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Pinkpuff

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #30 on: November 06, 2016, 06:02:54 PM »
Quote from: Swordmaster on November 05, 2016, 05:25:43 PM
Pinkpuff, what you did to Edward in UC was genius.  I'm all for Edward learning bard songs by level.  But as for all the item stuff, it seems like it would be more interesting to have Cid be the "chemist".  He's so... plain in vanilla.  Even in UC he was a bit plain.  It doesn't seem easy to fix Cid.  Though I think Cid should be able to use whatever weapon will have "avenger sword" status, due to him being the closest character to a "berserker".  Cid:  the berserker chemist machinist?  lol.  Just some thoughts.

Oh, and one more thing.  How viable would it be to make a "mime"?  Maybe replacing FuSoYa?

How about this: Avenger replaced with "Demon Axe". It's a dark-elemental axe that's demonically possessed such that the wielder goes into a fury and constantly attacks. Since it's a dark/demon weapon, DK can use it, and since it's an axe, Cid can use it. Two birds with one stone!

Character data (esp. levelups) are at a premium so I think the standard 12 will be all we can muster. Also having more than that will mess up my really cool character selection intro map since you can only have 12 NPCs. That said, I think someone was working on creating a Mimic command at one point and met with some degree of success IIRC.

With regard to the randomization strategy, I fully intend to make the dungeons look more "natural" in a graphics sense, but not necessarily "familiar" in the sense of composing them of pieces of maps from the original. As far as branching goes, that sounds complicated and I will probably get something linear working first before I attempt anything like that. There will of course be "rest stops", shops, save points, fat chocobos, inns and the like, but I think resource management will be much more of a thing in this than it ever was in vanilla or probably any FF game.

I like the idea of having an option with regards to the character setup. We can have something like:
  • Pure Vanilla: All characters and equipment are completely unchanged; exactly as they were in the original game. No extra equipment, improved abilities, etc. You can take Edge and just crush things early on or you can take DK and get splatted in the late game.

  • Vanilla Inspired: (Default option) The characters and equipment stay more or less true to their original form, but with some slight tweaks for the sake of either making them more evenly viable from beginning to end, or to differentiate them a little more from very similar characters (e.g. Rydia/Palom, Rosa/Porom).

  • Unprecedented Crisis: The characters and equipment are more or less lifted wholesale from Unprecedented Crisis.
That way each individual can tailor it to suit their tastes  :childish:

Another thing that might be worth including as an optional feature: Many roguelikes have perma-death; you can save your progress, but if you die, you can't reload your save. Would that be a difficult thing to program? When you "load game" I guess it would somehow remember which save slot you loaded, then if your party gets wiped out, it also wipes out that save slot?
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Grimoire LD

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #31 on: November 06, 2016, 09:49:11 PM »
Quote from: chillyfeez on November 06, 2016, 12:27:29 PM
The altered ASM shouldn't be much of an imposition, it's simply tweaks to background stuff you likely wouldn't have touched and the Slave routine, which you had to know was getting changed.
As for the used free space, those five-byte spaces are taken from isolated little spots of what is normally six bytes of FFs so you won't miss those. Then the larger chunk of space is a relatively small block that exists after the world map tile properties.
I tried to be minimally invasive, but if you need I can move some stuff to a more convenient location.

Oh no, you misunderstand Chillyfeez. I wasn't trying to disparage your use of space, I was just surprised at how far reaching it was, it shows a better grasp of things than myself in many cases. I try to keep matters mostly contained and rarely try to change functions outside to make any hack work more efficiently. It was a point of praise, not criticizing, hehe.

Quote from: Pinkpuff on November 06, 2016, 06:02:54 PM
How about this: Avenger replaced with "Demon Axe". It's a dark-elemental axe that's demonically possessed such that the wielder goes into a fury and constantly attacks. Since it's a dark/demon weapon, DK can use it, and since it's an axe, Cid can use it. Two birds with one stone!

