Insane Difficulty: Dancing Mad Advance v0.7 released!!! - Insane Difficulty

***I will edit this with additional information as I construct it but there is alot to put together and I also want to get feedback on what everyone wants to know. Look for more details on specific changes, tips, etc. in the next few days***



DANCING MAD ADVANCE v0.7 IS HERE!!!


How to install:

This has to be patched onto the EUROPEAN version of Final Fantasy VI: Advance. You will need an emulator(I recommend VisualBoyAdvance) to play. If you are having bugs or patching issues feel free to post about it and I will assist in any way possible. Now, without further ado.....


Welcome to Dancing Mad! It has been a long time coming but I finally have a playable release with a good amount of content. This version is exclusive to the GBA version of Final Fantasy VI and has content playable up to the end of the WoB. I guess you could play further but I don't recommend it since I still have some editing to do.

The good thing is the majority of the major editing is done and all that really needs finished are the WoR enemies. I will continue to work on those as players are going through the current content and should have releases coming about one a week or less moving forward. I am committed to getting this project finished as soon as possible and any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Now....getting on to the changes. This is a fairly toned down version of what you have previously seen. That isn't to say that enemies won't hit hard and have varied AI but the changes are much less noticeable especially in the beginning. As you progress through the game the enemies will start to have a bit better AI as well as higher damage. For the most part the AI isn't heavily changed until you get to around Zozo and even then it isn't too different. By the time you get to the later states of the WoB you will definitely be seeing different types of attacks. AI changes on the Advance version are a bit more limited than the SNES so its not always easy to make complex enemies.

The curve overall flows very well in my testing but keep in mind I tested this at base settings which are battle speed 3 and Wait mode. If you are having difficulties you can always lower the battle speed which only will affect the enemies. On the other hand if you think things are too easy you can raise the battle speed and make it active. In this version its highly customizable based on what you want to do.

I tried to focus the most difficulty into the boss encounters to make the normal encounters not seem so grindy. I want the journey to not feel tedious but I still want the difficulty to be there...its a balance that I will work on as feedback comes in.

Ok so down to the nitty gritty....what has been changed other than the enemies?

-Damage is overall ALOT lower. To give perspective I was doing an average of 300-500 damage with my strongest attacks on the floating continent at average party level 25. Of course there are variances but this is the average I would say. Damage curves pretty high based on level and then you have the stat boosts so most attacks have been significantly nerfed. Enemy HP has been nerfed to compensate for this.

-All items and equipment have been overhauled. The goal is to give alot of weapons and armor viability instead of just being incremental upgrades which really encourages build diversity.

-Weapons fall into 3 general categories: High attack power but lowers speed, medium attack power but raises speed, and low attack power but raises magic. There are hybrids as well as some special weapons.

-Armor falls into similar categories: High magic or physical defense but lowers speed, medium defensive equipment that is neutral, and low defense equipment that boosts evasion or stats.

-Items are not too drastically changed but Potions should be overall more useful throughout the game, and the Teleport Stone has been replaced with the Hero Drink which adds the Marvel Shoes effect to a character.

-Relics probably see the biggest overhaul. Things like the Ribbon have totally different effects, alot of relics can teach you spells even from the beginning and also give various stat boosts. There are a few relics that have been made shields or helmets but will still have the relic symbol in their name.

Patches applied:
Border Crossing Patch by Lenophis and Imzogelmo
Font Enchancement Patch by SC
General Violence Patch by Novalia Spirit
Graphics Reverter Patch by Vivify93
Sound Restoration Patch by Bregalad

I have alot more to say on this but its early in the morning, I just want to go ahead and get this released. Please feel free to give any criticism good or bad as I want this to be the best thing possible, but don't forget this is a hardtype Enjoy and thanks for all the support over these last couple of years, there is more coming soon!!!

Yeahhhh

Version 0.6 will be released tomorrow. I've done alot of work to make sketch viable which is the main addition as well as some small enemy tweaks. There will also be a general redistribution of rage skills which should make things better overall.

Version 0.6 is released!!!

Changes:

Lowered starting MP values for all characters
Doubled starting Stamina values for all characters
Adjusted starting stats for Cyan and Strago for balancing purposes
Readjusted Relms starting stats to account for the decent buff to Sketch
Corrected a few character defensive values
Raised attack power of Meteor(enemy version)
Lowered attack power of Gigavolt
Raised attack power of Lifeshaver
Adjusted attack power and MP cost of most espers
Increased attack power and MP cost of Quake, Tornado, and Flood
Lowered MP cost of Gravity, it can now target all enemies but does split damage on multiple targets
Some misc. adjustments to a few enemies, mostly in the Floating Continent



Sketch revamp:
We all know Sketch sucks. In the Advance version there isn't much I can do with the actual code, so what I have done is created a special attack unique to sketched enemies that is a power physical based attack. It won't be used by everything you sketch but most enemies in the WoB will use it since any other attack they use will be pretty useless. As you get into the WoR you will see more enemies using some other attacks and overall Sketch will be very more useful to the point that I have decreased Relms starting stats to compensate. The goal in the hack to make all attacks and ability in some respect and to open the door to things like no esper playthroughs and this should help. I encourage you to try Sketch out and give me your feedback.

