[FF8PC-Steam] Hard Mode and Add-on's Launcher (2017-08-25)

[Mcindus]

Hard Mode and Add-on's Launcher
Difficulty Mod and other Add-on's for FF8 on STEAM
Now All Languages Supported!
Mod Updated with easier process!

These mods use HextLaunch from DLPB's Tools
And they will until he finishes his new version of ddraw.dll for FF8

I compiled some old mods for those of you using the STEAM version of FF8

Add-on's:
Hard.dll: Makes the game generally more difficult:
-   Decreases the player's melee damage by a factor of 1.5
-   Increases the level of enemies by a factor of 1.1
-   Increases the melee damage of enemies by a factor of 1.1
    (this does not effect magic damage)
Damage.dll
-   Max damage increased to 65k instead of 9999; affects your group and opponents too.
HP.dll
-   Max hp cap increased to 32k from 9999
Magic.dll
-   You won't lose magic from your inventory when you cast it in battle.
    (Negates Double and Triple effects. I don't use this one.)
Publish.dll
-   Removes the Square Enix splash logo on Startup

DOWNLOADS: Only pick one!
Hard Launcher (English)
Hard Launcher (Spanish)
Hard Launcher (French)
Hard Launcher (German)
Hard Launcher (Italian)

CHECK HERE FOR HEXT FILE UPDATES AND INFO:
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=15354.msg258805#msg258805

Instructions:

1.   Move "HL_Files" and "FF8_Hard_Launcher" into your parent FF8 directory.
     (steamapps/common/FINAL FANTASY VIII)
2.   Launch the game from the new "Hard" Launcher
3.   The command window will let you know if .dll injection was done correctly
     (there is also a HextLaunch.txt log file)

*If you're using RaW, you can move the RaW.dll into /HL_Files/DLL_in as well to resolve possible issues
**If you use any Tonberry mods, do not move any of the Tonberry .dll's into this location - it will render Tonberry useless.

======================================================
If you choose, you may remove the Magic.dll and Publish.dll Add-On's with no glitches
======================================================

Original thread for 2000 PC version:
Go HERE to use these Add-ons with Aali's Driver.

Thanks to JeMaCheHi for trying so hard to get the mod to work and helping me figure out where I went wrong!

Thanks to DLPB for his Hext Tools!  Go HERE to support him!

[Pendrokar]

Hi,

So modifying the code of FF7/FF8 is done by a memory injection? There is nothing that points to specific variables in the code?

Hard.dll - Makes the game generally more difficult:
(Decreases the player's melee damage by a factor of 1.5, increase the level of enemies by a factor of 1.1, and increase the melee damage of enemies by a factor of 1.1; this does not effect magic damage)

I guess this would take a lot of time, but you could provide a short explanation on how this was done or where to look for it. Not how to install the DLL, but how you found out which variables to change. Wondering if the following change is possible:

I tried making all characters 100 LVL at the start of the game, which while did heavily increase the difficulty, it was all for nothing when I ran into the first boss, Ifirit, who's maximum level was limited to 10-20 something. So I am also wondering if manually increasing a bosses level beyond their maximum will automatically increase its stats?

[Mcindus]

Hello!  I actually have no idea how the mods were created.  If you go to the original post where I linked to the download you may be able to track down the programmer,  But it's been years since he's posted.   I just found a way to resurrect the old add on mods they used to use in the FF8_Launcher.  I do know someone who is editing the difficulty of the game.  He posted about vit 0 immunity in the tools section.  Maybe he has some insight?

I wouldn't know how to decompile the .dll to see what it's doing.  Anyone out there have any ideas?

[refoopseman]

you said the hextlauncher can work with RaW too but I put the Raw.dll into the DLL_in folder and the game said it has error and RaW.dll failed to load. Perhaps I did something wrong?

[eXistenZe]

I use hextlauncher and raw.dll with no issues so far...

[Moo2dabum]

i got these all to work except for the hp one still sitting at 9999 not to sure whats up or if there is some other method.

[eXistenZe]

Yep... HP.dll does not work for me too... Not even randomly like other users reported...