Character data (esp. levelups) are at a premium so I think the standard 12 will be all we can muster. Also having more than that will mess up my really cool character selection intro map since you can only have 12 NPCs. That said, I think someone was working on creating a Mimic command at one point and met with some degree of success IIRC.

With regard to the randomization strategy, I fully intend to make the dungeons look more "natural" in a graphics sense, but not necessarily "familiar" in the sense of composing them of pieces of maps from the original. As far as branching goes, that sounds complicated and I will probably get something linear working first before I attempt anything like that. There will of course be "rest stops", shops, save points, fat chocobos, inns and the like, but I think resource management will be much more of a thing in this than it ever was in vanilla or probably any FF game.

I like the idea of having an option with regards to the character setup. We can have something like:
  • Pure Vanilla: All characters and equipment are completely unchanged; exactly as they were in the original game. No extra equipment, improved abilities, etc. You can take Edge and just crush things early on or you can take DK and get splatted in the late game.

  • Vanilla Inspired: (Default option) The characters and equipment stay more or less true to their original form, but with some slight tweaks for the sake of either making them more evenly viable from beginning to end, or to differentiate them a little more from very similar characters (e.g. Rydia/Palom, Rosa/Porom).

  • Unprecedented Crisis: The characters and equipment are more or less lifted wholesale from Unprecedented Crisis.
That way each individual can tailor it to suit their tastes  :childish:

Another thing that might be worth including as an optional feature: Many roguelikes have perma-death; you can save your progress, but if you die, you can't reload your save. Would that be a difficult thing to program? When you "load game" I guess it would somehow remember which save slot you loaded, then if your party gets wiped out, it also wipes out that save slot?

I think those ideas are the best way to go PinkPuff, Demon Axe as the Berserking Weapon and the choices you listed are optimal (Not to mention it fits thematically with the Demon set of Armor). Chillyfeez completed a Mimic command and I think it worked well.

Hmm, wiping the save file on defeat... it shouldn't be all that difficult really. It's basically a glorified massive null which is as simple as LDA 00, STA (by X) 0x1700, Add 1 to X, check if X is 200, if not, branch back and null again. Just need to find the "game over" code, which shouldn't be too tricky considering a number of easily seen events happen at that time.

Now let's look at some ideas for Twincasting...

The Golbez/FuSoYa checks are completely superfluous in this current bit of planning, did you want anything done with those checks as well? I think it might be a good idea to hear concretely what you want done with Twincast PinkPuff since there are a lot of directions it can go.
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Pinkpuff

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #32 on: November 07, 2016, 04:30:36 AM »
Twincast, in an ideal world, I'd like to pretty much be comet except use the new "Level-based damage" routine or else maybe use caster's max HP (100% of it)? It should only work with Palom and Porom and should be disabled if the other twin isn't present. If possible, it should always use only Palom's stats no matter where he is in the setup.

Anyway, here's a preview of how I'm doing the character selection. Let me know what you guys think!  :childish:
(The patch is for 1.1 UN-headered)

http://www.timecave.net/ff4roguelikeifyer/FF4RL%20Base.ips

 :edit: Don't actually run the roguelikeifyer on this version of the patch. It will mess everything up.

 :edit: I just thought of a problem with the "clear the save file" idea. If you saved the same game in multiple files, you can get around it. Hm, I'll have to think more about it. Thanks anyways though ^_^
« Last Edit: November 07, 2016, 04:55:12 AM by Pinkpuff »
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Grimoire LD

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #33 on: November 07, 2016, 09:30:29 AM »
Quote from: Pinkpuff on November 07, 2016, 04:30:36 AM
Twincast, in an ideal world, I'd like to pretty much be comet except use the new "Level-based damage" routine or else maybe use caster's max HP (100% of it)? It should only work with Palom and Porom and should be disabled if the other twin isn't present. If possible, it should always use only Palom's stats no matter where he is in the setup.

