This could be a good idea...

[Murak Modder]

Okay, i was playing Chrono trigger DS (and Black sigil blade of the exiled) and then i was thinking how it would be better if the materia system was better made.

then i remembered that Sephiroth's materia is naturally locked, but it can however be made unlocked or edited with wallmarket.

so, the idea came to me to make everyone have fixed materia, but each person have their own elemental affinity, and for limit breaks, they could be changed to have a cetain element to them.

but, like some materia naturally needs to go to a certain level to unlock the spell, we could fix the materia to become usable at certain AP growth.

for example...

Cloud could be earth elemental and learn skills like double slash.

his materia set u could be...

all materia 'useless' at 0AP.

then at 50AP, 'bolt' becames usable.

140AP 'cure' becomes available.

etc.

it can be set up so that all the base spells are learnt, then the higher spells and skills becomes available in such a way.

what do the people think? is this probably possible and worthwhile to add additional challenge to the game? (although requires time and effort to properly plan everything out)

[Kudistos Megistos]

I think that giving characters elemental strengths and weaknesses shouldn't be too hard with some AI editing. Fixing materia might be pretty hard, however, especially since it will mean some materia will be removable and some won't be. And then there'll be the issue of some weapons and armour having no materia slots...

That said, I do like the idea of all the characters having special, non-limit attacks, and like you I got that idea after playing Chrono Trigger. I just don't think it would be easy to do.

Oh, and I think you'll be able to make materia that forces the player to level up before any spells can be used (the same way that Ultima does) by using WallMarket.

[The Seer of Shadows]

Remember that Cloud's materia are fixed to him at the beginning of the game?  Because you cannot access materia in the menu to start with?  It finally becomes accessible after Cloud explains the materia system to Barret.  Edit that part of the game out using Meteor and all your materia will probably be fixed forever.  That is, unless you remove all of them when the game gives you the option at places such as right before the battle with Rufus.

This could be a good idea, but it has its limitations.  To have materia fixed to Cait Sith and Vincent, you have to alter their initial status, and that means modding the executable.  Also, all the materia you find in the field will be useless, as will the materia stores.

Just thought I'd throw this out there.

[Murak Modder]

well, i got the fire materia to work as i intended it to! yay!



(..although not too fancy, all i did was use a dummy ID file for the initial one, then changed the rest to be fire, fira, firaga and flare.)

Is it possible to make ALL materia unmovable?

as for weapons... using wallmarket, i already made every single weapon and armour have 8 linked slots <final weapons still grant no AP>

The only thing thats actually really 'stopping' my plan currently is that I can't lock the materia since i seem to have everything else currently sorted.

although i might steal the wind and water materia away from you Kudistos. XD

Although if 'worse' comes to worst, i might just increase the strength of the initial weapons and try to use the same basic coding sephiroth has to make no equipment changes possible, but that is just a worst case scenario.


@Ceffy
using wall market, we can change the initial data that each person has, including what materia, limit breaks, weapon, armour and assecory they have, and some other misc things, so using that, we can define who has what materia.
as for the materia stores and field materia... if people want to waste their time buying materia they can't use, i'm not about to stop them.

[Terid__K]

That's actually how I play the game right now. I always leave Cloud with the Lightining and Ultima materia, inspired by Chrono Trigger. Also, I limit it to only one of each materia in my inventory, and summon is a no-no.

[The Seer of Shadows]

I know all about Wall Market, but it cannot alter the initial data of Cait Sith and Vincent, because that is stored in the executable to make way for the initial data of Young Cloud and Sephiroth (why didn't they just use separate character slots for those two!?).

If you absolutely must lock equipment as well, giving them Vincent's Death Penalty effect will prevent even the Buster Sword from becoming obsolete.  You can also given them Barret's Missing Score effect so that the weapon powers up with the AP rather than with the kills.

Armor cannot power itself up.  But you can always make Guard Sources and Mind Sources more available.  Also, by having fixed equipment, each character can have a certain "gimmick".  Examples: Cloud's weapon can inflict darkness, Barret's armor can absorb fire, Tifa's armor can protect against confusion, Aerith can have automatic barrier and mbarrier status, Red XIII can have automatic haste status, Vincent's weapon will never miss, etc.  This can easily tie in with elemental affinities.

