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Final Fantasy 8 => Gameplay => Releases => Topic started by: Sega Chief on 2019-02-21 22:00:30

Title: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-02-21 22:00:30
[New Threat Mod v0.3]*

Download (https://mega.nz/#!n50kEABT!0RUVBvdbL8kuypePk8SHta7GrrCcwleXvUn5VK-hBZw)

Donations (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=4NQDGBN7KYLLW)

*Note: This mod is currently still in beta and only Disc 1 has been released; consider everything you see a WIP and keep an eye out for balancing issues or bugs.


[Feature List]
Spoiler: show

[Junctions]
Stock no longer influences the % of the stat boost given by a spell; 1 stock of a spell acts in the same way as 100 stock, giving 100% of the intended stat boost. This allows players to freely make use of their Magic inventory and allows for setting up for more of a resource management system without sabotaging the player character's stats.

The other key change is that spells no longer have a 'best' stat to be junctioned to. Instead, spells have a hierarchy where spells will give higher/lower stat gains than each other. An example is given below:
Scan: +4
Fire: +6
Blizzard: +8
Thunder: +10
Cure: +11 or +200HP

These spells can only be equipped to the primary attributes (Strength, Vitality, Magic, or Spirit). This means you have to decide which stat is going to get the 'best' available stat boost, and which stats are going to get the weaker spells. Placing Thunder on Strength and Blizzard on Vitality will let you hit harder and take more damage, but it leaves your Magic/Spirit stat with Fire and Scan both of which give lower stat gains.

Restorative spells are different in that they generally provide a hefty stat boost, but are also the only spells that can be junctioned to raise MaxHP. This means you can sacrifice a MaxHP boost for an additional boost to your primary attributes. Status magic like Blind, Protect, etc. function in a similar way but are reserved for the secondary stats such as Hit, Evasion, Speed, and Luck.

As you progress through the game, you'll gain access to stronger spells with better stat boosts and shuffle out your older junctioned spells (Scan will typically be the first to go as it provides the lowest boost of all the primary-attribute spells). The difference between spells starts small at +2, but at higher tiers will grow to +4 and +8 difference, making your junction choices more significant.


[Draw]
This has been changed slightly in that a successful Draw will always give at least 9 stock of a spell, and has no upper limit (up to 100 can be drawn, assuming Magic stat is high enough and spell resistance is low). However, spell acquisition is more heavily focused on Refine/Drops/Field Draws than in-battle Draws; the goal is to make in-battle Draws more of a convenience for restocking basic elemental/curative magic, and less of a time-sink.

It should also be noted that GFs no longer need Draw to be acquired in-battle. The GF will be given to the player following the end of the battle, which will allow the Command menu slot to be freed up for other commands like Item, etc.

Draw Points have also been changed; they now offer a choice of two different spells and once a selection is made this spell is 'locked' into the Draw Point. Most Draw Points are also one-draw only and they are to provide useful spells earlier than they might be freely available or to top up useful magic such as Protect and Shell. It pays to think ahead when selecting what spell to Draw.


[Refining]
The required materials and results for Refine abilities have been adjusted. An effort has been made to achieve a sense of balance and eliminate exploits like infinite Gil, but this part of the mod should be considered a Work In Progress; adjustments will likely be made based on feedback. Some of the refines may be too powerful, others may not be worthwhile.


[Limit Breaks]
Limits have had the RNG removed from their check, meaning that milling turns will no longer have an effect. If a Limit does not proc when the character's ATB gauge fills, it means they cannot get a Limit until the battle conditions change (HP is lost, status is inflicted). This works both ways, and means that if a Limit does proc it will be available even if you swap control to another character and back again.

The Limit commands themselves, however, have not been made harder to proc. Instead, they're much more common. In mods where enemy damage is higher, Limits are riskier to use as they often require critical HP to proc and the Aura effect is very rare in this mod. By having Limits proc at around the 50% HP mark (varies by character and other conditions such as status ailments), they become more like character-specific abilities to vary up your approach to the fight.

Base damage & effects of Limits has been adjusted to account for this, so while they will deal more damage than your standard attacks (particularly if Crisis Level reaches 4 and you throw caution to the wind), they won't completely obliterate everything in your path like the base game Limits would.


[Characters]
Each character has had their base stats and growths adjusted, so that they have some favoured stats and weaknesses:
   Squall: All-rounder, with solid stats; spends the majority of the game in the party so he can be built using Junctions more easily.
   Zell: Effective but one-dimensional; has strong showings in Strength, Vitality, and Speed but abysmal Magic and Spirit.
   Selphie: Glass-cannon with solid Strength & Magic + the highest Speed stat in the team. Durability is overall low.
   Rinoa: Highest magic stat in the party and strong Spirit. Is one of the weakest party members defensively and early Limits are strength-based.
   Quistis: Strongest overall defences on the team with decent Strength & Magic to take advantage of Blue Magic. Is also the slowest party member, however.
   Irvine: Luck-based physical damage dealer, reasonable stats across the board but nothing special. High crit rate thanks to absurd Luck stat.
      
Weapons have been adjusted slightly, but not drastically. Instead of using a Strength bonus, a base power is used which starts at 20 and ends at 40 for ultimate weapons. Some have crit modifiers and rising/falling levels of accuracy. These three stats are now stated in the description from their respective weapon magazines.
      

[Enemies]
With a few exceptions, all enemies have had their AI adjusted and their attacks unlocked/altered. Bosses have had a more drastic overhaul, sporting new attacks and behaviour. Stats have also been changed as you'd expect.

Random encounters typically have a fixed level, whereas bosses scale directly from the party level with a slight + modifier. This may be changed based on feedback as there are several ways to set up enemy level based on individual formations.

Regarding formations, enemies that appear alone tend to be higher level than the ones that appear in groups.


[GFs, Spells, & Commands]
Base power and some effects have been altered across the board. Some spells like Pain and Break have been given a base power so they can act as single-target elemental damage options for Earth and Poison (they still inflict status ailments, but Pain only inflicts Poison now). Meteor and Flare were also set up with Earth and Fire elements respectively to differentiate them a bit. Elemental/Status junction effects were adjusted; it'll be tricky to get elemental defence above 100% without multiple slots in Elem-Def.

Some statuses, particularly buffs, have had their timers extended so that they don't need to be reapplied as often. This was done because applying buffs can be time-consuming due to most spells only being single-target.

GFs have had their base power lowered, but their level mod is higher than before; increasing their levels will have a greater impact on their base damage (overall it is higher than what it was in the base game). The way in which Affinity works has been given a twist; you start with 1000 affinity for each GF, but this affinity falls each time you summon the GF in-battle. Excessive use will leave GFs weakened for later in the game, but affinity can be slowly recovered by the use of elemental spells. Using consumables will also raise affinity.

AP requirements for almost all abilties were halved and some quality-of-life abilities start off as learned such as Encounter-None (held by Siren).

Some command abilities have been altered to cover gaps in elemental offence for late-game or to provide a bit
more utility. These abilities typically unlock for learning at GF Lv.50 (lower/higher in certain cases):
   Recover: Merged with Treatment; heals 25% HP and has a built-in Esuna.
   Fortify: Adds Haste, Double, Triple; but as a drawback adds Vit0 and first incoming hit will be a back-attack.
   Aqua Breath: Replaces Treatment, inflicts heavy water damage
   Mad Rush: Unchanged
   Freeze: Replaces Doom, heavy Ice damage with Slow + Petrifying
   Shock: Replaces Absorb, deals heavy Thunder damage with Darkness
   Mini-Flare: Non-elemental damage that ignores Spirit
   Judgeray: Holy elemental damage, inflicts Stop
   Devour: Unchanged
   Card: Unchanged
   Galeforce: Replaces Defend, inflicts heavy Wind damage and inflicts Confusion
   
   Darkside: Power adjustment for x2 damage instead of x3 damage and HP loss is 20% instead of 10%.
   Kamikaze: Power adjustment for x3 damage modifier instead of x6
   Cover: Does not reduce damage when used

   
[Field Scripts & Dialogue]
A number of adjustments have been made to the game's scripted events and dialogue text.
-) General dialogue revamp: this should be considered an ongoing WIP until later builds finalise it.
-) Small adjustments + tweaks to certain scenes for better facing, etc.
-) Majority of scripted tutorials have been replaced with a few windows of text going over NT-specific information.
-) Restoration of deactivated story scenes
-) Various quality-of-life additions such as sequence skips (Opening FMV for instance can be skipped)


[Misc.]
-) Included is a UV fix for the textures on the world map; this should be particularly effective if Linear Filtering
   is disabled in the FF8 Steam Launcher settings (a black line seam issue can be seen if linear filtering is on).



[Installation]
Spoiler: show

[Quick Version]
1) Install Roses and Wine (R07) or drop the FF8_EN.exe in the emergency folder into the FF8 folder.
2) Put all the files in the lang-en folder into the FF8\Data\lang-en folder
3) Read the bottom of this guide for steps to check that game is patched when playing, and also
   start from a new game rather than a vanilla-made save file.

[Long Version]
For an optimal experience, it's recommended to play the mod using the Steam version of the game. The mod is untested with the original 1998 FF8 PC but should work with it; just bear in mind that the original version of the game is unstable on modern machines without maintenance.

The Steam version uses MIDI files for its music rather than the MP3/OGG that FF7 Steam uses. It's highly recommended to download and install Roses and Wine for FF8 to resolve this, it's an Audio mod that replaces the game's music with .OGG: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=13715.0

It runs from an installer. Make sure to have unblocked/set admin priveleges for the installer before running it. This mod also provides an .EXE modifying feature that FF8 NT uses to apply changes to the FF8_EN.exe.

Now for installing FF8 NT itself:
Locate your FF8\Data\lang-en folder; it'll typically be in a location like:
D:\Steam\steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY VIII\Data\lang-en

*Note that if your version of the game is not in English, the lang-xx folder may have a different
   name. Chances are that the mod will not work with the french, spanish, and german versions.
   Compatibility for these versions can be provided if a user sends me the files for these versions.

In the FF8\Data\lang-en folder, make a back-up of the following files:
battle.fi
battle.fl
battle.fs

field.fi
field.fl
field.fs

main.fi
main.fs
main.fl

menu.fi
menu.fs
menu.fl

These archives contain the enemy files, field event scripts/dialogue, system data (magic, character stats, etc.) and refine values/text respectively. Store these archives in a folder so you can revert to the default game in the future without having to reinstall the game/verify the files.

Once the back-ups are made and stored safely, add the FF8 NT versions of these files into the game's folder.

The next step is to patch the game's .EXE. Go to the Roses & Wine folder (called RaW) and go to this directory:
   D:\Steam\steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY VIII\RaW\GLOBAL\Hext
   
Place the FF8_NT_EXE.txt file into this folder. What this will do is apply the mod's executable changes to your executable at run-time, leaving it unaltered for vanilla runs. If this part of the process doesn't work, use the FF8_EN.exe provided with the FF8 NT download; just remember to make a back-up of your default FF8_EN.exe.

To confirm that the game has been patched successfully, make the following checks:
1) Field Script Check: On starting a new game, a 'Welcome to FF8 NT' message should be displayed.
   Other parts of the game's dialogue is different as well.
2) Battle Check: Bite Bugs on the world map will make use of their 2 special attacks; Barf and Needle.
   The Ifrit boss fight will include new mechanics/attacks.
3) Menu Check: In your Refine menus, M-Pebbles should refine into 3 of a basic elemental spell instead of 5 and
   the text shown should be updated to reflect this.
4) .EXE Check: Junctioned spells should be giving 100% of their stat boost regardless of stock, Draw will always
   be a minimum of 9 spells and can exceed this limit.
5) Kernel Check: Squall's listed weapon accuracy in the menu should be 100% instead of 255%.

If all of these checks are met, then the game is patched and should perform as expected. But report any oddities and glitches you encounter (along with any additional mods you use, if any).




[Overview]
FF8 NT is a gameplay overhaul mod that's aiming to rebalance the game's systems while introducing new/revised content. The level of difficulty is intended to be accessible to all players, with grinding being optional rather than mandatory. Random enemies and boss battles have been revised with new mechanics, story scenes are tweaked with some deactivated scenes renovated for use, and some quality of life additions have been made. The central idea to the mod is to make the game a fresh experience but to also make it 'more of itself'; that means trying to maintain as much of the core game as possible but with adjustments to make the different gameplay elements work together better.

Feedback is always welcome, especially now as the mod is still in its formative stages. The current build extends to Disc 1 only, and while initial impressions have been positive on streams there are a lot of issues to be addressed and changes to be made. Any suggestions or bug reports would be appreciated.


[Changelog]
Spoiler: show

v0.1
-) Release

v0.2
-) Hext file adjusted and now works with Roses & Wine's hext folder
-) HP adjustment for Biggs & Wedge, Elvoret, X-ATM082, and Gerogero
-) Physical damage downtuned for Ifrit, Biggs & Wedge, and X-ATM082
-) Debug routine removed from Tomb of the Unknown King Draw Point

Current Issues:
-) Refine text (and some results) are incorrect/misparsed - Fixed
-) Card Level Lock for Card Mod is not working
-) Squall's weapon accuracy is treated as 255%, even with Blind applied

v0.3
-) Refine Text fixed
-) Revisions made to card refines (temporary measure as level-locking didn't work imbalances most likely still exist)
-) Restorative/Cure spells now ignore Shell
-) Diablos revamped
-) Multiple enemies revised that were missed in first wave; AI, attacks, etc.
-) Abyss Worm & Chimera modded
-) Added skip option to Opening FMV and to Train Briefing scene
-) Shunsq's controller buttons display mod was added as a variant for the Hext files
-) Revisions made to Selphie's Slots spells
-) Blind status no longer affects Crisis Level
-) Some dialogue revisions
-) Fixed in-battle Seifer line

Current Issues
-) Zell's Duel uses duplicate entries of commands to fill action list
-) Squall's accuracy ignores what the value is set to, so this has been returned to 255% for the time being; magazines still list the 'old' accuracy value


[Credits]
Big thanks to the FF8 modding community for producing their tools, coming up with info/assembly hacks, and maintaining the old/new wiki:
-) Mystre's Field Editor & Archive Extractor/Packer, Deling
-) Gjoerulv's Enemy Editor, Ifrit
-) JeMaCheHi's Formation Editor, Cactilio
-) Maki, JWP & AlexFilth's Kernel Editor, Doomtrain
-) JWP's init.out Editor, Quezacotl
-) JWP's AI Extension for Ifrit tool
-) Alexfilth's mwepon.bin editor, JunkShop

And thanks again to JWP for helping me out with assembly hacks and to Maki for giving info about how the field files work. Thanks to Callisto for advice on using the menu text editor.

Also a big thanks to streamers like Ysangwen, Uprisen, Strife98, Strongbow, Redmon, and others for broadcasting the mod on release; the feedback was invaluable and the support was much appreciated.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Yagami Light on 2019-02-21 23:33:09
This looks awesome, I'm pretty sure this is the first mod to fix some of the bugs present in the pc version as well, will give it a try kudos!
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: jester1610 on 2019-02-22 00:39:54
Found a bug for card mod. it says 3 Cactuar cards refine into 1 chefs knife while it's possible to refine it with 1 card.
when i refine fastitocalon-f card into a fishfin it took both of my cards while refine even it says that i need only 1 card.
and its not possible to refine 1 fishfin into 10 water, it says i need one but it seems i need more than just one.

