јAslickproductions.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=so1iojs5ocdn0o2vf0tti7fbu6&action=profile;area=showposts;sa=topics;u=6e:/My Web Sites/Slick Productions - FFIV Message Board/slickproductions.org/forum/indexe94f-2.htmlslickproductions.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=so1iojs5ocdn0o2vf0tti7fbu6&action=profile;u=6e:/My Web Sites/Slick Productions - FFIV Message Board/slickproductions.org/forum/indexe94f-2.html.zx%ѕg^џџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџШр•ЄопOKtext/htmlISO-8859-1gzip8:жопџџџџџџџџTue, 10 Mar 2020 20:30:53 GMT0ѓАА Ў0ЎPЎ€ЇВ№Ў%ѕg^џџџџџџџџЭ6оп Show Posts - Deathlike2

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Topics - Deathlike2

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 »
1
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4PSP - Journey Log
« on: November 16, 2012, 05:16:28 PM »
New log starting here regarding the PSP port of FF4... though I will direct new research to the TAY research thread when I even get there.

Kain's Jump does trigger the Mist Dragon's counterattack... that was not there before.

Magic Arrow shockingly looks like magic arrows (it does look a lot like swapped sprites from the Holy spell).

It is possible to fight a random battle BEFORE stepping onto an event tile. I fought random monsters before fighting Octomammoth.

Back row seems to work as expected... though the monsters fight "slower" or "weaker" than I remember.

 :edit:
Toads seem to attack with the "Rod" sound, which is odd.

The Secret Waterfall area doesn't have the Elixir... although I forget if that was changed in the GBA port.

Lots of things are relatively faithful... like back rows, Flan evasion (from the WSC/GBA changes), racial modifiers (well, at least with weapons like the IceRod).

2
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4 - Shell Grants Monster Magic Immunity
« on: November 15, 2012, 12:06:52 AM »
When a monster is set to having 255 magic defense, they are given magic immunity.

This includes Shell boosted magic defense to monsters with 254 (or lower) magic defense.

This behavior is limited to the SNES versions of the game.
Having 255 magic defense for the characters does not cause this... which really sucks.

I just found this out through Charm/Confuse testing...

3
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4A - Silence! You're Still Wasting MP!
« on: November 14, 2012, 11:53:08 PM »
I found this out during testing Charm status.

It's was amusing how MP was consumed while under Silence status.

Go figure.

This started in the WSC port and continued to occur in the GBA ports unfixed.

4
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4A - A "Charmed" Life
« on: November 14, 2012, 10:34:10 PM »
This is very similar to the Berserk thread...

While under Charm/Confuse, the character may execute their last command before actually doing stuff in Confuse status.

This occurs in the WSC port and GBA Jap 1.0 and US ports. This was fixed in the GBA Jap 1.1 and Euro port.

A notable behavior occurs between the two ports (WSC and GBA).

In the GBA port, most black magic can be used when available, except for Meteor (I dunno if its the RNG or intentional, but more likely the latter).
When Quake is used, it targets the monsters... why that occurs I don't have any idea why.

In the WSC port, most black magic can be used when available, except for Quake (similar to above).
When Meteor is used, it targets the monsters. Go figure.

 :edit:
Also, White Magic in the GBA port does not select Holy. Anything goes in the SNES and WSC port.

5
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4 WSC Save Files
« on: November 13, 2012, 10:18:01 PM »
For those of you interested in testing or something, that's all the save files I've created for the purposes of being able to go back to stuff if I need to.

Unlike most saves you find around the Internets, I like stat maxing (messed up a little with Cecil) and having the good stuff. Enjoy!  :tongue:

Final Equipment:
Cecil: Ragnarok, Dragon Shield, Ribbon, White Robe, Crystal Ring
Kain: Wyvern Spear, Aegis Shield, Ribbon, Dragon Armor, Crystal Ring
Edge: Masamune, Murasame, Ribbon, Dark Gear, Protect Ring
Rosa: Artemis Arrows, Elven Bow, Gold Hairband, Minerva Robe, Protect Ring
Rydia: Dragon Whip, Ribbon, Light Robe, Protect Ring


If there were cheats I could have used.. I would've used them... but there isn't.

6
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4A - Broken Racial Resistances
« on: November 12, 2012, 07:00:18 PM »
When I looked into the numbers while playing the WSC version of the game, it dawned on me that racial resistances were not adhered to.. unlike racial weaknesses.

This also affects FF4A US and Jap 1.0 versions. This was fixed in FF4A Euro and Jap 1.1 versions.

