The Skillster's FF7 Hardcore mode ver 0.01d LATEST

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

Thats something I will need to test, are you saying they need to be poisened and brought down to 7777hp? there is very low chance of that happening or even to set that up.

Been playing with the formations in the memory for realtime testing.
So far only been able to either a) put the enemy next to Dyne or b) put them to the extreme left or right of the battle scene (very funny when the camera pans to them and they are sitting on some hill way out there).

Code: [Select]


FR---------------------<-ID-><---location------>
                        52 00 24 FA 00 00 5C F9
01 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 53 00(20 03)00 00 24 FA
01 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 53 00 08 07 00 00 84 F8
02 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 52 00 50 FB 00 00 1C F3
02 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 53 00 14 05 00 00 48 F4
02 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF

I have only been editing the values in the brackets, I may use values from other formations to mix and match and post my results

[Genji]

Well I've used it then fought Materia Keeper. I poisoned him with Bio dealing 99 dmg (You can adjust it by adding\removing magic materia and\or putting MBarrier at MK), and after 2nd damage from poisoning (262+262), his HP become 7777 = (8400 - (99+262+262)). MK killed Cloud with Hell Combo dealing 7777 dmg, and then died from 7777 poison damage.


Name of Cloud, EX-SOLDIER because of Debug Room using.

About Jenova-Life I have for now only one suggestion : change "Blue Light "'s attack elemental to non elemental may be, but I guess it not stored at scene.bin file.

And since I'm using PSX version (ISO), is there the way to change scene.bin or I must buy PC version ?

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

It is possible to use an ISO editing program to change the scene.bin on the psx, please check the game tweaking forum for more details.

As for changing the type of damage down by monster attacks, this is something that lies deep in the scene files, possibly in the attack data or other section which hasnt been covered yet.

Does anyone know of identical enemies (or an enemy that has two identincal attacks, both with different elements?) but with different elemental attacks?

[Genji]

May be Schizo ?? Both head have different attack.

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

but do they both have the same attack but with different elementals?
I beleive they are two seperate enemies/sections as you can scan and target each one individually

[Marc]

sorry.  it is the protect vest.  the spirit charm I was mentionning is an item that enhances spirit defense in the same manner.  forgot the whole name.  it's spirit something.  but yeah protect vest is a good example of what I was saying.  You can only get some of these items from fights.

[Genji]

Right Head uses Breath with Fire Element, Left with Ice.

You can only get some of these items from fights.

No, you can buy them later, at Rocket Town for example.

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

except for extremely good items/materia most stuff that is won in battle can be found in shops across the world

[Kiggles]

Skillster. I appreciate you taking efforts to help balance out some of the materia/commands, like Steal/Morph. You really sound like you're getting into some nitty gritty, so I'll have to give this one a go. Esspecially with the effort you are focusing on making creatures more diverse.

Doubt I'll be able to get you any helpful feedback on your work, but thanks for taking my, and other's advice, even if you came to your own conclusions based on the existing game mechanics. Good luck. I'll be keeping my eye on this project.

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

Hi, I am play testing my section of the scene.bin, and I will admit some of the enemies are a tad difficult, and would be bothersome for players a little below the level my players are at.
I will tweak the speed a magic levels further to enhance the playability.
I am still to search for the elemental properties for attacks.
I am still not enable been able to discover exactly how to set the position of an enemy on the fighting field, but I know which settings need to be changed to change the positioning.

Once I have finished playtesting I will know what is a decent level of difficulty and have saves in good testing areas so I can press on with the editing.

Thanks for trying my patch

[Coheed]

About the Land Worm, I came across one at about level 23, and your surprise did make it hard. Killed me even >.>. So I... cheated a little to try and beat it for the items you said would be worth it, to see what they were. After beating it all I got was a potion... bug?

[Kiggles]

Enemies can have multiple drop items. Up to a total of four droppables, if there is nothing to steal. Drops are only one at a time, of course. The way it functions is the game will make a 'roll' on the first droppable item. If the drop fails, it makes a roll for the second item, so on and so forth, until a successful roll is made, in which case you get that item, OR all rolls fail and you get no items. Keep trying. There may be other items before the worthwhile drops to clutter up, and reduce the drop percentage of the good loot.

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

Kiggles:
The item you can steal, are you able to win this item instead at the same rate?

