Author Topic: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen  (Read 13137 times)

Foghart

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[FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« on: 2015-02-12 01:15:34 »
Hello guys! This is my first topic on this forum (amazing forum btw) and I've read some topics of SeeD Rebirth, Project Eden and some Mods for Final Fantasy VIII.
I've saw a member called Mcindus who shared some dlls about HP max cap 9.999 to 32k, damage cap and hard enemies: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=15354.0

Reading the topic came an idea on my head that I wanted to share with you guys and, if lucky, some programer can make a dll about this change!
Heres the idea:

In Final Fantasy 9, when you cast a 2nd or 3rd rank spell (like Fira or Firaga) the damage is huge compared to the 1st rank.
Fire = 100~300 damage
Fira = 600~1500 damage
Firaga = 2000~3000+ damage
Thats not "exactly" the damage those spells cause, but its around this much.
My point is... In Final Fantasy VIII those spells cause a frustrating amount of damage! I've fought against Sorceress Edea at the end of disc 1 in FF8 Steam Version, she casts Firaga/Blizzaga/Thundaga causing 300~400 damage..... I was like: "Really?"
If you put STR around 200~255 you forget about casting Magics to attack, you use just to Junction Status and period. What about Rinoa's Limit Break "Angel Wings"? What about Selphie's Limit Break to cast Magics? What about casting triple Thundagas that causes just 2000 damage with MAG around 200?

So, why the damage calc can't cause "more damage"? Of course, even if magics causes more damage than usual, Squall's Renzokuken + Finishers, Zell's Duel and Irvine's Shot will be used as always, causing high physical damage. But with this Mod, we can do a Black Mage Rinoa, a White Mage Selphie and a Blue Mage Quistis if we want, because right now it seens pointless to equip MAG+40% and others in the end of the game.

What you guys say? It would be good to have the spells to cause more damage and be more valuable?

EDIT:

A friend of mine said: "But in disc1 dealing 400 damage is too much!"
Son, if this is possible to do in Hext, it would be a hardcore magic dll of course, good for players that knows well how to use Junction System and put HP-J up to 3000+ in disc1. However the enemies gotta have a little more HP too so the game won't be so broken I guess...
« Last Edit: 2015-02-12 07:09:53 by Foghart »

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #1 on: 2015-02-20 14:09:41 »
Of course it'd be great for Magic to be more viable; FF8 (and this holds true for a lot of other FF games) tends to lean more and more heavily toward physical attacks toward the end of the game. The only real exception is Meltdown (for Vit0) followed by a volley of Triple Meteor but even that won't out-damage a Renzokuken or similar and those can be gotten on tap thanks to Aura or some HP manipulation.

The way it should work is spells need to always deal more damage than a physical attack in 90% of the cases. They have a limited stock, and the animation of their cast costs time. By comparison, physical attacks are quick to use and 'free' so if they deal equivalent damage then Magic becomes effectively useless aside from maybe a little extra versatility when going through areas with enemies weak to various elements (which can be gotten around if you're fighting, say, a boss and know it's elemental weakness beforehand to equip it to your weapon).

As far as damage scaling goes, an attack should rarely, if ever, be reaching the damage cap. If the formulas/base power can't be adjusted to make 9999 work then raising the cap is another alternative but it becomes harder to balance a game when the numbers themselves get higher so it's not an ideal solution (but it can be made to work).

A friend of mine said: "But in disc1 dealing 400 damage is too much!"
Son, if this is possible to do in Hext, it would be a hardcore magic dll of course, good for players that knows well how to use Junction System and put HP-J up to 3000+ in disc1. However the enemies gotta have a little more HP too so the game won't be so broken I guess...

That's a dangerous trap to fall into, because it makes the HP-J to 3000, etc. necessary to deal with enemies that have been specced to specifically deal with a player party using these. It'd be better if Junctions could be reined in and made less potent instead, that way early-game enemies don't need to be made super-powered to keep up. Way that would work out is that the player would have to junction certain spells to certain stats in order to be viable which takes a lot of the fun out of experimenting with different set-ups and builds.

Mcindus

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #2 on: 2015-02-25 00:32:44 »
That's a dangerous trap to fall into, because it makes the HP-J to 3000, etc. necessary to deal with enemies that have been specced to specifically deal with a player party using these. It'd be better if Junctions could be reined in and made less potent instead, that way early-game enemies don't need to be made super-powered to keep up. Way that would work out is that the player would have to junction certain spells to certain stats in order to be viable which takes a lot of the fun out of experimenting with different set-ups and builds.

