Messages

26

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: ff8 monsters : .dat files analysis

« on: 2010-12-08 21:36:38 »

Nice work!

Just one thing I'd add - for abilities :

May be 0x02 (= magic) or 0x08 (= monster ability).

...or 0x04  (=item). 

27

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Battle Hardcore Patch

« on: 2010-12-08 20:34:24 »

Playing in a straight line? That's interesting, don't mind my suggestion and stick to your way.  Thought most monsters will use better strategies & moves once they are over level 30.

3000 - 4000 Hp after the landing : I don't remember any new magic available at that point that could have this effect. The only thing that come to my mind are the damn cheaty Tornados, but they are available since the beginning of the game (I would so remove this sand worm card from Balamb Garden in CD1 if I had the opportunity - honestly.)
About 3, I wasn't suggesting Colly to do that, I like it the way it is too.

In Colly's mod, one of the big change is monster speed... For example, with his new speed Elvoret get two turns when your party get one - if you didn't junction anything with Selphie HP, and don't keep a healer on the wait, she can die before you get the chance to cure her. Are you playing in active or wait mode?

28

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: ff8 monsters : .dat files analysis

« on: 2010-12-08 19:25:22 »

Just to avoid confusion : I just look at the wiki, the part I meant is section 8 ('Battle scripts'), not section 5.

Some informations here looks a bit weird. It says section4 : unknown, section5: Ai scripts?; section10=sounds and section 11=textures, but if you take the common galbadian soldier for example, headers 4 & 5 are the same, and so are headers 10 & 11.

I wonder about sounds. If you replace the whole pampa .dat file with Ifrit's, on pampa island you'll met some Ifrits that will still use pampa sounds... 

29

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Battle Hardcore Patch

« on: 2010-12-08 18:55:51 »

I'm testing this patch on 'Omega Extreme' as well, and I'm mostly enjoying it so far. Looks fairly well balanced and interesting. However, I'm concerned about this line of yours:

It's easy if you're low level , and impossible if you're high level

You do realise this haven't much to do with Colly's mod? That's pretty much all of FFVIII - the reason why when asked "Is FFVIII hard?" some will answer "Hell yes I got my ass handed to me by that freaking Adel" and the others will laugh and claim it's the easiest FF ever. Monster level follow yours. But your stats don't change that much when leveling, all your power come through your junction. So if you have low level and good junction, the game is a walk in the park. You seem to play on low level, having mastered the full control of your xp gain (transforming monsters into cards, for example). You mentioned being surprised by Ifrit (honestly yes, with his insane magic defense and this critical hit that can kill one of your member even at full HP...) Ifrit is the only boss in the game with fixed level (6), along with Omega weapon (100).

If you find this mod still too easy, it could mean :
1 - your average party level is much lower than what Colly expected,
2 - your junction is better than what Colly expected,
3 - Colly should change the monsters stats curves so that they are less impacted by level factor

I personally play the game adjusting my party level on the bosses maximum levels. That would be would be lvl. 21 at end of CD1, lvl. 30 at end of CD2, lvl. 45 at end of CD3 and 65 when facing Ultimecia. But that's just me.

30

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: ff8 monsters : .dat files analysis

« on: 2010-12-08 17:34:24 »

I can't help for the model section, but if you need some informations about the AI section, you can ask me.

31

General Discussion / Re: I'm thinking FF8

« on: 2010-10-30 19:43:28 »

Those are good news, ultima espio! 

I just try it out, it crashes with still a few models (Zell weapons, Kiros...) but it's definitly better than Charedit.exe who could almost only open monsters models
Thanks for sharing out this information!

32

General Discussion / Re: I'm thinking FF8

« on: 2010-10-30 15:36:18 »

I'm interested, but I don't count for much. I'm a complete newbie here, and haven't got much experience.
I've been mostly decoding some enemies AI, for fun, and 've been rewritting some. (see this thread for example: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=10876.0)


What do you have in mind exactly? What aspects of FFVIII would you like to mod?
 

33

General Discussion / Re: FF8 GFs problem

« on: 2010-10-11 13:49:10 »

No, now we aren't missing any. I didn't wanted to spoil the remaining GF's name, but now that's dealt...

However, I don't think Jonhy B can still get DoomTrain. You need several objects for that, and if I remember well one of them can be only obtained by using one of Alexander special ability. As for Diablo, you can easily miss that one : if you leave the scene without speaking again to Cid, he will never give you the magic lamp, at all...

For both cases, the only hope is the game-breaking cheaty chocobo game whitch gives you tons of incredible items. Best to wait the next replay in my opinion.


But that should make at least 4 GFs still available.