Yes, that seems a bit tricky. I could never figure out the "Inferior Twin" issue myself. I think there's an old patch out there somewhere which disables Twin if Palom/Porom are not present. There are various Twincast hacks around, I made a couple myself that depending on the Superior Twin, a different spell is used, and the way it is designed easily allows for four spell possibilities with one of them revolving around a special conditional beyond chance.

Quote
Anyway, here's a preview of how I'm doing the character selection. Let me know what you guys think!  :childish:
(The patch is for 1.1 UN-headered)

http://www.timecave.net/ff4roguelikeifyer/FF4RL%20Base.ips

 :edit: Don't actually run the roguelikeifyer on this version of the patch. It will mess everything up.

 :edit: I just thought of a problem with the "clear the save file" idea. If you saved the same game in multiple files, you can get around it. Hm, I'll have to think more about it. Thanks anyways though ^_^

Nice bit of warning and explanation of the various functions. I also love FuSoYa as "God the Creator", it's fitting.

Palom/Porom - I like how their explanatory text is very similar to one another and good display of their abilities.

Yang - The mention of "boosting his physical defense" with Gird is interesting. Did you want anything more for Gird other than just a Protect Spell on self? Or did you already boost the power of Protect to make it worth using?

Edge - Everything accounted for.

Cid - Oh, nice detailed explanations about his planned new functions.

Edward - Haha; "He won't hide automatically". A crucial thing to tell players indeed, also great use of 'spoony' and nice description of the new Salve.

Tellah - Good description, makes the player immediately aware of Tellah's new role.

Kain - Fine explanation

Rosa - A nice change of role for Rosa and makes her distinct from Porom.

Rydia - Effect spells over direct damage... what does that imply in Black Magic? Pig, Toad, Venom, Stone, Stop, Drain, Psych, Weak, Fatal... alright that's a pretty good amount.

Paladin/Dark Knight - Another good use of juxtaposition. All around I really like this room.

And walking into the mirror of the back of the room sends me into the trees in the Village of Mist, heh. All in all it looks very promising, my only worry now comes with people picking characters, stripping them of their gear, and starting the character choice anew. Maybe start everyone with nothing, give the player 1000/2000 Gil and after the first choosing room, a second with a predesigned shop/s to get started?

The save file clearing isn't too difficult either. Instead of clearing 1024 bytes (I was wrong with the conversion before) you would clear 4096 Bytes to clear out all of the save data.

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Pinkpuff

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #34 on: November 07, 2016, 09:53:13 AM »
What would you say is a good value for Protect that would make Gird useful throughout the game? I didn't have anything else in mind for it specifically but I'm certainly open to ideas.

Can we hijack an unused script command or visual effect and make a "empty player's entire inventory" action?
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Grimoire LD

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #35 on: November 07, 2016, 10:37:00 AM »
...Technically speaking without normal events 90% of those Visual Effects now go unused, haha. Sure, it shouldn't be too difficult to build a clearing routine for items out of now unused Visual Effect code.

 I can make a unique routine for Protect that takes Vitality/8 = Amount to increase defense, it encourages some Vitality equipment on the White Magic Users, but would see its greatest use on Yang for Gird as his Vitality increases dramatically and by Level 40 without equipment he has around 46 Vitality.  Which would be an increase of +5 each time it's used.

Rosa by that same Level has 24 or so, which is the basic +3 it normally is but will only get better as she levels up.
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Pinkpuff

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #36 on: November 07, 2016, 10:57:14 AM »
I love it! I guess Paladin will have a fantastic Protect power as well which makes sense.
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Bahamut ZERO

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #37 on: November 07, 2016, 04:55:42 PM »
Quote
:edit: I just thought of a problem with the "clear the save file" idea. If you saved the same game in multiple files, you can get around it. Hm, I'll have to think more about it. Thanks anyways though ^_^

Hmm, perhaps there's a way of having the game autosave at different intervals? I figure that way there'd be no reason to use the "Save" menu, and a player couldn't cheat by having multiples of the same save (outside of save states of course haha).
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Swordmaster

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #38 on: November 07, 2016, 09:19:47 PM »
Quote from: Pinkpuff on November 07, 2016, 04:30:36 AM
Twincast, in an ideal world, I'd like to pretty much be comet except use the new "Level-based damage" routine or else maybe use caster's max HP (100% of it)? It should only work with Palom and Porom and should be disabled if the other twin isn't present. If possible, it should always use only Palom's stats no matter where he is in the setup.