I just see there more bugs that come with refine abilitys. need 2 jelleye cards to refine into sharp spike but i get m-stone piece whith one card. almost every card refines into the item it would normally do without the mod.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-02-22 01:12:38
This looks awesome, I'm pretty sure this is the first mod to fix some of the bugs present in the pc version as well, will give it a try kudos!

Callisto's Ragnarok beat me to it on a lot of them; I'm a little late to the FF8 party.

Found a bug for card mod. it says 3 Cactuar cards refine into 1 chefs knife while it's possible to refine it with 1 card.
when i refine fastitocalon-f card into a fishfin it took both of my cards while refine even it says that i need only 1 card.
and its not possible to refine 1 fishfin into 10 water, it says i need one but it seems i need more than just one.

I just see there more bugs that come with refine abilitys. need 2 jelleye cards to refine into sharp spike but i get m-stone piece whith one card. almost every card refines into the item it would normally do without the mod.

Yeah, the mngrp.bin seems to be messed up. I changed the hex, then edited the strings (some were a bit messed up but they seemed to be correct when checking them), checked it in-game, then edited some strings in a different part, and then finally ran it through hextedit again before release to apply some last minute tweaks. Something's went wrong on one of those two steps.

I'm working on correcting it just now but it'll take me a day or two.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Bowser9 on 2019-02-22 07:20:22
@SegaChief
Thank you for updating people on social media.

I noticed SB Gamers is streaming/capturing their playthrough of the early build on youtube. Would having more people stream/capture their playthrough be helpful? I can also stream to youtube via simple OBS.

Also, I noticed a couple changes were similar to Callisto's Ragnarok. Would you recommend playing Ragnarok as a precursor to New Threat? Both for balance ideas and the player/user experience?

EDIT: I actually own the old PC release of the game. I could test the mod's compatibility with that version if you'd like.

EDIT 2: I was surprised to see the likelihood of Limit increase. 50% HP to influence crisis level as well as the earlier introduction of timed afflictions like slow-petrification really shift the feel of the game based off what I see in SB Gamers' playthrough. I'm also pleasantly surprised to see how this was balanced, with Squall doing markedly less basic attack damage but making up for it with a limit that often rivals a fresh GF attack (with elemental bonus). That's just nifty and I can't wait to jump into the mod myself later.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-02-22 14:54:59
@SegaChief
Thank you for updating people on social media.

I noticed SB Gamers is streaming/capturing their playthrough of the early build on youtube. Would having more people stream/capture their playthrough be helpful? I can also stream to youtube via simple OBS.

Also, I noticed a couple changes were similar to Callisto's Ragnarok. Would you recommend playing Ragnarok as a precursor to New Threat? Both for balance ideas and the player/user experience?

EDIT: I actually own the old PC release of the game. I could test the mod's compatibility with that version if you'd like.

EDIT 2: I was surprised to see the likelihood of Limit increase. 50% HP to influence crisis level as well as the earlier introduction of timed afflictions like slow-petrification really shift the feel of the game based off what I see in SB Gamers' playthrough. I'm also pleasantly surprised to see how this was balanced, with Squall doing markedly less basic attack damage but making up for it with a limit that often rivals a fresh GF attack (with elemental bonus). That's just nifty and I can't wait to jump into the mod myself later.

Streams are always good. Callisto's mod is complete whereas NT currently has some serious bugs like the refines all being messed up (most text is wrong and some results are wrong/vanilla).

Compat testing with the original 1998 PC version would be handy. If you can, post some screenshots of where the archive files are for battle, main, field, and menu if possible.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Bowser9 on 2019-02-22 22:04:46
Will do. I'll get the screenshot to you when I can. Gotta dust off the fold-out case and the ol laptop.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Ayoyo on 2019-02-24 20:02:29
First impressions positive. Far as bugs go, only the summoning sequences in Ifrit&Elvoret bossfights (the ones they use)have been messed up for me so far. Really loving the revised dialogue, more flowing, natural and funny too. The stuff on the train right before landing in Timber was hilarious(is this a restored scene or your doing? Hard to believe Square would have this good a sense of humor). Also I think you might've made Selphie my favorite character. That's no easy feat either. #bitcheslovecannons

More or less breezing through the early game demonstrated a potentially awkward difficulty curve with enemies. What easily happens is random enemies become more threatening than bosses, especially with the new cool AoE's they throw at you. This of course is a good thing and I'm really pleased with random encounters so far, for actually keeping me awake instead of hammering A button to kill them. But then you get to the boss and the damage they dish out can be underwhelming by comparison. A potentially unfortunate byproduct of the current scaling method. I'm at the point where I leave Timber soon and so far bosses haven't been too threatening even with their new moves or they've died almost too soon, and I'm doing a really dry run so far without any powering up. One of the worst was Granaldo where I tried summoning Siren and it instantly killed the Raldos, and then a single Renzo finished Granaldo. X-ATM fell obediently too despite my botching constantly.

Still a bit dubious as to the initial GFs coming with elem-atk&def j's completed. Wonder if that was intended.

Loving all the streamlining here with regards to magic stacks and GF abilities. Not needing 100 per stack or grind for stat junctions immediately shaves off like 2 hours of tedium from the early parts of the game. New magic junction mechanic has felt like a really good idea thus far, I find myself swapping junctions around constantly to suit my strategy, upcoming enemies and whatnot.

Character differences apparent and impactful. Here's hoping it remains that way.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Bowser9 on 2019-02-24 21:45:27
Chiming in on Elemental Atk&Def.

Elemental Atk&Def available early makes sense given that you can't get them to that high of a % without much better spells. Almost all % have been nerfed. Grievances with enemy HP have nothing to do with Elmental Atk&Def, too, since GFs and Limits use their own damage calculations and that's where a majority of damage comes from. Well, at least in early Disc 1. Overall a nifty quality of life change.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Ayoyo on 2019-02-24 21:59:43
Yes, I'm not against it. The only thing that threw me off was Ifrit dropping an elem-atk-j item and Quistis promptly explaining how to put it to use, as if this was our first contact with the ability. Maybe it's just me but I found this out of place considering every GF had all the elem abilities already. However I was simply looking to affirm that my installation isn't screwed up.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-02-24 22:09:56
.

I was perhaps overly wary about Boss HP and incoming damage. Granaldo/Raldo is a very restrictive fight for available animations so better it ends faster.

Current plan for v0.3 is to implement the repaired refine text and revise the Diablos/Brothers/Iguion bosses. Tweaks to balance are also going in. When Disc 1 is in a better state, I'll advance through the rest of the game; that'll also be when more advanced custom field scripts start to go in.

The Elem/Stat Atk/Def were added fairly late as a way of adding some extra depth to your junction set-up. That's why Ifrit drops that redundant elem-atk-j despite all 3 starting GFs having it learned. The way it's been set up will stay for now but might change when full release comes around.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Bowser9 on 2019-02-24 23:29:28
Out of curiosity, once you advance into Disc2, should we be worried about chocobo world? A and B rank items from that are pretty busted (Rosetta Stone, Ribbon, etc), and that's not mentioning how powerful Boko can be. Summoning him with some greens can net big damage right away, assuming you're crazy enough to play chocobo world for that long or happen to have an existing save backed up from 2007.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-02-25 00:42:15
Out of curiosity, once you advance into Disc2, should we be worried about chocobo world? A and B rank items from that are pretty busted (Rosetta Stone, Ribbon, etc), and that's not mentioning how powerful Boko can be. Summoning him with some greens can net big damage right away, assuming you're crazy enough to play chocobo world for that long or happen to have an existing save backed up from 2007.

We'll see what happens.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: levantine on 2019-03-01 11:26:17
Hey Sega !
I'm glad to see the first release of your new project, i'm sure that it will be as nice as the 7 later on :p
Juste a litle question, are you going to add some battles that doesn t exist but would be good to have in the scenario (like you did in ff7 with for example turk battle in the cave after the ranch chocobo)
Also about characters, what does it mean for rinoa first limit is physical? if she's a pure mage how will you balance it?
As for Quistis, i was a litle dispointed to see she's a slowly tank hybrid, she's the blue mage so i was expect to see her more in a mage role, but it's up to you and i respect it !
I'm not the only one to say it but nice ideas here about junctions, draw magics and cards lvl cap !

Anyway good luck for your work !

Edit : about graphicals mods, wich one is compatible with your ff8 nt mods? wich one do you recommand to play with? thx a lot.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-03-01 13:41:14
Hey Sega !
I'm glad to see the first release of your new project, i'm sure that it will be as nice as the 7 later on :p
Juste a litle question, are you going to add some battles that doesn t exist but would be good to have in the scenario (like you did in ff7 with for example turk battle in the cave after the ranch chocobo)
Also about characters, what does it mean for rinoa first limit is physical? if she's a pure mage how will you balance it?
As for Quistis, i was a litle dispointed to see she's a slowly tank hybrid, she's the blue mage so i was expect to see her more in a mage role, but it's up to you and i respect it !
I'm not the only one to say it but nice ideas here about junctions, draw magics and cards lvl cap !

Anyway good luck for your work !

Edit : about graphicals mods, wich one is compatible with your ff8 nt mods? wich one do you recommand to play with? thx a lot.

There won't be many new battles, I can only make space for a couple using existing entries.

Rinoa's Angelo limits in the default game are physical-based, which is fine there because her base stats are abnormally high across the board. In NT, re-speccing her to a magic-focused role impacted on the Limit a bit so the base damage for (most) of those limits was left a little higher so they don't get left behind.

Quistis has a mix of physical & magical based abilities so I needed to have her STR and MAG stat fairly decent to make good use of them. I'd already got Selphie, Rinoa, and Zell with decent speed stats so natural path seemed to be for defence; less speed helps to balance out the utility a bit (Quistis can choose what ability to use, but Selphie has to rely on RNG).

The card level thing seems to be kaput. I'm going to tinker with it some more but I might need to change the plan with that.

All graphical mods should be compatible.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Arctic_Phoenix on 2019-03-04 05:20:39
Hey Sega Chief:

I first found your youtube channel several years ago when I found out about Tifas Bootleg. I learned about the hardcore mod, which you had youtube videos of each boss. Thank you for that by the way! Then I learned about the FF7 New Threat mod. I started playing I think 1.3 and it wouldn't update to 1.4, and now here you are at 1.5.

Anyways that's not what this is about. Last year I found out about you making the FF8 New Threat mod and I became extremely excited. I wish you nothing but support and gratitude for all the hard work over the years you and others have put into these mods. So allow me to introduce myself by first making it clear how impressed and honored I feel that you let others experience the game in a way that you see it.

Okay now onto the useful stuff. I decided to make an account and post because I have played through your mod up until yesterday. I made it to Galbadia Garden, but have already found a number of things to let you know about.

If you're interested and it's useful I will volunteer to put dozens of hours into it and beta test quite a bit more if you would like. Here is what I've found so far in terms of breaking your game.

Let me start by mentioning that it was actually a challenge to do this. You've changed quite a lot, and so it made me explore quite a lot. Even to the point where I was trying to remember field draws. Like the Esuna in the Balamb train tunnel.

So here's how I broke my game:

1. As you know, there is no working level lock, and the refine items are honestly a give and take. You're never sure which thing you're going to get. It does look as though as the FINAL spell listed is the one that's accurate. So maybe just several text changes will fix that problem. You already know about the refine problem though so I'll waste no more time on that.

2. I really liked being able to get mug going from the start, but it led to some issues. One being that if you mug the bombs in the fire cavern, you can refine those to Firas. That's a MASSIVE stat boost out of the gate.

3. Card Modding the blitz card gives you a Dynamo Stone. This gives you Thundaga before you even leave the garden. That alone boosted my attack to just about 1500 points of damage. Though I didn't have this unlocked until I was ready to leave for Timber.

4. If you card mod a single abyss worm, you will get tornadoes. You already know what that does.

Now you can go and change all that, but I've been thinking about a possible alternate fix. Would it be easier to either A; Limit the amount draw points give you to a sliding scale. For instance, if Squalls under level 10, you get 1, 10-20=1-3, 20-30= 4-5. Or B; maybe instead of only one spell being required to use the spell as a junction, maybe up the amount to like 10. (Not too many, but enough to where you don't become overpowered to all hell just because we managed to acquire one or two powerful spells.)

Anyways, regardless of what you do thanks so much for the time and energy you put into all of your work. You're my FF modding hero!

Additionally there is a glitch in the main game of FF8. When you are on Disk 2 and get control of the mobile garden, you can do the Winhill side quests. Well, for some reason if you change the name of your main character you CANNOT begin this quest. I don't know if it's fixable, but I thought I'd mention it.

I'd also like to give you credit where credit is due. You kinda annoyed me in a good way by how much stronger you made those damn beach fish. Also they only drop like 1 fin every like 2-5 battles. You made me almost lose interest in waters early on. lol

Lastly, No I was or at least have not yet gotten the Lionheart. I reached the Grendals at level 25, and I fought just about 10-20 of them and to no avail did I retrieve Dragon Fangs.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-03-04 15:14:26
Hey Sega Chief:

I first found your youtube channel several years ago when I found out about Tifas Bootleg. I learned about the hardcore mod, which you had youtube videos of each boss. Thank you for that by the way! Then I learned about the FF7 New Threat mod. I started playing I think 1.3 and it wouldn't update to 1.4, and now here you are at 1.5.

Anyways that's not what this is about. Last year I found out about you making the FF8 New Threat mod and I became extremely excited. I wish you nothing but support and gratitude for all the hard work over the years you and others have put into these mods. So allow me to introduce myself by first making it clear how impressed and honored I feel that you let others experience the game in a way that you see it.

Okay now onto the useful stuff. I decided to make an account and post because I have played through your mod up until yesterday. I made it to Galbadia Garden, but have already found a number of things to let you know about.

If you're interested and it's useful I will volunteer to put dozens of hours into it and beta test quite a bit more if you would like. Here is what I've found so far in terms of breaking your game.

Let me start by mentioning that it was actually a challenge to do this. You've changed quite a lot, and so it made me explore quite a lot. Even to the point where I was trying to remember field draws. Like the Esuna in the Balamb train tunnel.

So here's how I broke my game:

1. As you know, there is no working level lock, and the refine items are honestly a give and take. You're never sure which thing you're going to get. It does look as though as the FINAL spell listed is the one that's accurate. So maybe just several text changes will fix that problem. You already know about the refine problem though so I'll waste no more time on that.

2. I really liked being able to get mug going from the start, but it led to some issues. One being that if you mug the bombs in the fire cavern, you can refine those to Firas. That's a MASSIVE stat boost out of the gate.

3. Card Modding the blitz card gives you a Dynamo Stone. This gives you Thundaga before you even leave the garden. That alone boosted my attack to just about 1500 points of damage. Though I didn't have this unlocked until I was ready to leave for Timber.

4. If you card mod a single abyss worm, you will get tornadoes. You already know what that does.

Now you can go and change all that, but I've been thinking about a possible alternate fix. Would it be easier to either A; Limit the amount draw points give you to a sliding scale. For instance, if Squalls under level 10, you get 1, 10-20=1-3, 20-30= 4-5. Or B; maybe instead of only one spell being required to use the spell as a junction, maybe up the amount to like 10. (Not too many, but enough to where you don't become overpowered to all hell just because we managed to acquire one or two powerful spells.)

