Author Topic: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v2.0.99994)  (Read 4837226 times)

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #175 on: 2014-07-12 12:50:26 »
I fixed Yuffie Warping? Which thread was that? I remember changing the behavior of Yuffie's escape attack to try and avoid the game-breaking menu glitch that happens when she successfully escapes (because it was more likely with her bolstered move-set that she would escape and the player might unwittingly trigger the glitch and lose progress). The other thing I did recently was set up an Anti-YW/save-edit check that looked for a particular game-moment and another unspecified variable function that's discreetly flipped during the game. The prototype worked, but I removed it after two or three updates so only the first or maybe second wave of flevels have it intact.

Tenko Kuugen

  • Public Enemy
  • *
  • Posts: 1416
    • View Profile
    • Twitter
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #176 on: 2014-07-12 16:10:32 »
I fixed Yuffie Warping? Which thread was that? I remember changing the behavior of Yuffie's escape attack to try and avoid the game-breaking menu glitch that happens when she successfully escapes (because it was more likely with her bolstered move-set that she would escape and the player might unwittingly trigger the glitch and lose progress). The other thing I did recently was set up an Anti-YW/save-edit check that looked for a particular game-moment and another unspecified variable function that's discreetly flipped during the game. The prototype worked, but I removed it after two or three updates so only the first or maybe second wave of flevels have it intact.

Haha, I remember saying this is how I'd fix yuffie warping like when he played through your mod. Kynos has a point though, the 3 people who want to abuse it would cheat in other ways or just use a trainer anyway.
Someone in Kynos chat said you fixed it by changing a "Greater than" check to a "Greater than or equal to" check.

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #177 on: 2014-07-12 17:28:18 »
Yep, you could sort of add the extra insurance in of another variable check that isn't covered by a save-editor but at the end of the day it's just a bit of fun, and Yuffie Warping is always interesting to see. The procedure I put in wasn't anything malicious either, it just warped you about the game and unlocked a few new scenes (and a secret battle) before putting you with the Bronco. The battle is still in the scene.bin toward the bottom if you're interested in having a peek.

I don't remember anything about that 'greater than' stuff. As far as I know, the glitch occurs because the way information is passed between the modules isn't fully wiped/overwritten like it is on the Playstation version (which had limited memory) so some of that information would be retained when going through a Game Over. But I guess it could be eradicated if Yuffie was recruited from a field screen like Vincent is rather than a world map battle.

Out of interest, when was this stream? Was it recent or the one from a few months back?

Tenko Kuugen

  • Public Enemy
  • *
  • Posts: 1416
    • View Profile
    • Twitter
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #178 on: 2014-07-13 03:28:20 »
The stream was like, a few days ago? The one where someone said you fixed yuffie warping.

The one where I said I'd fix yuffie warping by having a game moment check in every field was the first playthrough he did of your mod. Remember when he bought 99 grenades and had no money left and save edited items and so forth? Heh.

I still haven't fixed all the bugs in Nightmare and I'm still waiting on someone playing through it so I have some balance feedback. Evidently re-learning the entire game and hardcore difficulty is too much for the people here :/

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #179 on: 2014-07-13 13:02:34 »
Bit strange; I think I might know who it was though but no harm done. I maybe should have adopted the Poverty Mod as the new name, anything's better than New Threat (ugh).

It sounds like you need someone who can a) beat stuff up, and b) troubleshoot on the fly when something goes wrong. What are the install requirements for getting the complete N7 mod? I'll have a bash at it.

EQ2Alyza

  • 7th Heaven Crew
  • Global moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 3200
  • Dilly-Dally Shilly-Shally
    • View Profile
    • EQ2Alyza - YouTube Channel
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #180 on: 2014-07-13 15:16:48 »
Iros is back, so we should be able to get support for the scene.bin soon  :)

Kaldarasha

  • *
  • Posts: 2449
  • Prince of Model Editing
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #181 on: 2014-07-13 15:20:39 »
Iros is back!  ;D

I could write this in every thread. :P But that's not the reason why I post it here, it could maybe help to make a good installer that he working on his tool again.
A new name: see PM. Sorry a bit over exited so many changes has happened in the past on Qhimm. (Omzy, Ficedula, Iros and Luksy is working on something too I guess.)

Edit:
Damn it. This time you have beaten me EQ2Alyza.  :-D

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #182 on: 2014-07-13 16:33:12 »
So he was coming back for the summer after all. Yeah, this is great news; seems like a bunch of people are coming back, like Ficedula and Obesebear.

Tenko Kuugen

  • Public Enemy
  • *
  • Posts: 1416
    • View Profile
    • Twitter
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #183 on: 2014-07-14 07:57:43 »
Bit strange; I think I might know who it was though but no harm done. I maybe should have adopted the Poverty Mod as the new name, anything's better than New Threat (ugh).

It sounds like you need someone who can a) beat stuff up, and b) troubleshoot on the fly when something goes wrong. What are the install requirements for getting the complete N7 mod? I'll have a bash at it.

Hahahahahahha poverty mod, hahahacoughcoughcoughgackugh... sorry, but this was just too funny because I read it in Kynos voice.

I am nearly always online for contact so I could even do the troubleshooting. I updated the core files and flevel to where I am at now (special grind zones - kills, AP, gil, limits. Yes, there is a special zone for each category to train if you chose to - New story extends to the end of Kalm but haven't updated the hidden items and other stuff)

You basically /should/ run the install over bootleg but you /can/ manually install it. You need the extra bosses from the battle.lgp from the hardcore mod, the animations and stuff from the aerith revival mod (anything else from those mods is already in my flevel and core files so, uh, yeah), menu overhaul (I forgot which options specifically but 9999 break, minigame fixes and some other stuff, check bootleg) and then my mod.
so basically hardcore + aerith revival + menu overhaul + my mod.
« Last Edit: 2014-07-14 08:34:51 by Tenko Kuugen »

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #184 on: 2014-07-14 17:00:57 »
Well, that's that installed. Cleared Reactor No.1, I'll put a list together of notes once I've reached the end of Kalm.

Tenko Kuugen

  • Public Enemy
  • *
  • Posts: 1416
    • View Profile
    • Twitter
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #185 on: 2014-07-14 19:59:32 »
if you have twitter you should follow me so I don't have to fill your (new)thread(t)(DOHOHOHO kill me now) with offtopic

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #186 on: 2014-07-14 20:14:30 »
if you have twitter you should follow me so I don't have to fill your (new)thread(t)(DOHOHOHO kill me now) with offtopic

I don't have Twitter, I'll just post it in the N7 thread when I'm done. Probably take a few days if the boss HP is anything to go by.

g0lbez

  • *
  • Posts: 7
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #187 on: 2014-07-15 03:04:52 »
just got to sephiroth and was kinda disappointed his first form was a gimmick battle, especially one that makes you use all the neglected party members D; i still need to beat that form

other than that it's been great to play through, it's obvious a lot of love went into this. i'll check out some of the extra sidequest stuff once i get past this sephiroth thing. the only criticism i have is that i know you've been balancing the game and such to be sort of fun difficulty as opposed to something like the hardcore mod but honestly it is kind of super easy. obviously a bit harder than the base game but we all know how ridiculous the base game is anyway.

although one thing that might've helped was the fact that in the version i downloaded aeris and tifa came initially with their triple ap weapons, since i wasn't sure if that was intended or not i used them but finding the weapons later i kinda realized you might have just forgotten to take them off.

other than that you supposedly balanced the difficulty around people who don't grind but also don't run from battles which is exactly what i do, and i'm definitely not a min-maxer super elite completionist type guy who wants things super ultra go fuck yourself difficulty but it could def stand for some more tweaking. although i imagine it is probably super difficult to try and balance things past a certain point, especially trying to hit that sweet spot between base game difficulty and hardcore mod difficulty.

good job on the mod and let me know if you have any questions about my playthrough

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #188 on: 2014-07-15 10:48:37 »
Thanks, bud. Glad you've enjoyed it so far though I agree with you that it could use some tweaking. Thing is, the gap between different play-styles (limit break grinders, fight what you see, and run from everything) gets bigger and bigger as the game goes on and while I thought that 2x Exp, Ap, and Gil would help people close that gap if they found themselves underpowered later on it actually made the problem worse on the other end; the guys grinding for their Lv.3 Limits ended up being super-powered and players taking a 'fight what I run into' approach were also finding themselves ahead of the arc because of the boosted rewards. I'm thinking of maybe turning it down to 1.5 for Exp, and normal for AP but not sure yet.

About Sephiroth in the Whirlwind Maze, the first form was originally a lot tougher but people were saying that it was too much to get through that + the second boss right after it (which was also a lot tougher). So I toned that particular boss fight down a fair bit. That's been the case for a lot of it; just toning down the random fights and some of the bosses (people were save-editing past the bosses in v1.0.5). But I was thinking of maybe adding the option for a Hard Mode; I can re-spec enemies and 'unlock' new attacks by setting a pre-battle AI that checks for a certain variable.  That might be a solution, or a NewGame+ kind of deal with new sidequests/encounters, etc. unlocking on the second playthrough; Kalderasha has been giving me ideas recently.

About the triple-AP weapons, did you start from a pre-existing save-game (like starting from the save point in Reactor 1 to skip the intro) or a New Game? The initial set-up of characters from the game's kernel is determined on a New Game rather than when that character joins the party. It just seems odd they'd have their original starting weapons equipped; I've had their weapons set to Metal Knuckle and Full Metal Staff in the mod's kernel for a while now. Did Aeris join the party with Barrier (Lv.2) + All, Heal, and Revive Materia? Another thing is that Red XIII was supposed to have Earth + Elemental on top of Fire + All; do you remember if he had that equipped when he joined the party?

One thing I'm wondering about though is when you say the Sephiroth battle makes you use all the neglected party members. As far as I'm aware, the game should only make you have Cloud and Tifa in your party for the Whirlwind Maze. Has a third character been locked into your party?

g0lbez

  • *
  • Posts: 7
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #189 on: 2014-07-15 21:33:15 »
there was a text prompt when fighting bizarro seph that said something like "switch out parties when you defeat a part!" but now that i remember right i think that's in the original game as well and it just gives you the option to switch out or something so nevermind on that front! now that i know i don't need to switch out dudes i'm looking forward to tackling the battle again since it seems pretty decently hard.

the boss after sephiroth in the whirlwind maze i thought was a decent challenge, nothing too crazy but definitely not a "hold down attack button" type thing. i think by the time you get to whirlwind maze you might need to factor in the player being able to reliably deal about 15k damage a turn, since that's about what i was hitting there. by the time you're at whirlwind you probably have accessories for boosting strength and magic by 50, which makes your punch faces dude and mage dude start to dish out some high numbers, not to mention weapons and armor that are innately boosting the same stats as well.

as for the triple ap weapons i think you're right actually, because the first time i played through i didn't apply the mod correctly and i didn't wanna do the intro again so i just hacked the save to start at the first savepoint, no not really a bug there but i guess it kinda diminishes the validity of my playthrough and difficulty opinions since i was using tifa for the most part with her super high strength triple ap weapon...

honestly i can't quite remember what aeris and red started with. i can say with 90% certainty i dont remember aeris starting with barrier but then again most likely due to my save hacking at the start of the game.

also kudos for adding in the extra dialogue regarding aeris so the story makes more sense. i got a bit of a laugh when barrett was all "yeah uh maybe be more careful this time" when getting ready to head back to the forgotten capital

g0lbez

  • *
  • Posts: 7
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #190 on: 2014-07-15 21:36:42 »
also i have to call out the demon wall boss in the temple of ancients, really well designed. it's definitely a battle where you go in and get your ass handed to you immediately but is definitely doable when you spend a few minutes getting a nice strat down

edit: so i'm not triple posting i'll just edit this in, but in regards to how you want to adjust the difficulty, adding in a hard mode as you suggested is probably the best idea of course, but i would say if you want to keep this like "fun play however you want mod" then keep in the boosted exp and ap and design the game around that.

the reason i say that is because my main issue with all the super hardcore mods is the limitations on exp and ap severely limit your options in battle and kinda make it less "play how you want" and more "you better have your party set up exactly as the modder intended or you're screwed." i like having access to various playstyles early in the game, it's definitely a good idea to keep in. with this mod i had all sorts of options at my disposal before i even left midgar, when usually everything up to that point in the game is kind of a drag since you're still limited to tier 1 magic and attacking and maybe some shitty items without any of the cool yellow and blue materias and such
« Last Edit: 2014-07-15 21:42:54 by g0lbez »

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #191 on: 2014-07-15 23:04:40 »
Thanks for all that, pretty encouraging feedback. I'll keep the Exp, AP, Gil as they are for now then and make small tweaks to later bosses. Nothing drastic, just a little extra durability so they have more of a chance to bring some of their mechanics to bear (especially later on; Omnislash is an absolute nightmare so I need to make Zack guard it better). I've started work on a New Game+ but it won't be the player repeating the story again; I'm going to use 7H to convert another mod I was developing into the NG+ scenario. I'm keeping quiet about the details for now, but you start this campaign in the AVALANCHE hideout and Meteor is already falling. The monsters in Midgar, the first area, will be specced for Lv70+ parties who've run through the NT Mod. I'll make a stand-alone version of it where a fresh party can tackle it too.

Don't worry about using those weapons at the start, it won't have made a huge difference in the long run and you'd have been operating without Barrier or Time Materia for a long stretch of the game which more than evens it out.

I think the best way forward is to make small tweaks (nothing drastic that'll undermine what players have done in the mod already) and then keep adding stuff to it. I'm going to make an effort to account for Ultimate Weapons and Lv.4 Limits a little better though.

atro city

  • *
  • Posts: 19
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #192 on: 2014-07-16 11:54:36 »
After I defeated Ruby Weapon, a green materia spawned at the Kalm traveler's house, but I couldn't pick it up.

Do the materia caves require raising a colored chocobo from scratch? The one that appeared after Ruby Weapon ran away. If so, I think I'll skip doing that. I was reminded how tedious and time-consuming raising a Gold Chocobo is when I did it for the Hardcore mod.

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #193 on: 2014-07-16 14:05:52 »
Yeah, I noticed that recently in a video that LCP did. Basically, instead of getting Master Materia you get another boss that gives you Big Guard when you kill it but there must be something I overlooked in the 'clean-up' of the field models. Not a serious issue, but I'll get around to it.

LetCreativityPlay

  • *
  • Posts: 44
  • Final Fantasy FTW *_*
    • View Profile
    • https://www.youtube.com/user/LetCreativityPlay
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #194 on: 2014-07-17 01:48:34 »
After I defeated Ruby Weapon, a green materia spawned at the Kalm traveler's house, but I couldn't pick it up.

Do the materia caves require raising a colored chocobo from scratch? The one that appeared after Ruby Weapon ran away. If so, I think I'll skip doing that. I was reminded how tedious and time-consuming raising a Gold Chocobo is when I did it for the Hardcore mod.

Hey, you can get a golden chocobo around 45 minutes without racing. Use this video for the steps (pretty easy). You just need morph to get zeio nuts from goblin. If you don't have morph, you can at least make a black chocobo until you get the zeio nuts!

Edit*
Thanks for catching my fail covarr!!
Here's The video link     
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Cj-XwZVCI
« Last Edit: 2014-07-17 07:35:10 by LetCreativityPlay »

Covarr

  • Covarr-Let
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 3941
  • Just Covarr. No "n".
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #195 on: 2014-07-17 02:10:03 »
Hey, you can get a golden chocobo around 45 minutes without racing. Use this video for the steps (pretty easy). You just need morph to get zeio nuts from goblin.
I tried to use this video but you didn't post a video.

atro city

  • *
  • Posts: 19
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #196 on: 2014-07-17 12:32:18 »
Hey, you can get a golden chocobo around 45 minutes without racing. Use this video for the steps (pretty easy). You just need morph to get zeio nuts from goblin. If you don't have morph, you can at least make a black chocobo until you get the zeio nuts!

Edit*
Thanks for catching my fail covarr!!
Here's The video link     
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Cj-XwZVCI

I remember trying RNG methods before to raise a fast Gold Chocobo and it never worked for me.

Well, I think I'm ready to give my feedback on the mod, as I feel like I've found all I'm going to find (around 1/3 of the extra battles are unfought, and I never got Morph). The mod is very well done, and I was surprised at the amount of new content and special sequences. It's obvious this took a long time to make, and the new enemy models are very good (my favorite was "Safer Sith"). To be honest, I didn't know you could do most of the stuff in this mod (the only other one I've played is Hardcore).

As for the difficulty, it started out pretty good. Some of the bosses in Disk 1 felt pretty weak (Red Dragon and Hundred/Heli in particular) but overall it maintained a consistent curve. From my playthrough, I felt that Air Buster, Rufus, Jenova Birth/Life, Materia Keeper, Zack, Ruby Weapon and the Kalm Traveler chocobo were the hardest fights. However, on Disk 2 the difficulty took a big dive. Tier 3 spells made sweeping enemy formations and wrecking bosses easy, and continued to do so all the way through the rest of the game. The combination of increased damage, lower MP cost, more elemental weaknesses and boosted EXP/AP (giving a lot more max MP) meant that I could continuously spam enemies with magic and almost never have to use Ethers or Magic Hammer. It also felt like the bosses did less damage and threw fewer curveballs at you in Disk 2. Of course, once the New Threat sidequests open up in Disk 3, ultimate weapons take over. Those fights were interesting for the most part (probably would have been more interesting if I hadn't gotten one of the most OP weapons [Missing Score] first).

Overall, excellent mod, just needs some balance tweaking in my opinion.

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #197 on: 2014-07-17 13:48:27 »
Thanks for the feedback, the general consensus seems to be that Disc 2 and onwards is where the difficulty curve nose-dives because of Tier 3 spells and then the unlocking of Ultimate Weapons. What I'm doing right now is experimenting with different ways to improve things going into that stretch of the game. I'll see about making the Disc 2 bosses a little more interesting as well.

I just can't decide what to do with Ultimate Weapons though. I'm thinking of splitting them up from Lv.4 Limits and setting up new (and harder) content to get those separately; last thing I want to do is nerf them because it'd cheapen the effort needed to get them. Or maybe push them back to NewGame+ content. Hmm.

Kaldarasha

  • *
  • Posts: 2449
  • Prince of Model Editing
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #198 on: 2014-07-17 14:01:27 »
Change the scene.bin for disc2.  You could make stronger enemies for the early encounters of the game. The logical explanation is that the beasts enemies go wild by the look of Meteor (let robotic enemies as they are, maybe after Cloud joins to the party, you could make them more powerful, this way it looks like that Shinra reacts to the tougher enemies. Maybe some Soldiers could be encountered too).

Sega Chief

  • Moderator
  • *
  • Posts: 4086
  • These guys is sick
    • View Profile
Re: [REL/FF7] New Threat Mod v1.1
« Reply #199 on: 2014-07-17 15:48:50 »
I think I can fit all that into the current scene.bin, I'd like to reserve the second Scene for a NG+ (I'm re-ordering it quite extensively for that one). For improved strength, I can set pre-battle AI to trigger when a global variable is switched (the Pandora's Box one isn't being used for Dragon Zombie anymore, maybe I could use that one?) and have that variable be flipped after killing the Junon Airport boss. There's still plenty of space in the current one too for new enemies, like SOLDIER; should I go for more characterised enemies or stick with anonymous ones though?