Brave New World 1.7.4 is now available!

Brave New World 1.7.4 is now available!

30 Pages
1
2
3
→
Last »

You cannot start a new topic
This topic is locked

#1 BTB

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Modder
Posts: 4,548

02 April 2016 - 08:33 PM

Download Brave New World Here

(New to Brave New World? Want to know what it's all about? Check out the Readme here.)

At long last, Synchysi and I are proud to announce by far the largest update to Brave New World since its initial release nearly three years ago. "This is the last update before 2.0" has been something of an ongoing mantra/joke since the days of 1.2, but the reason for this update's massive scope (not to mention its seemingly-eternal development cycle) is because it contains a lot of things that were originally slated for 2.0. So now more than ever before, I am confident in saying that this update marks the end of an era - all future development will focus on expansion rather than balance efforts, as we now deem the latter to be complete.

This tying up of loose ends and perfecting the game's "vanilla" content comes at an extremely opportune time, as we have recently been in contact with the fine folks over at Retro Circuits (formerly SNES Unlimited), who have expressed interest in manufacturing reproduction carts of Brave New World. So if you have ever dreamed of owning a physical copy of a Final Fantasy 6 ROMHack that's named after an Iron Maiden album, now is your chance.

So, what's in this update? A whole fucking lot, for damn sure, but some of the more significant changes include a new "esper bank" system that allows you to learn spells from espers without equipping them (thus preventing gaining unwanted ELs) as well as the ability to re-distribute your esper levels later in the game, the introduction of "restore points" in lieu of tents (which no longer exist), and the long-awaited canonization of Think's "nATB" system which eliminates the "menu trick" and prevents the speed stat from soft-capping. There has also been a complete overhaul of stamina, most status ailments, and several skills - Bushido, Dance, and Slots of particular note, as well as yet another re-arrangement of the spells provided by espers, which is a much more delicate balancing act than most people would believe (note: anyone who suggests further changes to anyone's spell list is getting an ass full of pipewrench).

One thing about Brave New World that I feel really sets it apart from many other mods is the scope and diversity of its target audience. Whereas most ROMHacks fall into something of a "hardtype" category, ours was not conceived nor ever marketed as a difficulty mod. As a result, our player base ranges from hardcore crazies who consider The 7th Saga to be "a jaunty romp" to folks who flat-out haven't even played the original game before. Due to the significant presence of the former in the Brave New World community, a large focus of 1.7 was ensuring that the latter group felt welcomed and not completely overwhelmed. 1.7 contains several quality-of-life changes, such as the re-introduction of level averaging in the late game, most of which is the direct result of feedback we've had from numerous Youtube LP's and Twitch streams. When the players speak, we listen. Sometimes.

Of course, this isn't to say that our... harder-core fanbase hasn't contributed a significant amount of their own style of feedback over the years. Many different challenge runs, most of which I didn't even think possible when developing the mod, have been conceived and completed since Brave New World's initial release, often keeping our forums active and interesting during long periods of non-development. There has even been a mod *of* our mod created by a trio of our most dedicated players showcasing a number of features that they wished to see in a future update (many of which are included in 1.7). If that's not dedication, then I don't know what is.

As always, I wish to express my sincerest thanks to the Brave New World community, whom I consider to be without a doubt the best thing to have come about from making this mod. Without you, our mod would never have become what it is today, and for both that and the relationships I have formed with so many of you, I am eternally grateful.

What's new in 1.7.4:

Spoiler

 • Rearranged the symbols on Setzer's Slots and rebalanced the effects of winning spins

 • Slightly modified (final) Kefka's battle script

What's new in 1.7.3:

Spoiler

 • Re-applied a mistakenly removed patch that would prevent the Sketch glitch

 • Typo fix

What's new in 1.7.2:

Spoiler

 • Fixed a bug that allowed Sabin to earn Bum Rush earlier than intended

What's new in 1.7.1:

Spoiler

 • Corrected an error in the Conjurer enemy script and an oversight in the Lilith/Succubus scripts

 • Renamed the Fenrir summon because it was identical to another attack name

 • Set the new window style as the default one

What's new in 1.7.0:

