Messages

2801

General Discussion / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] Multiple mods - The Reunion (R04c)

« on: 2016-01-07 01:57:09 »

That looks like the default foot part; might be that the hi-res part is either missing or wasn't set up to replace the original.

2802

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-06 22:48:00 »

Okay, so on the suggestion of my friend I just looked up what toss my salad means and I may have made a horrible mistake with that attack name :l

2803

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-06 22:34:57 »

Testing out some videocapture software mentioned by Segabro, with the intention of making some (possibly playthrough?) videos of 1.4 when it launches.

Found this little amusing abillity while doing so. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtLCJkJIjqs

There's a small history behind that ability. It was originally listed as the go-to for 'secret' enemy attacks but it had no set animation and cost 65535 MP to use (although if it didn't then the game would crash). Turns out it had an unused + working animation for the attack, it was just never set up. I think I saw someone else had found it too (probably Gjoerulv).

GUYS 2.0 IS UP! Check update &  reports thread!
Sorry that i meant 7h thread!

Oh my.

2804

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-06 19:16:50 »

I'm hoping to be done by mid-January, but anything can go wrong (mysteriously, nothing has yet which is a first). Boss AI can consume time if it doesn't work as planned, field script can become overly complicated/glitch out, etc. I lost some time re-doing the sources for the SP System yet again but I'm happy with it now.

Small update; just got done creating new scenes throughout Mt. Corel and Gongaga. The ones for Corel are mostly disabled/fragmented scenes that I recreated using Shademp's videos as a point of reference, but some are new and all of them have been reworked in some way to make them blend better into the game. There was a reason some of these scenes were deactivated in the first place :I

I also went and used the alternate draft of the Costa Del Sol scene; Shademp mentioned in his video that it was a lot longer which is true, so I speeded up the helicopter and streamlined some of the code to make it roughly as quick as the original. I did this because it features the greatest punch in the entire game makes slightly more sense story-wise. And because I could.

Next is Mt. Nibel. I'd been leaving this one off because it's a complicated area with two sets of flashback scenes already taking place there at different points in the game. Hopefully it'll go smoothly.

2805

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-06 16:55:11 »

1.4 is a major overhaul; depending on how far you get into 1.35, I can't guarantee that something won't go wrong later or be missed permanently.

2806

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-06 14:18:26 »

Same here segachief your work is awesome, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Iirc 1.35 will be in new 2.0 catalogue right? And 1.4 will pe patched afterwards?

I'm actually not sure; 1.4 will be patched onto it later though.

2807

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-06 03:24:09 »

Glad you're enjoying it, bud; good luck with the Vlakorados' and keep an eye out for the new release 1.4 soon; there'll be a lot of new content in it.

2808

Catalogs / Re: [FF7] Update Reports and Mod Requests

« on: 2016-01-04 20:23:29 »

I don't know if it's possible to combine NT with Reunion without doing it manually. Too many elements from encounter tables to game scripts are likely different; too different for a tool to be able to patch them together cleanly because it won't know what to keep and what to overwrite.

Here's an example, Oleary mentioned NT's Beginner's Hall. A lot of the tutorials there in the default game, I find, are completely redundant. They cover things like how to Save your game, and worse than that a chunk of them are delivered in the slow-ass Menu tutorial format. So for NT, I changed all of these to explain game mechanics that cover things I usually got asked during my challenge runs, etc. Things like how damage mitigation from Sadness/Back-Row works, ATB settings and their advantages/drawbacks, how Natural Dex vs. Boosted Dex works; stuff like that. I also turned them into normal text boxes, instead of Menu tutorials. The other tutorials that do use normal text boxes in the default game were changed too; and some of the explanations, like for elements vs. enemy types in NT, needed an extra box or two.

Now our tool comes along with Reunion text & scripts to inject. First off, the triggers for the Menu tutorials are gone so that translated text is lost already, except it'll translate the names of the tutorial options themselves which means when you pick, say, the explanation on Saving you'll get the extra NT text talking about ATB settings instead. The other tutorials will be worse; if there's additional text boxes, then you'll get the translated text followed by an extra text box or two from NT that's talking about something else entirely; in short, it won't make a lot of sense.

