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Topics - auxili160

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1
Archive / Simple .bin Request [updated]
« on: 2008-06-30 05:13:21 »
This thread may be locked. I'm getting the hand of the hex editor and managed to find pieces of inormation that made it possible to find where the weapons are stored and how they are organized.

I'm currently making a mod. Most enemies are level 99, and this brings up some major problems with certain ultimate weapons.

Update:
It has come to my attention that editing these variables may not be possible by using the kernel.bin. I don't want to make this job overly complex so I suppose an easier solution is called for.

Editing basic weapon stats -- such as materia slots, strength, accuracy, and so forth -- is a basic operation. Therefore, it will be easier to simply make every ultimate weapon weak as a chicken's leg (I'm talking about 1attack power, 1 attack accuracy, no materia slots, and so forth).

I know I know, nobody likes the idea of doing this, but listen to this: Make every OTHER weapon have the same stats as the ultimate weapons. Give them 100~attack power, eight linked slots, and so forth. All of Cid's weapons will have the same stats as the Venus Gospel, and all of Yuffie's weapons will have the same stats as the Conformer.

We lose some effects, such as Yuffie's morph-ability with the conformer and x3 damage effects when hp or mp is high, but, in return, we get an arsenal of weapons for each character, which I think is a great trade off.

Doing this should simply consist of basic weapon stat editing. If anyone is agreeing to do this, I'll create a list of stats for each character, which you can apply to each of their weapons.

It would be great if someone could make these changes, or point out to me where in the kernel.bin hex I can find the values that I need to change.
If someone is willing to make these changes, then I'll email you my current kernel.bin and you can make the changes. I'll be very grateful.

Thanks a bunch guys.


1)
Yuffie's ultimate weapon is overpowered. Since she'll usually be fighting level 99 enemies, she'll always be dealing twice as much damage as everyone else. I'd prefer for her to have an approximate 2.5x multiplier, since it is constant.

The current formula for her ultimate weapon is: Power Up = [Power * Enemy Level/16]
Changing the 16 into a 35 will fix this.

However, giving her an HP effect will be a more logical and better performing multiplier. Having a constant 2.5x power modifier is still unfair to Cloud, Cid, Red, Cait, Tifa, and so forth.
In this case, her formula would be a normal HP effect formula:
Power Up = [(3 * Power * Current HP) / Max HP] + 1
I think this would be better, knowing how my mod works.

2)
Due to the nature of my mod (I won't ramble on about it), Barret's weapon is very overpowered. It may be easy to make Barret's weapon do overflow damage, with it's 25x power modifier. Even if you don't get it to overflow damage, you can still easily get it to 6x-20x power, which is way too overpowered. This usually didn't matter in vanilla FFVII because you'd only be able to kill Ruby and Emerald weapon with overflow damage,but, in my mod, it's much more game breaking.

The formula for Barret's "Missing Score" is currently Power Up = [Power * [Total AP on Weapon / 10000] / 16] + 1
Changing the 16 into a 128 will fix this. This way, his weapon will be six times as powerful (assuming with all 500,000AP materia equipped rather than 25 times as powerful.

HOWEVER, this may be dodgy. In my mod, it will be easy for players to have a constant x6-20x modifier, which will still be overpowered. Because of this, it will just be better to give Barret an MP modifier like Cid and Nanaki (it is also suitable for Barret).
It would be:
Power Up = [(3 * Power * Current MP) / Max MP] + 1

3)
The current formula for Vincent's weapon "Death Penalty" is [Power * [Vincent's Kills / 128] / 16] + 10
This allows his weapon to become 32 times as powerful. There's no way to fix this properly, I don't think, because the player can likely just kill more enemies than they normally had to. I think it can always cause overflow damage, you'll just have to kill more enemies if we try to fix it. Also, if they can't manage to get it to overflow damage, they'll still get a very strong constant damage multiplier.
Therefore, it's a better idea to give him the HP effect instead like Cloud, Cait, and so forth (it is also suitable for Vincent).

Vincent's new ultimate weapon formula will be:
Power Up = [(3 * Power * Current HP) / Max HP] + 1

______________

It would be great if someone could make these changes for me, or point out to me where in the kernel.bin hex I can find the values that I need to change.
I imagine these changes are simple and won't take long. It will just require copying and pasting power up effects (Using Cloud's weapon's HP effect for Yuffie and Vincent, and Cid's weapon's MP effect for Barret).