Death Claw: A tad too hard, although his Laser attack IS supposed to do damage according to your HP.
Dyne: Not a chance, used Chocobo summon to stop Dyne, but by the time I went to use Cure 2 the BullMotors had killed me

I have cloud at Level 21 and rest up from Level 19 onwards.
Location in the Corel Prison.

So testing is good, I am getting a general feel for enemies;

2 Face: Too much HP to kill quickly but they kill themselves anyway.
those theives: Quick and maybe too much HP (one got away with my Turbo Ether ).
Death Claw: Beatable but deadly.
Sand Worm: not fought it yet... (weak against ice and water I think - Hint)
Bomb: Shiva and Ice2 all the way!
Thunder Kiss: Look our for its thunder attack, other wise fast and weak vs Wind.
big peacock bird thingy: Easy and slow but a fair amount of HP.
those annoying seed spitting toadstool things: Fast and dangerous since they come in groups of 5, when they start hitting you with Four Laser you will need to keep you HP up.
Nice fight to help you get a new Limit Break Level! Strong Vs Fire, Weak Vs Ice.


I will keep testing up to Gongaga and then I will refine existing enemies and then make any changes that any suggests to me (feedback please!) before moving onto new locations (I want to quickly get to sunken gelenika!).

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

OK, this morning I did fight the sandworm:
He was bloody hard, very fast and kept doing earthquake (weak quake 3 all).
You can get around it with earth+elemental, but his sandstorm attack is almost undefendable, so I have toned him down abit and fixed his items.

Dyne is still too hard, so I have been playing with him

And those theives are now atad slower and beatable.

[Genji]

The item you can steal, are you able to win this item instead at the same rate?

I think NO.

Dyne: Not a chance, used Chocobo summon to stop Dyne, but by the time I went to use Cure 2 the BullMotors had killed me

Transform=All Or Seal=All. If you did not added status immunities to them.

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

Genji: suppose that is a good idea, this normally depends on their level vs yours doesnt it?

I removed one bullmotor from the fight, but still got wooped (assuming people havent leveled up as much as me this fight might be impossible).
So I may reduce Dyne's speed and strength some more.

I realised that Sceneedit actually turns all the items won into potions (noooo), so thats why you didnt win anything from the sandworm.
I put most the items back and played with some of the stats of the enemies in the prison.

But i wont release another update till I finally beat this portion of the game

[Kiggles]

The item you can steal, are you able to win this item instead at the same rate?

I think NO.

This would be corrrect. Droppable items, and stealable items are designated independantly. An enemy can have 4 items they drop, and absolutely no stealable; or will not drop anything but can have up to four different items stealable. Unless you designate that a monster have had potions dropped AND stolen will it be possible to drop the same items you can steal. This does, however, require two item slots from the 4 an enemy can have. Drop/steal item variations can be anywhere inbetween, of course. 3 droppable: 1 stealable, 2 droppable: 2 stealable, 1 droppable: 3 stealable (or 1 droppable: 1 stealable/1 droppable: 0 stealable and up. In all instances, if any enemy drops an item you can steal it is because items droppable and items stealable are the same.

[Marc]

I tried to download the latest version and I got a service unavailable message.  The webpage of your friend also returned the same message.

I suppose that's temporary ?

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

Possibly we helped him to exceed his monthly bandwidth Allowance (oops!).
You know, I actually thought through this abit more, I feel in some areas monsters being difficult works well (world map, early dungeons, etc) but their are some where it is annoying (nebelheim, Gi Cave, templae of the ancients).
So I am going to rethink the difficulty and maybe think of a "difficulty curve mutiplier" which to base monster increases against.

So some areas may have a x1 or x1.2 increase while others maybe x1.5 or in rare cases x2?

[Kiggles]

Souds good. I find myself quickly becoming tired with a game if it is continually difficult. It is always a good idea to not only mix in a random critter that you can tear to pieces, but also have difficulty fluctuate slightly from time to time. In some instances being notably more difficult and others surprisingly easy. Even though a player could gauge their progress on old enemies, it has a better feel when you actually move through the game.

Deffinitely be careful with marathon portions of the game. Like the sonw field/cliff/crater-> Junon. I'll let oyu figure out what sort of balanxing is best, but it's the kind of thing that can be irritating if difficulty keeps scaling the whole way. Just a sort of problem area to look out for. Also, when Yuffie steals your materia. Be careful with that portion, since lacking materia means lack of alternitives. You pretty much just run a battle of atrition through that segment, since you can't exploit weaknesses, or use defensive buffs.

