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

[Vgr]

A simple batch script can do the trick. I'll even write it for you if you want, it's not that hard.

[Kaldarasha]

I also would like to know which field files are modified (without the Aerith revival mod - why even revive her you could make a replacement character for her).
At the moment toughscript can't work with the flevel.lgp. I had the similar problem with my German overhaul and could only solve it with Makou Reactor (export every field and then import every field in an unmodified flevel.lgp). I assume a tool had made dirty edits (Loveless maybe, Highwind for sure).

[Sega Chief]

I also would like to know which field files are modified (without the Aerith revival mod - why even revive her you could make a replacement character for her).

I'll get a list to you by tonight, Kalderasha (I think I owe Alyza a list for it too). For a lot of fields the changes are superficial and unnecessary, but any field that can be accessed from Disc 3 will have had some more serious modifications to the way scenes work in order to accommodate three different party leaders (for a nightmare, check out the gondola script). And any scene after Disc 1 that uses your squad-mates will have had an addition to handle the possibility of Aeris being there, except for the majority of Highwind scenes. I've not used any other tool besides Makou for editing the flevel and it hasn't been de-compiled at any point, but there's always an outside chance I've used Loveless right at the beginning while I was transitioning to Makou.

As for replacing the character, I dunno if making a replacement is that easy. I could definitely do it with a 7H version of the mod, that'd be a piece of cake thanks to the tools, but getting the game to do it on it's own would need some kind of wizardry, not to mention it would have a much larger impact on the game's story to have a new character running around the place. I just wanted to give the player that extra 9th party member to make use of; this is all about mixing it up with monsters, rather than story but I took some care to keep the impact it had to an absolute minimum (hence air-sickness).

A simple batch script can do the trick. I'll even write it for you if you want, it's not that hard.

I'd really appreciate that; a few people were asking about mod compatibility in the YT comments of this vid's installation tutorial. I'm trying to get into programming, but time is quite tight between debugging/tweaking the mod, work, fun in the sun (sunny days are rare in Glasgow), and my PhD. How would the batch script work for distribution? Would the user need some kind of LGP tools on their side of things to use it?

[EQ2Alyza]

Yes, I would like a copy of your file structure.

[Sega Chief]

Just getting a list of the fields together now. I'll try and leave a note for each quickly describing where the changes are.

FF7man, I updated the scene hotfix patch; I fixed Yahcobo's death counter (which should be him just running off like a regular chocobo) and I've re-done Binah's AI and tested him out. If you've killed everything else then should be on the home straight; I tested all the final bosses except Final Sephiroth when someone said Bizarro was crashing but turns out they had v1.0.5 installed.

[Vgr]

I'd really appreciate that; a few people were asking about mod compatibility in the YT comments of this vid's installation tutorial. I'm trying to get into programming, but time is quite tight between debugging/tweaking the mod, work, fun in the sun (sunny days are rare in Glasgow), and my PhD. How would the batch script work for distribution? Would the user need some kind of LGP tools on their side of things to use it?

I'll include the LGP Tools in the program to make sure everything's there. I'll send you a first, quickly-coded version so you can see what I mean. Will make it better after.

[Sega Chief]

Cheers, pal; that'd be a good frame of reference. I've been reading up on .bat files so I can maybe try a few things with the file you send, get myself a better understanding of how they're put together.

[FFman]

Just getting a list of the fields together now. I'll try and leave a note for each quickly describing where the changes are.

FF7man, I updated the scene hotfix patch; I fixed Yahcobo's death counter (which should be him just running off like a regular chocobo) and I've re-done Binah's AI and tested him out. If you've killed everything else then should be on the home straight; I tested all the final bosses except Final Sephiroth when someone said Bizarro was crashing but turns out they had v1.0.5 installed.

Thanks. It's FFman

Yahcobo flee correctly but nowhere in the fight he casted Pandora's Box.
The background from Binah's fight has disapeared, no sign of Byte and bit also but the fight ended without error.

Red crystal is not Autograph, it's Combat Diary. I edited it in my save because I was supposed to get it before.
I really like the bosses you've made out of Caith Sith.