2
Archive / In Development
« on: 2008-06-28 05:16:27 »
I'm in the talks about making a new difficulty mod for FF7, but I won't go into detail. All I want to know are these things:
What do you consider to be a normal high level for the end of the game? By "end of the game", I mean when you beat Ruby and Emerald weapon.
If there were bosses other than Ruby and Emerald weapon at the end of the game, would you power level to level 99? Would you want hardcore bosses that are meant to be beaten alongside Ruby and Emerald weapon (or even after) to be balanced for level 99 characters or, say, level 70-80 characters?

This question can be applied to normal hardcore mods. Do you want bosses during the game to be beaten at a normal level (Hojo being meant to be beaten by a level 50~ party, for example), or do you want to have to level up in advance in order to be able to beat the boss (having to reach, say, level 60 before being able to beat Hojo)?

Thanks.

Update:

I think I've decided what level I'm going to revolve my mod around. Rather than the huge level window I had to think about before, I've narrowed it down.
Balancing the game for such a huge level window would've been impossible. Enemies would've been too difficult for people on the lower spectrum, and if I try to balance it evenly the game would be too easy for high leveled folks.

I think I'm going to balance my new mod around level **. (Top Secret) :P
(of course, I'm most likely not going to balance the mod around stat maxers who have 255 in each stat. That wouldn't be fair to sane people)

With this mod, there will be a slew of balancing for equipment, materia, and spells, similar to Gjoerulv's difficulty mod (in fact, many of the same changes will be in place). I've edited one scene file so far and have tested it. It's fun. :) Now to put some light rules in place as to balance some overpowered things about FFVII (otherwise, it'd be impossible to balance anything in this mod) and we'll be good to go.
I'm almost done with the kernel.bin. Next will be the scene.bin and, finally, kernel2.bin.

Sorry for thinking out loud. :P

3
General Discussion / ff7 continuity error? lol
« on: 2008-06-25 07:33:04 »
When walking on the Mako Cannon in Disc 2 as Tifa, you can see the name "Sister Ray" printed on it.
However, later on in Disc 2, Elena says "Let's not call it the Mako Cannon. Let's call it... the Sister Ray!"

But it's ALREADY CALLED the Sister Ray. It's printed on the dang cannon itself.

Continuity errors are fun. :)

4
Archive / Hardware Mode vs. Software Mode
« on: 2008-06-21 23:53:21 »
Comparison pics:
Software: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/d11.jpg
Hardware: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/d22.jpg

Software: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/dffdgdfgdfgdfg.jpg
Hardware: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/Untitled-2.jpg

Software Accel:
Using software acceleration, textures are more pixely, but there aren't any texture problems. I lose out on certain effects, like a better battle swirl and a fade in to each battle (in software mode, you simply get a blinds effect - you'll see in the pictures).
Cosmo Canyon and Midgar area are brighter due to them not being shaded with darkness, which I kind of like. Also, battle areas look much better in software mode simply for the reason that textures all look well together and the floors, walls, and sky don't have creases.
Spells and such aren't really affected by software mode. Some are more grainy, but there isn't anything wrong with them.

Hardware Accel:
The BIGGEST gripe I have with hardware mode is the disgusting creases you get on textures.
When I use Hardware acceleration, the textures become noticeably patterned (forests, for example, look like a grid of tree textures that don't flow together). You'll see this in the pictures. The effect is very noticeable in the comparison pics above.
The green fade that is supposed to happen when awakening the forest doesn't work properly (you'll see in the pics below). Other shader effects may not work properly as well. Maybe Software mode's way of not displaying these shader effects (not turning the screen green, making midgar area dark, or making cosmo canyon more red) is a benefit in a way.
Textures are filtered, and they look smoother, but they can look over-blurred at times.
The battleswirl also has a delay to its start up. The screen will stand still for a split second before the battleswirl appears. Also, transitioning to areas with different music causes a slight pause. Software mode, on the other hand, plays quickly and smoothly when transitioning between areas.
Also, the minimap's black parts aren't translucent in hardware mode, which is kind of annoying.


Here are some more comparison pics:

Forest:
Software: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/Untitled-22.jpg
Hardware: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/ffviiclip1.jpg (Texture creases are ugly)

Beach:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/4.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/44.jpg (ugly creases in background)

Fade in to battle:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/6.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/66.jpg (fade in is much cooler in hardware more, but look at those fugly texture creases)

Midgar:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/110.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/111.jpg (Is it supposed to look this dark?)

Cosmo Canyon:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/101011.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/222221.jpg (Gotta admit, Cosmo Canyon looks nice in hardware mode. :) )

Overworld:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/7771.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/7772.jpg (the opaque minimap is kind of annoying)

Big lighting difference:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/8881.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/8882.jpg (Not sure which I like better. Notice the horizontal crease in the sky)

Special effects:
Notice how Hardware mode makes things look smoother, but the faults become much more obvious. Some effects get 'cutoff' for some reason and look really ugly. Also, look at the sky for texture creases in hardware mode.

