Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Kefka

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 [8] 9
176
It's not located in the kernel. Most likely it's inside FF7.exe, as other menu data tends to be there as well.

Oh, so this data hasn't been found yet? I see... So I guess I'll have to wait with potion editing for now.

177
Amazing editor NFITC1, it's been a really huge help for me so far! I've got one question though regarding item effects:

How can I change the effects of items that can be used outside of battle?

When I change the amount of healing done by an X-Potion or a Turbo-Ether to a fixed number similar to regular potions and ethers, the effect is only changed in battle, but not outside of battle. When I use an X-Potion in the menu, it still recovers all HP, so I was wondering if the out-of-battle effects of items are located somewhere else in the kernel. Does anyone know how to change an item's out-of-battle effect?

178
Gameplay / Re: [FF8PC-Steam] Magic Strengthen
« on: 2015-06-03 09:32:34 »
I pretty much agree with everything my previous speakers have said. FF8 is a great game with a very innovative ability system, but unfortunately it lacks one thing: balance. And this has 2 reasons:

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

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

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

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

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

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

179
^this

That's really strange indeed. I didn't even see Maliris's final attack code. I thought it was also using the "under 10000 HP" way.
So they indeed made 2 different systems for handling the end of the boss battles...

You can't use the "perform special death if HP is 0" system with HW for now. I'll look into it but if that works as I think it does, it shouldn't be too hard to enable.

However, you can already give more HP to enemies using the script : when an enemy goes under 10 000 HP, heal him.
See this post for a detailled way to go : http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=14315.msg224426#msg224426

Ah, ok thanks, that's one possibility to artificially increase an enemy's HP.

About Maliris, there's really nothing special to her Raining Swords final attack other than that it's located in function_func_4, which is the death function according to you. All bosses that use the "10000 HP death" usually have that located in function_func_1 (the looping function). I've been playing around with the idea of giving final attacks to certain enemies, but in order to do so I guess one would need to add a function_func_4 to their script. Most enemies don't have such a function by default, and currently the editor doesn't allow to add additional functions to a script. Do you think this will be possible in a future version?

180
Most bosses don't die by their HP being reduced to 0. Instead, if HP < 10000 trigger death script. This is why Ozma has 55535 HP -- he actually has 65535 but he dies when going below 10000 so he effectively only has 55535. You can't scan so you wouldn't know either way. If the boss's HP did reach 0 the battle just wouldn't end/would hang, which isn't a problem since bosses are immune to instant death attacks and other damage doesn't exceed 9999.
WTF?! That's so bizarre... :-o
Any idea on why they did that? :?

The "death if HP drops below 10000"  script is used by all enemies that have a special death animation, be it a spectacular explosion or just talking to you (Baku, Lani, Kuja, for example). The funny thing is, for all bosses that have less than 20000 HP total you can actually verify that in game by throwing a tent at them (which heals exactly 50% of HP and MP in battle). For example, the Masked Man from the game's beginning has acutally 10188 HP, and when you throw a tent at him it heals him for 5094, that's how you know it.

The only enemy in the game that has a "true" final attack is Maliris with her Raining Swords. This is the only attack that is performed when the bosses HP reach indeed 0, so we know that true final attacks must be possible.

I have no idea why they did that, but it's been bugging me too for a while now. I've always wondered if it might be possible to make these special boss deaths behave like Maliris (change them from "perform special death if HP is less than 10000" to "perform special death if HP is 0"). This would allow us to give most disc 4 bosses an additional 10000 HP. But so far I've been unsuccessful with that.

181
Ah, thanks a lot, it's working now! Don't worry, I don't plan on messing with boss formations, just wanted to add more enemies in random battles. I find it kinda lame that in most battles there's only 1-2 enemies, and the maximum of 4 is hardly ever used.

182
Great work, man! Thanks for the update! It's even working for me, don't know why I had problems and crashes with version 0.27, but 0.28 is running flawlessly again.

Anyway, I've got two questions regarding monster formations that I hope you can shed some light into:

1.) I've noticed that in some monster formations, there are additional slots checked as Targetable even when they don't contain an enemy (see pic). Do you know why this is the case or whether it serves a purpose?