Now, we truly know that the Loki's Lute is totally useless in the bugged version of this game.

 :edit:
How you test this:
You put a character with racial resistances with Mini or Toad status in the front row.
Compare it with a character w/o those racial resistances with Mini or Toad status in the front row.

The character with the racial resistances will by taking 1/2 as much damage... whereas the one w/o the resistances takes full raw damage from the monster.

7
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4A - The Wall Is A Lie
« on: November 11, 2012, 03:42:12 AM »
One of the stranger oddities is watching Reflect being applied to you via the Wicked Masks... and yet not actually be applied.
When a spell is actually being applied to you, it is easy to believe the visual is telling you exactly what it means.
There are occasional visual inconsistencies, like FF4A's Blaster being applied to characters resistant to both status afflictions...
However, having the proper Reflect visual is far more important when you actually face the Wicked Masks...

This started from the WSC port, and also occurs in FF4A's US and Jap 1.0 versions.
Since Reflect's behavior from the Wicked Mask has changed in FF4A's Euro and Jap 1.1 versions, this bug would be considered "fixed".

If I ever get around to it, I'll upload pics.

8
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4A - Remember FF6's Berserk?
« on: November 10, 2012, 10:31:17 PM »
I had this scary realization that this bug looked like a "feature", except this was the wrong game.

In FF6, when a character is put under Berserk, they usually do the last thing they were told to do... whether it is cast a spell, or use a special skill.
In FF4A, you can do the same thing...
This works best with skills or magic  that require a delay, such as Power/Deadly or Jump.
The attack power bonus from Berserk is applied, so the damage is increased when the command is used.
This "bug" does not do much with Kick (and probably Dark Wave as well) as they are not extensions of the Fight/Attack command.

This bug was introduced in the WSC port, and extends through FF4A Jap 1.0 and US versions.
It was fixed in the Jap 1.1 and Euro versions.

Note: I will try to include pics of this at some point.

9
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4A - "Berserked Jump"
« on: November 10, 2012, 01:56:15 AM »
This is very similar to "Psycho Edward", but not really.

All you have to do is cast Berserk on Kain while he's given the command to Jump.
It may help to prolong his delay to Jump to see this in action.
Doing this will allow Jump to deal damage that the Berserk bonus would have applied to Jump (not normally possible, but just humor the idea).

This bug started in the WSC version, and is also applicable to FF4A US and Jap 1.0.
It was fixed in FF4A Euro and Jap 1.1 versions.

10
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4A Major Reflect Difference
« on: November 08, 2012, 11:33:21 PM »
The Wicked Mask's version of Reflect that hits on all party members was started in the Euro/Jap 1.1 version of the game.

The original version (also applies to FF4A US and Jap 1.0 versions and the WSC version) attempts to apply Reflect vs the magic defense of a character (you will notice that Reflect is less effective as Magic Evasion and its Multiplier goes up).

11
Gaming Discussion / FF4 - The Handicap "Challenge"
« on: November 08, 2012, 01:54:11 AM »
Although that Spoony Bard helps you out, the "challenge" that is the Magnetic Cave (or more recently renamed Lodestone Cavern) is one that's actually a lot more disappointing that difficult. Like many of the other FF series, these were somewhat designed to test your knowledge or at least improve your understanding of the game. It is what also builds many of those cliched self-imposed challenge restrictions...

With that said, a little history:
NES FF1 - None that I recall. IIRC, the PSP version added one more dungeon that drains HP per step... though I doubt that's actually going to hurt.
NES FF2/FF3 - Not too familiar with them to comment.
FF5 - Tower of Power and Magic was designed for having the rare split parties, which became more prevalent in FF6. It also caused some planning to be done when you build your characters...
FF6 - Tower of Fanatics easily is the most annoying place ever. Considering how much you can stack magic evasion together and accentuated the entire purpose of getting Espers in the first place, you could really just run the place with your magic heavy users (Terra, Celes, maybe even Relm and Gogo) or fight almost "nobody". Most disappointing aspect was that Lores were a form of magic that were forbidden, and not having all elementals represented properly in this trek like Wind (Merton/Meltdown was Fire+Wind, so it was limited) and Water (though Flood was added in FF6A to "fix" that error). Espers weren't really that useful a solution since they were single cast (of course, can be Mimiced, but that isn't entirely practical).
FF7 - The only thing that comes close IIRC was when Yuffie stole your materia and did her own trials. Outside of that, I don't recall anything offhand resembling a challenge.