Anyways, regardless of what you do thanks so much for the time and energy you put into all of your work. You're my FF modding hero!

Additionally there is a glitch in the main game of FF8. When you are on Disk 2 and get control of the mobile garden, you can do the Winhill side quests. Well, for some reason if you change the name of your main character you CANNOT begin this quest. I don't know if it's fixable, but I thought I'd mention it.

I'd also like to give you credit where credit is due. You kinda annoyed me in a good way by how much stronger you made those damn beach fish. Also they only drop like 1 fin every like 2-5 battles. You made me almost lose interest in waters early on. lol

Lastly, No I was or at least have not yet gotten the Lionheart. I reached the Grendals at level 25, and I fought just about 10-20 of them and to no avail did I retrieve Dragon Fangs.

Hi bud, thanks for the kind words; it's really encouraging.

I've fixed the refine text but I'm queuing that with some other changes that I want to put up all together as an update for the Disc 1 beta (which will probably be the last update until the full thing gets released).

At the eleventh hour I realised I hadn't implemented some kind of restructure for cards, specifically which NPCs had access to which cards. I'd done some tinkering with it in the past but not rolled anything out yet. But one of the bytes on the refine entries, I believed at the time, related to GF level as this byte is almost always 01 and the Doomtrain refine that requires Lv.100 had a value of 64 instead (100 in hex). Unfortunately, this byte doesn't seem to be linked to GF level at all (Siren has a similar refine where this byte doesn't equal 64) and the level-lock for card refine failed completely.

I could try setting it up so that it needs 10 of a spell instead of 1 but I'm hoping that a proper distribution of cards and some tweaks specifically to Fire, Blizzara, and Thundara will sort out the issue of overblown stats early on.

The Winhill glitch sounds interesting I'll have a look into that. No idea why a namechange would prevent a script from firing.

Someone mentioned that the fish hit too hard but I don't recall tweaking them again before release; I'll check them out.

I think Grendel gives Dragon Skin and nothing else; no Disc 1 Lionheart yet it seems.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Mr_StarStorm on 2019-03-05 11:28:36
Hey sega
Great work so far big fan of ff8 love what you have done. Agree with others bosses need to be tinker a bit so they are more harder, maybe they will be when you fix up card refine a bit. Anyway keep up hard work look forward to next update :D
also if anyone hasn't reported this Gesper caused a solflock when it used degenerator https://www.twitch.tv/videos/390455332?t=03h47m31s
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.2)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-03-06 14:08:54
That looked quite funny, I must have knocked the animation ID off or something; thanks for letting me know.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Soviet_Spyy on 2019-03-14 16:36:41
hey Sega
what tool did you use to edit the magic stock stat boost (where having 1 spell is equal to 100). I love your mod so far the dialogue edits are amazing, just curious to which tool because i'm considering perhaps editing my files to re balance the junction/draw system a bit more, any help will be much appreciated

Keep up the good work! :)
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-03-15 15:43:04
hey Sega
what tool did you use to edit the magic stock stat boost (where having 1 spell is equal to 100). I love your mod so far the dialogue edits are amazing, just curious to which tool because i'm considering perhaps editing my files to re balance the junction/draw system a bit more, any help will be much appreciated

Keep up the good work! :)

There isn't really a tool, it's a hex-edit of the game's executable file (JWP came up with this):

Code: [Select]
#Junction Adjustment: 1 = 100 Stock

#HP
963CB = B3 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Primary Stats
966E5 = B2 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Speed & Luck
96788 = B2 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Hit/Accuracy
96893 = B0 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Evasion
96921 = B0 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Elemental Attack
969D1 = B0 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Elemental Defence
96AAE = B1 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Status Attack
96BC1 = B0 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Status Defence
96C9D = B1 64 90 90 90 90 90

You can either make those edits manually or you can put the above into a notepad file and place it in Roses & Wine's Global/Hext folder. For format, check the hext files in NT's download.

If you want to tune the actual bonuses given, you'll need the Doomtrain tool. This modifies the game's kernel.bin. To get that, you need to get the Deling tool which can open the game's Main.fs archive and extract the kernel file from it. After making edits with Doomtrain, use Deling to replace the kernel in the Main.fs with your modified one.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Soviet_Spyy on 2019-03-16 08:06:15
I got it to work, thanks for your help!
Thinking of creating a mod later in the future that reworks the junction/draw system, I might try make it that the stat boosts from junction are based on the character levels rather than magic stock but I don’t know yet. Anyways thanks for your reply and help, keen for disc 2 of new threat
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: JWP on 2019-03-16 10:28:17
If you want them based on level, the following patches should do the trick:

Code: [Select]
#HP
963CB = 8A 5C 24 14 90 90 90

#Primary Stats
966E5 = 8A 54 24 1C 90 90 90

#Speed & Luck
96788 = 8A 54 24 1C 90 90 90

#Hit
9688E = 8B 4C 24 04 31 C0 8A 81 B8 01 00 00

#EVA
9691C = 8B 4C 24 04 31 C0 8A 81 B8 01 00 00

#Elemental Attack
969CC = 8B 4C 24 04 31 C0 8A 81 B8 01 00 00

#Elemental Defence
96AA9 = 8B 44 24 04 31 C9 8A 88 B8 01 00 00

#Status Attack
96BBC = 8B 4C 24 04 31 C0 8A 81 B8 01 00 00

#Status Defence
96C98 = 8B 44 24 04 31 C9 8A 88 B8 01 00 00
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: kekko1285 on 2019-04-19 12:05:26
Hey Sega, it's simply exciting knowing you are putting (again) a lot of work into a FF mod. I played thoroughly the FF7 NT mod 1.4 and I found it simply amazing. I am now waiting for your next release for the 1.5+ final version of it.

I'm really keen on giving this FF8 NT mod a shot asap and giving you some feedback.

For now, the only suggestion I have is: do you think adding a "skip option" for GF summoning animations is doable/sensible? It happened to me in the past that playing FF8 modded versions where GF are made more "useful" resulted in a lot of time spent watching the same GF animation.

Anyway, feel free to ignore my request, it's more an idea than an actual request tbh.

Thanks for all the hard work!
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-04-19 13:46:36
Hey Sega, it's simply exciting knowing you are putting (again) a lot of work into a FF mod. I played thoroughly the FF7 NT mod 1.4 and I found it simply amazing. I am now waiting for your next release for the 1.5+ final version of it.

I'm really keen on giving this FF8 NT mod a shot asap and giving you some feedback.

For now, the only suggestion I have is: do you think adding a "skip option" for GF summoning animations is doable/sensible? It happened to me in the past that playing FF8 modded versions where GF are made more "useful" resulted in a lot of time spent watching the same GF animation.

Anyway, feel free to ignore my request, it's more an idea than an actual request tbh.

Thanks for all the hard work!

Yo bud,

Skipping the animations would be tricky; I tried doing it with the FF7 ones once and got lost in all the functions used to draw things on the screen, etc. The animations are like segments that tie into each other so the assembly would need to be set up in a way where it would correctly skip ahead. I've no doubt that it is possible, just probably beyond what I can do right now.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: irlite on 2019-04-25 08:18:06
Hello. I enjoyed playing through the beta of your mod over the past week and thoughts I'd share my thoughts. Please don't interpret any of this negatively as it's all meant in good faith. I had a lot of fun and appreciate the many changes you've made to the game to make things more interesting. Anything I say below is just a suggestion and if not congruent with your vision of what you want the mod to be I understand. =)

Context for my comments:
My playstyle favours minimal drawing and zero card modding because the former is tedious and the latter game breaking. I do not grind when I play FF games as I find grinding boring. I loved the concept of 1->100 junctions so much I bought FF8 on steam so I could try your mod out. I haven't played vanilla FF8 in years, although I have done a few run throughs over the past 16 years since I first played it. I like the world of FF8 and despite how broken the Junction system is in its implementation I find myself coming back now and again! I was looking forward to playing your mod a lot, particularly to see if it would be more challenging. Having said that, I know this isn't a HARD MOD (and thank the gods for that). Removing Magic, Draw, GF, Item command abilities from the additionals GFs I liked. Whether it's because you have plans for their development or want players to actually utilise the abilities to teach GF abilities I don't know - but I like it! Really liking the distribution of abilities you've given the GFs.

PROS
Having elemental/status attack/defence already available at the beginning of the game is a change I really like. Makes it very exciting when you stumble across status magic. Speaking of, I enjoyed having a limited supply of Haste and Double available for use at opportune moments. Kind of made me wonder how balance the game may have been in the initial design were Draw Points and Item Refines the only manner of acquiring magic (I have tried a run through in vanilla FF8 like this, only to find 1 Tent -> 20 Curaga to also make it trival. Really, what were the designers thinking?) Having Mug available early on I really like, because I do prefer refining magic from Items, particularly as magic seems more useful in this mod than in vanilla FF8 for ACTUAL USE.

DIFFICULTY FEEDBACK
Ifrit was a nice beginning challenge, the other bosses fizzled in comparison to the bar he set though. Overall, it seemed very easy still with the occasional enemy presenting a genuine threat (Esthar Cyborgs and Armadillos). I wonder if the status bonuses from magic are too generous and should be reduced a little? I don't think so because the length of the battles is perfect. Upping the offense of the enemies is the best way to achieve a better balance I reckon. I'd probably suggest making the random enemies deal closer to 20-25% Max HP worth of damage. It seems in general they deal about 1/10th of max HP per attack which is a little conservative. Getting Esuna early on is a monumental benefit. Many random enemies still seemed a bit OHKOs (those Zu-like monsters on the way to the Tomb of the Unknown King). Limits do differentiate characters a bit, but maybe they came a tad too frequently?

The other main source of ease is that GFs can be summoned very rapidly and they are extremely powerful. I believe Siren hit the Ranaldos in the training centre for 2500ish. Scale back their strength, make them take longer to cast, and they become a bit more balanced. They'd still serve as shields while you're summoning but the risk they may die before the summon is complete may reduce their overpoweredness during boss battles. It did seem like summoning them drew the ire of some enemies which then tried to kill them off. I liked that. I know your plans for compatibility and think that could be an excellent way of approaching the mechanic. I'd probably suggest starting compatibilities off much lower though (400 or so?).

Although I've claimed ease I did feel there was a sudden difficulty spike at Forest Laguna Dream Seq. Numerous soldiers pulling the Gravity Well + Shotgun tactic is brutal. My team mates died and I think I only got through because I was lucky that on the third battle they didn't use that combination. I thought Brothers were good. I died and came prepared with haste, protect and float on a second attempt. Diablos is located after Brothers in the GF screen yet is easily obtainable after acquiring the magical lamp. If there's a way to make it so he's only really tacklable once the -aras begin appearing that'd be good. Obviously the designers intended him to be more difficult than Brothers but it's your mod so do what you want.

Seifer/Edea were very well improved. Edea could probably have a bit more bite to her (love the use of Break and how it causes damage). I forgot to bring the FEW dispels I had to the battle... Eventually their shell and protect wore off because I was floundering around failing to kill them. Even with 4000 HP, protect and haste, I was hesitant to keep my party around 1000 due to Demon Slice. I wonder what this battle would be like without Curaga Junctioned to HP? A good challenge I suspect. I'll give it a go later.
If you're wondering how I got Curaga, because SURELY THIS ISN'T INTENTIONAL AT THE END OF DISC 1, see quirk #9.

QUIRKS
1. Junction auto is doing something odd. Selecting str prioritises cure over aero, esuna, and fira for the str stat. 
2. Brothers came with mid mag Refine already learnt. Mid mag ref 2->1 is quite overpowered. 5->1? One of the advantages and disadvantages of altering the difficulty in this mod is that 1->100 means only 7 of a given magic is required for junctioning across all characters for the FULL bonus (really 3, as magic can be easily moved between characters). Given this, I'm intrigued how you will handle the most powerful spells and their availability.
3. Money still far too plentiful. I'm partially to blame here as I did level my SeeD rank up to level 9.
4. Luna tonic cures darkness. That doesn't match the written description or the name of the item.
5. Pain description says it deals silence, darkness, and poison.
6. SeeD test level 7 question 4 asks about how many fires you get from m-piece. Maybe getting rid of these tests is a better idea than refining them though?
7. No exp for brothers fights? Exp for other bosses is given so I assume this is an oversight? Exp following bosses was a change I REALLY liked. I'd even go a bit further and make it so bosses give 3000 exp to force multiple level ups, given enemies leveling up with you is the main source of difficulty in the absence of access to crazy magic Junctions.
8. No automatic Carbuncle after Iguion fight. Oversight?
9. Healing Mail and Regen Ring Refine to 1 cottage. 1 cottage then refines to 20 Curagas. I stumbled across this is Deling City sewers. Suddenly I was a party of level 19-24ers with 3000-4000 Max HP... Enabled me to reliably get limit breaks at 1000hp which is very high given the damage enemies were dealing. I suspect balancing Refine may be tricky at first because of the chains invovled. This is why you have playtesters (and thank you for the privilege). I assume I acquired the healing mail from mugging something in Tomv of Unknown King. Armadillo maybe?
10. For ST-Atk: Pain only 25% Darkness. Blind does 25% Darkness. Intentional?

Anyway, this was fun to play through and thanks for that. I look forward to seeing you develop this mod further and I may even finish a playthrough of FF7 in future using your NT mod, which will mark the first time I've progressed more than 10 hours into FF7...
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-04-27 17:31:13
I've maybe been a bit too cautious with enemy balancing for FF8; I try to aim for randoms taking only a few attacks to put down as larger groups can drag out if they have a bit too much durability. But one thing this game offers is level adjustment so I could try making the enemies themselves slightly tougher but having heavier level penalties when they appear with others.

One benefit of having support magic only boost secondary stats is that they can be made available in limited amounts through field draws or character starting stock to be used at the player's discretion without throwing the stats balance off. Offence spells by comparison I've found difficult to allocate because they can throw things off too much if made available earlier so that's a limitation of the 1 stock = 100 stock stat adjustment at the moment.

GFs I'm a bit lost with. The intended design was as a 'panic button' but that doesn't work here because unlike FF7 I can't limit the uses of a GF per battle. There is a reversal to how affinity works in that a GF loses affinity with each use, but it's limited in how much it can drop by so some sort of adjustment is going to be needed there in the assembly to make the affinity swings more pronounced.

I'll check into the gravity well thing and maybe replace it with something else.


Quirks
1) I reckon Auto is probably not checking the actual stat bonuses available on the spells, and instead going by a static list of spell IDs that would have been best in the default game.

2) Mid Mag-RF could be moved onto Carbuncle instead with an AP requirement so that it needs a little work put in to be used for the Disc 1 finale (but will unlock from AP if taken into the Disc 1 straight away). That way it'd be available when intended + offers option to get an extra stat edge if player is having trouble with that fight so they don't get stuck. I think the lower refinement cost was just so the player could quickly upgrade their elemental spells to the next step.

3) I haven't really tackled money yet but plan to do so.

4) An oversight I had with the items is that their in-battle effects are different to their field menu effects (this is the same for FF7) so I'll need to find where that is in the .EXE though I might have it written down somewhere.

5) I probably missed that string when rewriting it; intended effect is just to have a chance at inflicting Poison.
6) Wasn't aware that there were questions like that, I'll review them.
7) I must have forgot to set the EXP flag for their formation, sorry about that.
8 ) Yeah, I forgot to add that to the field script

9) My refines are full of holes at the moment, so having people find and report these is always helpful. I managed to avoid the shame of enabling a Disc 1 Lionheart at least, but I think some players were able to produce Punishment and other high level weapons so still got work to do on this front.