Rage revamp(sort of):
There is still some work to do but I have done a general switcharound of alot of Rage skills. I don't expect everyone to get every rage but you should be able to find something useful no matter what you do or don't choose. The SNES version will have Rages much easier to learn and so it won't be as taxing if you really want to make use of it.

I'm in the testing process for the next version, 0.7, which will have content playable up to acquiring the Falcon, as well as some small other balancing tweaks. Expect a release within the next couple of days.

VERSION 0.7 IS RELEASED!!!

Changes:

Content is edited and playable up to aquiring the Falcon. Enemies are edited progressively to go from 26-30 from the time you get to the WoR to the Falcon. With only normal encounters and no grinding you should be able to get to about 30 with no problem.(If you try to fight Angler Whelk, he will probably kill you at this stage of the game because as an optional encounter he is much more difficult than average)

Sabin now starts at average party level +2

Changed Vargas's AI a bit to make the solo Sabin part more reasonable

Increased power of Razor Gale, Aura Cannon, Raging Fist, Flurry, Eclipse

Sky will now target all enemies on the counterattack, I hope this will allow it to see more use
Special note on Tiger. This is not yet noted in its spell description but it has been reworked. It now does damage to ALL enemies similar to the Revenge Blast skill. This is a very useful skill and should not be overlooked.

Fixed Chakra so that it will now function properly. It cures Sap, Sleep, Muddle, and Berserk in addition to healing the party.

Reworked shops and item costs overall, some costs may bit a bit high especially in the WoR but all in all but it should all work out especially considering you get alot of gil as the game goes on. I haven't cut gil gains that much tbh unlike in previous releases.

Edited enemy units in the Narshe party battle so that they will approach the player much faster

Lowered MP cost of Basuna and Esuna

Raised the accuracy of Sabin's Claws

Raised the accuracy of most offensive magic

The Gauntlet and Mage Bracer can now only be equipped by Terra, Locke, Strago, Relm, Mog, Gau, and Gogo

Terra can no longer use heavy armor

Made some other general changes to who can equip what armor to increase build diversity

Rasied power and accuracy of the Drill and Chainsaw

Adjusted some relics to prevent excess defense gains and promote build diversity

Fix Siegfried's AI so he uses the correct Potion on himself and will now drop a Mythril Glove in addition to the large amount of gil he drops(NOTE: This encounter is intentionally more difficult because it is optional)

Increased the attack power of Setzer's weapons

Edited a few existing chests

Well, I guess you made the right decision last night.

PROGRESS REPORT:

I've made alot of headway in the past few days regarding custom events. They are basically all done, save any future edits although those are very low on the priority list. The focus now is to make sure all enemies are properly ported, create all the custom boss AIs, fix all the sprites, some other cosmetic stuff, etc. Things are looking very good for a release sooner rather than later!

Pretty cool project!

Which tool have you been using to edit the item and monster stats and AI scripts? Have you been hex editing everything?

Madsiur, on 22 October 2014 - 06:22 PM, said:

Thanks! Your editor has helped a lot

I have been manually editing the AI scripts but they are basically the same as vanilla code wise so I usually reference the SNES rom in FF3usME to see what each enemies code is, search of it in the hex editor, then I manually edit. Of course you have to keep all the scripts the same length since I don't know how to change the pointers...plus they are coded a bit differently by what I could tell.

Its a bit of work, but since your editor only works on the US version I edited everything that I could and then transferred the data over to the EU version by copy/paste and a hex editor. I wanted to use a couple patches that were EU only so I wanted to use the EU rom.

There are some limits still with the code since a lot of the in depth stuff like damage formulas are coded completely differently, but what we can do with the ROM as of now is quite a lot.

auraplatonic, on 25 October 2014 - 07:45 PM, said:

The monster AI pointers are located here, right before the AI scripts. This is for the US version though. I'm not sure if the EU version has the data located at the same place. I don't remember if I discovered that myself or if Drakkhen did. It still a lot of job to change manually depending on the changes you make, since adding an extra byte to the first script shits all the subsequent pointers of 1 byte. You have about 18 bytes of free space at the end of the AI scripts...

727FD8-728325  PTR	   AI Script Pointers (2 bytes  * 423 entries)
728326-72C9E7  MONST   Monster AI Scripts (Variable * 423 entries)

auraplatonic, on 25 October 2014 - 07:45 PM, said:

This is a nice workaround. I'm planning to add EU version compatibility in the future. Right now I'm stuck at finding the monster graphics composition data so I might just skip the monster graphic editor and carry on with dialogue editor and AI script editor.

auraplatonic, on 25 October 2014 - 07:45 PM, said:

Yeah I don't know much about GBA assembly and wish there was more research done on the GBA version. It's still nice to see a project on the Advance version, despite all the criticism this version got it still has more content than the SNES version.