I think that'd generally be the problem; just a disconnect between what the mods do. Reunion translates the text, NT repurposes it instead. There's going to be a lot of overlap that only a manual edit can navigate cleanly.

2809

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-03 23:12:51 »

If the armour stays in their current forms, then you might as well. That being said, I would love to see character-specific armour, if only they had some kind of special effect.

Not sure what type of special effect I'd want to see, as I don't know the limitations you're working with.

Something to compliment their ultimate weapons perhaps, although that might limit choice when it comes to endgame.

Other suggestions could be:

- MP Attack effect (like the ability from FF IX) - spending MP on attack, to boost the physical damage.
- Some type of counter "attack" effect? Perhaps reacting to a specific status somehow.
- Percentage-based increase to a given stat, either befitting of their "role" or perhaps something that converts a stat into another? (For example turning Aerith into a STR-based support-healer.)
- Increased Limit-gain rate.
- Gain MP when hit by attacks and/or spells.
- Something to create a summoner-role perhaps, not sure how to go about this. Might just be something for Master Summon, should that make it back into the game.
- Perhaps an armor that gives a damage(?) boost, as long as you use different damagesources each round.


Edit: Doing my 2nd playthrough these days (Quite a difference with the intended hp stats  ), and I find myself getting incredibly annoyed with the Mystery Prize from the Battle Arena. Killing Gilgamesh 20 times in order to try and get Dio's Special Set, only to be bombarded with numerous copies of endgame armour, throwables and other attack items.
I'd GLADLY pay the point-cap, to avoid the RNG.

I can't make effects like that, I'm afraid. If there was a way for the AI to track what Armour ID you had on or something then could do it that way, but there isn't as far as I know.

I'll change that roulette on the Battle Square prizes so there's no RNG involved with it; it was a bad idea on my part.

[Spoiler:]

2810

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-03 15:23:55 »

I think it'd be a good idea to add Quadra Magic to this list as well: it was a large factor in trivializing the Extra Battle bosses and final battles for me. Cloud and Vincent spamming quadded W-Magic Tornado while Tifa mimed the spell tore through Safer Sephiroth before his third turn. I didn't expect such an easy battle after the nightmare that was the Dark Cave's final boss. D:

By the way:

Spoiler: show

Am I supposed to be able to steal Mystile from goblins? Getting multiples isn't really helpful, but it feels weird to get an end-game item midway through disc 2.

Safer was a bit easier because he appears after Bizarro with no save point/menu prep but for the new build I'm going to try something there, hopefully it works out and we can have a more climactic showdown to round things off.

As for Mystile & Goblin, I can't remember giving them that as a steal unless it's their rare steal? I'd better double-check all the distribution of the end-game armours, etc. in any case.

Speaking of Mystile; it says that it's "Yuffie equip", but Cait Sith is able to use it as well.

Cait Sith doesn't have his own specific end-game armour so I set him to be able to use any of the other 8 character's armour. He can't use either of the gender-specific armours though (Escort Bangle or Minerva Armlet). On that note, how do people feel about character-specific armour? Should I just unlock them all again so anyone can use them?

2811

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-03 03:38:58 »

depends on at what point we receive these.

getting magic plus early unbalances the magic/phys even more.

the OCD in me will hate having characters at different levels due to exp plus, but i suppose having tifa several levels above everyone else will balance that out.

and is it possible to turn mug into an attack replacing command? always seemed like a better way to have it than having to keep low level steal materia.

Most of the Plus won't drop until very late in the game, by which point physical attacks will be able to more than hold their own with Ultimate Weapons/advanced Limits backing them up.

Another way of looking at EXP Plus (and how I tend to use it) is catching up other characters to Cloud's level, as he invariably tends to end up higher level due to getting full EXP for the majority of the game. If you got your hands on a couple, then you could manage them to keep your party's levels much more in line with each other.

I think it's possible to separate Mug and Steal, but it's an .EXE hack and it had some problems if I remember right. Though if Slash-All/Double-Cut can replace Attack with no problems then maybe Steal/Mug can do it too? The risk would be that Steal would also replace Attack, which means separating the commands onto different Materia.