10) I intend Pain to only handle Poison status so I'll sort that out

Thanks for the feedback, bud; modding work has slowed down a bit because of a new job I unexpectedly came into but I'm chipping away at it. I have a last update for FF7 NT in the works so hopefully that'll assist in getting you past the 10hr mark; there's so much more boredom and misery to be enjoyed in FF7 that you're missing out on :p
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Rikku on 2019-05-02 16:14:17
WoW, this looks so cool, but how does it work??

Every magic boost the same amount as your level ?


If you want them based on level, the following patches should do the trick:

Code: [Select]
#HP
963CB = 8A 5C 24 14 90 90 90

#Primary Stats
966E5 = 8A 54 24 1C 90 90 90

#Speed & Luck
96788 = 8A 54 24 1C 90 90 90

#Hit
9688E = 8B 4C 24 04 31 C0 8A 81 B8 01 00 00

#EVA
9691C = 8B 4C 24 04 31 C0 8A 81 B8 01 00 00

#Elemental Attack
969CC = 8B 4C 24 04 31 C0 8A 81 B8 01 00 00

#Elemental Defence
96AA9 = 8B 44 24 04 31 C9 8A 88 B8 01 00 00

#Status Attack
96BBC = 8B 4C 24 04 31 C0 8A 81 B8 01 00 00

#Status Defence
96C98 = 8B 44 24 04 31 C9 8A 88 B8 01 00 00
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-05-02 16:55:32
WoW, this looks so cool, but how does it work??

Every magic boost the same amount as your level ?

I think it's using Level instead of stock; so to get the full stat boost from a junctioned spell the character needs to be lv.100.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: JWP on 2019-05-02 18:19:45
I think it's using Level instead of stock; so to get the full stat boost from a junctioned spell the character needs to be lv.100.
Correct, normally the boost is (magic_amount * stat_boost)/100 but the patches just cause it to use level instead of the magic amount.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Kefka on 2019-05-06 06:46:33
Hey Sega Chief, it's great to finally see some more FF8 mods emerging, but too bad that they don't work with the German version. However, there's one change in your mod that seems brilliant to me that Id like to also implement in my own mod, and that is this:

Quote
Limits have had the RNG removed from their check, meaning that milling turns will no longer have an effect. If a Limit does not proc when the character's ATB gauge fills, it means they cannot get a Limit until the battle conditions change (HP is lost, status is inflicted). This works both ways, and means that if a Limit does proc it will be available even if you swap control to another character and back again.

This has probably got to be one of if not the most important feature to prevent endless Limit spamming, so I'd like to ask you how exactly you did that? I'm guessing it involves hex-editing the exe. I'm not really a programmer myself, so if you don't mind could you post the necessary changes to implement this? Thanks in advance.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-05-06 13:58:27
Hey Sega Chief, it's great to finally see some more FF8 mods emerging, but too bad that they don't work with the German version. However, there's one change in your mod that seems brilliant to me that Id like to also implement in my own mod, and that is this:

This has probably got to be one of if not the most important feature to prevent endless Limit spamming, so I'd like to ask you how exactly you did that? I'm guessing it involves hex-editing the exe. I'm not really a programmer myself, so if you don't mind could you post the necessary changes to implement this? Thanks in advance.

I think I removed the RNG modifier from the check. In the hext document for FF8 NT it looks like this (when game is running, an offset of 400000 is added to addresses for english version; the # symbol is used for commenting lines in a hext file):
Code: [Select]
+400000
#Crisis Level Check
#941F0 - Start

#Formula:
#HPMod=2500*CurrentHP/MaxHP
#DeathBonus=DeadCharacters*200+1600
#StatusBonus=StatusSum+10
#RandomMod=[0..255]+160 - 942E7
#LimitLevel=(StatusBonus+DeathBonus-HPMod)/RandomMod

#Random MOD 0-255 + 160 [Set to 0 for no variance]
942E7 = 83 E1 00 90 90 90
#Default: +160, Current = +255
942F2 = 81 C1 FF 00 00 00

#Change this to EB 09 (or JMP 494329) to set 'fixed' crisis level proc
#or deactivate limits altogether with 0
#9431E

#94329 - Where crisis level 4 checked for, can be changed to any level or 0

So what happens in there is, the game rolls a 0-255 and then adds 160 to it. This value is then used in the Limit Level check along with the other factors to decide what Crisis Level the character is at; if it's less than 1, then no Limit is available. If it's 1-4, then a Limit is available.

The reason it's possible to mash triangle/mill turns to get a Limit to proc is because of that RNG check returning a different number each time. But what that hex-code does is it nops the RNG part (stands for 'no operation'; we can't just delete values from the assembly because all the other lookup addresses would then be off slightly) and the +160 was changed to +255. So now the RNG always returns a value of 255 instead of a value anywhere between 160-415.

So if a Limit doesn't proc, it will never proc until the conditions of the battle change. Same thing for if a Limit does proc; it will always proc when that player's turn comes up until the battle conditions change. This means you don't lose a Limit when swapping to another character, but it also means you can repeatedly use them whenever that character's turn comes up.

The next step of this would be deciding if a further restriction on Limits should be added; like a per-battle 'Stock' or similar. An idea I had was to set it up so that 4 Limits could be used per battle, with the first being a strong Crisis Level 4 and it going down a level every time a Limit is used (until they stop being available in that battle all together).

But another thing I was looking at was trying to make Limits behave more like a character-specific skillset that can be used more freely as some have fairly versatile sets like Quistis and Irvine. Balancing it would be a bit tricky though.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Kefka on 2019-05-06 15:24:19
Thanks for the quick reply, and for sharing your documentation.

The Limit breaks are unfortunately one of the most difficult aspects of the battle system to rebalance. I actually like the idea of limited uses per battle as well, it would also restrict Aura over-abusing. I remember that FFVI had a similar mechanic with its desperation attacks, but that one was a bit too restrictive (only once per battle, only after a certain amount of time has passed, and only with less than 1/16th maxHP). Kinda like two extremes without a real middle path.

Another possibility might be tweaking the bonus numbers for dead party members, lost HP and negative statuses, or even the one for Aura. Do you by chance also know where to find those? Or could you give me a byte sequence to search for, since the offsets in the german exe are somewhat different from the english exe, as I've just realized.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aldebaran on 2019-05-08 15:24:19
Quote
The next step of this would be deciding if a further restriction on Limits should be added;

The idea you get Limit Breaks according to the "danger level" the character is in is really cool, in concept. It's hit and miss in game, even without abuse, which is also easy.
An idea: it could depend on a character being hit by a strong enemy attack that leaves them near death and only counting dead party members and status effects when caused in a small amount of turns by the enemy. So lots of damage/status/S.Effects done in a short time by enemy only.

As for Aura and Meltdown they should be removed entirely, or their effect changed completely. Removing the Crisis Level from the LBs at any point defeats the purpose of the mechanic, imo. So is zeroing enemy VIT. Since Meltdown is a cool late game spell, perhaps it should do something like lower stats (or just one stat) progressively during the battle? Something like a stat poison effect that could be maintained by constant application. Would fit the name and make results fit the effort and expense instead of just erasing enemy defenses. As for Aura, it could level up the crisis level when it occurs, instead of increasing the chances of one happening.

Quote
But another thing I was looking at was trying to make Limits behave more like a character-specific skillset that can be used more freely as some have fairly versatile sets like Quistis and Irvine.

I think you can improve the versatility of Quistis and Irvine by simply making their crisis level require a less critical situation, something already done for Seifer and Edea in the party iirc, while decreasing this "bonus" when they gain their stronger LBs, or simply decreasing the bonus with their increasing in levels. In this way low level quistis would be able to use the LBs almost every battle, while Irvine would be mostly limited by ammo.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-05-09 08:09:40
Thanks for the quick reply, and for sharing your documentation.

The Limit breaks are unfortunately one of the most difficult aspects of the battle system to rebalance. I actually like the idea of limited uses per battle as well, it would also restrict Aura over-abusing. I remember that FFVI had a similar mechanic with its desperation attacks, but that one was a bit too restrictive (only once per battle, only after a certain amount of time has passed, and only with less than 1/16th maxHP). Kinda like two extremes without a real middle path.

Another possibility might be tweaking the bonus numbers for dead party members, lost HP and negative statuses, or even the one for Aura. Do you by chance also know where to find those? Or could you give me a byte sequence to search for, since the offsets in the german exe are somewhat different from the english exe, as I've just realized.

There is a tool that can change those modifiers from statuses but I'm unsure if it works for other language versions: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=17090.0
To get the game's kernel, use the Deling tool to extract it from Main.fs: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=13050.0
(Also use Deling to import the modified kernel after changes).

If it doesn't work, then let me know and I'll send a byte string of all the default modifiers to search.


The idea you get Limit Breaks according to the "danger level" the character is in is really cool, in concept. It's hit and miss in game, even without abuse, which is also easy.
An idea: it could depend on a character being hit by a strong enemy attack that leaves them near death and only counting dead party members and status effects when caused in a small amount of turns by the enemy. So lots of damage/status/S.Effects done in a short time by enemy only.

As for Aura and Meltdown they should be removed entirely, or their effect changed completely. Removing the Crisis Level from the LBs at any point defeats the purpose of the mechanic, imo. So is zeroing enemy VIT. Since Meltdown is a cool late game spell, perhaps it should do something like lower stats (or just one stat) progressively during the battle? Something like a stat poison effect that could be maintained by constant application. Would fit the name and make results fit the effort and expense instead of just erasing enemy defenses. As for Aura, it could level up the crisis level when it occurs, instead of increasing the chances of one happening.

I think you can improve the versatility of Quistis and Irvine by simply making their crisis level require a less critical situation, something already done for Seifer and Edea in the party iirc, while decreasing this "bonus" when they gain their stronger LBs, or simply decreasing the bonus with their increasing in levels. In this way low level quistis would be able to use the LBs almost every battle, while Irvine would be mostly limited by ammo.

The HP modifier currently is lower for all characters and their Limits are proccing roughly just past halfway of their MaxHP. Originally it was only going to be a few characters with it set up like this but I was trying it out with all characters in the last build. Aura I was thinking of moving onto an item stone and then converting the spell for use as something else. Meltdown I think is currently a defence-ignoring fire spell but still not 100% sure what the plan with it is going to be; Vit0 itself is something I'm trying to work in as a drawback to certain effects/items rather than a status that gets inflicted onto an enemy/player by attacks.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aldebaran on 2019-05-09 20:17:57
I have to say, all the changes until now sound really spot-on and well thought out. Really hope you keep going.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Kefka on 2019-05-09 21:37:47
You're right, Doomtrain can indeed do that! For some reason I thought the code for limits would be in the exe, it never ocurred to me that it could be in the kernel. Yes, Doomtrain works with the german version, and I've been using it for a while already actually, but somehow it seems I never bothered with the last 'Miscellaneous' tab. Wow, I feel stupid now, lol. Anyway thanks, I'll tweak the various limit values a little bit and see how I like the results.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Pure_Mind_Games on 2019-06-08 20:56:27
I always thought that if the game was ever remade it would be cool if they let you switch between your cloths and SeeD uniforms if it's possible I wouldn't mind seeing it here.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-06-08 23:00:15
I always thought that if the game was ever remade it would be cool if they let you switch between your cloths and SeeD uniforms if it's possible I wouldn't mind seeing it here.

I think that's possible.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Rikku on 2019-06-13 19:49:23
Hi everyone !!

I am looking forward to try the full version of this mod but, does anyone know when will be available ?

I enjoyed A LOT the ff7 new threat mod and i´m really really interested in this version.

Thanks
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-06-13 20:49:58
Hi everyone !!

I am looking forward to try the full version of this mod but, does anyone know when will be available ?

I enjoyed A LOT the ff7 new threat mod and i´m really really interested in this version.

Thanks

It'll still be a little while I'm afraid.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: yuffstah on 2019-06-15 16:33:42
Hey Sega Chief,

first of all, thanks for your work so far and the NT mod for FF7. I had a blast with all the tweaks/fixes and new bosses.

irlite already brought up most points that I have noticed during my run so far and I agree with pretty much all of them, so I just wanted to add a few things:

- Draw point choice is missing for Deling City sewer and the tomb
- Diablos is affected by Demi the first two times of usage. Not sure if that is intentional or just a bug on my end. Also he is still easily beaten when blinding him. Maybe you can make him cast silence or (that spell which disables limits)
- The Raldos (Granaldo fight) take almost no damage until Granaldo is dead. However, I hit them for around 100 once, but I'm not sure if that was a bug or has to do with the mechanic. First I though it had to do with the position of Granaldo (either making them have high or low defence), but that doesn't seem the case.
- Magic is finally usable with this mod, which opens up to new strategies and playstyles, but I think they are still too weak (or physical damage is too high). Comparing character damage with similar stats in Str and Mag, even when exploiting their elemental weakness, there is almost no difference in damage. In my opinion magic users should be more of a glass cannon, especially because you need resources (spell number/MP) for them.
- Some of the draw points feel unrewarding because you already encountered enemies with both options before getting to it. Maybe you can make spells of draw points exclusive to them (until you get the flying garden or so) and add spells that are very useful but not essential and can't be drawn from any other mob (like Life, Esuna, Dispel, Regen, Double, etc)
- Encounter rate seems higher than normal, especially in the training center I was getting into almost 10 fights until I got to the "hidden area"

That's it for now. I will probably do another playthrough and pay more attention to detail.

Hopefully the code of FF8 allows you to make a mod similar to FF7 NT. Though I don't wanna know how many hours went into that ;D


Let us/me know if you need any specific, time consuming testing. Cheers
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-06-16 12:44:22
Hey Sega Chief,

first of all, thanks for your work so far and the NT mod for FF7. I had a blast with all the tweaks/fixes and new bosses.

irlite already brought up most points that I have noticed during my run so far and I agree with pretty much all of them, so I just wanted to add a few things:

- Draw point choice is missing for Deling City sewer and the tomb
- Diablos is affected by Demi the first two times of usage. Not sure if that is intentional or just a bug on my end. Also he is still easily beaten when blinding him. Maybe you can make him cast silence or (that spell which disables limits)
- The Raldos (Granaldo fight) take almost no damage until Granaldo is dead. However, I hit them for around 100 once, but I'm not sure if that was a bug or has to do with the mechanic. First I though it had to do with the position of Granaldo (either making them have high or low defence), but that doesn't seem the case.
- Magic is finally usable with this mod, which opens up to new strategies and playstyles, but I think they are still too weak (or physical damage is too high). Comparing character damage with similar stats in Str and Mag, even when exploiting their elemental weakness, there is almost no difference in damage. In my opinion magic users should be more of a glass cannon, especially because you need resources (spell number/MP) for them.
- Some of the draw points feel unrewarding because you already encountered enemies with both options before getting to it. Maybe you can make spells of draw points exclusive to them (until you get the flying garden or so) and add spells that are very useful but not essential and can't be drawn from any other mob (like Life, Esuna, Dispel, Regen, Double, etc)
- Encounter rate seems higher than normal, especially in the training center I was getting into almost 10 fights until I got to the "hidden area"

That's it for now. I will probably do another playthrough and pay more attention to detail.