34

General Discussion / Re: FF8 GFs problem

« on: 2010-10-10 09:07:27 »

So, if I understand correctly you only have four GFs : Shiva, Ifrit, the thunder-bird thing and Tomberry?    ouch.

About stores, you know, Tomberry is able to help you. It's really a key GF : it can allow you to access all stores of the game via the main menu if he learn his required unique capacities. That can solve one of your problem.

Thought I'd keep that for your next replay, especially if you are able to get to Ultimecia final form,  there might be like two-three more GF you could still access...
You need the red dragon-like flying Estharian spaceship for that. Did you go to the Ocean Research Center in CD3?

35

General Discussion / Re: FF8 GFs problem

« on: 2010-10-09 21:09:52 »

It depends on which GF you actually have and which you have not. You don't necessary need all GF to beat Ultimecia, but proper junctionning and good use of limits breaks are a must...

Of course, you could cheat and earn the missing GF by using a savegame editor, like Griever or Hyne.
(download links : http://www.qhimm.com/  http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=9713.0 )
 
However, I would personaly advice you just to try beating her with what you've got, and if you're still stuck, to work on your junctioning. If you've got at least one GF per character (unless you want some character to just die and don't take part to the final fight), that should be enought.   
Then, you'd play the game again from the begining, trying not to miss a single GF this time - you know, with the help of a good guide you'd be astonished to see how many other hidden stuffs you've certainly missed. 

 

36

Troubleshooting / Re: Final Fantasy VIII, weird problem.

« on: 2010-10-01 17:23:00 »

Glad to hear you got it working, neledenhert. 
I'm not totally sure about those black outlines, I do have some transparent textures that appears black ingame (some of Selphie's hair, part of her nunchaku), is that what you are talking about?


Covarr, I think you've read the topic a little bit too fast. We just mentioned a little side-effect for Aali's driver (the black outlines). Otherwise, it works fairly good with ff8 (no need to move on ff7 out of despair!). neledenhert was having issues with the old Launcher (Magixt launcher).

37

Troubleshooting / Re: Final Fantasy VIII, weird problem.

« on: 2010-09-29 22:47:43 »

I always thought double posting was one message posted twice...

In other forum, yes indeed. But well, terms vary from a forum to another. The forum I'm used to welcome newcomers with smileys drinking large cups of beer, in this one you'll most likely receive a warning from obesebear. That's how things are. In this one, double-posting means posting again while nobody answered your previous post. 

About Aali's driver : why, by installing square 1.2 patch you couldn't get further? 
I thought this was correct : game + 1.2 Square patch + Aali's driver : yukkie 'psx quality graphics'

38

Troubleshooting / Re: Final Fantasy VIII, weird problem.

« on: 2010-09-29 21:08:36 »

Yes, doubleposting is not allowed on this forum. Same thing for necroposting (reviving old thread). I'm not a moderator, so it's not my job to warn you about those things. Just edit your post if you got some news.   

So you're still using the launcher and you had no success with Aali's driver. I don't think that's the right thing to do : like you I was reluctant to move from the launcher to Aali's driver, but the minute I finally try it I was convinced. Nobody is working on this launcher anymore, there won't be any update, no bugfix - and there are some bugs. I'm sure you've noticed that some effects are not well rendered, like Edea cool spell to pass into the walls, and at the end of a video it gets a 1/4 format. On the contrary, Aali is working and updating his driver constantly, and now I personally think it is indeed much better than the launcher. And any bug you'll report will help to improve it further.

You should try to make Aali's driver work once again. It is much more than a simple 'patch'. As said before, it is not supposed to work with the launcher : when you have Aali's driver installed, just run ff8.exe.
I'm still unsure about what you meant about 'psx-like graphics'... If you mean that all is very pixelised, set linear filter to ON in the file I told you. There are a lot more options - for example, you can play in window mode : usefull if you want to do some modding.

39

Troubleshooting / Re: Final Fantasy VIII, weird problem.

« on: 2010-09-29 14:49:07 »

Wow... First time I ever see that...  Was that with Aali's driver? I don't remember having this specific problem with the launcher, at all. 

Now that you mention it, yes, Eden sure used to lag a lot with the launcher. But anyaway, I was never a big fan of this GF.

40

Troubleshooting / Re: Final Fantasy VIII, weird problem.

« on: 2010-09-28 17:45:51 »

... well ... seems like we're having some problem understunding each other... 

In my previous post, by 'patch', I meant 1.2 Square patch, not Aali's driver. With Aali's driver, you don't need the old Launcher anymore (start the game directly from ff8.exe)

If I sum up :

game :
game + launcher : slow-down issue (picture1)
game + Aali's driver : didn't work as you had not the 1.2 Square patch installed (picture2)
game + 1.2 Square patch + Aali's driver : yukkie 'psx quality graphics'

Is that correct?