[Murak Modder]

Oh yeah, i forgot about that XD

still, using a hex editor isn't that difficult.

if we do the kills aspect, eventually would we not have the damage being too much for the game to deal with as we all probably saw with the 'zomg i killed the emerald weapon in under 10 seconds' videos that seem to be all over youtube?

the AP would probably be better, although the HP one could have its advantages...

but even if we can change weapons, we can still have gimmicks, although off hand, does anyone know the method needed to make equipment impossible to tamper with?

(i was bored once and had a gamesharked sephiroth in my reserves when i went to Wutai, although when Yuffie stole our materia, Sephy's materia was left unscathed.)

which leads me to think that if we make it so it can't be tampered with, even for bits like the rufus fight, nothing would happen if we told it to remove all materia.

[The Seer of Shadows]

That would be great.  After Wutai, when Yuffie randomizes your materia... that would be disastrous.

Both the AP and the kill gimmicks can go into overflow and instantly kill enemies if you power level them... but that takes a very long time to do.

You could also increase the availability of Power Sources and maybe Luck Sources... and perhaps explore some other things.  Perhaps there are some spells that cause physical damage for 0 MP.  You could also make some weapons ignore Barrier, or an enemy's defense, or edit the HP divisors so that Limit Breaks charge very quickly.

[Matt2Tees]

If you can make your ideas work Murak Modder, then I think I may just have to play through the game once again 

[gjoerulv]

Sephiroth's locked materia is field edited and can't be done with Wall Marked. Try Meteor. Removing the ability to access materia solves this problem. Just have equal numbers of slots on all weapons and armors, and voila. There you go (after some materia editing). Not hard at all.

[Murak Modder]

Hm, if anyone wants to help me out with merely removing the part that adds the materia menu with meteor, i'd appreciate it, since i don't seem to be able to make meteor work without crashing the game entirely.
(and if the person would be so kind, remove the part where Yuffie removes the materia and jumbled up returned materia?)

or tell me how to do it and then reinsert the data into the flevel without it crashing?

edit: okay, it appears why it always crashes is because i don't compress the edited scene with fice.lzs.


Although I'm debating over what to do for each person, since different strategies exist...

for Cloud, i want him to be the stoic (i think thats the word i mean) swordsman and have a earth affinity; having spells like quake (changed quake to have break in it) heal <healing powers from the earth baby!> counter attack, cover, <reeeeeeaaaaallllllyyyyy slow growth as  don't want every single attack to be taken by cloud, or i might just limit it to be a 30% cover chance> Poison <most poisons can be derived from plants, thus nature/earth>  Titan <the summon of earth>

so, condensed version for Cloud. XD

weapon: elemental + earth, heal, cover, counter attack, Titan,
armour: poison+ added effect,

but i can't really think of too many materia for him to actually have.

any suggestions?


and i'm currently messing around with different things, these are my current findings using the 'simple' method.
(using a dummy file for the first level and keeping the rest intact)
normal magic = works 100% with the changed system.
summon materia = currently it either doesn't do anything or it begins with 1. <I could weaken the summons and make them more expensive to cast and increase the AP needed to level up, or have it be 'stuck' as a 1 shot attack.>
command materia = glitched text in materia menu and makes all kinds of crazy text appear, however, it seems to work. <tested double slash and in the materia screen, i had all kinds of jumbled text with a highlighted 'dexterity', however in battle, it seemed to work fine, granting no abilities until it levelled up, and at which point, it changed attack into double slash.>
independant materia = i had no reason to change this as its part of the strategy aspect. <doing things like making their attacks a certain element or preventing certain status effects>

if anyone has any suggestions for materia setups, i'm open to them.

here's my 'list' of what element i want for each person.

cloud - earth
tifa - fire
barret - ice
red 13 - Fire
vincent - Thunder
Aeris - water/holy (focusing mainly on healing and curative spells)
Cait Sith - Gravity <he sucks, so the sucky element. >
Yuffie - water <she takes over for aeris >
Cid -  Wind <who else other than a PILOT is fit to have air based attacks?>

[Xelane]

0.0 i want this.

i love the idea of having unique character elements and abilities.

i think elements should be as followed though:

cloud-lightning
tifa-ice
barret-earth
aeris-holy? if not wind
red-fire (a must imo)
yuffie-water (leviathan is in her home)
cid-wind
vincent-is there a dark element?
cait sith-....uhhhhh you figure it out (stumped)

[Murak Modder]

Argh, it seems like i don't know what i'm doing in meteor, initially i removed the notice saying we could now use the materia menu, then at that point in the game, garbled text and the game hanged.

then i went into it again and took out the 'mes' bit that i thought may have been the new menu thing, but that made the game crash.

what do I change in the mds7bp1 to not allow the materia menu to be made? (or whatever the precise name is)

argh, hate to say it, but i like your elemental list better than mine. XD

as for materia...