Hopefully the code of FF8 allows you to make a mod similar to FF7 NT. Though I don't wanna know how many hours went into that ;D


Let us/me know if you need any specific, time consuming testing. Cheers

Cheers for the feedback, bud.

My intention was to have the draw point give new magic earlier than they're available from enemies (not all do this, some just offer a top-up on some essentials or what might be useful for upcoming fights). I'll review them against finalised enemy Draw lists.

Encounter rate was unchanged, but will look into it. I think enc-none is going to be an early GF ability just so it can be a random battle toggle like FF7 NT has.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Konichu on 2019-06-17 23:51:11
Hey, I just finished the mod and I noticed a few things :

- When you refine Cottage into Curaga, it says that it'll give you 20 but it actually give you 50
- You use the wrong item to cure blind (or my english is really bad at this point when I was looking for an item to cure it)

Is it normal to have to steal Carbuncle but not Undine ?

You should nerf a lot the cards, because before going to Deiling city, I managed to get all the really good cards and transform them in good magic like tornado and curaga and have all my char to have 3.5k hp, >100 str and just spammed Mad Rush (to get haste + protect + berserk) to get my way to all the bosses until the end of disc 1 so I think you should really nerf the cards or Mad Rush.

And we shouldn't be able to use magic that have under 10 uses in junction because otherwise we just have to put 1 magic on each character to make the early game a bit more hard

Spoiler: show
I wasn't ready to fight Omega Weapon when I pressed cancel
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Pure_Mind_Games on 2019-06-18 10:31:16
You should nerf a lot the cards, because before going to Deiling city, I managed to get all the really good cards and transform them in good magic like tornado and curaga and have all my char to have 3.5k hp, >100 str and just spammed Mad Rush (to get haste + protect + berserk) to get my way to all the bosses until the end of disc 1 so I think you should really nerf the cards or Mad Rush.

Counter argument, when selecting New Game have a message that tells people to use self control if they don't want to 'break' the game.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-06-18 12:44:21
Hey, I just finished the mod and I noticed a few things :

- When you refine Cottage into Curaga, it says that it'll give you 20 but it actually give you 50
- You use the wrong item to cure blind (or my english is really bad at this point when I was looking for an item to cure it)

Is it normal to have to steal Carbuncle but not Undine ?

You should nerf a lot the cards, because before going to Deiling city, I managed to get all the really good cards and transform them in good magic like tornado and curaga and have all my char to have 3.5k hp, >100 str and just spammed Mad Rush (to get haste + protect + berserk) to get my way to all the bosses until the end of disc 1 so I think you should really nerf the cards or Mad Rush.

And we shouldn't be able to use magic that have under 10 uses in junction because otherwise we just have to put 1 magic on each character to make the early game a bit more hard

Spoiler: show
I wasn't ready to fight Omega Weapon when I pressed cancel


For the refines, Cottage isn't supposed to refine into curaga at all but I think I've missed it in my refine list; there's an area I'm not sure of in my hex list that doesn't quite fit with the structure. For the items, the plan was to have items cure two statuses instead of 1 so that one of the items could then be used for berserk/confusion but I think the status heal is hard-coded for the field screens which I didn't realise.

Carbuncle has a thing going on where the monsters are under Reflect until he is stolen from them via Draw. I was planning to add a check to add him to the player's GF list if he wasn't drawn but didn't get around to it at the time.

The cards were the biggest flaw when releasing the Disc 1 demo as the placement of cards by and large was unchanged on NPCs and the refine results were supposed to use a byte that I thought was a level-lock on the refine. It was too much to patch quickly at the time so it's been left for the full release.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Konichu on 2019-06-20 09:42:00
Counter argument, when selecting New Game have a message that tells people to use self control if they don't want to 'break' the game.

I controlled my self, I just managed to get all the player/summon cards (like zell,quistis, mog) and transformed it into item. I didn't take any time to farm otherwise
But like Sega Chief said, I broke it only because cottage shouldn't give Curaga  ::)
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Schwahn on 2019-06-27 04:34:48
@SegaChief

I am a massive fan of NT for FF7, and I cannot begin to express just how glad I am that you are working on another mod for FF8 now.

You have already in this early build made some of the most significant changes I ever wanted to see with this game, such as stock no longer influencing the stat boost from junctions and just overall balancing the game in general.

FF8 felt horrible to me to play, because it isn't inherently designed in a way where you can just "Straight play" through the game. Already just with the base gameplay design changes, I can already tell this will become the definitive edition of the game for me and will likely breathe a life into the game that was NEVER there for me before.

Thank you, and keep up all the amazing work.

/Schwahn
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-06-30 00:30:25
@SegaChief

I am a massive fan of NT for FF7, and I cannot begin to express just how glad I am that you are working on another mod for FF8 now.

You have already in this early build made some of the most significant changes I ever wanted to see with this game, such as stock no longer influencing the stat boost from junctions and just overall balancing the game in general.

FF8 felt horrible to me to play, because it isn't inherently designed in a way where you can just "Straight play" through the game. Already just with the base gameplay design changes, I can already tell this will become the definitive edition of the game for me and will likely breathe a life into the game that was NEVER there for me before.

Thank you, and keep up all the amazing work.

/Schwahn

Thanks bud, hopefully it won't disappoint.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Eliscia on 2019-07-02 17:45:47
Hey there, just wondering if the % on squalls hit was reverted back to 255 or if I've managed to somehow mess up the install? Everything else is working as intended from the looks of it though.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Goth on 2019-07-04 10:09:13
Limits have had the RNG removed from their check, meaning that milling turns will no longer have an effect. If a Limit does not proc when the character's ATB gauge fills, it means they cannot get a Limit until the battle conditions change (HP is lost, status is inflicted). This works both ways, and means that if a Limit does proc it will be available even if you swap control to another character and back again.
This has probably got to be one of if not the most important feature to prevent endless Limit spamming
Yes, it's one of the most important feature IMHO.
To be fair, spamming the circle button waiting for Renzo was part of the fun back in the days, especially when playing with a friend and trying to beat a hard boss or Omega, it was a fun (unforeseen) mechanic, it created tension.
But when replaying the game we want balance, and I've always thought of this feature as one of the most important or at least the first step towards a better balance of the Limits, so it's good to finally see it implemented.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-07-04 13:03:33
Hey there, just wondering if the % on squalls hit was reverted back to 255 or if I've managed to somehow mess up the install? Everything else is working as intended from the looks of it though.

I reverted it because the game seems to ignore the hit% and the attack will always land regardless.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Eliscia on 2019-07-05 17:24:33
I reverted it because the game seems to ignore the hit% and the attack will always land regardless.

Thanks!
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Topken on 2019-07-09 18:57:23
Glad to see you working on New Threat for FF8 as I love the one for FF7
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Dark_Ansem on 2019-07-22 11:18:02
An exciting release for my first FF ever. Sad Edea isn't permanent but oh well.
Have you considered making some spells such as Holy or GF like Bahamut multi-hit?
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: joedram0 on 2019-08-03 07:34:51
Hello Sega Chief, you have really done some great work with these New Threat mods. My own mods for PSX FF7 and 8 I made, are based off of the ideas that yourself and others in the forum have made. They are nowhere near the quality of yours but that is to be expected with the PSX versions.

That being said, I uploaded my FF8 mod called Inernational GF Job System here but the hack is missing a few things that I hoped you could offer some insight with.

First, is how were you able to change junction magic to be 100% regardless of stock? I wanted to get that in my hack but am unsure if it is as simple as changing some hex values or if it requires coding. I could change the values if I new the offsets but that would be it.

Lastly would be if you knew of any way to change Squalls hit to be something other than 255 or if that is hardcoded. Thanks!

If you had any interest in seeing the changes to the game I made, it is located here:

International GF Job System (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=19123.0)

Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-09-06 20:18:41
Hello Sega Chief, you have really done some great work with these New Threat mods. My own mods for PSX FF7 and 8 I made, are based off of the ideas that yourself and others in the forum have made. They are nowhere near the quality of yours but that is to be expected with the PSX versions.

That being said, I uploaded my FF8 mod called Inernational GF Job System here but the hack is missing a few things that I hoped you could offer some insight with.

First, is how were you able to change junction magic to be 100% regardless of stock? I wanted to get that in my hack but am unsure if it is as simple as changing some hex values or if it requires coding. I could change the values if I new the offsets but that would be it.

Lastly would be if you knew of any way to change Squalls hit to be something other than 255 or if that is hardcoded. Thanks!

If you had any interest in seeing the changes to the game I made, it is located here:

International GF Job System (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=19123.0)

Sorry, bud; I hadn't checked the thread in a bit. I'll send a PM.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: strife98 on 2019-09-14 06:11:16
So I recently finished my Level 100 Run of NT8, and here's a few bugs I encountered. Probably going to reiterate a few that have already been mentioned so forgive me for that.

I couldn't get the HEXT to work right. I was able to get the correct amount of in battle draws, and the ability to skip the intro, but draw points, and a few other things were broken. I ended up using the emergency EXE.

Granaldo and Raldo boss fights didn't scale. My guess is because you do encounter them as normal enemies later on so they'd be a bit difficult to scale, so that might not be a bug. Same with the Iguions as they were only level 18.

Echo Drops only heal Silence and not Blind.

Cerberus camera for the Diablos fight is broken.

A few of the random encounters matched the levels of my characters instead of being at a fixed level. I ran into a few level 100 Funguars in the first Laguna scene, and I think there were a few of varying levels as some died rather easily. Didnt get a chance to scan them first. It seemed that a bunch of the enemies after the 2nd Laguna scene also had matched my level. The enemies around Galbaldia Garden, and Deling City were all also relatively around level 100.

A few of the draw points also don't work. I don't think any of them in the Deling Sewers worked.

All in all I think for a run where the only thing I did was get the characters up to level 100 it was a little too easy. I didn't use card modding, I think I only refined a few spells, and my didn't get level boosted so they only got the levels earned from fighting. I didn't need that much planning for the bosses. I ran through the game with just Confuse protection, and I had my elemental status attacks wrong for a majority of the bosses. I had a harder time fighting the level 100 random encounters that I randomly met. Speaking of, your level 100 Creeps are horrifying. I would rather fight Seifer and Edea than two Creeps. They are super hard to hit, and magic, which always hits, does little damage. I'm talking Selphie with as high of magic stat that I could give her with a Firaga only did about 800 damage against something with like 20k to 30k health. That could be chalked up to the only thing that was really level 100 about me was my level though. I didn't have any abilities that increased my hit rate, I didn't have Squall, and I very much didn't have the better magic Junctioned. So that might just be me complaining about fighting stuff I'm not ready for.

I think my favorite of the runs that I did was the no level gain run. That required a lot of planning and hoping for good things to happen. The level 100 run was quite easy in comparison to both the no level gain, and the normal run. However, I did have a lot of fun, and I can't wait till the next update!
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: lakecityransom on 2019-09-18 15:16:39
Hello again, just wanted to say I played thru FF8 after FF7 NT merely due to the timing of the remaster. I was completely oblivious it was coming (lucky lol). I found myself respecting it much more than 20 years ago, but holy cow, its pretty broken. By about halfway thru the game I was annihilating everything with ease, save for omega weapon. I figured you might make this game shine. Are you gonna bring it to the remaster or just the original PC version?

Seems like if you could put a lower ceiling on spell quantity and scale up over time + pullback on limit break abuse (including with aura) it could make a lot of difference.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Psymind on 2019-09-28 01:07:48
Hoping this supports FF8 Remaster in the future. Love this mod on FF7 mate, keep up the good work :D
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: gunner_1207 on 2019-10-17 20:01:03
I always thought that if the game was ever remade it would be cool if they let you switch between your cloths and SeeD uniforms if it's possible I wouldn't mind seeing it here.
have you given any thought as to how this is even done?, I've wanted this for ages but have no clue, i figure its in the main kernel somewhere. 
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-10-17 21:42:04
have you given any thought as to how this is even done?, I've wanted this for ages but have no clue, i figure its in the main kernel somewhere. 

There's a variable you can toggle I think. Couple problems: 1) SeeD uniforms have no equivalent battle models. 2) The SeeD and cadet uniforms on field screens are limited to where they're used in default game and it's currently difficult to add new field groups to a screen.

A hard-patch way of doing it would be to replace the regular battle character entries with the cadet ones. As for fields, I think each field has its own set of models (and animation set) rather than pulling them from an archive like FF7 PC does so swapping those out would take a lot more time.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aerodynamics on 2019-12-17 03:34:40
I loved your New Threat mod for FF7, its the reason i want to play it again.

I have a really deep conection with FF8 but i cant play it because it's not fun at all to me without a major overhaul of the junction and leveling up system.

If anyone can make me play FF8 again after 20 years it's you.

 I can only dream of playing this game again in a few years time. I'd like to say it's in your hands to fullfil my dream :p
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-12-17 12:22:24
I loved your New Threat mod for FF7, its the reason i want to play it again.

I have a really deep conection with FF8 but i cant play it because it's not fun at all to me without a major overhaul of the junction and leveling up system.

If anyone can make me play FF8 again after 20 years it's you.

 I can only dream of playing this game again in a few years time. I'd like to say it's in your hands to fullfil my dream :p

It won't take a few years to finish, probably a few months. A last update to FF7 NT before the remake comes out in early March is the current plan though. As for FF8 NT, the Summer sounds like a good time.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aerodynamics on 2019-12-18 03:38:46
It won't take a few years to finish, probably a few months. A last update to FF7 NT before the remake comes out in early March is the current plan though. As for FF8 NT, the Summer sounds like a good time.

It won't take a few years to finish, probably a few months. A last update to FF7 NT before the remake comes out in early March is the current plan though. As for FF8 NT, the Summer sounds like a good time.

Great :)
I haven’t tried the mod, I will only do so when it’s fully complete to disc 4. In paper, I applaud you for the following things that I feel should be great:
-   Junctioning system seems to be finally somewhat balanced now! 1 spell per stat and tiered stat bonuses, I really think it’ll be a good idea.
-   GFs no longer drawn- great, no more anxiety


Onto some suggestions (if you don’t mind):

The only thing keeping me from playing FF8 is the fact that it's not a "normal" game. It’s a broken game, gameplay wise, next to impossible to fix.

 Not sure if anyone has suggested the following, but I’d like to address changes to the main 2 issues that make FF8 broken and not fun: Magic and Enemy Leveling

1- Magic System: Should Work like a MP based system.
Since FF8 doesn’t have a MP system, either create one (this sounds awfuly hard) or use a workaround.
There could be limits to the max spells a character would store. These would be restored by items or sleeping.

 I believe a "tier + magic start" based system to determine the max spells could be a workaround the games non MP system.

Ex: tier 1: fire, blizzard, etc
tier 4: holy
Squall is level 10, magic 20, so he gets: a maximum of 10 fire spells and 2 holy spells (imagine he had drawn holy at level 10 lol). He spends spells and he can't cast anymore until he finds a inn or uses a item, or maybe even draws from an enemy.
If he increases his magic stat he gets more of each spell.

To limit the diversity of spells (like having 10 firagas, blizaga, thundaga, etc, maybe he could only use spells that are junctioned? Who knows.

Obviously this is meant to be a workaround the FF8 magic draw system to make it function as a MP system. If you can add actual MP that would be visible during a battle and just make spells and GFs deplete MP like a normal FF game, that would be amazing, but that seems very complicated for UI reasons too. With a regular MP system, maybe not even draw is needed.

