[FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v2.0.99994)

[Sethiiroth]

Gotcha, rather have quality over quickness anyway. I'd look for another mod to play in the meantime but this one has made every other one looks so poor that I'll just wait instead. Best of luck on 1.4!

[chaos447]

The item database is offline. Any reup?

[Sega Chief]

I'm making a new up-to-date one; I think the current one was made for 1.2 or maybe even earlier.

[Sega Chief]

Big thanks to SS for the donation; was a bit shocked when I saw it, to say the least 

[Sega Chief]

D:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/cgm5bd1v7dvm5hc/NT_Database.zip

[Bowser9]

lol Thanks, Sega Chief. You da man. =D

[Sega Chief]

I just found out that Variablis still has his pre-battle AI that makes him immune to elemental damage + physicals. Patch incoming :l

[Sega Chief]

\\NT News//

I'm on my lunchbreak and there's not enough time to do much, while there's too much time to not do anything, so a quick update on the mod and the work going toward 1.4 should fit the bill.

Right now I'm working on a series of new events that'll fit into the game's main story, and by that I mean they'll be placed in the areas that sit along the progression of the story-line. Some are mandatory, but the majority will be optional; the goal is to flesh out 'dead' areas that either have no events or which have left decent stuff just lying around for you to pick up. I don't want to waterlog the game with these though, so I'll be careful not to stop you every two minutes :3

Another thing I've been doing is letting scope creep take hold and working through the dialogue/text of the game. This is mostly just to get them neatened up in their text-boxes (some span the entire screen for a short line, for instance) but I have been...meddling a little bit. I'm also rolling out the 'Costa' thing by having your party turn up in the towns you visit so you can talk to them. A bit like how they were dotted around in Costa Del Sol when you visit for the first time. For an example of that, try visiting Kalm or Wall Market in the current build (and karma to anyone who can find Vincent in Kalm).

On the battle side of things, I'll be revising some of the innates used by the characters (Tifa is getting a 'grit' ability to replace that Sense-based one), adding a fourth Rank option (but focusing the other options down to two stats instead of three), and respeccing for a higher HP pool which unfortunately couldn't be applied for this build due to HP behaving differently to the other stats.

Right, break's almost up. I'll get that Variablis patch up tonight.

[Gatchaman]

Kalm Vincent's appearance has great comedic timing, iirc. I like all of their placements - suits the characters.

[Sega Chief]

I couldn't remember who it was that had found him; guess it was you :p

I've decided I'm going to overhaul the Rank system for 1.4. At the moment it feels too autonomous and opaque; there's no in-game way to measure where your 'SP' is for the next Rank, and no mention of when SP is accumulated or how much. It also gathers in for every character in the same amount, so the only variance comes from chunks given by certain story events which puts some characters at a disadvantage.

So what I might try instead is having ranks be bought using items that will drop from bosses or be found in different areas of the game. The player then decides which character(s) to buy Ranks for, with early ranks being quite cheap while higher ones are more expensive. That way they can choose to either develop their team evenly or focus on certain characters.

By doing that, players will have a much better idea of when they can buy ranks which saves them from having to continually check in at the Rank-Up screen. Let me know what you think, and any ideas for improvements/a better system.

[Gatchaman]

How about another dialogue box with the save point pop ups to show how many points characters have? Would that be too much info to process? If not, you could easily see when characters are at the next upgrade without going in to see Mr Smile. Maybe coloured text to emphasise when someone has enough.
"Cloud     25/20"(yellow or whatever)
"Barret    10/30"
"Tifa        18/20"
Etc, down the side of the screen?
I'm assuming it could show the limit for the next bonus? I don't know whether you've got the same requirement for every level up, if the points get discarded when spent, or need to reach a higher level, or whatever. It might be the case of the player having to know they get a level up every twenty points or something, and keeping track themselves... But anyway, that's the idea.

[selius]

if the new system works the way i think it will:

sounds like a good way to dead end myself spending every upgrade item on tifa.

[Sega Chief]

That could be a problem if people dead-end themselves by building only one character. Maybe there's an alternative.

I definitely want whatever ends up getting used as 'currency' to be visible though; that checking in and out must be annoying & a pace-breaker. I should have realised that at the time but I was eager to get the system out.

By the by, someone told me to set up a twitter so I did. I can't really remember 100% why, but it was something to do with keeping up to date on, eh, updates. I'll aim to tweet once per day; no promises it'll always be NT-related, but might be a handy way to get some quick info on how things are going/failed experiments without cluttering the thread? Seems like a bad idea to me but giving it a go: https://twitter.com/SegaChief

[EarthPhantomTS]

Hey there, new girl here!  Made an account JUST to comment on this mod!  So you should feel special !