Spoiler

 • New "Esper bank" hack allows characters to use spell points earned from battle to learn spells from
   compatible espers without equipping them; ELs are now "banked" and spent in a similar manner to allow
   us to provide a "respec" feature that allows characters to be re-built without starting a new game

 • Added several new save points and upgraded several of them to "recovery" points; Tents and Sleeping
   Bags have been removed from the game

 • Added some level re-averaging back into the game; Shadow is now re-averaged in Kohlingen and
   everyone is re-averaged at the beginning of the second half of the game

 • Added a "No Exp. Gain" option to the config menu in place of the "No Exp. Eggs" from older versions;
   this option is meant for challenge gamers (in light of the above change) or to let you farm for spell
   points and/or GP without overleveling or having to do so on the Veldt

 • New "nATB system" hack pauses all battle timers during attack animations, which prevents the speed
   attribute from soft-capping at around 60 and renders the infamous "menu trick" useless

 • Updated the RNG hack with an extra layer of randomness to prevent it from being manipulatable (the
   previous version, while far less streaky than the original, could still be predictably manipulated)

 • Overhauled the stamina stat to function more like the others; this involved changes to characters'
   base stats, the power of all stamina-based abilities, stamina-based formulas (note that the Mantra
   formula in particular now considers stamina more heavily than before), and a simplification of how
   stamina helps you avoid status ailments and damage from attacks (see the below two points)

 • Stamina now guards against *all* attacks that set negative statuses, but now only blocks the status
   instead of the whole attack (it still defends against fractional, redirectional, and MP damage)

 • New random variance formula now considers vigor for physical damage and stamina for magical
   damage; higher stats will result in lower and more consistent damage taken

 • The back row now only reduces physical damage taken by 25% (physical damage output is still halved)

 • Raised HP gains per level a bit after 30 and quite a bit going into the soft cap (40+)

 • Set Terra's and Relm's base MP to 45 (up from 30 for Terra; down from 60 for Relm)

 • Set Crusader's stat bonus to Vigor+1/Speed+1 (instead of MP+25/Stamina+1)

 • Moved around some spells on several espers and the natural magic learned by Terra and Celes

 • Re-arranged several spells in the magic index so that they're sorted more intuitively/sensibly

 • Replaced the Stone (formerly Quick) spell with a Lv.3 poison spell named "Dark" (exclusive to Strago)

 • Reverted several free-targeting spells (Demi, Rasp, Dispel, and Mute) to their original single-target
   settings; also changed Muddle from "free" targeting to target all enemies by default

 • Edited the MP cost of most esper summons and changed the effects of several of them; of note, Palidor
   and Shoat have been reverted to their vanilla effects and Golem's durability is now based off of the
   caster's max HP (instead of current HP)

 • Removed the Aero and Discord lores; they have been replaced with Blaze (fire damage, sets Blind/Sap)
   and Grav Bomb (earth damage = 15/16 of the target's current HP)

 • Reworked Mog's dances and the attacks on them in an attempt to make each one more focused

 • Changed around several of Gau's rages and added an expansion of the "Persistent Rage Fix" patch
   which clears him of any status he gains immunity to when a rage starts and clears him of inherent
   statuses gained through them when he dies

 • Setzer's Slots are now completely de-rigged, with the symbols grouped together FF7-style so that it's
   now a skill-based ability; note that Joker Doom has been replaced with something *much* less broken,
   and the other "winning" spins have all been tweaked, as well (in the case of Bar-Bar-Bar, we removed
   the hard-coded check which prevented it from summoning Odin)

 • The Autocrossbow now has the same hitrate as most weapons (100%) and so can now miss against
   foes with physical evasion (most have at least 10%); also raised its BatPwr a bit to compensate for this

 • Suplex now sets slow in addition to Muddle (note that Sabin no longer learns the Slow spell)

 • Physical bushidos (Dispatch, Flurry, and Tempest) now do damage based on the power of the equipped
   sword (or knife); their powers are now a set fraction of the user's Battle Power

 • The Eclipse bushido is now stamina-based instead of magic-based (reminder: like all stamina attacks,
   it's still technically a "magical" attack as far as everything else - like defense - is concerned)