Back to the original topic...

This challenge is really simple. You use shitty weapons, which generally affected Cecil and use shitty armor, which affects Cecil and Cid for the most part. Obviously, Yang and Tellah should be the star of the show... Yes and yet... no. You will soon learn to "optimize" your use of Tellah's pathetic 90MP through Osmose/Psych and find out that certain monsters are simply rich in MP than others like the Ogre and how Cure is simply the best healing spell outside of battle. Yang doesn't really change too much when you use him... unless you use bad claw combos...

Buying equipment for this trek sounds easy on paper as the classic gamer will just buy whatever junk is sold in the local shops. Unfortunately, the best thing you buy there is the GreatBow... everything else is a waste. It would've been nice to have collected RubyRings in advance, but the game spots you two of them in the castle treasure. You could have picked up three of them through Edward, Rydia's home secret passage, and Damcyan's basement. Then again, this equipment is only good for reducing damage from those annoying bats...

The real secret is to have acquired the good stuff from Baron and Mysidia. Baron's greatest contribution is providing the Karate Robe aka Kenpogi. As somewhat pricey as it is, it provides the greatest bit of protection through its naturally high evasion.
Remember the hat you bought for Tellah? It's nice to know that mage equipment is generally not heavy... so you have a nice choice between the Headband and whatever the hat is named at Mysidia. This is how you really do bargain basement shopping in FF4.  :tongue:

I hadn't mentioned yet what arrows you should be using. If you analyze what the elemental weaknesses the monsters in the cave have, you will come to the conclusion that those White/Holy arrows from Mysidia are the best out there, as only 2 of the monsters are not weak to Holy in that cavern. At least now Cecil can actually do something in the cave... (although, I liked FF4ET's Piggy Stick better...)

When equipped properly, the cave really isn't that hard...
However, I think the Tower of Zot is a harder test in the game than this... at higher levels, it is actually more difficult to heal from your wounds (having to consume more MP to heal proportionally higher HP growth for Yang and Cid). Tellah then becomes a great godsend.... kinda.

12
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / FF4A - Reflected Magic is Biased
« on: November 08, 2012, 12:48:40 AM »
Whenever you face two Evil/Wicked Masks, it is usually a fair assumption to make... you have a 50-50 chance of hitting either target when you bounce a single targeted spell off Reflect.
However, the reality is that this is not the case... which is a strange curiosity that started from the WSC port.

There is a very significant tendency for all reflected spells to hit the first monster in the first group.

A simple test consists of facing two Wicked Masks... allowing them to put Reflect status on the entire party and then casting a multi-targeted spell on all of the characters.
The normal distribution of damage should usually be pretty even, where both Wicked Masks should be taking 2/5 or 3/5 damage from split and recombined magics... occasionally having 1/5 and 4/5 damage and a semi-rare full damage to one Wicked Mask.
The problem is that there is some odd biases that cause the damage to shift primarily to the first monster on the field.
Single targeted magic has 2/3 or 3/4 chance to hit the first monster on the field... which has certain side effects and consequences.

Another way of testing this theory is through the CPU battle. Getting rid of the Defender helps... see what a spell like Holy or Flare is reflected onto the enemy... the chances that it hits the CPU is certainly more than 50%.

13
Gaming Discussion / FF4DS's Red Dragon - Trying To Understand
« on: November 04, 2012, 05:41:50 PM »
Someone please describe me at length of why this monster is generally mentioned as "broken" and overpowered.

Please provide info, such as stats, numbers (spell power or spell multiplier or both), and relevant info as to what people have considered as counters.

I've looked at some FAQs about the equipment, and it seems to me as if it isn't that hard to counter... (requires some grinding for certain drops/equipment as far as I can tell).

14
Gaming Discussion / FF4 - A "Cursed" Idea
« on: November 03, 2012, 12:21:44 AM »
This applies more towards the original SNES versions than later ports of the game. However, the fundamental problem is self evident...

The Cursed Ring had been a legend that evolved from tales of discontent or mystery.

For instance, it was rumored that it unlocked some hidden secret of Dark Knight Cecil.
Then again, it was also rumored that it did... literally nothing, outside of the poor stat loss.

The only thing "cursed" about this piece of armor... it did something, but it's actually putrid crap.

The sole purpose of the Cursed Ring is to simply upgrade "resistance" to absorption.
On paper, that sounds like a great idea, considering bosses and the like use a lot of elemental attacks to deliver damage.
However, this came at a measurable expense... crippling the character... both physically and magically.