Anyway, I'm right at Mt. Corel right now, and I'm having quite a bit of fun so far, but I've got a few questions.

First of all, you said in the Readme that enemies have 2 steals at 32 chance, and one steal after those at 8 chance.  That's simple enough.  My question though is, you do realize that once characters get above...say...58 levels higher than the enemy, they'll always get the first steal with that setup, right?  Or did you change the steal formula somewhat?  Cause you said, in the Readme, that when the LvlFactor is 40, those numbers give a 25% chance at each common steal, and a 6% chance at the rare steal if both common steals fail.  That would imply that the chance is out of 100 rather than 63 in this mod.

So, my question is, is the Steal formula changed slightly, or not?

Also, it seems like the Item List is still not 100% updated.  I downloaded it just this week, so I have the latest version, but I already found things switched around a bit from what it says.  Like, I found a Peace Ring instead of a Fire Ring in the Costa Del Sol Villa basement, and the materia in the Mythril Mines is a Pre-Emptive Materia, not a Gil Plus Materia (not that I might having an early Pre-Emptive Materia, but still...).  Am I the one with a weird version?  Or is the spreadsheet not quite up to date?

Alright, here's the patch: http://www.mediafire.com/download/n1ald6c47hsd335/NT_Mod_HotFix_Scene_-_24th_September_2015.zip

That's an adjustment of HP/MP values for all the characters, which will take effect once the character levels up once with the patch applied. They seemed a bit low once heavy Materia set-ups were involved so this should provide a bit more freedom for what can be equipped/used.

Also, on this, does it matter if I apply this, if I've already got the latest version of the mod?

[Kaldarasha]

Is it possible to add an HP penalty if a character gets K.O.? The penalty should of course be curable with a rest in an Inn or by the use of a tent.

[Sega Chief]

Hey there, new girl here!  Made an account JUST to comment on this mod!  So you should feel special !

Anyway, I'm right at Mt. Corel right now, and I'm having quite a bit of fun so far, but I've got a few questions.

First of all, you said in the Readme that enemies have 2 steals at 32 chance, and one steal after those at 8 chance.  That's simple enough.  My question though is, you do realize that once characters get above...say...58 levels higher than the enemy, they'll always get the first steal with that setup, right?  Or did you change the steal formula somewhat?  Cause you said, in the Readme, that when the LvlFactor is 40, those numbers give a 25% chance at each common steal, and a 6% chance at the rare steal if both common steals fail.  That would imply that the chance is out of 100 rather than 63 in this mod.

So, my question is, is the Steal formula changed slightly, or not?

Also, it seems like the Item List is still not 100% updated.  I downloaded it just this week, so I have the latest version, but I already found things switched around a bit from what it says.  Like, I found a Peace Ring instead of a Fire Ring in the Costa Del Sol Villa basement, and the materia in the Mythril Mines is a Pre-Emptive Materia, not a Gil Plus Materia (not that I might having an early Pre-Emptive Materia, but still...).  Am I the one with a weird version?  Or is the spreadsheet not quite up to date?

Also, on this, does it matter if I apply this, if I've already got the latest version of the mod?

The spreadsheet still has some things that need correcting; there's a lot of stuff that's been slowly changed here and there over the months and I haven't kept a record of it all (the Peace Ring in the Costa basement, for instance, was a complete surprise to me but I can vaguely remember why I might have done that). I'll update it with the info you provided.

As for the steal chance, I had it in mind when I set it up; it's based on the Vagyrisk Claw problem in the original game. If you encounter those enemies at too high a level, the 'rare' Claw became impossible to steal. With NT, I've made the rare steal easier to get if you're at a lower level so as to encourage players to keep moving through the game, but everything that can be 'rare' stolen is available later in the game anyway (nothing's missable, outside of the player actively rejecting an item in the Battle Results screen which shouldn't really ever happen); they were basically just intended to only appear maybe once or twice per playthrough to potentially change how things go early on. People have purposefully farmed rare steals (with success) but I wouldn't recommend it.

You can apply that patch, but it likely won't raise your character's MaxHP to the intended levels. Use it by all means, though; it should make a difference if you're still on Disc 1.

Is it possible to add an HP penalty if a character gets K.O.? The penalty should off course be curable with a rest in an Inn or by the use of a tent.