[Omik]

I noticed that if the window looks like after the launch


All mods work, including HP.

[selius]

possible to make it so magic.dll only affects edea?

[Mortael]

I am going to see if I can fix the HP.dll so that it *always* breaks the HP limit, I'm sure there is a reason, probably even an intentional one

I might try my hand at experimenting with the physical damage to str stat ratio, so that the maximum of 65k can be hit, but also working with the physical damage to vit stat ratio as well, to avoid over-powering certain monsters

[eXistenZe]

Making a new hard.dll is also a needed, since the game is already easy by itself. The other dlls break it even more.
Doubling the enemy's level (some even triple it) and increasing their speed would be great. You reach a point with haste and speed-J that makes most enemies dummies without a single chance to attack. With the working hp limit break, it's also better to increase enemies HP, attack and m-attack than crippling party's damage...

[Mortael]

I'll have a look at the Hard.dll, definitely, after I've got my head around the damage/hp, what I'm doing so far, is essentially isolating the changed strings, decoding them to decimal, replacing the string by encoding back to hexadecimal, and then trial and error to get the correct outcome - there is a chance, these might in-fact be the original values, or relating to damage as oppose to HP... Again, down to trial and error!

My aim is to make it really vital to break hp limit- so through the use of HP-ups/hp bonus, have all monsters above a certain level break damage limit, so this makes 255 vit less of a joke, when monsters hit you for 50 etc. The battle system as we know it is totally broken, but because we know this we can find a workaround, but it will take time to make the changes... A lot of time.

Highlighted the first couple here:

[Mortael]

I also found the integers that control the max number of hitpoints too <3 Of course, you can only have up to 32,727... Any number that exceeds FFFF will cause glitches. So, I changed it to 30,000 just to demonstrate, that the resulting number effects max hp, for those who are a bit OCD and like well-rounded numbers, here we are:




Now... I have a theory that there must be a conflicting integer that gets read as oppose to this figure here... Or an integer that correlates to having the max hp being read or something.. Idk yet! Although, I've been quite lucky to have the HP break each time I've played the game since I've editted it from 32K.. Could be a fluke, so I may enlist a testing force

p.s. there used to be a weird buggy issue with the 32K hp, that would make your character jump up and down when healed at max hp, that is no longer the case at 30K, if that bothered you- furthermore it's pretty fun to see your HP at "0" Yet still in white ...Not sure if there will ever be a way to have more than 5 integers displayed at once as HP near character name.

For a MORE difficult mod, I could change the max HP to 5K or even lower, even 500, this will ensure more frequent 1 hit KOs on your party

[DLPB_]

Making a new hard.dll is also a needed, since the game is already easy by itself. The other dlls break it even more.
Doubling the enemy's level (some even triple it) and increasing their speed would be great. You reach a point with haste and speed-J that makes most enemies dummies without a single chance to attack. With the working hp limit break, it's also better to increase enemies HP, attack and m-attack than crippling party's damage...

If all these dlls do is change memory at run time, then use HextLaunch with Hext instruction files.  It's as simple as editing and adding text files that way.

[Nightshade]

If you close game without closing launcher and push play button to start game, hext launcher will not work. It is bad tool.

[nickyt89]

I'm struggling to get this working with some of the graphic mods- tonberry,Eden, horizon tripod seed reborn I just get a error saying "the program cannot start because MSVCP120.dll is missing, try re installing the program to fix this problem"
This only happens when using the new ff8.exe for the hard mode mod
Any help would be brilliant

[DarkMatta]

I'm coming to the end off the game now and I don't think the hard mod have ever been working for me.

At first I thought because I kept my level low but managed to still make my characters juntioned with good magic that I was still to powerful, making the game still easy due to the bosses etc still being low levels. However, I've just thought Fujin, Tajin and Seifer on the Pandora with my main 3 characters all lvl 100, and they're attacks are absolutely nothing. Most of their attacks have been in the 2-3 digits, sometimes are some 4 figure damage attacks, however, they are in the low 4 digits and pose no threats. I don't recall it ever being this easy before.

