to the Provoke spell, thus making them attack. I've played around with this extensively, to the point where a monster in a particular formation (specifically its current group) would run a specific counter attack. For example, if a monster is in group 1, it would Fight, but if the same monster is in group 2, it would cast some spell of sorts. This will require some tweaking of the counter code (it is easily moddable as said before) and it would increase the # of attacks possible by a monster group, w/o having to tweak around with the monster's speed/agility.

I may have forgotten a few things, but these are worth looking into in trying to expand a system which is ultimately very predictable, but you can get very creative in a very predictable system.

999

Game Modification Station / Re: Is there any way to correct three glitches in FF3 (SNES)?

« on: December 14, 2009, 08:47:20 AM »

A few subsets of spells would benefit... like Whirlwind (although, it's not helpful to you), Break, and Death.

1000

Game Modification Station / Re: Is there any way to correct three glitches in FF3 (SNES)?

« on: December 13, 2009, 07:03:27 PM »

IIRC, the Evade bugfix patch has existed for a while now. I suggest you check Romhacking.net or google for what you are seeking.

Although, I'm not sure if Darkness is fixed as part of the patch though, but it probably is.

 
http://www.rpglegion.com/ff6/hack/evade.htm

1001

Game Modification Station / Re: Using Lore & Summon in the Fanatics Tower

« on: December 13, 2009, 12:18:02 PM »

Ah, yes, now I understand.

I think Leno or DB has modded that aspect, but I'm not sure.

1002

General Discussion / Re: NFL season (2009-2010), week 1

« on: December 13, 2009, 10:57:28 AM »

Saints @ Falcons (division)

Saints - Falcons are simply not as good on both sides of the ball.

Packers @ Bears (division)

Packers - The Bears are who we thought they were, but noone has let them off the hook!

Rams @ Titans

Titans - Rams have ownership issues, and are aiming for the #1 draft pick, so go figure.

Broncos @ Colts

Colts - I simply don't see the Broncos winning this game. The offense is not good enough to keep up with the Colts.

Bills @ Chiefs

Chiefs - I'm not sure which team will do well enough.. if you ask me.

Jets @ Buccaneers

Jets - I'd rather have the Bucs win, but the Jets defense is better than the Bucs... and that's not even mentioning the fact that the Sanchise is not playing.

Dolphins @ Jaguars

Jags - I don't see how the Dolphins can sustain their game w/o Ronnie Brown, despite the win against the Pats.

Lions @ Ravens

Ravens - Lions have bigger issues than we think.

Seahawks @ Texans

Texans - Neither team is very good, so I can't say that this game is interesting at all.

Bengals @ Vikings

Bengals - I'm not sure wtf happened with Favre last week, where the Vikings were annihilated vs the Cards... this is more of a I hate Favre pick than anything else.

Panthers @ Patriots

Pats - This game will be close... the Panthers are starting their backup QB... but that doesn't make me feel any better at the moment.

Redskins @ Raiders

Raiders - I don't like this pick very much, so go figure.

Chargers @ Cowboys

Chargers - This is the beginning of the end.. since it's another Cowboys December run.

Eagles @ Giants (division)

Eagles - Something tells me that the Giants won't be up for this... on the defensive end.

Cardinals @ Eagles

You mean 49ers Leno. 

Cards - The 49ers will make this competitive, but they are simply not the team they thought they were... primarily because of the QB, or lack of a legitimate one.

1003

Game Modification Station / Re: Using Lore & Summon in the Fanatics Tower

« on: December 13, 2009, 08:46:56 AM »

Summons are already available via the Magic Command (except via X-Magic by design).

1004

Pandora's Box / Re: Suggestions

« on: December 10, 2009, 06:50:37 PM »

I have an idea similar to the stealing suggestion, certain enemies have 2 steal-able weapons, items, etc. I was thinking if certain enemies (for example the Marshal in Narshe has a Guardian for a steal-able  weapon that's 75% and a Flail for 25% lets say you steal the flail his attack would be reduced, seeing as how he should be much stronger then any other Narshe Guards) or their attack pattern changes if something is stolen, like they can go into a frenzy or they use completely different attacks

I think you can do that already (I could be wrong), but the monsters can react to Steal or Capture, and you could simply set the appropriate bits to make the monster run a different script altogether. It simply may be that their battle scripts were not written to do it, even though it is an option. This can already be accomplished with FF4 (and probably FF5 as well), but I see it as a novelty feature.

1005

General Discussion / Re: NFL season (2009-2010), week 1

« on: December 10, 2009, 06:45:46 PM »

I'm too sleepy to give good commentary, so 

Week 14 schedule:
Steelers @ Browns (Thursday, division)

Steelers - Can anyone explain the NFL's fascination with the Browns?