Insane Difficulty: 2.0 Idea? Maybe? - Insane Difficulty

If merely seeing the letter D puts you in a titter, then I'd wager the problem is with you, not the game.

'Titter' should have that effect, however.

On the writing/joke front, I played through the game with the Clean patch and never really found much of anything too untoward, and I honestly think the references to other games are done pretty nicely. Actually, I probably found the replacement text for the rougher language to be much funnier than BTB/Syn intended. I still lol a little anytime I read "great googly-moogly." I blame my love of B-movies for this.

The hangup on "D" definitely is not a thing with anyone I know (internet or real life), although I do kind of disagree with Syn on the topic of named dragons. Obviously the original didn't have in-game lore related to dragons, but that could be a potential change that might add to the world-building a bit in 2.0, and maybe give them a bit more character than "we need a boss here: why not stick a dragon there?". That said, I'm not sure there's anything wrong with the way they are currently either, both approaches have pros/cons.

When I first played the game and encountered purple d, my mind first thought of sunny d, the citrus drink. Maybe gold dragon can be renamed to this /s.

Can confirm that I always titter when I have to take a D. But then, my sense of humor hasn't changed since I was 12.

I never considered the thought until I saw it mentioned on this forum. Don't particularly care if the dragon's get actual names; would rather not, but meh.

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 24 September 2016 - 01:33 PM

Lockirby2, on 19 September 2016 - 09:01 AM, said:

Let's see, I claimed:
#1. They could add a character or two. Mind you, I stated that I did things the hard way in hex and fucked up (was following the directions and comments made over in one of the modding forums), but it seems someone already solved that. Guest Adder (This patch makes the two 'temp' characters usable. Figures I only learn of this patch 'now' ).

So yep, totally doable.

#2. They could add in espers if wanted. The GBA version did it (assuming they were sane, though given the coding fuckups they have done, I'm not making any assumptions there with that) by adding in some extra lines and effectively 'doubling' the Esper number (so going from 28 spaces to 56, even though they only added in four Espers and left the rest alone and empty). Here's a link to a map of the GBA FF6 Rom for that.*

#3. They could add in items like "grenades' (doable), or change other items to add various commands (doable and already done, I.E. Leo's Crest, which is an alteration of General Leo's Legacy patch).

So what exactly have I stated again that's "technically unrealistic" here?


*It also looks like the GBA version used Madsiur's Expansion Edtor for extra items to steal, but only really applied that to Gilgamesh in the Collesium. Quite a wasted opportunity too considering how damned useful and fun that could have been if used elsewhere in the game.

Anyways, getting back on topic, I found the the Auction House mod by Catone is actually "Smaller" code-wise than the "Original" coding used for the Auction House, and loses nothing in the process while adding a lot more 'variety' into auction interactions as well. Though granted, there would definitely have to be some changes made to the items there. Still, this might be a way to insert other items and whatnot in as needed. :shrugs:

I haven't claimed anything about #2 or #3. My focus was on #1.

Note that the post that I linked before was by the guy who made the Guest Adder patch (Hatzen). This was his discussion of what needed to be done to solve the issue well (i.e., in a way that would be up to BNW standards).

Also note that my position is slightly different from Synchisi's in that I do believe that it might eventually be possible to add more characters (I hope, since FF6Hacking.com is giving it an honest go, that adding characters would be a possibility for 2.0, but I'm not considering it a sure thing, especially since FF6Hacking's solutions may not be compatible at all with BNW). I just don't agree that you have solved this problem, which is my main point.

EDIT: Also, I think that if BNW were to add another new character, they'd choose something more interesting than a plotless Kappa from the Auction House. But that's neither here nor there.

I'm jumping in here to give my 2 cents for whatever they are worth. I feel like I have some experience here because I've spent way too much time trying to implement some of it. Please read through because I really want to explain the process the best way I can. Espers are a bitch to deal with.

Robo Jesus, on 05 October 2016 - 04:41 AM, said:

I have not played BNW but from what I have seen they are looking for quality over quantity. There are some strides being made in this area slowly but surely...but still many limitations.

And regarding Hatzen08's patches...he has alot of interesting and off the wall ones but the code he uses can be a little tough to deal with. By that I mean not compatible with other patches as well as making choices that he/she feels is best for what he wants to achieve which at times means cutting out or moving code you may not want moved. If they do any additional characters, it will likely be code they create themselves which is a pretty big undertaking for this type of thing.