Also, the HP mod doesn't work for me at all.

[Kabuh]

I too had an issue with HP mod not working.

The resulution i found is that I have to install hard.dll too.

Can someone plz make HP.dll standalone version?

[stavstav]

if you alt-tab out of the game and check the command window it should say hard.dll loaded...

So, when using the instructions hextlaunch creates a folder "newfolder1" and then hard.dll does not work (unless you move it)...

instead of going thru the steps, just download this file  below and extract to root game dir... super easy...
 
launch game with ff8_hard.exe


https://mega.nz/#!DUhFhALb!ocCg9wBNIsq6DaYmGj_5KPBZw0BBxJbZkWAld8YDdP8

[metalwawa666]

I followed the instructions and still can't get the .dll files to load...it says there is no instructions present?

[hordequester]

If you have no instructions error or not loading DLLs, you did not follow the instructions. Especially the part where it tells you to edit settings.ini to match. There's a WorkingFolder= line that currently breaks DLL loading. Delete the text after the = or remove the line entirely to make your ini match like the OP.

Works fine here following all instructions and without Hard.dll (Currently using FF8 Requiem instead). Obviously, if you were already at 9999 before you loaded the mod, you would stay at that at least until a level up or stat change since it appears to just adjust the variable and cap to allow larger values and doesn't call any kind of recalculation at save load.

[gaaasstly]

I am the author of the dll files. The reason something might not work is due to version discrepancies and because it was poorly coded. These were put together before the Steam release and I stopped playing FF8 shortly after to work on other projects. I no longer have the source files, but I can show you how they work.

Spoiler: show

Damage.dll:

Code: [Select]

510620C8 | 81 C1 FF FF 00 00        | add ecx,FFFF                            |
Hard.dll (pseudocode):

Code: [Select]

ReturnType CallingConvention FunctionHook(VariableType VariableName, ...)
{
    VariableName *= Multiplier;
    return OriginalFunction(VariableName);
}
HP.dll:

Code: [Select]

510620C8 | 81 FA FF 7F 00 00        | cmp edx,7FFF                            |
510620CE | 7E 05                    | jle hp.510620D5                         |
510620D0 | BA FF 7F 00 00           | mov edx,7FFF                            |
Magic.dll:

Code: [Select]

0F7120C8 | 32 C9                    | xor cl,cl                               |

I will modify the post with updated patches for Steam BuildID: 296320 as I rediscover them.

Spoiler: show

Break Damage Limit:

Code: [Select]

FF8_EN.exe+91137 | 81 C1 0F 27 00 00        | add ecx,270F                            | add ecx, 0xffff
Break HP Limit:

Code: [Select]

GF

FF8_EN.exe+95E6D | 81 FA 0F 27 00 00        | cmp edx,270F                            | cmp edx, 0xffff
FF8_EN.exe+95E75 | BA 0F 27 00 00           | mov edx,270F                            | mov edx, 0xffff

Party

FF8_EN.exe+95A1A | 81 FA 0F 27 00 00        | cmp edx,270F                            | cmp edx, 0xffff
FF8_EN.exe+95A22 | BA 0F 27 00 00           | mov edx,270F                            | mov edx, 0xffff
Limitless Magic (does not break Double/Triple and works in Battle/Field):

Code: [Select]

Battle

FF8_EN.exe+86B0C | FE C9                    | dec cl                                  | nop

Field

FF8_EN.exe+F3027 | FE CB                    | dec bl                                  | nop
Save Anywhere - Address (set value to 1 and freeze):

Code: [Select]

FF8_EN.exe+18FEA89
Save Anywhere - Patch:

Code: [Select]

Save Point

FF8_EN.exe+1221CF | 8A 88 D1 00 00 00        | mov cl,byte ptr ds:[eax+D1]             | mov cl, 1
FF8_EN.exe+1221D7 | 80 C9 01                 | or cl,1                                 | nop
FF8_EN.exe+1221E6 | 80 E1 FE                 | and cl,FE                               | nop

Loading Zone

FF8_EN.exe+12BE1D | 8A 90 D1 00 00 00        | mov dl,byte ptr ds:[eax+D1]             | mov dl, 1
FF8_EN.exe+12BE2D | 80 E2 FC                 | and dl,FC                               | nop

[Mcindus]

I am the author of the dll files. The reason something might not work is due to version discrepancies and because it was poorly coded. These were put together before the Steam release and I stopped playing FF8 shortly after to work on other projects. I no longer have the source files, but I can show you how they work.