Attack explosion:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/s2.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/s1.jpg (nicer looking effect, but is it worth that disgusting cutoff?

Firaga:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/9991.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/9992.jpg (Firaga clearly looks better in hardware mode and, thankfully, there are no creases or cutoffs)

Graphical Bugs:
There are also some graphical bugs when running in hardware mode.
Screen effects:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/Untitled-d2.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/ffviiclip2.jpg

Treasure Chests:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/Untitled-ss2.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/Carlo210/Untitled-1.jpg



Which do you prefer?

5
Troubleshooting / Problem with Hardware accel - fixed
« on: 2008-06-20 05:33:00 »
I was having problems in Hardware mode, but I've fixed them. All that remains is ugly texture creases (in hardware mode), and I don't think there's a way to fix that.



6
Archive / Difficulty mod - Taking Requests
« on: 2008-06-16 23:37:22 »
I'll be working on a difficulty mod in the future and I thought it'd be a good idea to start taking requests for balancing.
This mod will be balanced and not as crazy as the 2x and 3x stat mods. I'm aiming for a 1.5x to 2.5x difficulty mod (not 1.5x to 2.5x stats).
Some encounters will be more intense (such as Harpies, Hell Rider VR2, and other large and special enemies) and random encounters will require you to actually use the resources available to you.

If anyone would like certain changes to be made in terms of specific enemies, specific materia AP, spell properties (making Big Guard cost more MP, for example), and so forth, just tell me here.

7
Archive / Difficulty Mod - To Do
« on: 2008-06-16 04:10:43 »
We all know there are ones already released, such as the '2x stats hardcore mod' and 'Hay's Reasonable mod'.
I've been wondering exactly what people are looking for in a reasonable-type mod.

I personally think these are the most important things that should be changed in regards to ff7's default difficulty:

- Prevent easy 1-command kills. By this, I mean being able to kill tough enemies in just one turn by telling each character to attack the same target, being able to wipe out all enemies with magic-all or matra magic in the early stages of the game, and being able to wipe out enemies with slashes at higher levels.

- Balance magic defense and physical defense for enemies. Magic is very strong early on, and each spell only costs 4mp, making spamming a fantastic strategy. Physical attacks get very strong later on during random encounters, however, thanks to things like slash-all and 4x-cut.

- Increase enemy speed and attack power. It's much too easy to kill enemies before they can attack twice. By increasing enemy speed and making their attacks actually do more than 1% of your hp, fights get more interesting. Some enemies in particular hardly get any time to attack before they get killed, and I intend to change this.

- Keep enemy levels the same. Increasing enemy levels has hardly any benefits. By increasing enemy levels, you make stealing and manipulation useless, which isn't a good thing.

- Don't bloat stats. By giving each enemy 2x stats, random encounters become tedious and too difficult. Higher stats doesn't mean a funner difficulty, it just means you'll be going through the motions for longer.

- Make some enemies unique from others. Small enemies should be faster than a petty 50spd, and large enemies should pack a bigger punch than a measly 40str at level 17. Enemy classes, to a light extent, makes things interesting. For example, giving the blue elephant enemies a large amount of hp (maybe even more than 2x) and large strength (maybe 2x), but a slow speed (maybe 20spd) and defense will make him mroe interesting to fight.

- Enemies must be balanced. If an enemy is a tank-class, then give him a slow speed, low magic defense, or low attacking power. If he has low attacking power, give him 1 or 2 speedy minions. If he has a slow attacking speed and packs a big punch, he handles himself pretty well on his own as long as you up his defense. Basically, treat each formation as a party of its own.

- Make things interesting. I've changed the Hell Rider VR2 enemy's stats (the warhammer-wielding enemy near fort condor) so he is Very fast, Very deadly, and has lots of defense and magic defense. Why? Because, when I first encountered this guy, I felt like I was going to be in for a great fight... and then he died after each of my characters attacked him once. Lame. I intend to turn these enemies into mini-minibosses who may have useful items that you can steal or win from them. At around level 17, they may have around 1000 hp which will take around 3-4 turns to take down, and you'll likely have to put someone on cure or potion duty, which is GOOD. Notice that this battle isn't extremely difficult or anything (you shouldn't get a game over if you encounter him with full hp, and he doesn't have any AOE attacks), but it WILL leave a dent and WILL be rewarding, which is the point.
 
- Random encounters are not random game-overs. I do not intend to make fights with, say, three Kalm Fangs to take out 50% of your party's hp or anything like that. When you win such a battle, they'll likely have taken out 25% of one of your party member's hp, which is an improvement over the petty 5% they'll deal in the original game's difficulty.