Good luck.

[Genji]

Yeah, it's sounds good, but first you need list of battles to decide. And btw having overpowered enemy, that have 2-side attack formation will end any adventure ))

You can raise some parts difficulty knowing that player will have HP Plus or two.  I think you can variate difficulty of enemy in one area, for example make Kyuvilduns (monster with Lay Flat move) like 1.5 difficulty, but Dragon with 2.5. (in Nibel Mountain).

[edit]
I've tried to patch my scene.bin and got message "Cannot find file to patch"

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

strange, pm me ur email address and I will send you my one

[nl]

Souds good. I find myself quickly becoming tired with a game if it is continually difficult. It is always a good idea to not only mix in a random critter that you can tear to pieces, but also have difficulty fluctuate slightly from time to time. In some instances being notably more difficult and others surprisingly easy. Even though a player could gauge their progress on old enemies, it has a better feel when you actually move through the game.

Deffinitely be careful with marathon portions of the game. Like the sonw field/cliff/crater-> Junon. I'll let oyu figure out what sort of balanxing is best, but it's the kind of thing that can be irritating if difficulty keeps scaling the whole way. Just a sort of problem area to look out for. Also, when Yuffie steals your materia. Be careful with that portion, since lacking materia means lack of alternitives. You pretty much just run a battle of atrition through that segment, since you can't exploit weaknesses, or use defensive buffs.

Good luck.

I've been wondering about changing alot about the dynamics of the battles.  Not just making things generally more difficult but encouraging alot of decisiveness, earlier in the game too.  I've played with introducing Double Cut and MP Absorb early while facing these enhanced enemies.  Of course, I'd say it's then not quite as hard,  but it is more engaging than normal.  It seems to promote the fighter/healer relationship and raises the pace of the action.

[Kiggles]

Interesting. I wouldn't mind looking into giving the player more choices from the get go. Effective, and creative party setups could be a really interesting dynamic, which I felt was very lacking for the majority of FF7.

Anyway, I have been playing Digital Devil Saga 2 lately. I'm going through on the hard difficulty, and it is some of the most fun I have had with an RPG. The basics are that most everything has a weakness, or small list of actions. Furthermore, your party is very limited in the amount of skills they can have active during battle. Ultimately, it is very simlar to FF7's materia setup. You have a max of 8 skill skills per character. Skills are individuals skills/spells, but the end result is something along the same lines.

Attempting to mimic the same format wouldn't work, because the Shin Megami Tensei Press Turn system is VERY reliant on exploiting weaknesses, not to mention protecting your own. However, I feel that giving the player Elemental (blue support) materia as early as possible, and a few other support, independant (purple), or command materias early on would GREATLY improve some of the strategy. Early on it may be as simple as finding out a boss' weakness, and using Elemental->Fire on everyone's weapon., or determining that most (if not all attacks) are ice, and using Elemental Ice on armor is the way to go. Basically, strategy would be pregame oriented. Yes, it is a little disapointing, since I like involved encounters, BUT we kind of need to work with what we have. Giving the player all the tools they need to make good pre-game strats is FF's strong point. Giving them the motivation, and enemy configs to exploit them... not so much.

Ah well, if I didn't say as much earlier, don't sweat this little deviation in discussion, Skillster. I think you are more of less on the same track, BUT using the existing FF7 gameplay feel (gradual progression/accumulation of statistics and equipment/items) which is good. I don't think you wanted to completely overhaul the FF7 gameplay, but make it a bit more interesting and challenging. What nl and I are mentioning is more along the lines of a big overhaul to the game progression/feel.

I may look into this, and experiment further. It'll be a while, though. I don't have the best of PC configurations right now.

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

dont worry I feel you can increase difficulty by making very small changes to the gameplay, so far we are able to:

Increase the level and stats of enemies.
Decrease the chances of Winning/Stealing/Morphing Items.
Change Elemental/Attack Type Weaknesses.
Add/Remove the number enemies in a battle.
Change the Elemental/Status/Type of enemy attack.
[/list:u]
I feel that before in the previous patches all that was being changed were the first two items in the list, we can now change all these items and not massively effect the game, just the difficulty and the experience.
Which is the ultimate goal.