2.) I've tried adding additional monsters to some battle formations (I also did check the Targetable flag in the new slots that were filled). For example, I wanted to add 2 Goblins to a fight that normally only has 2 Fangs. But then in battle something wierd happens: the new monsters are only visible for a couple seconds,  then they disappear. I suppose it happens when their turn comes up, because the new enemies also cannot perform any attacks. The funny thing is that they still remain targetable, but they're just invisible and cannot act. Any ideas about what's going on?

183
I think it's actually easier if you click the Preview button in the formations tab to open the Battle View Preview window, then you can manually "grab" and move the camera around as you like. Just left-click with the mouse somewhere into the picture and hold it, then drag it along (you'll get a feeling for it eventually). If your mouse has a scroll wheel, you can use that to make the camera "zoom" in and out.

Once you found an angle that you like, you have to right-click into the white text box that shows the current camera coordinates (see picture below) and select "set camera to this position". Now your self-adjusted camera position has been saved.


184
What I don't know:
1. where is zlib1.dll?
2. where is PrC?

PrC is just the abbreviation of Proud Clod.
The zlib1.dll should be included in the zip-file of Proud Cloud that you downloaded. I just checked my Proud Clod zip files (the last two versions), and both contain the dll. If for some reason you don't find it, I can upload the file to Speedy Share for you.

The camera position can be edited under the formations tab, although you'll have to do it manually for every battle formation in every scene (which amounts to maybe 700 or so formations).

185
@ Kefka : You got it right, but you also need to add the battles in the preloading datas. There is a bug that should be corrected in the next version for preloading datas, but you can try now nonetheless.
Add those battles to the preloading datas, add the "RANDOM_BATTLE" opcode inside the script and test : it will crash in-game if the bug occured and should work fine if not ^^
The corresponding battle scene for the battles must be preloaded as well but I think I made it automatic (if you add a battle, the battle scene is added too if it weren't there).

Note that the 1st argument of "RANDOM_BATTLE" has unknown effect. It might be about the frequency of random encounters.

Ah, ok, thanks for the tip. I'll play around with that for a while.

I've got another question for you, and maybe it can already be done in the current version, but I'm not quite sure how. Is it possible to change the contents of treasure chests on the World Map? I already know how to do it in the Field files, but I'm not sure about the World Map. There is a section called Chocobo Treasures in the World Map tab, but the ITEM ADD Opcode in its script contains only variables, not absolute item IDs like in the field files. Where exactly are the items in the chocobo treasures located?

The reason I’m asking is because I'm mainly working on rebalancing the game's difficulty (not an extreme hardcore mod, just a bit more challenging than normal) because I find that it’s way too easy. Rebalancing the first two discs was easy, but early disc 3 is where the problems start. This is the point when you can find some of the game's most powerful equipment way too early, like Dragon's Hair, Ragnarok, Kaiser Knuckles, High Mage Staff, Light Robe, Shadow Robe, Circlet and Genji Armor. So I was planning on swapping some of these items to later treasure chests, when their stats are more appropriate for the point in the game.

186
FF8 Tools / Re: [FF8] Enemy editor - IFRIT (0.11)
« on: 2015-04-28 07:24:59 »
Right now is there a way to change when an attack is used (counter, ordered, random, etc)?

If FF8 is anything like the other FFs, then this should all be in the enemy's AI script, too. I know it is that way for FF4, FF5, FF6, FF7 and FF9. Right now, Ifrit only allows you to change the attack list, but not when the enemy uses it. Hopefully a future version of Ifrit will allow us to edit enemy AI, this is something I'm wishing to do, too.

187
@ Kefka : that's a pitty for the counters :/
I would have thought it should work at least in the looping function. Did you check if it was actually looping? The function should end with those two lines :
Code: [Select]
    WAIT(1)
    loop
If there is a RETURN instead, it won't loop anyway so it may be why it didn't work.

Ah, that could be why it wasn't working, I was always using RETURN at the end. I'm gonna try again with a loop function then.

About the statuses : no, I don't plan to go that far in the battle mechanics. I wish I could, but the figures controlling these kind of things are really spread over the file and it will be too difficult for me to draw the big picture of the battle mechanics.
However, I've progressed in the spell animation editing feature ; without giving false hope (this feature was full of them for my concern), there might be a way to stop the ATB progression during spell animations, making the combo regen+booster lighter. That also needs checks.

Interesting, that might be a solution to both of my status-related questions. It would make Auto-Regen far weaker while at the same time prolonging the duration of all status effects. If that is indeed possible it would be great.