I have learned Omnislash and got W-Summon but the Special Battle is not available.

There is no W-Magic materia ?

What left me to do :
- Beat Special Battle Square and get the prize.
- Beat Lost Number. I still didn't figure how to do it.
- Beat the last 3 bosses.

[Sega Chief]

I'll move P. Box to Yahcobo's death counter script so he uses it at the end (but I'll have his AI reduce his magic stat first so it has less chance of wiping out the player without warning because of the defence-ignoring property).

I changed the background for Binah to the black one because it felt more appropriate, also his wings don't clip through the floor now. He'll summon the Byte and Bit if his general counter reaches a certain point (which is sped up if a Limit Break is used) but it sounds like he needs a bit of toughening up; he only has 200k HP at the moment which is half of what the Weapons have.

Looks like I got confused over those items. I'll make a list and double-check each one again. Special Battle should be unlocked once every character-specific sidequest has been completed. Reason is, there were variables attached to buying Omnislash and W-Summon (but they're not there now because those prizes were changed). The latest flevel patch should have that trigger. And W-Magic is the prize for beating the Extra Battle boss Abyss.

[ManuBBXX]

Hi Sega chief !. First, congrats for your modd !
I play with Gjoerulv hardcore Modd, cause I like die a lot of times and fight a lot for winng fights !
I would try your mod, but I fear about a too simple difficulty. ( I don't say I'm a pro, far of that ! ) But the 'standard' difficulty is so easy tha, I can't play like that anymore.
What about the difficulty of your mod ? between normal and hardcore modd difficulty ?

[FFman]

I'll move P. Box to Yahcobo's death counter script so he uses it at the end (but I'll have his AI reduce his magic stat first so it has less chance of wiping out the player without warning because of the defence-ignoring property).

Yahcobo didn't cast it even when he fled.

Special Battle should be unlocked once every character-specific sidequest has been completed. Reason is, there were variables attached to buying Omnislash and W-Summon (but they're not there now because those prizes were changed). The latest flevel patch should have that trigger.

I completed every character sidequest, yet I don't have access to the Special Battle. Is it because I completed them before you made the change for Special Battle ? Meaning the trigger for each quest didn't exist.

And W-Magic is the prize for beating the Extra Battle boss Abyss.

I get another prize for beating him, I think. I don't have any W-Magic and I beat the 10 Extra Battle.

[Sega Chief]

-To FFMan-
Yahcobo: That's because I haven't changed it yet; I'm going to make him use it when he dies for the next update.

Special Battle: I tested this before putting it out; the only thing I can think of is the change made to Aeris' sidequest variable causing the issue. I'm going to set it instead so that it only needs Cloud's sidequest to be finished. That should cover it.

The W-Magic is a mystery to me. It's in the script to drop after beating Abyss and talking to the middle NPC; I'll re-test that part to get a better idea of what's going on.

-To ManuBBXX-

Hi Sega chief !. First, congrats for your modd !
I play with Gjoerulv hardcore Modd, cause I like die a lot of times and fight a lot for winng fights !
I would try your mod, but I fear about a too simple difficulty. ( I don't say I'm a pro, far of that ! ) But the 'standard' difficulty is so easy tha, I can't play like that anymore.
What about the difficulty of your mod ? between normal and hardcore modd difficulty ?

It's definitely easier than the Hardcore mod. But overall, it depends on your approach. Let's say you stop and grind for Lv.3 Limit Breaks; you'll probably have no trouble for most of the game. I avoided speccing enemies and bosses to handle stuff like that because I feel you make those things necessary when you do that; if you give a boss enough HP or Defence (or some other mechanic) to deal with stuff like Meteorain, then a player who doesn't grind for limits suffers as a result. The same thing goes for Sadness and Back Row; I decided to not take those into account when speccing damage for the same reason.

The idea here was to make something that was fun to play and which gave the player the freedom to approach fights however they want. You can have people on the front row, you can go with physical attacks or magical attacks (magic costs less to cast and has slightly more power + almost every enemy has elemental weaknesses). There are a few bosses that have a special mechanic, but you can get around them using things like defence-ignoring attacks for instance.