Would it be possible to do something like cut the Junction status bonus by 1/2? or even 1/4?  If this effected ALL Junctioned stats aside from elemental atk/dmg, then the game would have a new 'feel'.  I think that when the game designers brought the game to market, test-players were like '??junction, wtf??' so they tried to fix the issue and thought 'players will never just sit there and junction for a half hour'.  but lo and behold... as we have learned since Video Games began... and 100 esuna's later, we're OP.  And now we're OP and frustrated that the game is easy.

volvania

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #3 on: 2015-06-02 22:37:25 »
you can change the magic demage names affect and junction strength in kernel.bin when you open the kernel in hex and put byte in prefrence at 132

you will see first line around offset 0x210 you scroll to the right you will see numbers like 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 this indicate the end of the magic after it start the second magic from there you can locate the what you like to change i cant remember well but i think first 4 bytes are for name second for damage and how many character it hit and after will be the stat then junction do some trial and error change the numbers and see what happen check other magics for guidnace for example look at bio and see how status affect number is also the magic order is as hyne save editor open it and go to magics and you will see fire fira firga etc,

Kefka

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #4 on: 2015-06-03 09:32:34 »
I pretty much agree with everything my previous speakers have said. FF8 is a great game with a very innovative ability system, but unfortunately it lacks one thing: balance. And this has 2 reasons:

First, as you've already said Foghart, attack magic is really weak in general, giving the player little reason to cast it. In most other FFs, the high level elemental magics usually dealt about 2-3 times more damage than physical attacks, but in this game, it's the other way round. Even if your strength and magic stats are about the same, your physical attacks usually end up dealing 5 times more damage than let's say Firaga, or even Holy and Flare.

Second (and this is the really game-breaking imbalance), the junction bonus of spells is just plain ridiculous, and I'm not even talking about Ultima or Triple and the likes of that. Even spells like Regen, Quake and Tornado, which can be gotten much sooner, provide you with such a huge boost to your stats that it removes any challenge from the game.

In my opinion, for a successful rebalance of the game one would need to:

1.) Increase the damage output of attack magic (for both player characters and enemies)

2.) Drastically reduce the junction boosts of spells, at least by 1/2, like Mcindus said, but probably by even more. Right now, it's not even possible to objectively judge the game's difficulty because it can vary so greatly depending on your junctions. Some players who didn't understand the junction system and therefore relied on summons throughout the game complain that it's way too hard (they usually get stuck at Adel), but those that know the system and where to get the best magic early on claim that it's way too easy. I've read both opinions countless times. A reduction of the juction bonus, perhaps coupled with a higher natural stat growth at level-ups, would narrow down the possible player strength and create a universal difficulty level. How high the difficulty should be is up to anyone's personal preference, but my main point is: the difference between "no junctions" and "the very best junctions" shouldn't be that extreme. Junction effects should still be noticeable of course, but they shouldn't turn you into walking gods (which they do in vanilla FF8).

@volvania: Now that's an interesting find, I'll definitely look into it, thank you for that.

meesbaker

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #5 on: 2015-06-03 09:51:18 »
I actually dont believe that junction effects are too strong. The only thing that needs to be removed from ff8 is card refinement ability and boss enemies have to become much stronger. Also the speed+ abilities must be replaced to make 140 speed unreachable without ridiculous amounts of farming.

Thats really all Id do to the game. Maybe beatin cc king should be much harder, too and have a special reward like a set of Apocs or so to give triple triad still a sense. But really the only thing that makes junctions op is the fact that you can get your hands on high level magic without being a high level causing enemies to be high level as well.

My 8 cents ;)

Goth

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #6 on: 2015-08-21 19:34:17 »
Am I the only one who thinks the main problem for people that know any FF very well is AI? I would love to have more intelligent enemies, and I remember there was a topic and a "demo" about this, with Elvoret casting Zombie and things like that. THAT is what would add an entire new dimension and feeling to the gameplay. That project probably went vaporware but someone should really resume that idea, it's the most interesting modification to the gameplay.
Just imagine bosses casting Curaga to themselves at the right time, throwing Dispel at you, playing around with Reflex, finding out what element you're weak to, etc.

I love the fact that you can become very powerful with the right Junction, so why not just leave it as it is and change the enemies. Making Junction less powerful would feel like playing chained.

The other thing (which IIRC is harder to do) is making enemies to have fixed stats, so a no-level-game is not a joke and (most importantly) is not the easiest way to beat the game.
Anyway, I agree on the magic thing too. So for me it is:

* enemies AI
* enemies fixed levels/stats
* powerful magics (so they have a direct use)

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #7 on: 2015-08-21 20:14:21 »
AI is very important when making a rebalance if the original is lacking in some way, but sophisticated AI can only come to the fore if the player strength doesn't vastly exceed the enemy's strength. But then the reverse is true; if you have bad/simple AI combined with heavy stats then the fight won't be very interesting. They're very closely linked together to making a fight good; we have a stats editor at the moment, but I don't think we have an AI editor yet.