Robo Jesus, on 05 October 2016 - 04:41 AM, said:

I don't want to seem rude here but it is much more complicated then that. I have worked alot with customizing espers...you are working with alot of different things here, some are hard coded and just unbearable to try to edit. I am mostly talking about the animations here. You are talking about creating new animations for these unknown amount of other espers, which I have no idea how you would even attempt this, is this even within our hacking scope? Editing palettes, sprites, etc is all possible but actually how things move, what kind of sprites are held, how these sprite and animation IDs work with each other is all so ridiculously finicky that you would be hard pressed to come up with something decent.

I want to explain the process of trying to edit esper animations so that I don't come off as just blowing smoke. You will have to forgive me if I get any small details incorrect but the gist of the process I know I am correct on. Each spell or esper has up to 4 indexes for it's animation. These indexes can hold different aspects of the animation. For example, Fire 3 has 2 indexes, one for the ball that flies down, and one for the explosion that comes out of it. Generally speaking spells are alot easier to tweak because their effects are smaller. It is till a pain but you only usually have issues when dealing with wider spell effects or when you try to put indexes where they shouldn't go. Each index is better suited for a different effect so the same address will look different in a different index alot of the time. There are also spell bytes for each spell. The best way to explain is that the byte says what "kind" of animation you can have. What do I mean by that? I'm not sure how it works with spells, but it is alot easier to explain with espers.

The way the indexes work with esper animations is MUCH more volatile. The indexes determine what animation the esper will do, as well as how big of a sprite the animation will hold. If I wanted to change Carbuncle to Tiamat, I could just edit the sprite of carbuncle, right? What you will get is a small square of Tiamat's sprite flying around instead of Carbuncle's sprite, since the index for Carbuncle can only hold a small sprite. Your option here would be to try to use another esper's index that would fit your new sprite. Unfortunately this has the side effect of changing the animation.

I tried to make an animation for Leviathan....suffice to say I was never satisfied with the result. I had to change the index to another esper, the only one I could get to work is an esper that stood still during the animation, but then it was facing the wrong way, so then I had to import a SECOND sprite, facing the different way which just took up an unrealistic amount of space. And taking all this into account I could not find an acceptable animation from a quality standpoint for the water animation. You see some of the secondary animations don't work well with certain esper ones, and certain ones have hardcoded elements that you can't change without creating bugs. Bahamut comes to mind on this with regards to secondary animations.

With regards to Odin/Raiden...this is where the byte value comes into place. The animation byte for espers determines what actual esper sprite the game tries to pull. There are also some hardcoded elements with certain espers. So in saying this it seems like it would be easy. What if I wanted to make a new esper, and just put them over Raiden? I could just replace the sprite with the new sprite....right? Well no, since that Odin and Raiden are hardcoded to ALWAYS slice enemies that they effect(and they each use a separate byte), even when you take out the instant death proc. And the funny part is the enemy will still be there if they get sliced and not killed but you won't be able to see them. You cannot get around this, it is hardcoded into their byte, even if they change their sprite.

Now, how did I make the custom Diablos esper do you ask?(Ok, you didn't ask lol) It took a large amount of trial and error, luck, and alot of my time to make something that in the end I don't feel like is that high quality. You would be lucky most of the time to find something that actually looks halway passable and works. This animation Is Tritotch's animation with some palette changes and a different sound effect. It was the only one that is halfway reasonable. I had to use Carbuncle's byte which means I had to actually go in and manually move sprite's around to change how they were assigned. Unfortunately this also had the effect of limiting Carbuncle's animation quality since it is using a different default byte.

None of this is including the fact that I had to seriously degrade the quality of the original sprite just to get it to fit into the mold that I had. The game deals with bigger esper sprites in an interesting way that is a nightmare to deal with frankly, I'm not going to explain that further. So this is the final result:



And this, which I feel is not the quality I really wanted but the best I could do...is with the EXISTING code. Adding new code presents challenges I wouldn't know how to explain.

If you read this far I hope I didn't come off as a dick or anything...it just gets wearing when people say what you should be able to do when you are worked with these things so much that you wish it was that easy. And I am like a baby with this stuff compared with Synchysi so I can imagine that he has had similar problems with other things I have not even touched.

Just so we're clear, we very specifically don't want to add new characters or espers.

(I'll do anything for 2.0, but I won't do that)

I'm not a modder or programmer, so this may be something of a simplistic question, but what does it mean to be "hard-coded"? I get that there may be certain firmware limitations on an actual computer, but that's not the case with modding a file that's just code (i.e., software). What am I missing about why, for example, Raiden's summon HAS TO "slice" the enemy? If it's just code, that can be changed, albeit some changes are more difficult than others.