But you can't beat first-hand experience. Try giving it a whirl up until the Midgar Escape to see if this mod's for you or not; there's a lot of new fights to get stuck into, at the very least.

[Tenko Kuugen]

Yahcobo: That's because I haven't changed it yet; I'm going to make him use it when he dies for the next update.

Special Battle: I tested this before putting it out; the only thing I can think of is the change made to Aeris' sidequest variable causing the issue. I'm going to set it instead so that it only needs Cloud's sidequest to be finished. That should cover it.

The W-Magic is a mystery to me. It's in the script to drop after beating Abyss and talking to the middle NPC; I'll re-test that part to get a better idea of what's going on.

A lot of variables are saved to the game
What happened here is likely:
You are checking for bits being set that only get set when you beat the bosses.  If the patch is updated after the bosses are beat, the check will never return true. An easy solution to this is a cardboard NPC that checks whatever variable you use in the sidequests and sets the appropriate bits if he detects the sidequest as finished. Might even be something as boring as a plain looking npc that just says "I love fighting. Heh. Heh. Hah."
Seems redundant for new games but it'll take 5 minutes and will fix this problem for all people that updated.

[Sega Chief]

A lot of variables are saved to the game
What happened here is likely:
You are checking for bits being set that only get set when you beat the bosses.  If the patch is updated after the bosses are beat, the check will never return true. An easy solution to this is a cardboard NPC that checks whatever variable you use in the sidequests and sets the appropriate bits if he detects the sidequest as finished. Might even be something as boring as a plain looking npc that just says "I love fighting. Heh. Heh. Hah."
Seems redundant for new games but it'll take 5 minutes and will fix this problem for all people that updated.

What I need to do is set up a check for the old variable; if it returns true, it updates the new variable. I'd put that in the Main or Init so it's completely discreet (I set up something similar to that for Aeris in Icicle Inn).

[FFman]

Just finished the game in 33 hours. Nice ending screen

It is a pleasant mod ! I enjoyed it. You did a nice work.
I mostly used magic throughout the game, especially Earth/Break and Bio.It is only at the end that I used physical damage with double cut.

Everything that you added is great, nothing seems off. The bosses design is cool, some made me laugh.
The only slightly negative thing that I see is the difficulty but everything seems easy after the hardcore mod.
You said that you'll work on a hardest version of the mod. I'm looking forward to it.

[Sega Chief]

Hey, you finished it! Glad to hear you enjoyed it, despite the tonne of problems I was supposed to have fixed for this version (I actually remember saying to someone that 1.1's key feature was that it'd be bug-free; if only I'd known how wrong I was). Thanks to your input though, I've been able to fix a lot of it; it wasn't fair that you and others had to deal with all those glitches and oversights so I'm sorry for that.

I was worried that physical attacks would leave magic in the dust fairly early on but it sounds like magic is getting a fair shake, particularly Earth which was sort of useless in the original game (few enemies were weak to it and flying enemies dodged it entirely; the slight damage advantage over other elements was also negligible and negated by the higher MP cost).

Difficulty-wise, I think it's close to fitting in the niche I wanted it to be. The idea was that an experienced player could trust themselves to get through fights reliably and quickly by using provided mechanics like Barrier, Time, elemental weaknesses, etc. while at the same time not alienating less experienced players who might not make full use of these. Then there's the fail-safes for underpowered teams like Paralysis, Stop, Poison, etc. I just wanted it to be accessible to everyone this time and fun to play.

Different story with the hard version; that'll be a nightmare. But first things first. I've fixed a few of the problems, and they should hopefully work now. Patches are pending while I fix up one or two more things.

-) Gold Saucer: added a script that flips the new Aeris variable if the old one is active. I set up triggers to test this, and it seems to be functioning.

-) W-Magic: Fought and killed Abyss, W-Magic dropped when I talked to the NPC. I pored over both NPC scripts and couldn't see an issue there. Not sure why it didn't drop for you, it's a bit of a mystery.