Spoiler: show

Damage.dll:

Code: [Select]

510620C8 | 81 C1 FF FF 00 00        | add ecx,FFFF                            |
Hard.dll (pseudocode):

Code: [Select]

ReturnType CallingConvention FunctionHook(VariableType VariableName, ...)
{
    VariableName *= Multiplier;
    return OriginalFunction(VariableName);
}
HP.dll:

Code: [Select]

510620C8 | 81 FA FF 7F 00 00        | cmp edx,7FFF                            |
510620CE | 7E 05                    | jle hp.510620D5                         |
510620D0 | BA FF 7F 00 00           | mov edx,7FFF                            |
Magic.dll:

Code: [Select]

0F7120C8 | 32 C9                    | xor cl,cl                               |

I will modify the post with updated patches for Steam BuildID: 296320 as I rediscover them.

Spoiler: show

Break Damage Limit:

Code: [Select]

FF8_EN.exe+91137 | 81 C1 0F 27 00 00        | add ecx,270F                            | add ecx, 0xffff
Break HP Limit:

Code: [Select]

GF

FF8_EN.exe+95E6D | 81 FA 0F 27 00 00        | cmp edx,270F                            | cmp edx, 0xffff
FF8_EN.exe+95E75 | BA 0F 27 00 00           | mov edx,270F                            | mov edx, 0xffff

Party

FF8_EN.exe+95A1A | 81 FA 0F 27 00 00        | cmp edx,270F                            | cmp edx, 0xffff
FF8_EN.exe+95A22 | BA 0F 27 00 00           | mov edx,270F                            | mov edx, 0xffff
Limitless Magic (does not break Double/Triple and works in Battle/Field):

Code: [Select]

Battle

FF8_EN.exe+86B0C | FE C9                    | dec cl                                  | nop

Field

FF8_EN.exe+F3027 | FE CB                    | dec bl                                  | nop
Save Anywhere - Address (set value to 1 and freeze):

Code: [Select]

FF8_EN.exe+18FEA89
Save Anywhere - Patch:

Code: [Select]

Save Point

FF8_EN.exe+1221CF | 8A 88 D1 00 00 00        | mov cl,byte ptr ds:[eax+D1]             | mov cl, 1
FF8_EN.exe+1221D7 | 80 C9 01                 | or cl,1                                 | nop
FF8_EN.exe+1221E6 | 80 E1 FE                 | and cl,FE                               | nop

Loading Zone

FF8_EN.exe+12BE1D | 8A 90 D1 00 00 00        | mov dl,byte ptr ds:[eax+D1]             | mov dl, 1
FF8_EN.exe+12BE2D | 80 E2 FC                 | and dl,FC                               | nop

YES!!!  Welcome back   I'm glad you're working on this project.  Have you seen the editing tools available for FF8 now?  You might be able to utilize them in conjunction with your mods.

I hope this works!  There are many people trying to make the game more difficult, but as you know - it's an ongoing struggle to balance FF8 properly without everyone always exploiting the heck out of it. lol.

[DLPB_]

I'll soon be releasing my own DLL which automatically adds the ability to use text file byte change instructions without need for injection (part of RaW).  So you don't need to mess about with dlls.

[Mcindus]

As we patiently wait for DLPB to finish his new ddraw.dll for FF8, I present everyone with an "easy" way to implement these add-on's! 
I fixed old compatibility issues and streamlined the process.

Right now, I'm using dll injection from the old files still - and as soon as someone can help me figure out how to translate gaastly's hex instructions into HEXT, we won't have to use the .dll's anymore.

Until then - try the new "Hard Launcher" HERE