 • Shadow's weapons have been reworked to accommodate a new patch that allows Throw to retain
   special weapon effects (i.e. the anti-human properties of the Butterfly/Man Eater); his earlier weapons
   have all been stripped of special effects and the Orochi and Kagenui have been swapped around so that
   the latter shows up while it can still be useful while the former is now a competitive melee weapon

 • Defense-ignoring abilities now respect damage multipliers; this means that bserk now affects defense-
   ignoring weapons and Morph boosts the power of *all* of Terra's spells (both offensive and curative)
   and weapons (excepting the random Flare procs from the Apocalypse, which is a special case)

 • Reworked the stat boosts on all of the end-game swords; the Valiant Edge (now named "Valiance") has
   been changed back into a knife and the Omega Weapon now has a revamped, entirely stamina-based
   damage formula to compensate for the fact that it is no longer the ultimate stat stick

 • Simplified the random procs on thrown weapons to deal critical damage to non-floating targets and
   triple damage to floating ones (they previously did only 50% more damage to non-floating targets

 • Flail-type weapons now randomly proc an instant kill *only* on undead enemies (or critical damage for
   undead bosses) and no longer ignore row; they also get a speed penalty for being heavy/slow to use

 • Setzer's Tarot has been given the anti-undead property mentioned above (instead of "randomly kills")

 • The Punisher now randomly casts Dark (new spell) instead of Flare so that it can get the damage boost
   from MP-fueled critical hits; also swapped its battle power with the Doomstick and Quartrstaff and
   altered the latter two's stat boosts to emphasize them as "fighting" weapons

 • Brushes now randomly cast buffs (Safe, Shell, and Haste) instead of curative spells; also overhauled
   their stat bonuses to make them more lateral instead of straight-up upgrades to one another

 • Changed the random spell procs on the Spirit/Hell Claws and Stormfang

 • Nerfed the battle power of a certain stabby implement

 • Added a few extra armor options for Sabin (robes) and Mog (Gaia/Dark Gear)

 • Gogo can now equip the Moogle Charm

 • Changed the starting equipment of some characters (Locke, Shadow, and Mog) to better demonstrate
   how dual-wield and 2-handed weapon setups work in the mod; also gave Celes a sword to start off with
   so that it's no longer possible to get stuck at the end of her scenario without one

 • When holding a two-handed weapon with both hands, the empty off-hand is now yellow (instead of gray)
   to indicate that you are allowed to equip something in that slot if you'd like

 • Zombie now shares a status resistance with instant death; the most notable change is that the Spirit
   Ring now guards against instant death since the ability for your party to set this status on enemies
   has been largely removed from the game (only Gau can do it now)

 • The Blind status (renamed from "Dark") now affects all physical and stamina-based attacks (i.e. those
   from Tools, Blitz, Bushido, Throw, GP Toss, and physical Rages); it's also no longer circumvented by
   100% accuracy weapons/relics or by hitting something in the back (during side/pincer attacks)

 • The Imp status is now a flat 50% reduction to all output (both offensive and healing) without any of
   that pseudo-Mute horse shit

 • Mute now *only* affects normal spells (Black, White, Grey) and the 12 Lores; many enemy MP values
   have been lowered/removed since many of their attacks no longer cost MP

 • The Image status now has a 1/3 chance of being removed when hit (instead of 1/4 in vanilla)

 • Lowered the duration of the Stop and Frozen statuses; undead foes are now vulnerable to the former

 • Renamed "Seizure" to "Sap" and (as mentioned earlier) "Dark" to "Blind"; also reverted all references
   to the Clear status as "Vanish"

 • The Clear status is no longer lifted from floating targets by ground-based magic attacks (i.e. Quake)

 • Red Bulls now cure 200 HP instead of 150

 • Green Cherries no longer set/remove the Imp status

 • Super/Bouncy Balls (present only in previous versions as a hidden/joke item) can now be purchased;
   their animation (which has apparently been broken for quite some time) has also been fixed

 • Increased the GP dropped by many enemies, mostly in the second half of the game

 • Overhauled enemy status resistances; also made some minor changes to their elemental resistances,
   inherent statuses, HP, GP drops (see above), exp. gains, and battle scripts

 • Per the above, battles in the Fanatics Tower should now be far less annoying and much more worth it