In FF4, the amount of magic damage you take is simply knowing how powerful a spell is through the spell multiplier (monster's magic stat/4) vs the character/targets's magic evasion multiplier (a combination of Agility/32 + (Intelligence+Spirit/32) and the magic evasion stat. Simply put, Rydia is #1 in magic evasion, vs Yang is #1 in taking magic damage (especially with his special charging attack command).
Absorption relies on actually taking the most magic damage that you can, so crippling Agility, Intelligence, and Spirit accomplishes that... decreasing Strength and Stamina is superfluous. Although, losing strength is generally "fair compensation" for this benefit, but lowering Stamina is generally pointless.. since the armor accomplishes that by its lack of evasion. (Whatever, 7 points of defense is nothing to cry over).

The Cursed Ring relies on armor to take the benefits of this feature. This armor is limited to the elemental armor sets... Fire/Ice Shield and Armor.. the Diamond Armor sets, Protect Ring, Crystal Helm, Dragon Armor set, and FF4A's Red "Burning" Bard set and the Cat Hood (with honorable mentions to Vishnu Vest, Rainbow Robe, Caesar's Plate, Dragoon Plate, Robe of Lords).

On the surface, this would most benefit a fighter type character... since the Cursed Ring will simply cripple Tellah out of existence. most of the original game's elemental resistance resides on the Protect Ring, thus limiting elemental benefits to generally Cecil and Kain.

However... taking advantage of this in a general sense... is pretty... horrific.

Consider what monsters actually used elemental magic. There are two specific types of damage magic that are used...

1) Damage magic - Rubicante's Glare (Flame Dragon/Tornado) is the most notable elemental attack (Fire). This would usually be the most opportune time to use the ring, right?
Wrong. For as many characters that would make this a usable option (1 in 5 chance... 2 in 5 chance if you luckily get two of them), he will still end up obliterating the others with that spell just because he can. So if you spent all that time collecting elemental resistance... well, he's the only memorable choice.

Note that most monsters do NOT use such magic. Unless you are stupid enough to play with the Tricker monster, you will rarely find any regular monster or formation that uses strong elemental magic... and at best you would consider the Red Dragon... but that's an easy monster to beat the crap out of. Anyways, most monsters fall into the next category...

2) Damage based on target's HP + elemental - The first time such an attack is applied to you is from the Dark Dragon... yes, the other version of the Dark Elf. Of course, you didn't have resistance to Fire yet (and it looks like an ice attack too... kinda like the IcyBlaze attack). Then you eventually meet the IceBeast that attacks based on the monster's HP... and then the finally the FlameDog chest (containing the Fire Sword)  teaches you why equipping the Fire Armor early was a "totally horrible idea" (tm)... though that's generally a non-issue later. You would eventually encounter FlameDogs and Chimeras combos... which can potentially murder you while alone....

Then, you find out that the healing you gain from this... is pitiful. The algorithm that derives healing from damage spells uses the algo for targeted HP spells. It uses same fractional number that the HP-target spell to calculate damage. So, for the FlameDog's Fire, it's 5 (because it normally would take 1/5 of your HP if not resistant to Fire), and the Chimera's IcyBlaze is 4 (it would take 1/4 of your HP if not resistant to Ice). In sum, you get a pity healing.

It's actually worse when combined with the Adamant Armor.. despite negating the bad effects of the Cursed Ring, Immune takes precedence over Absorption.

I guess that's an improvement in FF4A (and probably WSC as well, in addition to the later ports). The healing done by point #2 is based on the monster's HP, which I guess is a plus, but that also means that hurting the monster also hurts your healing. Then again, ZeromusEG and the Brachioraidos fuck thus up badly (the Hero Shield being part of that problem) and now it's a complete and total clusterfuck (like, getting healed 9999 type of imbalance).

The Adamant Armor in FF4A suck far less.. since Absorption takes precedence over Immunity...

So, if you ask me now if the Fire Scarf in FF4:TAY is imbalanced... now you know why.

 :edit:
Forgot to mention Gold Hairband and Light Robe into the elemental armor mix.

15
Gaming Discussion / FF4 - The Failed Evolution of Rows
« on: November 01, 2012, 01:23:31 AM »
Subtitle: History of Squaresoft Port Failures

If anyone has read any of my FF4 specific threads about the "back row bit" which is aka "ignore row bit", then you should know where I'm going with this.