Another question regarding the random battles: If it is possible to remove random battles from a certain field, the opposite should be possible, too, right? Because I was considering adding random battles to fields that currently have none. So all I would need to do would be to add the RANDOM_ENCOUNTER function to a field file, plus the four random battles that I want in brackets, like this:

Code: [Select]
RANDOM_BATTLE( 0, 306, 306, 310, 310 )
Or is there something else that needs to be done?

188
FF8 Tools / Re: [FF8] Enemy editor - IFRIT (0.11)
« on: 2015-04-27 09:16:47 »
I played around with exchanging attacks for certain enemies a while ago, and so far this is the attack ID list I found out so far (it's far from complete, though):

Spell IDs:

1: Fire
2: Fira
3: Firaga
4: Blizzard
5: Blizzara
6: Blizzaga
7: Thunder
8: Thundara
9: Thundaga
10: Water
11: Aero
12: Bio
13: Demi
14: Holy
15: Flare
16: Meteor
17: Quake
18: Tornado
19: Ultima
20: Apocalypse
21: Cure
22: Cura
23: Curaga
24: Life
25: Full-Life
26: Regen
27: Esuna
28: Dispel
29: Protect
30: Shell
31: Reflect
32: Aura
33: Douple
34: Triple
35: Haste
36: Slow
37: Stop
38: Blind
39: Confuse
40: Sleep
41: Silence
42: Break
43: Death
44: Drain
45: Pain
46: Berserk
47: Float
48: Zombie
49: Meltdown
50: Scan
51: Full Cure
52: Wall
53: Rapture
54: Percent (Dummy)
55: Catastrophe (Dummy)
56: The End

Enemy Ability IDs:

2: physical attack
308: Light Pillar
309: Gravija
378: Ultima (enemy version)
380: Quake(enemy version)

I haven't looked into all enemy abilities that thouroughly yet. Note that there are secondary "enemy only" versions of the Ultima and Quake spells which are more powerful than the regular versions that are available to the player. Certain bosses like Adel, Ultima Weapon or Omega Weapon use those instead of their regular version.

Also keep in mind that currently there is no way to change the target of a magic, for instance, if you replace a single-target attack like Fire with a multi-target one like Ultima, it would still only hit one single target. This is because the targetting for each attack is located in the enemy's AI script, and currently there's no way to edit that. But perhaps a future version of Ifrit will be able to? I'd be looking forward to it.

189
Thanks, Vir, your tables give a nice overview of how the spirit stat influences the time span and the amount of damage/healing that comes from regen and poison. Now all I would need to know is how to edit that. As for now, the only way to lower Regen healing is by lowering the Spirit stat, but I don't wanna do that, as Spirit is important for so many other things as well.

By the way, your tables also gave me some nice ideas for my own mod.

190
These additional features look very promising, I'm looking forward to them. I don't know if this is helpful to you, but I've made an excel file for some of the damage calculation formulas which I'm using for my modding. For those who are interested, here it is:

Code: [Select]
http://speedy.sh/PYtGD/FF9-Damage-Formulas.xls
By the way, I tried your suggestion with placing the counter script in Function_func_1_1, but it didn't seem to work. Although I have to admit, I didn't test it very thoroughly yet. I will experiment some more with it.

On another topic, your to do list reminds me about something else that I've always wanted to play around with, but since I don't know anything about programming, you need to tell me whether the following 2 things are impossible, or whether you could include them in a future version of the editor.

1.) The first one is about the duration of temporary status effects, which are way too short I think. When you’re playing the game with the ATB on active mode and the battle speed set to fastest, no negative status lasts longer than 2 rounds at most if your spirit stat is decent. This becomes especially obvious near the end of the game, when most party members have spirit stats of around 40 even on moderate levels. For example, Mustard Bomb will hardly ever have a chance of killing a character even if it inflicts Heat, because if just a single attack with a decent animation time is in between Mustard Bomb and the targeted character’s turn, the Heat status will have already expired by then. And with ‘decent animation times’ I’m not even talking about summons, as the length of any normal spell or other technique is already sufficient to make Heat wear off. This makes the Body Temp ability more or less obsolete in the late game, even when going up against enemies that use Mustard Bomb or Freeze.

