Topic: Keeping everyone in shadow party

[Grimoire LD]

And it's finally here! You've now fully improved upon Phoenix's old idea and made a much more workable setup. And thank you for saving equipment, that was one of my major pitfalls with my Edge/Cid Switch Item. Perhaps with the other Event Item, I'll switch out Rosa and Rydia for Palom and Porom... it wasn't a possibility before, but now it is. The issue in that is that they are basically made for the part of the game in which they appear, I didn't do anything else nifty with them as I did with Cid to give them sustainability hmm... I'm sure I'll think of something.

Let's give this a whirl in a test rom and see how it goes...

And it works beautifully!

Fought a couple of battles with Edge (And Of course get the Imp summon on a basic playthrough sense in this test rom...) put him back in the Shadow and reloaded him and his Exp. was still the same.
Oh man, this opens up So many options, now all that remains is that blasted TNL silliness and we will have so much more freedom on character placement.

Let's open up FF4kster and see what the new actor arrangements are...

Ah, yes... that makes all proper sense, quick question though... the other Actor slots, does that mean that we can't have Tellah learn or forget Recall? That's... pretty much all that was ever used for that function now that I think about it. Every other instance of a returning character aside from Rydia used their base set anyhow.


In any case this is The De Facto hack made for FFIV, Ever. You sir have done a wondrous job for us all! The wheels of linear programming that is all too often a hallmark of FFIV is starting to come loose, we are very close to a true freedom where characters are concerned.

I suppose next will be utilizing LordGarmonde's research and putting them into the game to get rid of space limitations as far as levels go.

[LordGarmonde]

In any case this is The De Facto hack made for FFIV, Ever. You sir have done a wondrous job for us all! The wheels of linear programming that is all too often a hallmark of FFIV is starting to come loose, we are very close to a true freedom where characters are concerned.

That they are. Again, great work - a huge block now gone that road to creativity is opening up.

I suppose next will be utilizing LordGarmonde's research and putting them into the game to get rid of space limitations as far as levels go.

My derivations are more-or-less complete! I've worked out numbers for each stat for each character - all that remains there is to back extrapolate to Lv 1 so I can assign new appropriate starting stats. That should be no trouble - with the growth rates in hand I just need to run in reverse until I make it down to Lv 1.

With that the set should be complete - TNL, HP, MP & Stats. Tomorrow night I'll write up/release the Stat data and my final sketch for the decoding algorithm - after that it's for you guys to do what you do! 

[chillyfeez]

... Yeah... Tellah and Recall. Unfortunately, this hack does not allow Tellah to "lose" Recall. I may be able to put that back in at some point, but it's not a big enough concern at the moment.

I got the imp spell in a test run, too! Those jerks...

Yeah, I'm equal parts looking forward to and dreading LordGarmonde finishing his stat algorithms. It should help circumnavigate whatever weirdness is going on in the level up routine that causes the issues in my shadow hack, but will of course require a full rewrite of the level up routine.

[LordGarmonde]

I got the imp spell in a test run, too! Those jerks...

  Me TOO! 

... Yeah... Tellah and Recall. Unfortunately, this hack does not allow Tellah to "lose" Recall. I may be able to put that back in at some point, but it's not a big enough concern at the moment.

What about changing the command to something more like "Call" in FFV - give him a no-cost random shot of magic (maybe tweak the % of each result) but then he could keep it forever. In my head I'm thinking of it sort of like when Edge learns Flood+Blitz...I can so see Tellah losing control of his magic with mixed results. I toyed with something similar up for Palom - only for him it was a renamed Sing - but it corresponded to him trying magic that might have been beyond him...my test with with Fire 1/2/3 & Self-Destruct - LOL

Yeah, I'm equal parts looking forward to and dreading LordGarmonde finishing his stat algorithms. It should help circumnavigate whatever weirdness is going on in the level up routine that causes the issues in my shadow hack, but will of course require a full rewrite of the level up routine.

I'm writing it up now since it turns out I've got some time. Hopefully when you see it I can shift that ratio to 60/40 

[Grimoire LD]

Tellah losing control of magic is actually part of the reason he left Mysidia. His bio in the information book says that he was breaking the seals on magic at a rapid rate, but he eventually unleashed a spell he couldn't control (I have a feeling that this spell was probably supposed to be Meteo, but that piece of information may have fallen through the cracks during development) and ended up injuring many people in Mysidia and for this he left to atone for his hubris and became renowned as a wizard (according to TAY), eventually settling down in Kaipo and lived in peace, but due to the passage of time and his old age he began to forget his magic.

So Tellah losing control is completely canon and it would be a fitting trait. That's not to say that Recall doesn't have its fair share of interesting things about it. After all it can cast Death and Tornado multi-targeted... rarely. The Recall command could easily be boosted a bit if need be for long-term usage, maybe change its name.

[Pinkpuff]

Having Recall be more based on effects (like the Death and Tornado you mentioned) than elemental damage would probably help it with being more long-term useful; or at least consistent usefulness throughout the game.

That said, he probably doesn't need it anyway. I mean, in FF2US he didn't even have it, and even in the versions where he does have it I find myself not using it that often in favor of the reliability of just using the element I know I need, and knowing I won't get a "fail", or worse, a spell I didn't want and wasting precious MP on it.

Either way it's more a decision for the individual hacker and doesn't seem like it should be part of the scope of the basic patch.

On that note, is there a "undo shadow EXP splitting" patch to go with this?

Also this is totally fantastic and a dream come true! Chillyfeez is my new hero.

[chillyfeez]

By the time I got this put together yesterday, I was happy to be finally "done," but , yes, there will be a "skip shadow exp division" patch.
As I recall, the exp division was a subroutine, so I just have to find where I put that jump and blank it out.
Possibly this afternoon, I'll be compiling disassemblies of everything in the patch, at which point I will undoubtedly find said jump. So whenever I get there, I'll put the patch together.

You were already my hero, so I guess now we're even.

[TheBigT2000]

So, can this be used as a way of making it so that you can edit your party near the end of the game like in the GBA version?

[chillyfeez]

That's the idea. Or any other time, for that matter.

[Pinkpuff]

So, can this be used as a way of making it so that you can edit your party near the end of the game like in the GBA version?

It would get you most of the way there. What you would be missing is a nice menu interface for editing your party freely. But what you can do is set up a bunch of NPCs with events that will put people in or take people out. Then the player can edit their party by talking to them in the appropriate order.

[TheBigT2000]

Yeah, that's what I thought. Also, I would probably make it so that you can never take Pali Cecil out of the party. lol

[Pinkpuff]

That makes total sense plotwise, but strictly speaking there should be no technical issue with removing him.

[TheBigT2000]

What would happen if you got rid of everyone in your party though? I would make it so you could never have an empty party, and making it so you can't get rid of Pali Cecil would be the wisest solution.

[Pinkpuff]

What would happen if you got rid of everyone in your party though?

Hm, never tried it but my guess would be that the game would function normally until you press the R button whereupon your sprite would probably become something strange, or you got into a battle whereupon most likely the game would freeze up.

So yeah, I agree, it's probably best to make sure that can't happen...

[TheBigT2000]

I think it would just make your ROM explode faster than a fat kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet!