Messages

301

General Discussion / Re: What is Final Fantasy about?

« on: 2017-06-15 17:08:05 »

Generally speaking here is the basic plot of all Final Fantasies:

Some terrible event occurred hundreds, thousands or just a few years ago (sometimes repeatedly). Unlikely heroes get caught in this struggle to prevent it from happening again or from causing more problems.

There are similar mechanics in each game: leveling up (No levels in 10's series), stat increasing, equipment upgrades etc. Lots of meme-level story/character elements: chocobos, characters named Cid, reused enemy designs. Magic just exists and people accept it even though it's rarely practically used outside of battles. Lots of numbers flashing on the screen during battles.

As the others have said there's little connecting any of the main numbered titles. Some of them occur in the same universe (supposedly FFX occurs on a different planet in the distant past of FFVII) and others just reference other entries.

it's usually one of those (almost) fairy tale like ending where the story ends with a "happily ever after"

Depends on the ones you play. VI altered the world permanently and left it in a possibly decaying state. X wasn't very "fairy tale" until the ending of X-2. XIII wasn't great either. Were you listing Chrono Trigger as a final fantasy game? Of the dozen+ endings you could get I'd only describe 2 of them as "happily ever after" endings. Oh, that's another thing about FF's, they only have one ending each. VI has different ending clips depending on which characters you recruit by the end of the game.

302

FF7 Tools / Re: [FF7] KERNEL.BIN editor - WallMarket (v1.4.5)

« on: 2017-06-14 03:09:08 »

http://wiki.qhimm.com/view/FF7/Battle/Damage_Calculation

http://wiki.qhimm.com/view/FF7/DamageFormula#X1:

I'm going to put those up front just 'cause.

Morph changes the Weapon's power from 16 to 2. This affects almost all damage calculations by directly reducing their output by an eighth. Weapon's increase damage by changing the characters' actual attack stat. You can't avoid this using the standard X1 damage calculation value that weapons use. There are a few calculations that don't use the power stat, but you can't set some flag to make the vanilla sword just ignore the Morph penalty.

These damage calculations are the 6X and 7X calculations (for weapons you'd probably want the 6X as that's physical damage). These are conditional damages and not really meant to be used on regularly used actions.
You could use Conformer's Damage calc of A3 which modifies power after the morph penalty, but it might be really weak in the early game and way overpowered in the late game.
A7 (Death Penalty) is mostly exempt from the penalty. Since DP's power is always increasing with every kill, this will reduce the power to no more than 10, possibly 11. If the kills are great enough to result in a power of 18 (1024 kills) then morph would result in a damage of 11 (a 38.9% reduction rather than 87.5%). However, IIRC I rarely got any character to exceed 1K kills in any normal playthrough (including grinding).

303

Support / Re: Final Fantasy 9 mods: UI/Backgrounds/Cheats

« on: 2017-06-05 20:37:06 »

It's unfortunate. The best thing for them to do would have been to locate the original 3d assets for backgrounds and re-render them at  a higher resolution...

Most developers back in the day didn't retain their original sources. Either they scrapped them to make room for the next project or the original designers actually have legal claim to the sources. I believe most of the set design of FFVIII was done by a third-party designer and only gave a certain quality image for Square to work with. Upscaleing that would require contacting the original designers (assuming they're still in business) and getting higher-res images (assuming they were ever made) or redoing the entire image (again, assuming the designer personally has no legal claim to the image).
IIRC in the case of FFVII, one of the top developers or producers was the sole possessor of the original source code and left Square shortly after the PSX International edition was finalized. The source is now in a legal limbo in such a way that it can not be used by the one that possesses it nor procured by the company that technically owns it.
Since FFIX was redone in Unity it's probably safe to say that the source was retained enough, but only some assets were redone. In the case of backgrounds it was likely "if we can't do it all we can't do any of it" kind of issue.

304

General Discussion / Re: [FF8] Controlling enemies with their abilities (PC Version)

« on: 2017-05-29 13:50:06 »

If it's anything like FFVII, which it probably is similar, then it would take a HUGE rewrite to add an enemy to the playable party.

305

Troubleshooting / Re: Is restarting after fresh installation necessary?

« on: 2017-05-29 13:47:32 »

It's almost never necessary to restart after installing. It almost never was except in the case of hardware drivers. I believe now even modern OSs (like Win 10) doesn't even need a restart when that happens now.

There are some RARE cases where restarting is necessary. These "restart before running" messages were common with the install wizards of the day just as a "cover your bases" step. It was once enforced (possibly practiced) that changes to the registry required a reboot to take effect. However, adding branches to the registry as in the case of FFVII and FFVIII won't affect anything that would require a restart.

306

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9 PC/Steam] Improved NPC and battle background textures

« on: 2017-05-24 04:05:16 »

Suddenly the battles look like they're in Wind Waker.

The NPCs on the field are incredibly better. I noticed that your screen-res is pretty high, will lower res (1080) notice this difference?

Slightly on tangent: I get annoyed by "remasters" that only up the detail on the main characters and ignore all the other NPCs/models the game has. Square is guilty of this for sure (X HD was noticeable that only the main characters really looked any better).

307

Troubleshooting / Re: Original buster.tex File?

« on: 2017-05-24 03:55:25 »

I'd say completely delete your local content from Steam and re-download it. Reinstall the mods you want without the custom start menu.
Several people here use the Steam version and could probably help you with your actual problem if you change this topic's name to something like "Using custom start menu with Aali's driver".
I have the original '98 release so I can't help other than garnering attention from those that can.

308

Troubleshooting / Re: Original buster.tex File?

« on: 2017-05-23 13:30:38 »

I don't think passing out original source files is allowed.