I think it might be, but I'm not sure if the actual MaxHP value can be updated on the command menu itself. I had an experimental enemy attack that actively reduced MaxHP and while it did this successfully, the actual value on the MaxHP appeared unchanged (which I thought would be too confusing with such a critical stat, so I made it affect MP instead).

As for getting that to persist out of battle, I reckon it would take an .EXE hack of some kind and a pretty sophisticated one. The game won't let MaxHP drop even if a Kernel is swapped out for one using a different HP curve (same thing with the other stats, though who knows; Sadness and Fury might be able to have stat drops attached to them?).

[EarthPhantomTS]

The spreadsheet still has some things that need correcting; there's a lot of stuff that's been slowly changed here and there over the months and I haven't kept a record of it all (the Peace Ring in the Costa basement, for instance, was a complete surprise to me but I can vaguely remember why I might have done that). I'll update it with the info you provided.

As for the steal chance, I had it in mind when I set it up; it's based on the Vagyrisk Claw problem in the original game. If you encounter those enemies at too high a level, the 'rare' Claw became impossible to steal. With NT, I've made the rare steal easier to get if you're at a lower level so as to encourage players to keep moving through the game, but everything that can be 'rare' stolen is available later in the game anyway (nothing's missable, outside of the player actively rejecting an item in the Battle Results screen which shouldn't really ever happen); they were basically just intended to only appear maybe once or twice per playthrough to potentially change how things go early on. People have purposefully farmed rare steals (with success) but I wouldn't recommend it.

You can apply that patch, but it likely won't raise your character's MaxHP to the intended levels. Use it by all means, though; it should make a difference if you're still on Disc 1.

Okay, thank you!  Yeah, on the steal thing, I guess that's alright.  As long as you knew what you were doing .

[Zara9]

hey Sega chief

can you add boss battle music to the erland and ruby boss battles on your mod please

[Sega Chief]

hey Sega chief

can you add boss battle music to the erland and ruby boss battles on your mod please

The situation hasn't changed for that, I'm afraid. There's no World Map editor so it'd be difficult to change that on my end without some help. It'd also add another .lgp to the installer, though I don't think it's a particularly large one.

[Sega Chief]

Just finished Cait Sith's new innate ability; at every post-action moment, his HP will be increased by the current value of his MP. This'll hopefully scale quite nicely throughout the game, as his base MP gets higher. It also suits his tank role, as he won't be able to be chipped down by weaker attacks and require less healing when Covering, etc. It also has the built in drawback of healing less and less as he uses more of his MP.

Might do something similar with Aeris' innate now that this is up and running. Nothing drastic, just something to have it scale through the game so it remains useful toward the end. Maybe based on her max MP divided by a big modifier.

Edit: Yuffie's Innate was adjusted; now it works in a similar way to Barret's innate. When she gets hit with a physical or magical attack, her evasion against that type of damage is doubled. She can't have both bonuses at the same time though; gaining one will cancel out the other (so if she has the phys evade bonus and gets hit by a spell, she'll lose it and gain the magic evade bonus instead).

[ajural]

Played through this mod (up to north crater), though I missed the september 24th update, so my hp was super low for the whole time. (why isn't it linked on page 1?)

Some silly things happened though, like in the battle against Jenova WAR, I had Yuffie in my party, perfect dodge activated, and she was able to dodge literally everything Jenova could throw at her, but the battle took forever anyways, because "Nemain" raised Jenova's defense way too much after a while. After like 30 minutes of battling, I just gave up and restarted, because Yuffie could only deal 1 damage, and everyone else just died instantly if I tried to revive them.

Also, with how the new Cait Sith ability looks, it could make the Jenova DECAY battle very easy, as the challenge in that battle seems to be being unable to heal.

Aeris' innate starts pretty strong, but becomes pointless after a while, but it seems like you're working on that, so I'm happy.

Especially in the early game Tifa seems waaaay too strong, easily hitting for 1k with each of her limit hits, while the others are sitting at 200 - 300 damage until limit level 3 or so. She easily beats even the glass cannon in damage, while being almost as fast and much bulkier. Her innate is also really strong, almost as strong as Red XIII's, but it activates after just 1 use of sense, and not after 15+ turns in battle. I decided to not use her after Junon because I felt she was game breakingly overpowered.

Maybe it was because my hp was so low due to not having the update, but I really didn't know how to tackle the endgame content. I wasn't strong enough to beat any of the bosses for the limit breaks, and my attempts in the special bosses in Gold Saucer were also fruitless, even after quite a bit of pot/bouncy ball grinding in the north crater. None of my characters got to max job rank, although I didn't do the dark cave quest, maybe that would've gotten me the remaining points, I dunno.