Now, you can toogle some options on or off with Aali's driver, in ff8_opengl.cfg (open it with notepad.). I would try to see  if that solves up the yukkie 'psx quality graphics', whatever you mean by that.

41

Troubleshooting / Re: Final Fantasy VIII, weird problem.

« on: 2010-09-28 15:55:15 »

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I've fully understood what you wrote : you were having this error prior to applying the patch, right? And now, you're having 'more like psx' graphics with Aali's driver working?

If that so, have you tried toogling some options on/off? For example, linear filter?

Otherwise, you'd have to ask Aali himself in the big topic about his driver. 

42

Troubleshooting / Re: Final Fantasy VIII, weird problem.

« on: 2010-09-27 21:24:17 »

Using the old Launcher available here on this forum, I had the same exact problem you describe :
tremendous slow-downs when the game tries to 'shake' the scene, creating doubles (or more) of the image on screen. This was noticeable with Gilgamesh random appearances as well, for example.
 
However,  I have never experienced it either with the game alone, either with Aali's driver. Like Obesebear, I'd recommend the later : http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8306.msg142017#msg142017
Have you tried it?

43

Troubleshooting / Re: Black Boxes still a problem in Final Fantasy 8?

« on: 2010-09-17 19:58:33 »

I think Aali's driver fixes the black box issue. You might want to check it ("Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8" in the project section of the forum, download from last post) It isn't 100% perfect of course, still a work-in-progress project but definitly worth trying. 

44

Completely Unrelated / Re: FFVIII Elimination Challenge

« on: 2010-07-31 22:05:52 »

Use 'Gunblade' on Xu !!!

Selphie=500
Irvine=200
Laguna=500
Kiros=500
Ward=500
Edea=500
Fujin=500
Ellone=500
Wedge=500
Xu=0

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
R.I.P.
Raijin
Rinoa
Quistis
Seifer
Squall
Ultimecia
Adel
Dr. Odine
Zell
Biggs
Cid
Xu

45

Completely Unrelated / Re: FFVIII Elimination Challenge

« on: 2010-07-30 07:41:10 »

Attack Xu, Cure Irvine

Selphie=500
Irvine=200
Laguna=500
Kiros=500
Ward=500
Edea=500
Fujin=500
Ellone=500
Wedge=500
Xu = 200

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
R.I.P.
Raijin
Rinoa
Quistis
Seifer
Squall
Ultimecia
Adel
Dr. Odine
Zell
Biggs
Cid

46

Completely Unrelated / Re: FFVIII Elimination Challenge

« on: 2010-07-29 14:04:47 »

Cure Edea, Attack Kiros!
and I still haven't use the 'gunblade item' yet!

However, I'll use a magic instead : Dispel on Xu! She had an invisibility spell since end of page 3!   

Selphie=500
Irvine=350
Laguna=500
Kiros=450
Ward=500
Edea=500
Fujin=450
Ellone=500
Wedge=400
Xu = 300

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
R.I.P.
Raijin
Rinoa
Quistis
Seifer
Squall
Ultimecia
Adel
Dr. Odine
Zell
Biggs
Cid

47

Completely Unrelated / Re: FFVIII Elimination Challenge

« on: 2010-07-29 09:32:21 »

Cure Edea
Attack Fujin

Selphie=500
Irvine=400
Laguna=500
Kiros=500
Ward=450
Edea=500
Fujin=450
Ellone=500
Wedge=400

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
R.I.P.
Raijin
Rinoa
Quistis
Seifer
Squall
Ultimecia
Adel
Dr. Odine
Zell
Biggs
Cid

48

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: FF8 Need Help

« on: 2010-07-28 13:24:49 »

You should look in this topic : http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8461.0
At the end of the first post, check part "XII. Compiling.". That's the program you need.

49

General Discussion / Re: A way to buff monsters in FFVIII to make the game more difficult?

« on: 2010-07-23 00:29:29 »

There is connection between moves in the kernel.bin and the moves inside battle files. But for me, the moves should be the same, only the strategy should be changed. All enemies has "INT" stat, so increasing it will make game more difficult.
I'm ending my hardcore patch (version 2.0) now and I will release it very soon, for PC and PSX version.

Can't wait to try your hardcore patch, but I disagree about not changing enemy moves, and I'm not too sure about this 'Int' stat. I am working on a little mod I'll release sooner or later : it focus on Dollet landing, and should give a general idea on how I perceive it. Nothing as big than your hardcore patch of course.   
Eventhought I was not convince by your hardcore patch ver.1, it did gave me the best Ultimecia fight ever. 