I was looking into making some new ones <with things like trine <changed to thundaja>, some spells kudistos did, and some other ones, such as 'proper' darkness ones. (for vincent)


but the widdle set up from the element list Xelene did. (in a nutshell)

cloud: elemental + thunder, white pack 1+ added cut, cover, counter attack, Ramuh, added effect + seal, Deathblow, double attack, HP+, mega all <maybe>

(white pack 1 is comprised of... poisona, cure, barrier, cura)

but i'll properly make materia set ups later.

[Xelane]

Well murak i can't really help you with meteor or programming, but i would love to help you figure out how to make all of this work (materia setups, weapon stats, spells used by which char, etc)

so let me know if you want any ideas or constructive criticism 

[Murak Modder]

sent a pm to you xelane.

and i just seem to be getting nowhere with meteor. XD

can someone put me out of my misery?

(hears gun cocking)

...not THAT misery.

[Xelane]

i'm sure someone here can help, or you could look for the person who made meteor?

hey murak, you know how to make a patcher and/or someone who can do it right?

just want to be sure, if you can't i can look for someone.

reply anytime

[The Seer of Shadows]

You know, elemental materia are not incredibly useful for this mod.  You can give the weapons themselves elements in Wall Market.  Same with armor and accessories.  Only reason you might want to throw in an elemental materia is when you want the character's elemental strength to gradually increase.

May I make an elemental suggestion?

Cloud - Lightning
Barret - Fire
Tifa - Ice
Aeris - Holy
Red XIII - Earth
Yuffie - Water
Cait Sith - Gravity
Vincent - Poison
Cid - Wind

That's pretty similar to the list you have already.  Keep in mind that there are 16 selectable elements in Wall Market, and if you wanted to, you could create a whole new element (such as Darkness, as an element opposing Holy) from Hidden.

If you wanted to give each character certain status effects that they can inflict with their physical attack, you can assign the weapons one status effect each... but to inflict more status effects, you must use an Added Effect materia.

[Xelane]

well ideas aside, the only difference is that red and barret are switched.

it doesnt make much sense to me to make red (the name implies fire) who starts off with fire materia and has a flame at the tip of his tail to be earth elemental and barret who has a rugged personality and hulking build to have fire....

other than that i believe that elements should not be added to weapons, but it can be useful.

[The Seer of Shadows]

I've always thought of Red XIII being earth elemental because of where he lives and also that Earth Rave limit break.

[Xelane]

I think earth rave might have something to do with him being multi elemental in nature or perhaps its just like aeris limit break "breath of the earth" (unsure of exact name)

but i would believe he is fire elemental because of the color of his skin, his name, his starting materia, his cosmo memory limit break, and the fire at the tip of his tail

not that i think yours is a bad idea, i just don't completely agree with it...

[The Seer of Shadows]

It was only a suggestion.  But if you do make Barret an Earth elemental person (meaning that he dishes out earth damage), then there'll be a slight problem.  He's always going to miss flying creatures, which is ironic because he is one of the three characters with long range weapons.

[Xelane]

point taken in that aspect, let's see. what else fits a big, hulking black guy with a renegade attitude?

i would expect that his attack wouldn't be earth, just his magic.

[Kudistos Megistos]

I was going to agree with Xelane, but that's a good point. I'd say that Shadowseer's list has been the best so far...

[Xelane]

red doesnt strike me as an earth type......

its like giving a guy named "pyroguy" earth abilities.

besides it makes sense to not have an affinity to weapons now that i think about it. how would you kill ruby weapon when your attacks heal it?

[The Seer of Shadows]

If there is even one enemy that negates or absorbs Fire, Ice, Lightning, Water, Earth, Wind, Holy, Poison, and Gravity (and it is possible for enemies to be immune to all of those at once), then yeah, that's a problem.  In that case, either don't make the weapons themselves elemental or else weaken whichever enemy that is.