Overall, it was a fun experience, didn't encounter any bugs (except the one I mentioned on your youtube channel about Kjata), and I'm really looking forward to future changes.

[Sega Chief]

Played through this mod (up to north crater), though I missed the september 24th update, so my hp was super low for the whole time. (why isn't it linked on page 1?)

Some silly things happened though, like in the battle against Jenova WAR, I had Yuffie in my party, perfect dodge activated, and she was able to dodge literally everything Jenova could throw at her, but the battle took forever anyways, because "Nemain" raised Jenova's defense way too much after a while. After like 30 minutes of battling, I just gave up and restarted, because Yuffie could only deal 1 damage, and everyone else just died instantly if I tried to revive them.

Also, with how the new Cait Sith ability looks, it could make the Jenova DECAY battle very easy, as the challenge in that battle seems to be being unable to heal.

Aeris' innate starts pretty strong, but becomes pointless after a while, but it seems like you're working on that, so I'm happy.

Especially in the early game Tifa seems waaaay too strong, easily hitting for 1k with each of her limit hits, while the others are sitting at 200 - 300 damage until limit level 3 or so. She easily beats even the glass cannon in damage, while being almost as fast and much bulkier. Her innate is also really strong, almost as strong as Red XIII's, but it activates after just 1 use of sense, and not after 15+ turns in battle. I decided to not use her after Junon because I felt she was game breakingly overpowered.

Maybe it was because my hp was so low due to not having the update, but I really didn't know how to tackle the endgame content. I wasn't strong enough to beat any of the bosses for the limit breaks, and my attempts in the special bosses in Gold Saucer were also fruitless, even after quite a bit of pot/bouncy ball grinding in the north crater. None of my characters got to max job rank, although I didn't do the dark cave quest, maybe that would've gotten me the remaining points, I dunno.

Overall, it was a fun experience, didn't encounter any bugs (except the one I mentioned on your youtube channel about Kjata), and I'm really looking forward to future changes.

Cheers for the feedback, bud. This pretty much confirms some of the general problems in the mod that I'm working to tackle right now. The reason the HP patch isn't on the front page is because it doesn't affect current playthroughs (I thought it would auto-correct HP on the next level up, like it does for other stats, but unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case).

As far as the end-game content goes, I'm working to get rid of Extra Battle and instead have some of those enemies appear in areas along the main scenario (some will be cut, others redesigned). Limit sidequests are going to be started much earlier with extended scenarios (some radically different from their original ones) in Disc 1 with the option to finish in Disc 2, so that they don't just all appear out of nowhere on Disc 3. As far as balancing goes, I'm plotting out a 'grind-free' route that'll have players arrive at Disc 3 maybe in the Lv.60-70 range instead of Lv.40-50, with the Materia + equipment locked behind Extra Battle worked back into the game's main scenario.

The approach I took originally with Disc 3 hasn't really been ideal, when all's said and done.

[Doully]

Hiya from Kirkcaldy.

I'm actually gasping on getting another run through of this but I realise you're really hard at work in making an update. Could ye give me a rough estimate on when I should look forward to 1.4? Absolutely nae rush on that note either! I'll be pretty much M.I.A between now and Christmas due to work anyway but really looking forward to what's to come. On the note of Christmas, definitely will be lobbing ye a wee donation as well. This is a fantastic game mod.

Doully

[Sega Chief]

Hiya from Kirkcaldy.

I'm actually gasping on getting another run through of this but I realise you're really hard at work in making an update. Could ye give me a rough estimate on when I should look forward to 1.4? Absolutely nae rush on that note either! I'll be pretty much M.I.A between now and Christmas due to work anyway but really looking forward to what's to come. On the note of Christmas, definitely will be lobbing ye a wee donation as well. This is a fantastic game mod.

Doully

Thanks, pal; appreciate it! I'll be aiming to get 1.4 done as soon as possible, but I'm thinking that I'll be busy at work going through December so I'm reluctant to say it'll be done in time for Christmas (though it would have a nice sense of timing to it). Important thing is making sure that everything is air-tight; I don't want a repeat of that HP problem, for instance. We'll go with around New Year's as a target, but if too many things go wrong during scripting then it'll be held up for a little longer.

[Tom]

In the shinra elevators battle with thousand gunner and airhawk add some kind of timer like 500 meters remaining or 70 floors remain to give the impression that the elevator is falling because thousand gunner is overweight.