- Bosses will be difficult, but won't wimply have their stats multiplied. I hated fighting  Missing Number and killing him in 3 turns, after reading in the faq that he's the hardest boss in the game at that point in the story. I expect my party to use cures and a variety of spells to take down the boss. Once the boss is defeated, I want to have to rest at an inn due to the mp or hp I've lost. I don't want to walk away with one character only having 75% of his total MP left due to casting Aqualung repeatedly.

- Lame strategies must go. This goes hand-in-hand with balancing enemy defense. It is much too easy to simply cast matra magic, Aqualung, or beta continually for every encounter, and simply use ethers when needed. I usually find myself playing FFVII like an efficiency-maximixing game. I know that, if I wanted to, I could simply nuke the hell out of everything and simply use a bit of recovery items when needed. However, I try to use as little items as possible, thus I shy away from using Beta and Aqualung to rape everything during the early stages of the game. What I intend to do is make the player use more resources during fights. This may require kernel editing (making certain spells cost more mp, for example), which I have zero ability in, but hopefully I can team up with someone to do this.

I could go on, but this post is getting much too long. I may begin a new difficulty mod that takes these things into account.

(Notice I comment mostly on Disc1 battles. This is because it's been a while since I've played disc 2 and 3. I'm currently doing another playthrough)

8
Archive / Cosmo by Ficedula problem
« on: 2008-06-11 02:07:29 »
Hello. Regarding the spell names patch (thread: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=5571.0), I was wondering how one can edit .bin files so I can change the spell names myself.
In that thread, it said to:
Quote
1) Download ficedula's Cosmo and ficedula.dll...all can be found on the program compilation sticky. Set them up correctly.
2) Open Cosmo. Let it make it's index, and whatnot. Afterwards, if you get a dialog box, click "Tools," "Internal Editor," and skip to step four.
3) If you don't get a dialog box, report it back here.

Well, I don't get a dialog box. All that happens is, after it scans the file (to make the index), nothing happens. The scanning window says "Done!", but it doesn't close itself and no dialog box with "tools" or "internal editor" (etc) shows up. In fact, the Cosmo program cannot even be closed with "cancel" or the window's X button. I have to close the program off of the taskbar (right click - close).

The program itself only has a "help" window with character names and some other random names (in the form of [Cloud] and [Barrett]). None are clickable, they're only text.
Then there's a "Previewer" window which is a FFVII text bubble, but all it says inside is "Next" and it's pretty useless.

Basically, I cannot do anything with this program. I was told to report about it here, so this is what I'm doing. Thanks! :)

9
Archive / lb2_awe - ff7music song
« on: 2008-06-09 05:53:20 »
Hey, I just came across an empty song entry in my ff7music called "lb2_awe".
I know it's something sephiroth related as I've learned from my searching. There's one unallocated song in my psf folder - the sephiroth theme song (904 Sephiroth intro.minipsf). It's the slow one I remember hearing in the Shinra mansion at times. However, it is the exact same song as 305 Those Chosen by the Planet.minipsf (though it starts out quicker without the intro).

In ff7music, entries "cephiroth" and "cintro" (sephiroth's intro) are using 305 Those Chosen by the Planet.minipsf, so I'm just wondering what the use is of this unallocated, seemingly useless lb2_awe and 904 Sephiroth intro.minipsf. Should I made lb2_awe use 904 Sephiroth intro.minipsf, or is lb2_awe not even used at all (it would seem that way).

Thanks

10
Troubleshooting / FF7Music.exe instability
« on: 2008-06-08 05:58:56 »
This patch works fine for me, except for one thing.

I'm using Windows XP, and, while each song is buffering (within 10-30 seconds of a song starting) FF7Music is prone to locking up. First the song will get really choppy and then FF7Music will freeze. I alt+tab out of FF7 and FF7Music is not responding.

I've tried different buffering configs, both out dlls, different settings and such, but I cannot stop FF7Music from playing songs choppily and freezing.


I also don't know how the old version of FF7Music work (the ones that only have a setup program and not an operate-while-open program).

11
General Discussion / Small FF8-related music question
« on: 2008-06-08 05:22:52 »
I haven't played FF8 yet, and I will in a month or so. I was just wondering if the PC version has the same music as the PSX version.
Simple question, simple answer. Thanks. :P

12
Archive / Cloudless Party Mod - does it exist?
« on: 2008-06-08 03:28:59 »
I'll keep this short.
I'm wondering if there is a way to remove Cloud from your party and substitute him for someone else. I've searched around and couldn't find anything.

Thanks guys. Love the current mods that are out!

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