I agree with getting rid of the Level synch thing. If not that, then at least making it so that every enemy including bosses can reach Lv.100 along with the party.

I actually dont believe that junction effects are too strong. The only thing that needs to be removed from ff8 is card refinement ability and boss enemies have to become much stronger. Also the speed+ abilities must be replaced to make 140 speed unreachable without ridiculous amounts of farming.

Thats really all Id do to the game. Maybe beatin cc king should be much harder, too and have a special reward like a set of Apocs or so to give triple triad still a sense. But really the only thing that makes junctions op is the fact that you can get your hands on high level magic without being a high level causing enemies to be high level as well.

My 8 cents ;)

I dunno, if you were balancing enemies for a curve and the player was able to jump stats up by 100-150 then it'd be very difficult for the modder to predict what they're coming in with, unless you spec the boss to handle a 'worst case scenario' in which case that'd force the player to max themselves out which is what you'd want to avoid if possible (if there's a heavy grind involved with it). I did a run with Card banned but I was able to pick up a lot of the strongest magic from certain enemies and Draw Points without it; I didn't even need to go to the Islands Closest To Heaven/Hell. The Magic that enemies have still needs to be looked at.

I think as far as Card Refinement goes, we'd ideally want to be able to edit what you got from it. Limiting the high rank cards that can be farmed back from the CC Queen needs to be either reined in with lesser/different drops or the cards themselves moved deeper into the game to different NPCs (although I think she's scripted to get every card you've missed/refined when she appears on Disc 4). I imagine the refinement items are .EXE specific, but the NPCs holding the cards might be in the flevel which has an editor.

Although saying that, making Triad completely optional and not affect gameplay at all might not be too bad. FF9's was like that, I think.

Kefka

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #8 on: 2015-08-24 11:21:08 »
The other thing (which IIRC is harder to do) is making enemies to have fixed stats, so a no-level-game is not a joke and (most importantly) is not the easiest way to beat the game.

This is actually easy to do now, thanks to JeMaCheHi's editor, Cactilio. There you can define for every single encounter in the game whether the enemies in that encounter should have fixed levels, max levels (like storyline bosses), or scale all the way to level 100 along with you.

Anyway, I agree on the enemy AI script part, this is something I'd definitely like to improve as well (maybe we will see it in the next version of Ifrit, hopefully?). To make the game overall more challenging, AI editing is imo better than simple stat boosts, it could surely make for some very interesting fights.

I still believe, however, that the junction system needs a rebalance. The stat boosts you get even from some of the more powerful magics is just insane when compared to other FFs. For comparison, in FF5 or FF9, abilities allowed you to boost your HP by 20% or 30% at max, and even in FF7 a maxed out HP Plus materia only increased HP by 50%.

Here, on the other hand, spells like Regen, Quake or Tornado boost your HP by 2500-3000, and all of them are available in late disc 2 even without card refinement. And those aren't even the strongest, as Triple and Full-Life both become available as soon as you reach the Centra Ruins (and Full-Life boosts HP by 4800!). By that time, my average party usually has around 1500 HP as a base, so that boost would equal a 150-300% increase!

The same goes for the other stats. If you have a base strength of about 50, and a spell like Triple boosts it by 70, then that's an increase of 130%. No other FF game has abilities which boost your stats by such a huge amount.

Unless something is done about that, it will be nigh impossible to create a stable difficulty level for the game, as it can be both easy-cheasy or ultra-hard, depending on what junctions you decide to use. I often find myself avoiding the best spells for junctions and choosing mediocre junctions on purpose, just to have a little bit of challenge left in the game.

JeMaCheHi

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #9 on: 2015-08-24 12:23:49 »
Am I the only one who thinks the main problem for people that know any FF very well is AI? I would love to have more intelligent enemies, and I remember there was a topic and a "demo" about this, with Elvoret casting Zombie and things like that. THAT is what would add an entire new dimension and feeling to the gameplay. That project probably went vaporware but someone should really resume that idea, it's the most interesting modification to the gameplay.
Just imagine bosses casting Curaga to themselves at the right time, throwing Dispel at you, playing around with Reflex, finding out what element you're weak to, etc.

I love the fact that you can become very powerful with the right Junction, so why not just leave it as it is and change the enemies. Making Junction less powerful would feel like playing chained.