2- GFs are shields and deal crap damage: Should be more like fragile ticking time bomb nukes

I think It’d be interesting if GFs didn’t shield you while charging. Instead, based on their strength, they would take longer and longer to charge, leaving you more and more vulnereable. They could also decrease your defense while charging. Like a risky move that can pay off. Not sure how to integrate this into the magic system though. Maybe only being able to summon a GF once or twice per fight, depending on the number junctioned, I dunno?

If the nuke approach doesnt work properly, maybe try to tie them into the "mp" style system, limit their usage, etc.

3 – All enemies on the same level:

I applaud the regular battles having a fixed enemy level. However, I am not sure I’m open to boss fight scaling with the party level, because, even if you need to level up to be able to beat the regular enemies, the hardest fights are always boss fights, so one still has an incentive to not level up after you feel you can beat the regular enemies.
I do recognize that boss fights that scale with you could be more challenging, but overall it’s not worth the anxiety of trying to not level up.

While not having played your mod, here’s some other sugestions/worrying things I’d like to discuss about FF8:

Weapons: I think there needs to be a big difference between weapon used and damage dealt. It’s barely felt on the original game, and in final fantasy 7 too. Final fantasy 9 has a pretty good scaling of weapon tier and damage dealt. Could make that as a guideline. I am not sure the 20 to 40 is enough to differentiate the weapons, but I didn’t try the mod so…

GF and abilities : Some make the characters feel too diferent from each other. Ex: one GF has +40% HP, makes Selfie a tank and a squishy Zell. Weird I know. Maybe a whole rethinking of the abilities is needed.

Card rules : Probably options to change these. Maybe add more events to challenge some NPCs. I really liked playing Triple Triad. Sure, it’s ridiculous to challenge Headmaster Cid in the middle of a Garden assault, but it’s fun.


I know these are a lot of ideas to think about, I’m not entirely sure if these are actually good solutions or if they were mentioned before, but I’d like to point them up anyway. I really would love to play FF8 again, but even with Ragnarok I feel some key issues are not addressed and therefore “deal breakers”, like magic and junctioning
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Divatox on 2019-12-26 05:52:25
Nate about the enemies, its a kinda very hard job edit the level of every enemy and put then back into game because are 844 battle locations in the FF8.
Making the bosses at the same level as the party is nice (i started to mod a second time my game)
Bosses will be in the same level as the party
and Ultimecia's Castle will be ALL enemies and bosses in the same level too (i expended about 3 weeks making those changes XD and edited the enemies putting more old bosses in normal battles like GeroGero, Fujin, Raijin)
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aerodynamics on 2019-12-27 22:04:46
Nate about the enemies, its a kinda very hard job edit the level of every enemy and put then back into game because are 844 battle locations in the FF8.
Making the bosses at the same level as the party is nice (i started to mod a second time my game)
Bosses will be in the same level as the party
and Ultimecia's Castle will be ALL enemies and bosses in the same level too (i expended about 3 weeks making those changes XD and edited the enemies putting more old bosses in normal battles like GeroGero, Fujin, Raijin)

Thanks for your feedback ;) Regarding boss level scaling, when you level up do you feel like you probably didnt want to? When playing FF8 originally I tried to avoid levelling up because the bosses scale with you.

I agree it should be hard to edit all battle locations, but Sega Chief plans to edit all monsters to a fixed level, aren't the regular monster battles the biggest chunk of all those 844 battle locations? Shoulndn't be hard to edit the level of 50 bosses based on what the player level should be at that time and place in the game.

I would really like to hear your opinions (including of course Sega-Chief's) on the "MP like" system I talked about before.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2019-12-28 12:48:51
Thanks for your feedback ;) Regarding boss level scaling, when you level up do you feel like you probably didnt want to? When playing FF8 originally I tried to avoid levelling up because the bosses scale with you.

I agree it should be hard to edit all battle locations, but Sega Chief plans to edit all monsters to a fixed level, aren't the regular monster battles the biggest chunk of all those 844 battle locations? Shoulndn't be hard to edit the level of 50 bosses based on what the player level should be at that time and place in the game.

I would really like to hear your opinions (including of course Sega-Chief's) on the "MP like" system I talked about before.

I'm not keen on an MP system; Stock is fairly unique to this game and I'd prefer to work around that system. But Stock and MP aren't a million miles apart in terms of how they work; both restrict the number of times a spell can be cast, so if Stock regenerates in some way then it begins to more closely resemble an MP system.

The game has a field opcode where spells can be added to a player's inventory. Not tried it yet but assuming it's functional (can't recall an instance where it was used in the vanilla game though, as Draw Points do it through their own special function) then an Inn could replenish spells to a certain point. But this requires the following:

1) A way to check what spells were on the character prior

2) A way to check how many of that specific spell are currently stocked to add the correct amount (unless it caps automatically when hitting max in which case this isn't needed)

3) A way of preventing a spell from vanishing when all stock is consumed and being locked from use when this is the case.

As for level-scaling; currently, most bosses have level-scaling while randoms do not. The idea was that due to randoms being fixed level, it wouldn't be feasible to grind out to an absurdly high level that would result in a super-powered boss. The EXP given by randoms though still seems to be quite high even with that so if it doesn't work out I'll go for fixed levels on bosses as well.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aerodynamics on 2019-12-29 01:10:37
I'm not keen on an MP system; Stock is fairly unique to this game and I'd prefer to work around that system. But Stock and MP aren't a million miles apart in terms of how they work; both restrict the number of times a spell can be cast, so if Stock regenerates in some way then it begins to more closely resemble an MP system.

The game has a field opcode where spells can be added to a player's inventory. Not tried it yet but assuming it's functional (can't recall an instance where it was used in the vanilla game though, as Draw Points do it through their own special function) then an Inn could replenish spells to a certain point. But this requires the following:

1) A way to check what spells were on the character prior

2) A way to check how many of that specific spell are currently stocked to add the correct amount (unless it caps automatically when hitting max in which case this isn't needed)

3) A way of preventing a spell from vanishing when all stock is consumed and being locked from use when this is the case.

As for level-scaling; currently, most bosses have level-scaling while randoms do not. The idea was that due to randoms being fixed level, it wouldn't be feasible to grind out to an absurdly high level that would result in a super-powered boss. The EXP given by randoms though still seems to be quite high even with that so if it doesn't work out I'll go for fixed levels on bosses as well.

You are right when you say stock and MP arent that different. However, in my opinion, as i'm fighting a boss, i like to (have to) use all i can to beat it. In my opinion, this is the most fun way, as bosses are challenging but manageable if one tries. Trying to not use your best magic in a boss is rather restrictive.

If i'm saving spells and they dont replenish after the boss (like in a game with MP where your party goes to sleep, etc), then I might not use them? Like, trying to hoard spells for late game :p

BTW, GFs start out with max affinity and one can regain that affinity by casting elemental spells, but what about some other methods?

All I can say is FF8 is such a different game when it comes to its system that making it more normal just seems like building a game from scratch! Which is a shame since the soundtrack and environments are so good.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Rikku on 2019-12-29 09:44:18
Hi everyone !!

I have two suggestion in order to improve the FF8 system. These are two ideas though.

1º) Maybe rethink the magic refine system. I mean, boost the numer of magic and the items location (for example, graves only gives 5 magic, it could be changed to 10 or 20 and give the numer of graves given by enemys or perhaps create concrete shop who just sells this king of items).

2º) For hard purposes, i imagine the game as if you junction a magic then you can´t use it.
With this you need to decide which magic you junction and which magic you left to use it in battle and in the field giving a new level to the junction system and who seems to be justify by the own system.


Thank you all !!
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aerodynamics on 2020-01-04 18:00:05
[delete this post please]
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aerodynamics on 2020-01-07 15:53:15
So I’ve finished a no-refine rundown of the NT8 demo. First of all, thank you for allowing us to demo your mod. I specifically bought the steam version just to play it.
I wish to share my opinions about the good things and things that I believe could be improved. First, I’ve read all the posts on this thread so I’ll try not to repeat known issues as I wish that this feedback can actually be useful.
Overall: I enjoyed it! Made me wish for more, for sure. The choices made are definitely improving the game in the right direction.

1- Found a graphical glitch: After fighting the Anacoundaur in Dollet there is a random encounter with a couple of soldiers that always make a really crazy graphical glitch where colored lines are all over the place. It has actually crashed my game once. It's either only related to this mod or the original game since I was playing with no other mods. Happened every single time at the start of the battle.

2- Regarding Gil, I found it easy to get as well, and the only thing they were worth for in my no-refine playthrough was phoenix downs and hi-potions. Maybe remove the tests and add a new mechanic increase your seed level? I find the tests mechanic rather tedious because one can just search the answers. It’s not really rewarding to be rich because one replied all the questions correctly :p. Another idea would be to lock seed test levels by game stages?

3- After playing through this mod I don’t think a MP system like I mentioned would be worth it. It’s perfectly fine right now regarding magic ;)

4- Characters:
+ I love the new limit break way of proc’ing. They are a nice risk to reward. Feels great to pull them off.
Zell, Quistis and Irvines LBs seem a bit underpowered. Zell could do a slight damage increase on the base moves, maybe 20%. Irvine could do with a small increase too in normal and shotgun ammo damage. No idea what to do with Quistis here.  Selphie LB is surprisingly fun to use
+ I love the super-fast Selfie and the tanky mage Quistis. Overall I still wished for Quistis to be a bit more tanky.
- Squall’s physical attack is ridiculously overpowered with the hit at 255%. Because of this, Zell and Irvine’s auto attacks are very underpowered.

5- Enemies:
+ Ifrit fight is great. I was surprised when he used his summon attack on my team
- Elvoret was a little too easy and could use some surprise moves.
+ X-ATM092, the robot fight in dollet is nice, perfect difficulty. I would like it if it surprised the party like the Scorpion Bot did on NT7 hehe.
- Granaldo was a little hard at first but super easy using siren to kill the 3 rock dudes. Killing the Armadodo’s makes the fight boring. It’s not that Siren’s op, it’s the armadoldos extreme water weakness. Probably can’t be fixed because they are random encounters.
+- I liked Diablos fight, but in my fight he didn't capitalize on my low hp and kept using gravity attacks instead. Only attacked phisically once or twice.
- Gerogero is just a little too tough offensively
- Minotaur and Sacred fight in my humble opinion could use some tweaks. They have too much HP or the characters don't have enough wind damage at that point. Maybe it’s because I had no Aero at this point? Ps: they can be slowed and if you use protect the fight is super easy, long and tedious. I like the float thing you did though ;)
- Seifer and Edea are tough as balls. I had to use everything I had, haste, shell, protect, dispel, everything. Then again, remember: I did not use any refines. I struggled most with the poison

6- Mecanics:
+ Junctioning is great. Cannot think of a better Junctioning system. Major thumbs up here.
- Hi-Potions with the med-data abilty, is basically a full-heal (1500hp). Intentional? Maybe reduce med-data to 50% instead of double?
- What’s your stance on Cure/Esuna/etc being able to assign to be used as a elemental attack for holy? Would that be boss breaking?
+ Draw system is actually interesting this time
- If you choose Water over aero in the first draw point with that choice, you never get to draw aero again. I would suggest changing the Timber bar entrance draw point to Aero/Water.
- Leveling up is too easy. Is there anyway to make level or EXP be gradual? Instead of being 1000p each level?
- Shell, Protect and Haste seem to last forever. Is this intencional?

7- Dialogues and story:
+ I enjoyed the few lines you added to some characters. It clarifies the story and makes the person feel more engaged. I would really love to see more of these lines on certain parts of the story. I do know it's a WIP.
-I wish there were more reminders to equip the Gfs and junctions in the game. Specifically, before the Iguion’s fight with Rinoa.
- I think players would benefit from a reminder after fighting the iguions, as squall enters the hallway, to search for the hatch.
+- Quality of life improvements are great and I hope you include more if possible. I would've liked be able to skip the sequence in which Rinoas farther explains the whole plan to attack the sorceress, for example.

Overall, I really enjoyed your mod. This is your mod, your decisions. If the feedback provided was useful in any way I would be really happy. I’ve got to admit I’m pretty excited to play the full version.

Cheers ;)
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2020-01-09 08:53:57
So I’ve finished a no-refine rundown of the NT8 demo. First of all, thank you for allowing us to demo your mod. I specifically bought the steam version just to play it.
I wish to share my opinions about the good things and things that I believe could be improved. First, I’ve read all the posts on this thread so I’ll try not to repeat known issues as I wish that this feedback can actually be useful.
Overall: I enjoyed it! Made me wish for more, for sure. The choices made are definitely improving the game in the right direction.

1- Found a graphical glitch: After fighting the Anacoundaur in Dollet there is a random encounter with a couple of soldiers that always make a really crazy graphical glitch where colored lines are all over the place. It has actually crashed my game once. It's either only related to this mod or the original game since I was playing with no other mods. Happened every single time at the start of the battle.

2- Regarding Gil, I found it easy to get as well, and the only thing they were worth for in my no-refine playthrough was phoenix downs and hi-potions. Maybe remove the tests and add a new mechanic increase your seed level? I find the tests mechanic rather tedious because one can just search the answers. It’s not really rewarding to be rich because one replied all the questions correctly :p. Another idea would be to lock seed test levels by game stages?

3- After playing through this mod I don’t think a MP system like I mentioned would be worth it. It’s perfectly fine right now regarding magic ;)

4- Characters:
+ I love the new limit break way of proc’ing. They are a nice risk to reward. Feels great to pull them off.
Zell, Quistis and Irvines LBs seem a bit underpowered. Zell could do a slight damage increase on the base moves, maybe 20%. Irvine could do with a small increase too in normal and shotgun ammo damage. No idea what to do with Quistis here.  Selphie LB is surprisingly fun to use
+ I love the super-fast Selfie and the tanky mage Quistis. Overall I still wished for Quistis to be a bit more tanky.
- Squall’s physical attack is ridiculously overpowered with the hit at 255%. Because of this, Zell and Irvine’s auto attacks are very underpowered.

5- Enemies:
+ Ifrit fight is great. I was surprised when he used his summon attack on my team
- Elvoret was a little too easy and could use some surprise moves.
+ X-ATM092, the robot fight in dollet is nice, perfect difficulty. I would like it if it surprised the party like the Scorpion Bot did on NT7 hehe.
- Granaldo was a little hard at first but super easy using siren to kill the 3 rock dudes. Killing the Armadodo’s makes the fight boring. It’s not that Siren’s op, it’s the armadoldos extreme water weakness. Probably can’t be fixed because they are random encounters.
+- I liked Diablos fight, but in my fight he didn't capitalize on my low hp and kept using gravity attacks instead. Only attacked phisically once or twice.
- Gerogero is just a little too tough offensively
- Minotaur and Sacred fight in my humble opinion could use some tweaks. They have too much HP or the characters don't have enough wind damage at that point. Maybe it’s because I had no Aero at this point? Ps: they can be slowed and if you use protect the fight is super easy, long and tedious. I like the float thing you did though ;)
- Seifer and Edea are tough as balls. I had to use everything I had, haste, shell, protect, dispel, everything. Then again, remember: I did not use any refines. I struggled most with the poison

6- Mecanics:
+ Junctioning is great. Cannot think of a better Junctioning system. Major thumbs up here.
- Hi-Potions with the med-data abilty, is basically a full-heal (1500hp). Intentional? Maybe reduce med-data to 50% instead of double?
- What’s your stance on Cure/Esuna/etc being able to assign to be used as a elemental attack for holy? Would that be boss breaking?
+ Draw system is actually interesting this time
- If you choose Water over aero in the first draw point with that choice, you never get to draw aero again. I would suggest changing the Timber bar entrance draw point to Aero/Water.
- Leveling up is too easy. Is there anyway to make level or EXP be gradual? Instead of being 1000p each level?
- Shell, Protect and Haste seem to last forever. Is this intencional?