I have found some info on the duration times of status effects in this document here.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197338-final-fantasy-ix/faqs/44329

It’s a very in-depth analysis of FF9’s battle mechanics, which leads me to believe that the author (Rebirth Flame) must have located these data by looking directly at the code. After all, the only way to obtain that knowledge is by actually hacking the game, isn’t it? Now as I said I am no programmer, so what I’m saying now might be completely wrong, but the duration time seems to be one fixed number for each temporary status (both positive and negative ones), like 160 for Heat or 240 for Poison. This counter decreases continually, and when it reaches 0, the status wears off (at least that's what the author claims). So my question is, if you know where these duration counters are located, would it be possible to make them editable in Hades Workshop to prolong status duration? That would be great.

2.) The second point is about the Poison and Regen stats. One thing that I believe needs to be changed in order to make the game more challenging is to break the power of the Auto-Haste & Auto-Regen Combo. With these 2 abilities activated, you’ll never need to manually heal your party ever again. No matter how powerful the enemy’s attacks are, with Haste status the Regen healing will come so fast that it easily heals you back to full health before the enemy gets his next turn. Add Auto-Life into the mix and your party becomes nigh invincible, eliminating any level of difficulty from late disc 3 onward.

I was thinking that one way to weaken this combo would be to increase the time span between Regen healings. According to the same battle mechanics guide, there seem to be secondary counters for Poison and Regen which determine the time span between two Poison damages / Regen healings. Would it be possible to make these counters editable?

Anyway, these are just some ideas floating around in my head, and I don't know how difficult it would be to change them. But I would like to hear your thoughts on those.

191
Sorry for the double post, but I've got another question regarding enemy AI scripts, this time it is about counterattacks. It seems that Function func_1_3 is the script that deals with counterattacks, right? Some enemies have a script in this section that I'm unsure of what it does or even what it is (see picture). Do you know what this is supposed to do? Because all enemies that have that don't have any counterattacks.



For example, I'd like to make Quale counterattack with his Rolling Attack occasionally, so I just copy-pasted a fitting counter script from another enemy (Nova Dragon) into Quale's Function func_1_3. However, he still doesn't counterattack at all. What could I have done wrong? The counter script itself must be OK because we already know that it works fine for Nova Dragon. So... what could be the problem?

It seems that Quale's original counter script doesn't serve any purpose either, because deleting it / replacing it with Nova Dragon's counter script didn't change his normal combat behavior in any way. Same with a few other enemies that have this same (seemingly useless) script in Function func_1_3.

But the big question I wanted to ask is: is it possible to give counterattacks to enemies that normally don't have one?

I'm grateful for any input.

192
The combination is: 36, 10, 59, 97.

All of them are hidden within the Mansion, if you want to find them they way it's supposed to. In the bottom left room near the entrance, there's a letter on the floor which gives you hints about the whereabouts of 3 of the numbers.

The first one tells about the top of a chest, so just check all the treasure chests again after you opened them (it's the one upstairs near the safe).

The second hint "Behind the Ivory's short of tea and ray" might be hard to understand, but it means the piano on the ground floor (maybe because piano keys are made of ivory? Don't know). Look behind it and you'll read the number on the floor.

The third hint refers to a creaking sound that you can hear once you run over a certain spot near a chair in the right wing on the second floor (you have to listen very carefully to hear it). From this spot, go 5 steps left, 9 steps north, 2 steps left and 6 steps north. Search the floor where you'll read the third number.

The fourth number is acutally written on the letter near the entrance, but it's hidden. When the letter lets you select hints to the first 3 numbers, you can actually select an invisible fourth spot below them which tells you the fourth number.

This is the proper way to aquiring all the numbers.

193
Wow, it worked! Thanks a ton!

Yeah, there's really a lot of variables in every AI script, it was really difficult to get the hang of it at first. I also made another change while I was at it. Did you now that Tiamat can use both Twister and Jet Fire only once per battle? I always found that rather lame, considering that his weaker Crystal version doesn't have this restriction. I made it so that he can use them an unlimited amount of times, and luckily it turned out to be a simple one variable value change for each. With these changes in place, Tiamat can actually be quite challenging now.

So there are certain attacks whose animations support both single and multi-targeting, but others that don't? This must be why changing the target worked for Malboro's Bad Breath, then.