Found some bugs. One is on the Carry Armor type boss in the dark cave. If you use Quad Ultima + Ultima MP Absorb the game hangs. Also, after I get the sector 5 key, I'm teleported to the north cave and after the dialog the game hangs. I can't get passed that point.

The first is a problem with the game's engine; it occurs whenever a Quad-Cast of Ultima + Absorb is used against any enemy with multiple parts: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Quadra_Magic_Ultima_glitch

And despite what the Wiki says, I can confirm that it does occur against against Jenova Synthesis :l https://youtu.be/C1U3OvCojBA?t=2m35s

As for the second problem, that was (hopefully) addressed in the flevel hotfix patch. Try applying that and seeing if it still occurs, unless you're on the 7H version in which case let me know.

2812

Catalogs / Re: [FF7] Update Reports and Mod Requests

« on: 2016-01-02 22:59:33 »

Thank you very much for that insight, I guess like everything age takes it toll. Glad to see it implemented in the new threat mod.

Nightmare 7 used Espio's mod directly I think, but the one in NT was made from scratch (I think the Aeris Revival mod had a unique sidequest in it, and the dialogue will undoubtedly be different); Espio recently let me use the new animations they'd made for Disc 2/3 though which helped with a lot of tricky scenes needing unique animations like the Corel Train and the final descent.

2813

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-02 22:14:10 »

Excellent changes to the materia, as I feel the same way about them.

What will be the drawbacks to these plus-materias? If you've decided yet anyway.

The only real drawback is that there's only one of each available and they won't be found until toward the end of the game (except for MP Plus, which can be obtained as early as the Junon area on the world map).

2814

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-02 16:09:31 »

Quick question to put to people; I'm thinking about making a certain number of 'filler' Materia drop as 1-Star mastered. Reason being that I generally find them to be a loose end and their benefit might not outweigh having them in your Materia set-up for a long time to get them the AP needed to level up; they tend to be either situational or an after-thought. The list is:

Chocobo Lure (Max)
Pre-Emptive (About Lv.3-4 effect)
Enemy Away (Max)
Enemy Lure (Max)
EXP Plus (Lv.1 Effect)
Gil Plus (Lv.1 Effect)

These are all obtained from field script rather than shops, and only sell for 1gil even when mastered. If the proposed change is made, you'd be getting the full effect of these right off the bat. EXP Plus is being set to Lv.1 so that I can use higher EXP yields on enemies without risking overflow, but I'll need to check if the effect stacks and/or if more than one can be obtained from Gold Saucer (or elsewhere). Gil Plus would be at Lv.1 because poverty to keep the economy going a little longer until Materia like All starts hitting max level for selling. I can set both EXP/Gil Plus to use the full Lv.2 effect instead if that's preferred, but I'll need to run tests with high EXP to find out what the overflow value is so I can avoid it.

Another set of Materia planned to be made 1-star/mastered are the rare ones that I think would be better balanced as unique one-off pieces. I reckon this could prove unpopular, though:

Mime
W-Magic
W-Item
W-Summon
Final Attack (1 use only)

Nothing's set in stone yet, all I have is an alternate kernel where I tested these changes and the effects all seem to be okay. The only issue was that Mime appeared as greyed out, like it' was locked, when viewed in the party menu (but functions normally in-battle). Let me know what you think.

All that aside and in the same vein as above, some news is that I'm bringing back the missing Plus Materia (HP/Speed/Luck/Magic) but they'll be 1-Star, unique/mastered, and have a set boost for 25% to their respective stat; the problem before was that a stacked bonus of +100% was too much variance for me to balance enemies or plot out progression but if they're one-off Materia and the boost can only be 25% then that should be a lot more stable and easier to take into consideration. MP Plus, which was already in the game, has been aligned with the other Plus Materia so it'll be more useful early on by giving +25% MP instead of only +5% at Lv.1.

Long Range continues to be missing.

2815

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-02 14:28:28 »

I think a "reasonable but fast-paced level of difficulty" might be a bit of an understatement.