7- Dialogues and story:
+ I enjoyed the few lines you added to some characters. It clarifies the story and makes the person feel more engaged. I would really love to see more of these lines on certain parts of the story. I do know it's a WIP.
-I wish there were more reminders to equip the Gfs and junctions in the game. Specifically, before the Iguion’s fight with Rinoa.
- I think players would benefit from a reminder after fighting the iguions, as squall enters the hallway, to search for the hatch.
+- Quality of life improvements are great and I hope you include more if possible. I would've liked be able to skip the sequence in which Rinoas farther explains the whole plan to attack the sorceress, for example.

Overall, I really enjoyed your mod. This is your mod, your decisions. If the feedback provided was useful in any way I would be really happy. I’ve got to admit I’m pretty excited to play the full version.

Cheers ;)


First thing is an AI glitch that causes the file to run on into its textures; one of the enemies in that formation must have not had the fix applied to it, causing the error.

Gil I think was going to be balanced up once I got notes on how SeeD rank wages are calculated, it's more or less how it was in vanilla at the moment.

Squall's physical attacks seem hard-wired for 255% accuracy; I think I read in SmallDirt's reverse-engineering thread of the animation data that the flags for that are stored in there. Couple of approaches could be:

a) adjusting the crit-rate for trigger down from 1.5x damage to something lower like 1.25 or 1.33 and splitting his weapons into two categories, one with high base power and one with less base power but a high crit% modifier. Squall can actually land normal critical hits that deal 2x damage but only if the trigger isn't used; this even applies to Renzokuken so at high Luck you might be better off not using the trigger at all and hoping for natural crits to land. His weapons also split naturally into two categories as he has a revolver and pistol variant for each tier so that might be a way to go. This would mean he still has 255% accuracy though.

b) Altering the animation data so that trigger is no longer used and Squall's physicals are the same as the others. This would hopefully get rid of the 255% accuracy thing but it would also mean getting rid of a fairly unique battle mechanic (Renzokuken should be unaffected).

Granaldo is a difficult fight to make interesting; neither he or the Raldos have a magic-capable animation (that I'm aware of) so it's mostly restricted to physical attacks and you only have 2 party members vs. 4 enemies which restricts how aggressive you can make them without it getting annoying.

I was told that the Edea fight is one of those fights that, if you lose, it just proceeds to the FMV but it doesn't seem to be the case. I might try and make that be the case so that winning is a bonus of some sort.

I'll take a second look at the healing items. I think I wanted med-data available early so you can have one character act as a 'chemist' of sorts with an advantage when using items. Hi-Potion is probably too potent because I was wanting to future-proof it a bit.

Could set Cure/Esuna for Holy element attack junction, assuming the spells that can be equipped aren't hard-coded somewhere.

I wanted to try and make the Draw Points offer a choice that has impact. Aero is handy for Elvoret and Granaldo, while Water is good for X-ATM (and I think Gerogero, not sure). I'll see about adding Aero to one of the Timber draw points though I think Thrustaevis in the Galbadia area world map has it by that point.

EXP is too high, I've since adjusted it a lot. I overestimated the adjustment that's made for characters being lower/higher level than the enemies.

I did set protect/shell/haste to have the max possible duration time, which isn't infinite but will last a super long time on wait ATB. I'm not sure whether to keep that or not, I personally never liked Protect/Shell being finite in this game because there's no visual cue for when it happens. If they had gauges or a visible cue like Haste then it'd be better.

I'll add a Junction reminder + menu call before Iguion and maybe set an event line so that if you go past the hatch, Squall will turn around to look at it. Will also add an option to have a short version of the briefing instead of the full guided tour version.

Thanks for the feedback, gave me some things to think about.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: smalldirt on 2020-01-09 12:37:57

b) Altering the animation data so that trigger is no longer used and Squall's physicals are the same as the others. This would hopefully get rid of the 255% accuracy thing but it would also mean getting rid of a fairly unique battle mechanic (Renzokuken should be unaffected).

Actually What can be done is to Change his attack scripts by weapon
1) Make his attack at start to be a regular one
2) Make his regular attack non missable
3) Implent triggering for His ultimate weapon.

This Way his weapons Will be more unique and gives more reasons to upgrade.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2020-01-09 13:08:59
Actually What can be done is to Change his attack scripts by weapon
1) Make his attack at start to be a regular one
2) Make his regular attack non missable
3) Implent triggering for His ultimate weapon.

This Way his weapons Will be more unique and gives more reasons to upgrade.

It can be done on a weapon per weapon basis? That's great news.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: smalldirt on 2020-01-09 16:40:34
It can be done on a weapon per weapon basis? That's great news.

Atleast by my assumption, since the related section contained in the weapons and not in the chartacter modell file, however need to test it.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: rc2112 on 2020-01-23 20:57:57
Hi,

A few questions.

First, and foremost, how much different will this be than the Ragnarok mod? I have played your NT version of VII and loved that so I just wanted to gauge if I should just wait for this to be completed or if I should check out Ragnarok too if I get time.

To follow that, was wondering if there was an expected date for this to be finalized (at least fully playable). It looked like the last update was in March of last year, but the thread is still active so I assume it's still moving along.

And I don't think I saw anything about it, but are there any changes to Triple Triad at all? Including what cards are held, their locations, difficulty, A.I., etc.

Thanks so much for this work. If anything I asked has been answered elsewhere I am sorry. I just wanted to check on the status of this project but am currently in a meeting at work haha.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2020-01-24 08:29:50
Hi,

A few questions.

First, and foremost, how much different will this be than the Ragnarok mod? I have played your NT version of VII and loved that so I just wanted to gauge if I should just wait for this to be completed or if I should check out Ragnarok too if I get time.

To follow that, was wondering if there was an expected date for this to be finalized (at least fully playable). It looked like the last update was in March of last year, but the thread is still active so I assume it's still moving along.

And I don't think I saw anything about it, but are there any changes to Triple Triad at all? Including what cards are held, their locations, difficulty, A.I., etc.

Thanks so much for this work. If anything I asked has been answered elsewhere I am sorry. I just wanted to check on the status of this project but am currently in a meeting at work haha.

I would check out Ragnarok, it's a gameplay mod with full gamut of changes; sidequests, battle overhaul, .exe changes to formulas, that sort of thing.

Progress on the project slowed down significantly when I started a new 9-5 job in April of that year, but I chip away at it when I can. I've done some work on the Triple Triad game.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: AuthenticM on 2020-03-18 19:54:33
Hey,

I'm a big fan of New Threat for FFVII, and I just learned that Sega Chief was making such a mod for FFVIII. I just want to say that I am on board and that I have bookmarked this thread for periodic check-ins. Thank you for your hard work, Sega Chief, and also to everyone who contributed to your work. You are injecting some new life into these old games and it's just fantastic.

On another note, I just want to say that I hope the mod eventually becomes compatible with the new FFVIII remaster.

Cheers!
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Konichu on 2020-08-07 22:36:15
Hi Sega Chief, how things are going for this mod ? :)
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2020-08-07 23:09:14
Hi Sega Chief, how things are going for this mod ? :)

I sidelined it to get FF7 NT 2.0 out several months ago. I'll need to get my head back into it at some point and re-organise my files.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: AuthenticM on 2020-08-16 03:08:49
I am very much looking forward to it! :)
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: flacidapplebottoms on 2020-09-18 02:53:26
Have you considered making Edea a permanent party member for this mod? This was done for Beatrix in the mod for FFIX called "Alternate Fantasy", and it integrated her into relevant scenes subtly to maintain continuity when needed. I always thought it was be a great idea for Edea in FFVIII and I'm surprised no one ever suggests it.

Just an idea.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: AuthenticM on 2020-09-24 21:01:37
Have you considered making Edea a permanent party member for this mod? This was done for Beatrix in the mod for FFIX called "Alternate Fantasy", and it integrated her into relevant scenes subtly to maintain continuity when needed. I always thought it was be a great idea for Edea in FFVIII and I'm surprised no one ever suggests it.

Just an idea.
I don't think I like this idea. FF8's story is very much about the orphanage kids and their destiny. Edea's role in that destiny is one of support.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aerodynamics on 2020-10-14 23:39:05
Have you considered making Edea a permanent party member for this mod? This was done for Beatrix in the mod for FFIX called "Alternate Fantasy", and it integrated her into relevant scenes subtly to maintain continuity when needed. I always thought it was be a great idea for Edea in FFVIII and I'm surprised no one ever suggests it.

Just an idea.

I also dislike the idea. I dont think it's not something worth spending precious time on.
Remember that each extra feature Sega Chief works on is time not spent on the main development.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: PokeFaize on 2020-10-26 18:21:51
Heyo! Since your work on FF7 New Threat was absolutely superb, and hearing you'd start focusing on this project after the next FF7NT Update, I figured I'd give this a try and help out with feedback!

I LOVE the changes to junctioning, with 1 stock =100 stocks for stat boosts. It makes playing Magic characters as Mages feel actually viable without shooting yourself in the foot.

I've made it to Timber where Rinoa officially joins the party, and I've intentionally avoided abusing Triple Triad, Card, and Card Mod (mostly because I really hate Triple Triad). GFs also have not been used in Combat.

Character related notes:
Spoiler: show
-If Selphie is intended to be a hybrid glass cannon, maybe buff her base stats so she hits harder than/as hard as Squall? At least for the early game, especially where her lower bulk gets her killed super fast.

-Rapture Description typo: "Float,Regen,Hass te to all."
 -(Also, all of Selphie's Limits are "unlocked" from the start, but so far only DemiCure has shown up in her Slots.)
 -(I think DemiCure should have some status healing to make up for no longer healing the party to full HP.)

-Some of Zell's "paths" in his Duel Limit wind up at dead ends

-Rinoa's Strength and Magic are both naturally higher than Selphie's (while also being at a lower level), which undermines Selphie's Role as a Hybrid Glass Cannon.


Gameplay related notes:
Spoiler: show
-Ifrit nearly wiped me cuz I decided to play risky with Squall at low HP to spam limits (had less than 5 minutes to beat the fight). Very good, really enjoyed the difficult fight.

-With Enemies hitting harder, it may be a good idea to lower their speed during the early game. Too many close calls & game overs from enemies attacking non-stop despite being in Wait Mode

-Elvoret wiped the party after using Siren Song (which did absolutely nothing) and started throwing out Thundaras, doing roughly 650 damage to whoever got hit. Rematch went rougher against Biggs+Wedge due to how fast they are and Biggs' Confusion on his Attack, but smoother on Elvoret due to being better prepared.
 -(Siren Song still did 0 Damage on the rematch, but succeeded in inflicting Silence)

-X-ATM092 nearly wiped my team in the first forced fight with it since I spent a couple turns Drawing Protects and Shells. Opted against abusing the AP Trick with it to avoid the risk of a Game Over.

-Granaldo Fight was fairly tame. Protects on the Aldos left me having to spam Quistis' Ultra Sonic Wave to take them out before Granaldo could wipe me with its hard hitting combo attacks.

-Maybe change Ability Description to include Base Power, like in recent FF7NT updates? Would help a lot for getting the most out of Quistis' Damaging Blue Magic Limits.

-Diablos' Party-Wide Doom is pretty unneccesary and kinda overkill for Disc 1, especially since he can apply Aura, Double(?), and Haste(?) to himself
 -(Already mentioned, but camera doesn't work right when Diablos summons Cerberus)
 -(Diablos having Nether Blast to circumvent Blind cheesing him also makes his Party Wide Doom very overkill for Disc 1)
 -(Beating Diablos gave no EXP, and Diablos joined at Lv.9)

-GeruGeru was a complete pushover, though I did spam Squall's and Zell's limits. Maybe boost its Vitality and HP? Auto-Protect too? The team is very physical oriented at this point, so making GeruGeru physically resistant could make it more of a challenge?


Glitch & Crashes related notes:
Spoiler: show
-Draw Point in Library (Sleep/Silence) crashes the game when choosing to Draw Silence. Choosing to Draw Sleep produces no game crashes.
 -(Have been avoiding choosing the second draw point option since then, due to not having saved recently upon approaching new draw points in the event choosing the 2nd Draw Option is what made the game crash)
 -(Chose Draw Aero from the Water/Aero Draw Point in Dollet Tower; no crash. Seems the one in the Balamb Library might be bugged?)

-Already mentioned, I think, but Items used in Field are different from when used in Battle. Would probably just be better to cut down Status Healing Items to just Remedies?
 -(Potions say they heal 400HP, but only healed 200 in field and 250 in battle)
 -(Note for others: Luna Tonics heal Blind in the Field)

-Battle Formation Bug Bite x2 and Caterchipillar had Caterchipillar invisible until both Bug Bites were dead.
 -(Same battle, the Now-Visible Caterchipillar proceeded to repeatedly attack despite being in-menu on Wait Mode, resulting in a Game Over as I tried to heal)

-Weird animation glitch: When leaving the training area after talking with Quistis in the Secret Area, the event for the Granaldo Fight triggered as normal, but Squall ran in a circle before exiting the screen.

-Game froze during a battle against a red Galbadian Solder after GeruGeru battle, when Squall dealt a critical hit to him.


Really enjoying the mod so far, and will continue to keep taking notes as I go!  ;D
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2020-10-26 19:02:40
Heyo! Since your work on FF7 New Threat was absolutely superb, and hearing you'd start focusing on this project after the next FF7NT Update, I figured I'd give this a try and help out with feedback!

I LOVE the changes to junctioning, with 1 stock =100 stocks for stat boosts. It makes playing Magic characters as Mages feel actually viable without shooting yourself in the foot.

I've made it to Timber where Rinoa officially joins the party, and I've intentionally avoided abusing Triple Triad, Card, and Card Mod (mostly because I really hate Triple Triad). GFs also have not been used in Combat.

Character related notes:
Spoiler: show
-If Selphie is intended to be a hybrid glass cannon, maybe buff her base stats so she hits harder than/as hard as Squall? At least for the early game, especially where her lower bulk gets her killed super fast.

-Rapture Description typo: "Float,Regen,Hass te to all."
 -(Also, all of Selphie's Limits are "unlocked" from the start, but so far only DemiCure has shown up in her Slots.)
 -(I think DemiCure should have some status healing to make up for no longer healing the party to full HP.)

-Some of Zell's "paths" in his Duel Limit wind up at dead ends

-Rinoa's Strength and Magic are both naturally higher than Selphie's (while also being at a lower level), which undermines Selphie's Role as a Hybrid Glass Cannon.


Gameplay related notes:
Spoiler: show
-Ifrit nearly wiped me cuz I decided to play risky with Squall at low HP to spam limits (had less than 5 minutes to beat the fight). Very good, really enjoyed the difficult fight.