-) Great Glacier: Fixed an issue with the map recording/recalling group Cloud's position/direction rather than party leader #0. Fixed that and Snow's turn script to face party leader BUT found an interesting issue on the World Map. If Cid or Tifa are behind Icicle Inn and they approach, the game has a script to 'bounce' them away and prevent entry. Sort of same thing with Great Glacier, it just blocks access when either these two are displayed on the world map. It can be fixed by PHSing Cloud in as he'll replaced either on the world map but this could be a problem for the period of time when he's missing. So gonna fix that up.

-) Junon: Blocked access to Beginner's Hall (intermediate) for Tifa and Cid party leaders. I'll be expanding the hall at some point and adding something in there. Not sure what yet.

[FFman]

I did not used the party leader change thing (except for doing their quests) so I don't do any test on it.

About W-Magic, it is sure that I didn't get it and I'm pretty sure I had something else but I can't remember what. With no old save left, I can't dot it again. If you saying it's working, it's ok.

I just noticed another problem. After creating a monster for Extra Battle, you can fight it over and over (that way I get 4 ruban [On Abyss I guess]) but if you leave the screen and come back it says that the monster is not available.

[Sega Chief]

The fights are supposed to be repeatable but if it gets locked after leaving and re-entering that's a more a serious problem; I'd better look into that.

Edit: Looks like my extra battle was using temporary variables that are lost when exiting the screen. I changed them to permanent ones but it meant putting more checks to cover previous versions and correct it all.

Edit2: Alright, so it wasn't just the type of variable operation it was addresses used too. I'm swapping all the Extra Battle addresses over to use #3 instead of #5 and #6 (tested an entry with #3 instead and it works, retains memory of it when leaving the field screen and re-entering). Setting up an in-game fix to sort this will likely be tricky because the temporary values aren't saved to the game so what I'm going to do is back-pedal and follow Tenko's suggestion of putting a temporary NPC in place that can unlock every entry in the Extra Battle Menu; it'll also make all the Materia available again for one more pick-up and be at the player's discretion whether to use this NPC or not (the NPC will be removed from the mod after a week or two). Update will be available tomorrow, once I've tested everything thoroughly.

[atro city]

I was worried that physical attacks would leave magic in the dust fairly early on but it sounds like magic is getting a fair shake, particularly Earth which was sort of useless in the original game (few enemies were weak to it and flying enemies dodged it entirely; the slight damage advantage over other elements was also negligible and negated by the higher MP cost).

If anything it feels like magic might need to be toned down some. Throughout my playthrough magic has had a lead over physical attacks (especially when combined with All) which has only increased as spells became more powerful and more spammable. I just got Bolt3 at Gaea's Cliff and it's wiping most enemy formations in one go.

Difficulty-wise, I think it's close to fitting in the niche I wanted it to be. The idea was that an experienced player could trust themselves to get through fights reliably and quickly by using provided mechanics like Barrier, Time, elemental weaknesses, etc. while at the same time not alienating less experienced players who might not make full use of these. Then there's the fail-safes for underpowered teams like Paralysis, Stop, Poison, etc. I just wanted it to be accessible to everyone this time and fun to play.

I have a question about this. I have Aeris in my party and she's already busted open some boss battles with Seal Evil. I haven't gotten Planet Protector yet, but is that going to cause severe balance problems when I do? Aeris has by far the most broken limits in the game and I don't want to turn what's been a pretty enjoyable experience so far into a complete cakewalk.

Also, I really enjoyed the Jenova Life fight, it's my favorite boss in the mod so far. It was quite challenging and forced you to have a solid strategy going in.

[Sega Chief]

If anything it feels like magic might need to be toned down some. Throughout my playthrough magic has had a lead over physical attacks (especially when combined with All) which has only increased as spells became more powerful and more spammable. I just got Bolt3 at Gaea's Cliff and it's wiping most enemy formations in one go.