The battle after setting the charge for the No.5 reactor, has wiped me over a dozen times, and I haven't even killed over half of the enemies in the battle. The bio-troopers (2) and the special combatants (3) are level 26 to my team's level 11. Their hits are averaging about 90 damage on my 350-400 life. There isn't a way to really farm at this point in the game - there isn't an area with enemies and a store to refill the potions accessible at the same time.

Any tips? I'd imagine I'm going to have to restart the game to progress past this point anyways.

Did you pick Arrange mode and/or have the optional .EXE patch in? This fight gets much more dangerous even with just one of those in effect, due to the higher Level + the long-range flag on the majority of their attacks; Arrange itself is needing a heavy tune-up due to it making the early game too hard but being largely unnoticeable by the end.

If you need Potions/Downs then your best bet is to head up to the top room via elevator (the one which has a button you press to open the doors to progress on to the boss fight) and fight Blood Tastes there. They're weak to Fire/Ice and have 232HP, but more importantly they have a good chance to drop Potions and Phoenix Downs. You can also get grenades from the proto-machine guns, but that fight is likely dangerous on Arrange/with the .EXE patch.

As for the fight, Oleary has some good advice; an early salvo of Limits should flatten some of the Special Combatants early on but if you have that optional .EXE patch in then the power of these Limits will likely be less + be subject to range modifiers. Focusing down the S. Combatants is probably the best play as they have less HP and will use a reflect-inflicting attack after a certain number of turns called Beta Wave. Having someone Cover + Defend, one heal, and one attacking could work but if the damage coming at you is too high then you might need to be more aggressive to start off with instead. One thing to note is that if you do have the .EXE patch installed then Barret's Mindblow should inflict Confuse + Berserk (in addition to it's normal MP-draining) which could turn the fight right around; use it on one of the Bio Troopers and hopefully it'll work.

But I guess this highlights an issue with this Reactor; the player's item supply can run out and trap them. I'll either adjust the drop rates to be much higher or add some kind of vendor down there. If you do start again, make sure it's on Original mode or consider ditching the .EXE patch if you have it applied; both that and Arrange still need a lot of work.

2816

Gameplay / Re: [FF8-STEAM] Hardcore Boss, Greater Rewards Mod (Initial Ideas)

« on: 2016-01-01 18:59:18 »

Hey gang! So I've decided to come back and work some more on FF8, this time making bosses more difficult, yet yielding greater rewards. I feel this will get some of you replaying the game again and hopefully finding it very difficult in the process I don't know about you, but I get really bored and tired of spamming my limit breaks all the time and beating bosses with 1 hit, whilst having 255 vit and str before I even leave Balamb in Disc 1! I am not only going to create a mod where this level of grinding is now NECESSARY, but I'm going to make the battles long and endearing. I've played this game hundreds of times, but I am still welcome to ideas and suggestions for certain bosses.

The biggest problem with this game is the lack of structure in it's battle progression, and I think the problem that a mod should tackle first is the fact that you can leave Balamb Garden on Disc 1 with 255 Vit and Str. Before you spec the enemies, I'd try and sort out the Junction system (stat bonuses offered by spells), item-drops, and Card-Mod rewards first (Limits are also a big issue but a fix for them won't be easy due to the ). If you can create a framework of some kind that gates off powerful spells/stats/items until the later parts of the game, then you can also cut out the majority of the grinding that the vanilla game allows you to do and keep players moving forward.

I would love a ff8 difficulty mod but..."I am not only going to create a mod where this level of grinding is now NECESSARY". I didn't think people found grinding out the entire game in the starter area fun? One of the main reasons I hated ff8 is because every time I start a new game I feel like I need to grind for draw spell but also for a ton of gf abilities so that I can easily beat the spider in dollet, all the grinding is front ended at the start and kinda makes the rest of the game trivial but makes starting a new game boring, when I was a kid I made a saved file right after all my grinding for gf abilities/drawing just so I could always start a new game from there and not have to redo a bajillion draws and boring battles.