194
Nice, thanks for the understandable version of Ozma's AI. Enemy AI is one of the most interesting aspects to edit, but I still have a lot to learn about it. I have just started changing certain enemies' AIs, and I've already succeeded at some of the things I wanna do (like having Hades use Curse and Doomsday without a countdown, or preventing Beatrix from ending battles automatically after 10 rounds).

However, I'm having trouble with changing the target of certain attacks from single to multiple, and I hope someone can help me with this. Specifically, I'm trying to make Tiamat's Float spell target the entire party instead of just one party member (so he has better chances of pulling off his Snort counterattack). Since he has 2 Float spells in his list, I changed the targeting of both attacks in his AI to SV_PlayerTeam (see picture) just to be sure, but it didn't work. He still casts Float on only one party member. Why?

This doesn't make sense to me as I've already done the same thing successfully with Malboro's Bad Breath, and it worked flawlessly. Now Malboro casts Bad Breath on the entire party.

I've wondered whether it might have something to do with the attack animation? The first Float spell in his attack list has a single-target animation, the second one a multi-target animation, but it seems this second one is never used. Is there a way to make him use it?


195
Off the top of my head, I can't remember if there was a mix-up of Phoenix Down/Phoenix Pinion in the German version, where does it happen? Is it in one specific Chocobo place or in all of them?

But the German version does have its own share of problems, not in terms of typos or grammar (that was done a lot better than in FF7 and FF8), but because a lot of the allusions to earlier FF games was lost. However, I don't know if that can really be blamed on the translators, because the first 6 FF games were never released in German, and so the German translators most likely didn't even know anything about the first 6 FF games, so they had to make up something. Which is also the reason why I didn't even recognize the story that Ramuh told the first time, even though I knew FF2 already (played the NES rom). The translators really took a LOT of liberties with that.

196
@Vir: I agree that Hades Workshop is amazing, I'm using it too for my FF9 rebalancing (and increased difficulty) mod, but I'm also playing the German version, so I don't know how compatible this will be with other versions since I've also changed the names of a couple enemies and abilities. Maybe I will release a ppf patch someday, without any name changes. Right now my focus is on enemy AI scripts, but I still have a lot to learn about that (so many variables that can be really confusing).

@Tirlititi: this is great news about E2, I'll try it out right away! Thanks a lot!

Edit: It worked! I just got Excalibur 2 with a playtime of 75 hours! Nice!

197
Nice work, Vir!

I'm also currently working on rebalancing FF9, but mine is also aiming at increasing the game's overall difficulty a bit (since vanilla FF9 was way too easy). Some of my goals are similar to yours, I'm also looking to make other lesser used skills and magic more useful, to give the player a real reason to use some skills. I did so by increasing the accuracy for most status spells, Matra magic or Demi, for example, while at the same time lowering the power of some clearly overpowered skills like Shock or Zidane's Dyne Skills, and also increasing the defense and magic defense of most bosses so that you don't reach 9999 damage that easily.

I also agree that a low level game should still be possible, for those that want to try the challenge. This was one of the things that always bugged me about FF7, that you can't do a true low level game because bosses give EXP.

I never really bothered with Excalibur II, and I know I never will, mainly because I don't like rushing through RPGs. To me, a "perfect game" includes talking to every NPC in every town (usually multiple times, until they've got nothing new to say), but having to skip this and rush all the time ruins the entire atmosphere for me, and no piece of equipment can justify that, no matter how powerful it is. Which is too bad, because I'd like to possess Excalibur II at least once, for the sake of completion. So my idea would be to simply remove the 12:00 hour requirement and make it so that Excalibur II is always there, no matter your playtime. I don't know how to implement that yet, but if it's possible that would be great. It would enable a perfect low level game while taking away the time pressure from the player. What do you think about that?

198
FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] Online viewer
« on: 2015-03-09 14:44:15 »
Wow, that's cool, you can even look at all the weapons! Thanks a lot for this, man!

199
Quite funny video, but watching it once is more than enough I think.

200
FF8 Tools / Re: [FF8] kernel.bin editor - Carbuncle (0.9)
« on: 2015-03-09 14:34:34 »
Sorry for the necroposting, but I just wanted to ask if anyone is still working on this project? A kernel editor for FF8 is something I've always wanted, is there any chance that Carbuncle will become a kernel editor that can do everything, like WallMarket? Or is this project kind of canceled?

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 [8] 9