Well, I'd rather not change the way junctioned spells affect stats. I don't mind having 255 STR, since I'd like to see how much damage I possibly can make with the break damage limit patch. But I'd like to have monsters strong enough to endure a fight like that.

On the contrary, I think it's the first thing that should be changed, as well than the availability of some magic that are too easy to get. Anyway, against max-outed characters with LionHeart-style attack and using the Meltdown spell trick, no monsters can last long, no matter their stats. That's not my way of playing.

All right, Ifrit pretty much does what I want.

Good. Just be carefull with Str and Mgi, last time I checked the formulae were not quite right... But you know, if that's what you want to change, you might just wait for Colly mod.
If you don't need enemy level data anymore, I don't think I'll post it right now. Might not be the better thing to start with. Oh and crap, I had the thing all written, I'll post it anyway :

I'm not a programmer (I do little things from time to time, but don't count on that, I'm a beginner), but my brother is studying in it, so he should be able to help me out on some minor needs of programming knowledge. I'd like to have the information you were talking about for changing the enemy level, if you have time. I am aware that some monsters/bosses depend differently or not at all on your level, but that's no big deal, as long as most of the monsters are fun to fight.

I'm not a programmer either...
In FFVIII, the great majority of common monsters follow your level. A lot of boss are capped : they follow your level up to a maximum value. Some always have the same level (monsters in the Ifrit cave, monsters with level1 at Lunatic Pandora, monsters with level 100 at Island closest to Hell...). Monsters in Ultimecia castle have got random levels. And well, some have got higher level than your party - I need to check again those.

So well, how to edit enemy level... I used those two programs : FF8_AC and Translhexion. (available somewhere in this page http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8461.0)


As a rule, always make some backup before editing something... So copy from your FFVIII directory, in the DATA folder, all three 'Battle' files and paste it somewhere else.

Now you need to extract a file out of the 'Battle' in order to edit it. This file is "Scene.out". FF8_AC allow you to do that.

Open this file with Translhexion. You'll see... well, a big mess of numbers, in hexadecimal.
If you are aware of the FFVIII debug rooms, you know that in one of them you can trigger all fights of the game, by entering 4 numbers.
Scene.out contain data about all fight in game, in the same order than those you can trigger in the debug room : as an example, when you trigger fight 0000 in debug room, game use data from the first sequence of Scene.out, when you trigger fight 0001, second sequence, etc.
Member aladore384 could provide you a list of all fights of the debug room, you might want to send him a message.
 
First thing to do : all sequences in Scene.out are 128 bytes long. So in Translhexion, go into "Options",  "Preference", and change the value for "byte to display per line" to '128'. Now each line is an entire sequence.

Enemy level data is at the very end of the sequence. For each fight, you can have up to 8 enemies, but never more than 4 at the same time.
So what you want are the last eight bytes. First one is for enemy 1, second for enemy 2, etc... 

Now what the numbers are for...

'FF' and 'FE' means those monsters follow your level (FF 'more or less', FE 'exactly' - most monsters are 'FF' and 'FE' are mostly bosses)
'FC' is random level. 'FB' is Ultimecia.
number up to 100 are constant level : Ifrit for example have 06, he will always be at level 6 no matter what. (fight 0094)
number between 100 and 200 are capped monsters : they will follow your level, but have max value equal to 100 minus given value. (ex : the spider-like robot at Dollet have got 6F, that's 111, so max level : 11. Fight n°0009, 0010, 0013)
Numbers higher than 200, I forgot and still need to check... I was thinking it was 'current level + some value' but in my old notes I see it labeled differently, so I fear it's rather 'around party_levelx2' (used values are d2 and d7). 

50

General Discussion / Re: A way to buff monsters in FFVIII to make the game more difficult?

« on: 2010-07-22 07:58:47 »

Welcome on this forum Renegade! I'm a newcomer too, but I share you point of view about FFVIII. It was reasonably difficult for a starting player who understand nothing about the junctioning system, and haven't discovered all the tricks -such as the powerfull water magic easily available at the begining of the game.  But for veteran players, it's way to easy.

There are currently three way of increasing the difficulty :
- editing enemy stats : check out Ifrit program somewhere on this forum. It doesn't require any strong modding level
- editing enemy strategy and moves (ai) : that's what I'm doing from my side, but I haven't seen anyone else on this forum doing that and there are no cool - easy to handle program (I use translhexion, a hex editor)
- changing enemy level : this is quite doable but I haven't seen that documented on this forum. I can provide you the required informations thought. As for your idea, if I remember correctly there could be indeed some monsters which have your level + some value (monsters of deep research center I think, need to check)