I find that spells require a little more effort to use because the animation is longer, they need to be equipped, and they cost MP so I wanted them to be stronger than physical attacks to compensate. That said, Tier 3 spells are maybe too strong when they're unlocked. In my test playthrough, those were unlocked roughly around the Great Glacier and they land for about 3-5000 damage which kills regular enemies fairly easily even without using an elemental weakness. I was going to handle it by maybe reducing the AP gain from enemies on Disc 1 down to 1.5x instead of 2x.

I have a question about this. I have Aeris in my party and she's already busted open some boss battles with Seal Evil. I haven't gotten Planet Protector yet, but is that going to cause severe balance problems when I do? Aeris has by far the most broken limits in the game and I don't want to turn what's been a pretty enjoyable experience so far into a complete cakewalk.

Also, I really enjoyed the Jenova Life fight, it's my favorite boss in the mod so far. It was quite challenging and forced you to have a solid strategy going in.

Early bosses can be hit with Stop and Paralysis, but this tends to be phased out as you go into Disc 2. Peerless is a big status, but it's like Shield in that it'll run out fairly quickly (it's actually almost useless on Active/High-Speed ATB because it'll run out in two-three turns). It's the other limit breaks like Meteorain, Omnislash, Highwind, etc. that're far more likely to bust the game open. Peerless has a bit more of a strategic turn to it; you can pop that Limit to avoid a super-attack or to get around an enemy that uses counter-attacks.

Ultimate Weapons are also a bit of a concern; the only reason they were kept (mostly) the same is because I didn't want to detract from something that the player has to win from a boss; it'd suck to win Ultima Weapon only to find that it's a weak-sauce version. I'll definitely consider fine-tuning magic, though.

Good to hear that about Jenova LIFE though; she was an awful boss in the last version of the mod.

[Kaldarasha]

You could also adjust the AP the materia needs for the next level.

[Tenko Kuugen]

I believe trying to 'balance' physical attacks and magic themselves is the wrong way to go about it. I personally simply varied monster strenghts. If something has 200 magic defense but only 15 physical defense you're going to pick physical attacks even if they're on equal defense levels weaker than magic.

[atro city]

Quick bug report: On the Weapon Raid at Junon, I was fighting the SOLDIERs and procced Added Effect-Transform and Added Effect-Destruct against them at the same time. As they died it displayed "Cure" and if there were still other enemies, the game stalled indefinitely.

[Sega Chief]

You could also adjust the AP the materia needs for the next level.

Could do. I was worried about blocking access to tier 3 spells for players who don't fight a lot but I put Beta, Aqualung, and Trine further into the game recently so maybe I can get away with making the AP requirement higher.

I believe trying to 'balance' physical attacks and magic themselves is the wrong way to go about it. I personally simply varied monster strenghts. If something has 200 magic defense but only 15 physical defense you're going to pick physical attacks even if they're on equal defense levels weaker than magic.

I did that sometimes for bosses, I set up Schizo to have a physical-immune side and a magical-immune side (one uses physical-based attack and the other uses magical-based ones) so the player would have to mix it up for him. I reckon tweaking both enemies and spells/attacks is the way to go about it.

Quick bug report: On the Weapon Raid at Junon, I was fighting the SOLDIERs and procced Added Effect-Transform and Added Effect-Destruct against them at the same time. As they died it displayed "Cure" and if there were still other enemies, the game stalled indefinitely.

That sounds like something in the game's engine. I'll test that on SOLDIER 2nds and other enemies in the default game to see if it's caused by the mod or not. I'll fix it up either way.

Edit: Seems that glitch happens in the default game too. Combining other statuses, like using Transform + Seal, doesn't cause it. No idea what it is, just that Cure is the very first spell in the kernel's index.

[Tenko Kuugen]

I assume this happens:
Death is the first status. If an attack causes both death and another status, it tries to apply the other status to a dead enemy, which obviously it can't do (you can't frog a dead Cloud either for example)

You'd have to ask NFITC1 for more info on that or debug through the .exe where specifically it handles applying status effect with attacks. This might even be unique to causing both statuses with a physical attack.


On the .exe topic, I heard you fixed Yuffie Warping. Can you share the .exe edit?