309

WIP / Re: [FF7PC] The Bug Database - post bug reports here

« on: 2017-05-18 04:27:45 »

As Luksy has posted the PSX calculates and renders the colors differently.

I think it's more basic than that. I think it's the limitation of the composite video connection. Since it can't do better than 240i and most CRTs do their own blending (though not necessarily on purpose) it takes more color variation to make an obvious contrast. As such, the backgrounds were designed to be oddly blocky with random flecks of color sprinkled in to make a smooth appearance despite the source's jaggy appearance. The designers of the PSX's GPU knew this and probably force each pixels' color to slightly influence the ones next to it. So to compensate, set designers have to be creative to cause realistic gradients. The source would look dirty, but the interpretation looks smooth because it can't show each pixel in its true color.

I noticed this a few years back when I got a video adapter for the PS2 that was both composite and component in the same cord. The composite looked smoother because the resolution was lower and made my set do some interpolation. When I switched to component (which maxes at 480p) I immediately regretted my decision as all the color artifacts came shining through and less interpolation was done on the image.

Now we play games at 1080p and up so lots more time is spent on making 32-bit colored textures at 4K resolutions so more accurate gradients can be achieved.

310

Troubleshooting / Re: Simmulating a new game or something simmilar

« on: 2017-05-10 18:29:22 »

Tutorials don't make lasting changes and you can't change equipment with field scripts.

311

Troubleshooting / Re: Simmulating a new game or something simmilar

« on: 2017-05-10 17:49:01 »

I meant custom written asm code. I can write a new handle for certain animation codes.

312

Troubleshooting / Re: Simmulating a new game or something simmilar

« on: 2017-05-10 14:23:40 »

Yes, I know the Yuffie code. She steals up to 48 materia from a prioritized set and when the quest is over she just dumps it on all the characters in whatever empty slots they happen to have. It just fills in empty slots and dumps the rest back into the materia inventory. There's no set order to it, either. Whatever gets stolen first will end up in the first empty slot, etc.

313

Troubleshooting / Re: Simmulating a new game or something simmilar

« on: 2017-05-10 12:04:31 »

Just so you know, it's "Layman's terms".

This requires an engine re-write. There is not an easy way to pair materia and equipment. I can almost see how this could be done, but I doubt there's enough unused code to make it happen.

Someone needs to make a FF7E (extended) wrapper so we can add our custom coded mods to the engine as well as the data.

314

WIP / Re: [FF7PC] The Big Bug List - post bug reports here

« on: 2017-05-10 04:55:19 »

I was speaking in theory. It looks like some pair of coordinates got reversed.

315

Gameplay / Re: Some simple fixes to FF8 and some help needed.

« on: 2017-05-10 03:28:12 »

These don't sound simple. Just sayin'

316

WIP / Re: [FF7PC] The Big Bug List - post bug reports here

« on: 2017-05-10 02:49:18 »

It looks like the y and z coordinate of the light source may have gotten reversed.

317

WIP / Re: [FF7PC] The Big Bug List - post bug reports here

« on: 2017-05-10 01:36:56 »

I'm pretty sure it's always been this way.

318

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Editing the battle scripts

« on: 2017-05-09 20:54:40 »

It's part of the animations of that stage. I can't be certain, but check the **ab file of that stage and see what is going on. That's likely where it is.

319

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Editing the battle scripts

« on: 2017-05-09 20:43:58 »

You can't just add a screen filter to the battles. The rain is part of the battle stage.

320

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Editing the battle scripts

« on: 2017-05-09 20:25:48 »

Both the field and the battle scripts have access to the entirety of the savemap.

321

WIP / Re: [FF7PC] The Big Bug List - post bug reports here

« on: 2017-05-08 19:10:19 »

You should probably do it at the end of each field script. That way you can Game Over at a reasonable time. In the case like this, where you do damage then heal, it would kill at the appropriate time and not mid-dialog.

322

General Discussion / Re: Need Primary Stat Level Up Increase Formula (FF7)

« on: 2017-05-08 17:51:54 »

Also, it's confirmed...

You have an off-by-one error in wall market:
[img]

This is known. It's a floating point error when the graph gets high. I've corrected it in the not-yet-released version.

323

WIP / Re: [FF7PC] The Big Bug List - post bug reports here

« on: 2017-05-08 16:34:03 »

Which part of the main loop? The field's main script or the game's main loop?

324

General Discussion / Re: Need Primary Stat Level Up Increase Formula (FF7)

« on: 2017-05-08 16:27:04 »

And the Wall Market I'm currently working on will display the values a little more prominently. As it is you have to hunt for the values you want.

325

WIP / Re: [FF7PC] The Big Bug List - post bug reports here

« on: 2017-05-08 16:23:08 »

I think the function needs to be able to do that in other places though.  To be able to revive or kill based on simple assignments to HP of a character.  I'm not sure where else it's used. What was really needed was a function to set HP to an absolute number rather than "decrease" and "increase".  They likely came up with the idea of "make HP 1 after being hit with the needles" later in development. 

What I am doing for Weapon is simply making these needles and so on an instant death or other bad effect like decrease HP.  If all 3 chars are 0 HP, then game over.  The latter is already another bug (all 3 chars can be dead on field), which will need fixing.

Then the fault is in the field script. I just checked it and it just removes 501 HP and restores 1. That will heal all dead characters.
What needs to happen is the field script needs to be rewritten AND new codes need to be added. It needs to remove 500 and trigger the game over if all HP are 0. As you mentioned before there is no way for the field to check the HP of the party members. That needs to change. Codes 3C and 3D could be hijacked to return the HP and MP values of the party members.