This sums up what you need to fix for an FF8 mod to bring players back to it. While it isn't necessary to really grind at all in FF8 due to the way levels work, a lot of players probably did what myself and Oleary did way back when and got drawn into the high-yield grinds that the game offers early on. Problem is, a grind is still a grind and it should never be part of a game by design because it can very quickly kill a player's momentum; in my FF7 mod, I made the mistake of setting up Disc 3 to be a high-yield grind area to handle end-game extra bosses but what I should have done was pace the game in such a way that players arrived at Disc 3 with the party-strength needed to just jump in right away and tackle those fights with a reasonable chance of winning (with the content leading up to that point set to a steady arc that reaches this point naturally).

The only place grinding should have is providing a player with a small leg-up to advance if they're having trouble with a particularly problematic boss; it should never be necessary or allow a player to break the remainder of the game.

2817

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2016-01-01 14:53:28 »

No worries, both bugs have been reported + fixed for the 1.4 build. I think for the text box, the way the variable check works means that both options will just act like you picked No (each line has a value, with a specific value being needed to open the Save menu; any other value just has the script run along as normal).

2818

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2015-12-31 20:04:35 »

Oh yeah, that one. I think I forgot to look at it.

2819

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2015-12-31 18:27:57 »

B-But that means I gotta make another Motorball ;-;

2820

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2015-12-31 15:06:42 »

Oh, about removing the morph I 'm 99% sure I morphed Jenova when you encounter it in the ship between Junon and Costa. Can't remember what it gave tho but was probably an armor or an acc.

Edit: Btw, is NG+ planned for 1.4 or is it still for 1.5 ? And if it's planned for 1.4, will we be able to full clear 1.35, then patch to 1.4 to start in NG+ or will we need to refull clear 1.4 before ?

NG+ is being made as an extension to NT so it'll be appearing as the 1.5 update; it'll be a stand-alone mod so I can work with a separate set of files and keep things a bit less cluttered.

2821

Gameplay / Re: FF7 without random encounters

« on: 2015-12-31 14:56:53 »

Ochu (or Oytugh :p) is a tool that adjusts things while you play. You can make yourself invincible, turn off random battles, speed up the game's frame-rate, and a bunch of other cool things.

I think another option is to find the old enemy editing tool called 'Hojo' and use it's mass-edit function to set all enemy HP (including bosses) to 1; that way you can just breeze through. Or for lv.99, you can use the Black Chocobo tool (or Steam's character booster) to set Cloud to Lv.99; everyone who joins the party from there will be Lv.99 as well, or close enough to it.

2822

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2015-12-30 17:37:18 »

Does this mean you've removed the rare steals from all bosses (?), or simply the earlier ones in the game?

All the rare steals were removed from bosses (and the Morph) so you can focus on fighting the boss; I've shifted around a lot of the drops/steals as well.

Playing the dark cave and love it. Ever thought about adding a quest in the future, that would split your party and let you use all members like the phoenix cave in ff6? It makes mastering materia and saving armor important throughout the game.

That sidequest was originally going to be three parties in three different locations, but I didn't have a very clear idea on what was going to happen so I went with Midgar instead. I could maybe do something a little more ambitious with the new game+ along those lines.

2823

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2015-12-29 22:10:54 »

No, it's unfortunate because the rare steal is Tifa's ultimate weapon and you died after getting it the first time is all.

2824

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2015-12-29 15:12:27 »

That is pretty unfortunate, considering what that rare steal actually is.

2825

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.35)

« on: 2015-12-29 13:27:12 »

How about these beach tentacle monster? Maybe the final jenova model...

It's not so much that; I can't really sculpt from scratch so I need to use/reshape existing parts and there's not a lot about that can fit the bill for the head.

I believe that in order to get the rare steal, you have to "fail" (?) the common steals or something, like the game rolls for the common ones first, and if those fail you have a shot at the rare one.
And the sneak glove, if memory serves, increases the odds of the common steals, so I doubt it helps at the rare ones. :<

That should be correct; I based it on the problematic Vagyrisk Claw steal from the vanilla game: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Bagrisk
The idea was that rare steals were to just be an occasional bonus that could pop up from time to time, with everything being available later on anyway. I've had to review that for bosses though, because there's people who feel compelled to re-attempt for these steals over and over so I've removed the rare steals from them as a kind of intervention :I