 • Also per the above, many of the sloggier late-game bosses have had their HP lowered a bit

 • Added an "abort on enemies" function to the game's targeting system that's used to fix several bugs
   left over from the original game

 • Added a hack to prevent reflected attacks from semi-softlocking the game if they have no valid target

 • Added a new patch that prevents X-Magic from drawing multiple counter-attacks

 • Added a new hack to display colosseum prizes without first needing to commit to a wager

 • The Auction House has been shut down permanently for rennovations

 • Removed "upgraded" chests from the game and edited the contents of many others

 • Celes and Locke are now unequipped at the end of their scenario

 • Shadow is now unequipped when he leaves your party at Barren Falls (note that with this change, there
   are no longer *any* cases of somebody running off with all of your shit)

 • It should now be easier to find merchant ghosts on the train

 • The Hidon sidequest now offers more rewards than just lore(s) for Strago

 • Sketch no longer halves Relm's (or Gogo's) magic stat for physical attacks

 • Removed some of our more... dickish changes (>.>) from previous versions

 • Quite a few dialogue changes, both to the Beginner's School and otherwise

 • Fixed the b0rked censored patch (we hope)

 • Added a new window style (replacing style #8) and swapped the default window style with #2

 • As always, quite a few other things either too minor or too secret to mention here

(Oh, and if liking things on Facebook is your bag, baby, then by all means go nuts.)

#2 Synchysi

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Hacker
Posts: 1,081

02 April 2016 - 08:33 PM

Reserved.

This post will later be updated with links to the various BNW add-ons (Think's patches, alternate sprites, etc.) and any other unofficial or beta patches. If you know of anything that can/should be listed here, feel free to PM it to me. I'd prefer PMs in fact, in order to avoid cluttering up this thread.

CTB Beta

#3 Think0028

Improbability Breaker

Job: Member
Posts: 1,702

02 April 2016 - 10:38 PM

I'm running a toxic concoction of mods, but nothing that should cause this: chainsawing someone caused the game to crash, in a way that looks like a misaligned pointer jump. I strongly suspect it's my fault again, but FYI. Seems like the cleave causes the problem. I'm chalking it up to my code overwriting something important til I get to my debug tools.

#4 Cainen

Novice

Job: Member
Posts: 31

02 April 2016 - 11:32 PM

Testing CNW. Cyan's Cleave didn't cause a crash, but...

Posted Image

#5 BTB

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Modder
Posts: 4,548

03 April 2016 - 03:57 AM

~~Is that Conjurer attacking itself, or is that you?~~

Ok, yeah, it's hitting itself. Not sure how this didn't come up earlier, since I redid that script a few versions back... in any case, I have exactly enough free space left in the enemy AI bank to add a targeting byte to fix that.

Under normal circumstances, I'd just let a minor bug like that slide. But since there's repro carts being made, I'm gonna push try and get a bugfix update out for it and anything else that comes up in the next few days, no matter how small (I'm also *really* hoping that Think is just smoking crack and there's not a problem with the Chainsaw).

I'm also kinda wanting to set the "new" window style as the default and set the current default back to position #2. Kinda makes more sense that way, I think. So that's something else I want to go ahead and do before the repro carts go into production.

#6 Synchysi

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Hacker
Posts: 1,081

03 April 2016 - 06:51 AM

Think0028, on 02 April 2016 - 10:38 PM, said:

Works fine on my end.

The new chainsaw effect starts at C2/2B30. The normal attack and the hockey mask proc share much of the same code, except for 9 bytes starting at C2/2B38 that only the hockey mask proc uses.

#7 BTB

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Modder
Posts: 4,548

03 April 2016 - 07:08 AM

If you don't patch a clean ROM, you're gonna have a bad time.

#8 Think0028

Improbability Breaker

Job: Member
Posts: 1,702

03 April 2016 - 08:59 AM

It was only Chainsaw's cleave and not Zant's cleave, so I suspect I did something naughty. I'll fix it on my end.

#9 Time/SpaceMage

Casual Gamer

Job: Member
Posts: 124

03 April 2016 - 03:57 PM

BTW when you devs have some free time, the site's character guide for Terra still says Morph doesn't boost Break/Ultima. There's probably more where that came from.