The other thing (which IIRC is harder to do) is making enemies to have fixed stats, so a no-level-game is not a joke and (most importantly) is not the easiest way to beat the game.
Anyway, I agree on the magic thing too. So for me it is:

* enemies AI
* enemies fixed levels/stats
* powerful magics (so they have a direct use)


To change enemies AI is still unreachable. I studied it several times, and I already have a bunch of opcodes known, and lots of scripts extracted, formated, and translated to pseudocode, but still, there's a lot unknown about it. Maybe when everything is propperly researched we could do an AI editor similar to Deling's field script editor.

Foghart

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #10 on: 2016-02-15 02:28:39 »
I still believe, however, that the junction system needs a rebalance. The stat boosts you get even from some of the more powerful magics is just insane when compared to other FFs. For comparison, in FF5 or FF9, abilities allowed you to boost your HP by 20% or 30% at max, and even in FF7 a maxed out HP Plus materia only increased HP by 50%.

Here, on the other hand, spells like Regen, Quake or Tornado boost your HP by 2500-3000, and all of them are available in late disc 2 even without card refinement. And those aren't even the strongest, as Triple and Full-Life both become available as soon as you reach the Centra Ruins (and Full-Life boosts HP by 4800!). By that time, my average party usually has around 1500 HP as a base, so that boost would equal a 150-300% increase!

The same goes for the other stats. If you have a base strength of about 50, and a spell like Triple boosts it by 70, then that's an increase of 130%. No other FF game has abilities which boost your stats by such a huge amount.

Unless something is done about that, it will be nigh impossible to create a stable difficulty level for the game, as it can be both easy-cheasy or ultra-hard, depending on what junctions you decide to use. I often find myself avoiding the best spells for junctions and choosing mediocre junctions on purpose, just to have a little bit of challenge left in the game.

I've been reading all those posts and I couldn't agree more with you Kefka. I was playing FF8 some hours ago and noticed what you just said:
I was farming some items to upgrade everyone's weapons, then my Bahamut just learned STR+60%... Guys, its FREE STR+60!! I know, I know, I had to win Bahamut, learn his abilities and stuff to get this STR bonus but c'mon! It's too much to swallow! It would be fine if a player had done a build like "STR+20%, STR+30%, HP+20%, Counter" for example, but HP+80%??

If someone is doing a dll to rebalance some of those bonuses it might (with some proper testing of course) rebalance the game in a large way.

volvania

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #11 on: 2016-03-06 16:14:47 »
abilities from the Gf can be altered easily in kernel.bin look in the forum and you will see some guidance i can help you but not in the mood atm unless you really want to, plus weapon ingredients can be altered to make farming abit harder and worth it also the weapons stats everything can be altered to make the game great but sadly the only problem is the stupid AI soo easy it hurts....and soo generic  some guys here tried to figure how to change the ai in c0m.dat files but not much info is shared the only person shared his finding is randomNPC and he is offline for years now

Callisto

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #12 on: 2016-03-12 19:00:14 »
Volvania, could you please explain where to change weapon ingredients? The idea sounds tempting. I am familiar with basic hex editing and item IDs, so a short explanation should do.

Edit: Never mind. Found the relevant data in mwepon.bin.
« Last Edit: 2016-03-15 19:59:48 by Callisto »

JeMaCheHi

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #13 on: 2016-03-13 12:23:43 »
abilities from the Gf can be altered easily in kernel.bin look in the forum and you will see some guidance i can help you but not in the mood atm unless you really want to, plus weapon ingredients can be altered to make farming abit harder and worth it also the weapons stats everything can be altered to make the game great but sadly the only problem is the stupid AI soo easy it hurts....and soo generic  some guys here tried to figure how to change the ai in c0m.dat files but not much info is shared the only person shared his finding is randomNPC and he is offline for years now

I'm currently working on an enemy AI ripper so you guys can study the AI scripts in depth. I've been working on it for a long time, actually, because I'm pretty busy on RL and it goes really slow (it's been stopped for about 3 or 4 months...), but I could get a very basic, alpha release in a few weeks so you can start studying the AI.

volvania

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #14 on: 2016-04-03 01:20:43 »
this is the only thing i am waiting for logging to qhimm for the past few years searching everyday for someone might post explanation about the ai man all my work is stopped just because of this i have downloaded everything for ff8 but i wont play unless i change the ai it self changing everything except the ai doesn't feel like a new experience to me to be honest .



im looking forward for the release man

JWP

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Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« Reply #15 on: 2016-04-28 13:52:26 »
I'm currently also looking in the the AI code - I'm slowly working on reversing the function located at 0x00487DF0 in the Steam version - it's essentially what handles every opcode.
See this thread:
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=16838.msg240173#msg240173

JeMaCheHi, is there a list of known opcodes somewhere? - it'd help with the reversing process :).