SuperHario, on 05 October 2016 - 09:12 AM, said:

The short answer is that it's coded in a way that is not easily modified. For the end user, this would be defined as anything that is not customizeable in the options. For a hacker, it's basically something that's coded in a manner that makes it a huge pain in the ass to change.

I use an editor called FF3USME to make my edits to the game and generally consider anything that I can't do with it to be hardcoded. As an example, I can edit every setting and flag on every spell index to my choosing, but the spell index that originally contained Step Mine will *always* have an MP cost based on the in-game timer regardless of what I set it to. This cannot be changed unless I ask Synchysi to dig into the code, find out what is pointing there, and get rid of it. It is considered "hard-coded" in this case because what makes that one spell index unique is not coming from any of the "normal" settings that can be easily adjusted.

New equipment proposition.

Mage Shields that offer minimal physical defensive benefits, modest to good magic def and block, and some speed, stam, vig, and/or magic boosts as appropriate for balance purposes.

Here's a quirk, though, they're made out of odd shield material. Paper, Cloth, Clay, Gem, ...

Only Relm, Strago, Gau, and Mog can wear them.
Strago Paper, Cloth, Clay
Realm Paper, Cloth, Gem
Mog Paper, Clay, Gem
Gau gets Cloth, Clay, Gem

Strago starts with Cloth, Relm and Gau with nothing (but Cloth buyable post Burning House), and Mog starts the WoR with the Clay Shield. Now at least he's been active in his cave crafting it.

Gogo has the Gem Shield, which you win after a Gogo boss fight, which is the only of the Mage Shields Gogo can equip.

This post has been edited by SuperHario: 22 December 2016 - 09:05 PM

dunno if this has been touched on or not, but I think the game feels great, i think maybe some extra bonus bosses (if possible) would be a great addition. could just be a palette swap with other existent bosses or enemies, but with new movesets. nothing terribly complicated, just some more challenging fights for late game parties.

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That's sounds like something that would go in the extra dungeon once 2.0 comes out. In the meantime, I just want WoR sprites for everyone, but that's a dream (for now............)

gregulizzle, on 13 December 2016 - 09:56 AM, said:

Definitely a 2.0 thing, if ever. There's literally no room for additional sprites - they killed an Esper to make Czar. So it has to wait for a ROM expansion. Also, superbosses aren't really in-keeping with the design philosophy as far as I can tell. Kefka and company are supposed to be the most challenging part of the game, which makes sense to me, and if you're roflstomping them then you overleveled. Additional bosses will, I expect, be designed to slot into the WoR progression alongside existing quests, or will utilize gimmicks that make their difficulty orthogonal to the main plot's. By that, I mean their difficulty won't derive from high numbers, elaborate counterattack scripts, or any of the shenanigans you see in Kefka's Tower (so no Love Token, Wallchange, etc.).

Bauglir, on 13 December 2016 - 02:39 PM, said:

This, basically.

Bauglir, on 13 December 2016 - 02:39 PM, said:

Actual history of Russia.

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Me after fight Czar the first time

Interesting idea about Mogs Clay Shield is that it is Palidor compatible, i.e., no jump loss. So Edgar Can equip that. It gives a -7 speed deduction and +2/3 stam, but auto haste with Palidor evens things out. Strago with Odin at +7 Speed brings them to balance.

Cyan can hold the Paper Kite, and it's found in a chest Doma post banquet. He's a mafioso consigliere. It also has a small boost to speed doesn't lose two hand bat power so it helps realm with back row healing too. But it has a big -7 stamina hit.

Who gets access to the Cloth Shield? Sabin comes to mind. Just to diversify giving him one non-claw option. This should have a mag boost to help Fire Dance but a -7 vig reduction. Could it have no back row loss to Fight command? That's kind of useless to Sabin unless you're trying for a status proc.

That means the Gem Shield (née Glass) is -7 magic just to get thru each attribute. Give it small vig boost and a few of status protections.

I've been thinking about the Gogo fight. It could be Colessium Style with Gogo mimicking your move and summoning random espers (i.e, bar slots). But with low magic, no attacking esper should kill you but ragnarok. This makes Gogo a mime who Rage-Leapt into the espers and can summon them at will.

That would actually be a sweet relic for Gogo, one that let him Summon any esper but at double the MP cost. The 'Go Stone' trades for the Gem Shield at the Colessium. There Gogo has to fight a Gogo Boss Sprite.