Not that... I remembered that page was THERE until recently. Or that half the other games' articles link back to the main page indicating that hardly anyone visits that section >.>

#10 BTB

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Modder
Posts: 4,548

03 April 2016 - 05:02 PM

I kinda want to see what Nakar has to say about 1.7 before I touch that too much. What I like about that section is that it's not my voice.

#11 BTB

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Modder
Posts: 4,548

04 April 2016 - 08:08 AM

So, normally I would let any minor issues at a time like this wait until we do another update, but since people are starting to order repro carts I'm going to be asking Synchysi to push out a small update. This will include a fix for the Conjurer AI, setting the "new" window style to default, and renaming Fenrir's summon since it currently has the same name as a different attack.

It will *also* include a change to the AI of the Lilith and Succubus enemies. After watching Nowea's latest videos, I checked their scripts and discovered that, well, I've actually been incorrect about their behavior and it's quite likely for them to insta-gib you as a result. So, that will also be fixed.

#12 Think0028

Improbability Breaker

Job: Member
Posts: 1,702

04 April 2016 - 10:07 AM

The good news is that the chainsaw bug does not appear to be a consequence of CTB. I'll continue investigating to figure out which of my patches is at fault before I compile my 1.7 patch list. The bug occurs as a result of the chainsaw hockey-mask animation. It's not the cleave animation loading - it triggers whether it's just doing damage or killing the target. It's not chainsaw as a whole - the non-hockey-mask animation is fine. And the code in C2 is untouched from BNW.

EDIT: Found it: my 2x exp for lower level party members patch was causing the glitch. I had been meaning to rewrite that one for ages, so this works out fine. I'll go update that.

#13 BTB

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Modder
Posts: 4,548

04 April 2016 - 10:57 AM

That hack shouldn't be necessary anymore since we added re-averaging back in.

#14 Think0028

Improbability Breaker

Job: Member
Posts: 1,702

04 April 2016 - 11:07 AM

It's pretty nice for getting the 18 dudes to 30 without getting your 30 dudes to 36, but it's definitely less critical now that the EXP curve's been massaged a bit more. I'll leave it out.

#15 BTB

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Modder
Posts: 4,548

04 April 2016 - 12:51 PM

So, since the new version I'm asking Synchysi to make sets the new window style as default (moving the old default to position 8 and style 2 back to its original position), applying it to an existing same will make the windows look a bit different since it'll load the existing palette from the SRAM. This is easily fixable in-game by going to the config menu and adjusting the colors as you wish, but assuming that you haven't altered the colors, it should only look jacked-up if you're using the old default style (currently #2).

This is what your windows will look like if you're using either the new default (style 2 from vanilla) or the new window style:

Posted Image

Honestly, I think the vanilla default looks bitchin' with the palette from the new style.

#16 Synchysi

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Hacker
Posts: 1,081

06 April 2016 - 05:39 PM

New version: http://www.synchysi..../BNW_v1.7.1.rar

The only changes are a couple of minor enemy script corrections and the window setting thing in the post above this.

#17 BTB

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Modder
Posts: 4,548

06 April 2016 - 06:40 PM

Site link updated to 1.7.1

Also went ahead and notified the repro cart folks that they're good to start producing.

#18 Trinstin

Novice

Job: Member
Posts: 16

07 April 2016 - 07:37 PM

I'm pretty sure that the answer to this is no but since I'm extremely distracted lately by my job and life in general I guess I wanted to ask someone around here who will just give me a direct answer. Can I possibly play this on a smart phone (Galaxy S7)? Thats it.

#19 BTB

Co-Creator of BNW

Job: Modder
Posts: 4,548

07 April 2016 - 07:39 PM

Sure. A lot of people play on their phones.

I have no sodding idea how, though. I've never owned one of those bloody contraptions in my life.

#20 Think0028

Improbability Breaker

Job: Member
Posts: 1,702

07 April 2016 - 08:03 PM

On android, Snes9X EX+ is the app you want.

Share this topic:

30 Pages
1
2
3
→
Last »

You cannot start a new topic
This topic is locked

Insane Difficulty: Brave New World 1.7.4 is now available! - Insane Difficulty