Is it not possible to base Twincast on level only?  It would solve Porom's low Int. issue.  Then it wouldn't matter who's stats were used.  Unless one of the twins is a few levels short of the other.

Quote from: Grimoire LD on November 07, 2016, 09:30:29 AM
Yes, that seems a bit tricky. I could never figure out the "Inferior Twin" issue myself. I think there's an old patch out there somewhere which disables Twin if Palom/Porom are not present. There are various Twincast hacks around, I made a couple myself that depending on the Superior Twin, a different spell is used, and the way it is designed easily allows for four spell possibilities with one of them revolving around a special conditional beyond chance.

Ok, this idea is way better than mine.  I love it.  One more thing regarding the twins:  I like what was done to Porom's "Cry"/"Fake Tears" in the PSP version.

I'm not at all sure if this is possible or not, but I think it would be awesome if there was an option to start all characters with only Fight and Item (maybe even just Fight, or... a random command even), and have commands in treasure chests (or maybe random NPCs that teach a random command to one character... or a random character).  I like this even more than a "mime" class.  But... spells will probably have to be randomized and scattered as well.  Hmm....

By the way, none of these are actual requests, I'm just tossing ideas out there.  I'm enjoying this discussion.  I love this programming-clusterf**k of a game.  lol
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Pinkpuff

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #39 on: November 08, 2016, 06:44:03 AM »
I think having the new level based damage routine look at level only for the stats is probably the most straightforward solution.

How about we can add yet another option for the character and equipment setup:

Randomized: Character abilities and equip skills are shuffled up and dealt out at random
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Grimoire LD

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #40 on: November 08, 2016, 10:01:44 PM »
That can be done, yes. I'm just worried about checks and balances on what equipment they come with and if they will even be able naturally re-equip the item.
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Swordmaster

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #41 on: November 08, 2016, 10:51:20 PM »
Quote from: Grimoire LD on November 08, 2016, 10:01:44 PM
That can be done, yes. I'm just worried about checks and balances on what equipment they come with and if they will even be able naturally re-equip the item.

My vote would be to start everyone completely unequipped, as in Lufia II's Ancient Cave.  Or if they must have something, give them a stick and basic clothes (Wooden Staff and Cloth Robe?).  lol.  Of course make it so everyone can use those.  As far as equipability, couldn't this be randomized as well?  Using the new hypothetical Randomized option, of course.  Just tossing around a couple more pennies.   :cycle:
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Pinkpuff

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #42 on: November 09, 2016, 04:05:11 AM »
What about this:

In the "Randomized characters" option, first it randomizes abilities, then gives anyone with an equipment-reliant ability the appropriate equip skill(s), then randomizes the rest, making sure each character has a certain minimum (they should at least be able to equip something in each slot except for maybe left hand), and then once equip skills have been determined, each character's starting equipment is determined by picking a random equip skill they have for each equip slot and giving them the lowest item of that type in that slot.
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Grimoire LD

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #43 on: November 09, 2016, 04:33:43 AM »
I think PinkPuff has the right decision on this. Lufia II allowed you to get armor of varying quality early on in the dungeons where as FFIV has a greater emphasis on equipment (save weapons, of course).
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thepatirckinator

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Re: FF4 Roguelikeifyer (basic map randomization working)
« Reply #44 on: November 09, 2016, 07:18:33 AM »
 :hmm:Okay!
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