Background:
In the FF series, the row concept has been around for many iterations.
FF1 didn't really have them, but the order of your characters dictated the frequency of damage.
FF2-FF6 has them... I'm kinda unsure of FF7, but that's beyond the scope of this.

The general point of having a character in the back row is to allow them to take approximately half the damage they would normally absorb from the front row.
Usually this tradeoff would reduce the effectiveness of your offense, and relied on generally weaker weapons that tend to ignore row to dish decent damage.
Magic has always ignored rows (I'm sure there may be some exceptions to the rule, like FF6's added weapon magic).
In FF5, bows and whips were primarily geared for this (inherited from FF4 and prior) and FF6 had a small number of weapons in that category (Locke's Throwable Objects and many of Setzer's "Gambler" type weapons fall into that category).

In FF4 (possibly in some older FF, though not the first one), monsters also have rows.
It's specifically structured in that the backmost enemy is in the back row, thus requiring you do "plow" a hole or clear the front row of monsters to dish full damage to the monster in the back.
In the classic 3 Goblin + Swordrat scenario, you would need to clear probably 2 of the Goblins to make your way into the back row.
Otherwise, you will very likely trigger its nasty counterattack (though, using Kain to Jump onto the Swordrat is usually optimal).
*Insert screenshot here*

So, it's pretty logical and simple, assuming you can envision depth of the battlefield.
Fortunately, having the monster in the back row also reduces the physical damage it dealt to you... so if it were a really strong monster, it wouldn't be as threatening until you clear out the "bodyguards".

In FF5 and FF6, monster rows were removed... so you weren't restricted too much to attack enemies in the back of a formation... which kept things simple.

Unfortunately, simple was never developed...

So... what was wrong with the SNES versions...?

In the SNES versions, there is a generally beneficial bug that pretty much any character can take advantage of.
All you had to do was equip a back row compatible weapon, and suddenly, you would NEVER be penalized from attacking from the back row.

Considering that attacking from the back row reduced your hit rate aka accuracy by 50%...
And... attacking the back row of an enemy formation would also reduce your attack rate by 50%...
You would avoid the worst case scenario of having a cumulative effect of having 1/4 of your original accuracy!
Then again, there's a bug with Edge (and probably Yang) where the back row bit doesn't get set if the back row compatible weapon (boomerang) was put on the left hand.
Go figure on the coding.

The bug is beneficial... so what? Well, some of the weapons that were back row compatible, had a nasty side effect.
For instance, the Dwarf Axe NEVER induced critical hits.... same goes for Rydia's whips.

So... was this fixed in the WSC version???

The WSC version did a lot of work on redoing a lot of internal data. Naturally, bugs would occur. However, there's a ton of detrimental stuff that came out of it.

1) Targeting was messed up - For whatever reason, selecting the front-most target was not a guarantee.
The SNES version has zero problems addressing that issue. I guess someone had to futz with this.

2) Back row bit has zero meaning. Weapons that were normally designated to attack from the back row w/o problems completely suffered offensively.
Bows and Arrows were crippled by this, so the only capable archer was Rosa (due to the algorithms, Aim escaped some punishment).

Years later, there came to be a GBA port... that would solve the WSC problems right?

No. Many issues where inherited from the WSC port... but QA clearly didn't find the bugs the first time around.

FF4A Jap 1.0/US had only one notable change - the "removal" of back row for monsters.
It's OK I guess when that make the game closer to FF5+FF6, but, that doesn't resolve problem #2 from the WSC version.
Considering problem #1, you could argue that this issue was addressed... but that's not a real fix by modern standards.

A side effect of problem #1 of the WSC port manifested itself in this version. You could not target the new Master Flan monster.
In virtually every normal battle, you were able to target ANY monster on the field. Whether you could hit the monster was a different issue...
The Master Flan was some ninja exception to this rule. In order to actually target the monster, you could have to clear its "Flan barrier".
This wasn't very difficult though... but you could only imagine WTF they were thinking over there.

Fortunately, the back row weaponry issue was somewhat addressed in FF4A Jap 1.1/Euro version.
However, it's not a good fix. It made it so that ALL attacks from the back row did the same damage as the front row!
That is NOT A FIX. What was worse was that the Bow+Arrow did not benefit from this change... probably using a different code path.
Why oh why was this not bugtested properly???

Lucky for the Master Flan, you could target it in this version.
Great... one less neutered boss from a bug fix that technically shouldn't have been used in this manner in the first place!!!

I haven't played the PSP version yet... and I'll update this thread at some point.
I'll just say this... I await to see how you managed to fuck this up.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 »