-With Enemies hitting harder, it may be a good idea to lower their speed during the early game. Too many close calls & game overs from enemies attacking non-stop despite being in Wait Mode

-Elvoret wiped the party after using Siren Song (which did absolutely nothing) and started throwing out Thundaras, doing roughly 650 damage to whoever got hit. Rematch went rougher against Biggs+Wedge due to how fast they are and Biggs' Confusion on his Attack, but smoother on Elvoret due to being better prepared.
 -(Siren Song still did 0 Damage on the rematch, but succeeded in inflicting Silence)

-X-ATM092 nearly wiped my team in the first forced fight with it since I spent a couple turns Drawing Protects and Shells. Opted against abusing the AP Trick with it to avoid the risk of a Game Over.

-Granaldo Fight was fairly tame. Protects on the Aldos left me having to spam Quistis' Ultra Sonic Wave to take them out before Granaldo could wipe me with its hard hitting combo attacks.

-Maybe change Ability Description to include Base Power, like in recent FF7NT updates? Would help a lot for getting the most out of Quistis' Damaging Blue Magic Limits.

-Diablos' Party-Wide Doom is pretty unneccesary and kinda overkill for Disc 1, especially since he can apply Aura, Double(?), and Haste(?) to himself
 -(Already mentioned, but camera doesn't work right when Diablos summons Cerberus)
 -(Diablos having Nether Blast to circumvent Blind cheesing him also makes his Party Wide Doom very overkill for Disc 1)
 -(Beating Diablos gave no EXP, and Diablos joined at Lv.9)

-GeruGeru was a complete pushover, though I did spam Squall's and Zell's limits. Maybe boost its Vitality and HP? Auto-Protect too? The team is very physical oriented at this point, so making GeruGeru physically resistant could make it more of a challenge?


Glitch & Crashes related notes:
Spoiler: show
-Draw Point in Library (Sleep/Silence) crashes the game when choosing to Draw Silence. Choosing to Draw Sleep produces no game crashes.
 -(Have been avoiding choosing the second draw point option since then, due to not having saved recently upon approaching new draw points in the event choosing the 2nd Draw Option is what made the game crash)
 -(Chose Draw Aero from the Water/Aero Draw Point in Dollet Tower; no crash. Seems the one in the Balamb Library might be bugged?)

-Already mentioned, I think, but Items used in Field are different from when used in Battle. Would probably just be better to cut down Status Healing Items to just Remedies?
 -(Potions say they heal 400HP, but only healed 200 in field and 250 in battle)
 -(Note for others: Luna Tonics heal Blind in the Field)

-Battle Formation Bug Bite x2 and Caterchipillar had Caterchipillar invisible until both Bug Bites were dead.
 -(Same battle, the Now-Visible Caterchipillar proceeded to repeatedly attack despite being in-menu on Wait Mode, resulting in a Game Over as I tried to heal)

-Weird animation glitch: When leaving the training area after talking with Quistis in the Secret Area, the event for the Granaldo Fight triggered as normal, but Squall ran in a circle before exiting the screen.

-Game froze during a battle against a red Galbadian Solder after GeruGeru battle, when Squall dealt a critical hit to him.


Really enjoying the mod so far, and will continue to keep taking notes as I go!  ;D

I think I've got a number of the glitches mentioned here sorted but will check the enemies as the AI bug can be quite subtle sometimes and not crash in certain formations.

Zell's thing with Duel was I think an experiment to see if I could set him up so that the goal becomes to get to the finisher rather than repeating the same few moves for maximum damage, with a dead-end reached if the path to one of the finishers wasn't met (or the finisher wasn't unlocked though I think they can be used anyway if you know the inputs; plan with that was to change the inputs for the book-locked finishers so the first playthrough at least can't use them early). I recall there being a problem with Zell or similar where an enemy would start to attack infinitely or behave strangely after Duel, but I think that was resolved after 0.3 went up so it won't be in the final build.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: PokeFaize on 2020-10-26 19:13:56
I think I've got a number of the glitches mentioned here sorted but will check the enemies as the AI bug can be quite subtle sometimes and not crash in certain formations.

Zell's thing with Duel was I think an experiment to see if I could set him up so that the goal becomes to get to the finisher rather than repeating the same few moves for maximum damage, with a dead-end reached if the path to one of the finishers wasn't met (or the finisher wasn't unlocked though I think they can be used anyway if you know the inputs; plan with that was to change the inputs for the book-locked finishers so the first playthrough at least can't use them early). I recall there being a problem with Zell or similar where an enemy would start to attack infinitely or behave strangely after Duel, but I think that was resolved after 0.3 went up so it won't be in the final build.
Oh that sounds neat with Zell's duels. I should take some time to figure out the path to Burning Rave then lol

Glad to hear that some(/most?) of these glitches have already been caught and dealt with :D
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: PokeFaize on 2020-10-27 02:04:43
Just finished the demo! A very solid battle to end Disc 1! I'm super excited to see what you have in store for this project! :D

Here are the notes I took as I wrapped up the demo

Character related notes:
Spoiler: show
-Selphie is in a weird spot where she's definitely made of glass, but missing the cannon part (both physically and magically). Her speed makes her great for rapidly Stocking Magic from monsters but that's about it. Maybe buff her Strength and Magic? or swap her Speed, Vitality, Spirit, and HP with Quistis?
 -Selphie's Slots can take ages to bring up the right Selection, and being fragile puts her at even greater risk of being killed while searching for Wall or DemiCure. Being tanky would help reduce the odds of this happening, and having low speed would make her Slots' Double and Triple Casts much more valuable imo.
 -Quistis' low speed doesn't do much to balance out her ability to freely choose which Limit she uses, especially when she's more than durable enough to risk staying at lower HP ranges (her high HP making her "low HP" range much safer than most everyone else's) to repeatedly fire off Multi-Target Limits before casting a White Wind to heal the party to full/near full when things get too risky.

-Everyone else plays just fine imo. No real complaints for anyone besides Selphie.

Gameplay related notes:
Spoiler: show
-Brothers boss was a total pushover with Float on everyone + the Brothers. If possible, maybe consider adding Dispel in some form to their move list?

-Iguion x2 was a pushover, which is fine imo.
 -(Had the option to Draw Carbuncle from them, so I did to ensure I got it)
 -(Carbuncle is Lv.13 when obtained.)

-Both the Brothers and Carbuncle have Mid-Magic Refine

-Reflect and Shell give the same amount of Elemental Resistance. Maybe buff Reflect's Elemental Defense boost?

-Hi-Potions heal 1000HP on the field like the description says, but heals 750HP in battle

-Edea + Seifer battle was easier than anticipated, though Edea's Tornado being Single Target is a huge blessing as having Tornado hit the party like normal would make this fight significantly more difficult without Selphie's DemiCure (or Quistis' White Wind if it's available at all in the Disc 1 demo)

Glitch & Crashes related notes:
Spoiler: show
-Fought a Grendel in the forest where the 2nd Laguna Sequence happens. Game froze when it killed Squall.


Gonna try taking on the extra boss at the end of the demo! Great work so far, and I can't wait to see what you come up with! :D

EDIT: well that went about as well as expected lmao
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: AuthenticM on 2020-10-31 20:08:32
Hey,

Does the mod modify in any way how limit breaks are obtained? The original game could be cheesed by keeping Squall and others at low HP to spam limit breaks. I'm wondering if the same thing can be done with NT.

Thank you
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aerodynamics on 2020-11-22 23:26:57

-Edea + Seifer battle was easier than anticipated, though Edea's Tornado being Single Target is a huge blessing as having Tornado hit the party like normal would make this fight significantly more difficult without Selphie's DemiCure (or Quistis' White Wind if it's available at all in the Disc 1 demo)[/spoiler]

Also played the demo and I actually agree with everything on your post, but to me, the Edea Seifer battle was on the borderline of difficulty. I found it hard, buffing them up could mean they would be OP. Might be just me I dont know, but since I agree with you in so many points, I really think this battle shouldn't be messed with.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: PokeFaize on 2020-11-23 18:31:48
Also played the demo and I actually agree with everything on your post, but to me, the Edea Seifer battle was on the borderline of difficulty. I found it hard, buffing them up could mean they would be OP. Might be just me I dont know, but since I agree with you in so many points, I really think this battle shouldn't be messed with.
I think the fight is perfectly fine as it is, but it was much more manageable than I had anticipated given some comments about how hard they were in earlier posts on this thread. There really isn't a whole lot of room to buff them without making the fight nightmarish to manage without Selphie's DemiCure (or Quistis' White Wind if it exists in the demo) to keep up with the damage they do.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Rainku on 2021-01-20 06:49:16
Yo! Hows progress going? ;D

I remember playing your FF7 NT 1.5 and loved it! I'm playing with the Ragnarok mod for FF8 right now and it's pretty decent.. but I like the sound of what your trying to do with the limit breaks and spells, so really looking forward to how it turns out! I definitely feel your changes are neccesary to spice FF8 up a bit.. FF7's battle system feels quicker and snapier cause of the atb continueing to fill up even whilst executing commands.. FF8's atb pauses on each and every action so it's nice to have limit breaks happen more often and not have to worry about drawing 100 of each spell etc just to make the combat system look a little more.. nicer.. I supose.

Will give your FF7 NT 2.0 a shot soon!

Cheers
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Aerodynamics on 2021-01-27 23:06:17
Im also pretty interested on NT8 :) I absolutely loved that demo

Yo! Hows progress going? ;D

I remember playing your FF7 NT 1.5 and loved it! I'm playing with the Ragnarok mod for FF8 right now and it's pretty decent.. but I like the sound of what your trying to do with the limit breaks and spells, so really looking forward to how it turns out! I definitely feel your changes are neccesary to spice FF8 up a bit.. FF7's battle system feels quicker and snapier cause of the atb continueing to fill up even whilst executing commands.. FF8's atb pauses on each and every action so it's nice to have limit breaks happen more often and not have to worry about drawing 100 of each spell etc just to make the combat system look a little more.. nicer.. I supose.

Will give your FF7 NT 2.0 a shot soon!

Cheers
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2021-01-27 23:23:55
Yo! Hows progress going? ;D

I remember playing your FF7 NT 1.5 and loved it! I'm playing with the Ragnarok mod for FF8 right now and it's pretty decent.. but I like the sound of what your trying to do with the limit breaks and spells, so really looking forward to how it turns out! I definitely feel your changes are neccesary to spice FF8 up a bit.. FF7's battle system feels quicker and snapier cause of the atb continueing to fill up even whilst executing commands.. FF8's atb pauses on each and every action so it's nice to have limit breaks happen more often and not have to worry about drawing 100 of each spell etc just to make the combat system look a little more.. nicer.. I supose.

Will give your FF7 NT 2.0 a shot soon!

Cheers

Im also pretty interested on NT8 :) I absolutely loved that demo


It's getting there, but I started a new job a few weeks back so been settling into that. I've divided myself up a bit too thinly with a FF7 NT 2.1 patch, a randomiser rework, and FF8 NT again so I need to clear my feet of the former two ASAP.

Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Navihank on 2021-02-19 21:11:49
Does this mod work on the remastered edition, or only vanilla?
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2021-02-22 15:57:55
Does this mod work on the remastered edition, or only vanilla?

Only the Steam version, I don't think the remaster was out yet when this beta was put together. I'm not sure what the porting process is but if there is one (or an alternative, like that demaster patch I saw) then will do what I can.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Navihank on 2021-05-25 21:27:59
Is this just a gameplay mod, or are you going change some of the story beats like VII?
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: heromic on 2021-11-12 22:05:30
hi. how can i change the CL parameters?
i want to make character have low hp to activate instead of 50%, and maybe use just CL 3 and 4, i don't want cl 1 and 2,
how can i change it in the files?
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: AuthenticM on 2021-12-10 17:37:01
Hey Sega Chief,

Any chance of a surprise 1.0 release in time for Christmas?

Looking forward to playing the whole thing.

Cheers
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: javisanchez1234567 on 2022-02-16 14:52:49
Hello Sega.
Could you tell me what program you used to make extracting 1 or 99 spells the same? I like to mess around with the FF VII programs, but I have no idea about the FF VIII ones, however I want to play FF VIII again, but the issue of using magic weakening me pulls me back and I really like your idea, however I'm Spanish and I can't play your mod like I did in FF VII because of the language, so even if I have to play FF VIII I would like to edit the extraction theme, thank you very much.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Sega Chief on 2022-02-16 21:58:58
Hello Sega.
Could you tell me what program you used to make extracting 1 or 99 spells the same? I like to mess around with the FF VII programs, but I have no idea about the FF VIII ones, however I want to play FF VIII again, but the issue of using magic weakening me pulls me back and I really like your idea, however I'm Spanish and I can't play your mod like I did in FF VII because of the language, so even if I have to play FF VIII I would like to edit the extraction theme, thank you very much.

This was done in assembly rather than with a tool, which means either using a hex editor on the FF8.EXE or injecting hex script using something like Roses & Wines (which modifies the FF8.EXE at runtime). The issue may be that the spanish FF8.EXE has different offsets to the english FF8.EXE and I don't know what the differences in offsets are I'm afraid.

The hex addresses and the changes needed to be made for the english exe were:
#HP
963CB = B3 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Primary Stats
966E5 = B2 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Secondary Stats
96788 = B2 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Elemental Attack
969D1 = B0 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Elemental Defence
96AAE = B1 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Status Attack
96BC1 = B0 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Status Defence
96C9D = B1 64 90 90 90 90 90
(Credit to JWP for these)

If you're lucky these may be at the same offsets in the spanish exe. Sorry I couldn't be more help. As for what hex editor to use, I personally use something called XVI32 hex editor, but there's likely other free hex editors out there.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: javisanchez1234567 on 2022-02-17 10:38:05
This was done in assembly rather than with a tool, which means either using a hex editor on the FF8.EXE or injecting hex script using something like Roses & Wines (which modifies the FF8.EXE at runtime). The issue may be that the spanish FF8.EXE has different offsets to the english FF8.EXE and I don't know what the differences in offsets are I'm afraid.

The hex addresses and the changes needed to be made for the english exe were:
#HP
963CB = B3 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Primary Stats
966E5 = B2 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Secondary Stats
96788 = B2 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Elemental Attack
969D1 = B0 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Elemental Defence
96AAE = B1 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Status Attack
96BC1 = B0 64 90 90 90 90 90

#Status Defence
96C9D = B1 64 90 90 90 90 90
(Credit to JWP for these)

If you're lucky these may be at the same offsets in the spanish exe. Sorry I couldn't be more help. As for what hex editor to use, I personally use something called XVI32 hex editor, but there's likely other free hex editors out there.


Ok, thank you very much, I'll try if it works. The times that I have compared it has been in the Steam version of Final Fantasy VII and the .exe (Spanish and English) usually coincide. Let's see if I'm lucky. I usually use HxD. I don't know if it will be very good, but when I have had to play something from FF VII it has been worth it.

oh! I almost forgot, is this all for the regular Steam version or the remaster? I find it confusing that there are two versions of a game for the same platform...

Ok, I read the post a bit to see if anyone had asked. FF VIII base.
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Konichu on 2022-07-03 16:31:30
Hey Sega Chief, hope you're doing fine in life with your new job
Did you stop the development of this mod or still continuing FF7 NT 2.1 ?
Title: Re: [FF8PC - Steam] New Threat Mod (v0.3)
Post by: Damy on 2022-11-09 10:40:20
Dont know if it has been considered but I would like to see fixed enemies rather than scaling to your level.  It's not Final Fantasy if everything scales, IMO.