Brainstormed a Chrono Trigger Hack

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#1 thzfunnymzn

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26 July 2016 - 10:44 AM

Brainstormed a Chrono Trigger hack idea somewhat thoroughly. Just showing if off, seeing if ya'll think its any good, and/or if ya'll see flaws / suggestions. (Stole some ideas from some KevinBaconAlpha on GameFAQs who never followed through with finishing his hack). Several ideas are probably unfeasible (ASM issues), but oh well. It was a fun brainstorm.

http://www.megafileu.../Hack_Ideas.txt

Despite my loquaciousness, it's not an excessively long document.

(Pastebin thought I was spamming when I tried to post, so its on megafileupload).

EDIT: Ninja'd a link change. x2 >_>

General concept is to make positioning important. So, stuff like trading out most "hit-all" techs for another one of the targetting type, eliminating the silliness of "I walk up, hit, then walk back" by keeping you next to your foe, maybe introduce stuff like concerns about your attack's range & not being able to just magically walk through enemies. Dunno how much, if any, is possible.

Also diversifies character techs away from "more big numbers attack," tries to spread out techs temporally, & presumes a higher difficulty (though not "hard"). Such things inspired by Brave New World, of course. >_>

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 28 July 2016 - 07:17 AM

#2 Augestein

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28 July 2016 - 05:22 AM

How long is that, I can't download it right now, but I'm curious about the general ideas.

#3 thzfunnymzn

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28 July 2016 - 07:08 AM

...hurp. I should've posted the general ideas in the opening post. Don't mind me. I'll just edit the first post.

Shouldn't be a terribly long document, despite how wordy I am.

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 28 July 2016 - 07:18 AM

#4 Praetarius5018

Creator of SD3 Hardtype

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28 July 2016 - 08:29 AM

I once started a similiar CT hack, then got "sidetracked" with SD3
I hope to get back to that at one point...
messing with stat growths, level cap, damage formulas, passive items, fun times!

Well, a big obstacle on that list would be whether or not the characters should move back to their starting position or stay where they are. The former would prevent getting stuck on certain terrain, the later may be interesting if you want to build "pseudo-platforming" in dungeons.
Aside from that, editing animations would be complicated. I recall it wasn't even so simple as just removing the "return to starting position" command for Slurp Cut.

One thing I'd heartily suggest would be to change provoke to a "steal" type move so you aren't forced to use Ayla, unless you want to remove that option completely.
Status weapons work on physical techs just well, so you could move missing status effects to the weapons of physical based fighters and have them available that way.

#5 thzfunnymzn

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28 July 2016 - 12:07 PM

Yeah, the stat growths & such things you mentioned also need work. I didn't brainstorm any ideas with it b/c I don't know any of CT's inner workings. If you had resources on it, that would be fantastic.

For moving back to starting positions, I figured having an abundance of "return to start" was one of the things severely limiting the importance of positioning. As such, I made it a basic assumption that characters would stay where they are after most attacks. Figures it would be complicated.

Thank you for the heads up on status weapons. That does open up possibilities.

I had only one Steal attack, a Marle/Ayla dual tech. I suppose I could have both Marle's & Ayla's status moves also make steal attempts (maybe Lucca's as well). Techs are too limited to waste one on steal, let alone two on steal like in vanila.

Thanks.

#6 Praetarius5018

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28 July 2016 - 12:35 PM

thzfunnymzn, on 28 July 2016 - 12:07 PM, said:

not mine ofc.:
Data Crystal
Triple Tech

http://www.romhacking.net on stat ups per level
just as a warning, some editors allow you to edit the starting stats BUT they often only edit the "pre-calculated" stats, not the real Lv1 stats, so when they reach a level up stats can be very different from what you expect

properties that can be set on weapons, armors, techs (obviously not all are compatible with all types)

Spoiler

0	normal
1	2x damage on critical
2	random damage, wonder shot
3	Damage +25%
4	Damage +50%
5	Damage +75%
6	Damage +100%
7	damage with elemental property
8	damage with elemental property +25%
9	damage with elemental property +50%
A	damage with elemental property +75%
B	damage with elemental property +100%
C	+50% damage vs magical creature
D	+100% damage vs magical creature
E	HP to 1?
F	
10	
11	
12	
13	33% damage (triple kick)
14	25% damage (confuse)
15	sleep on magical creature
16	dead allies inc. Damage
17	Auto-shell (armor)
18	50% chance to half HP
19	crisis arm, last HP digit as multiplier
1A	drain lightning 50% (armor)
1B	drain shadow 50% (armor)
1C	drain water 50% (armor)
1D	drain fire 50% (armor)
1E	100% chance to half HP
1F	drain lightning 100% (armor)
20	drain shadow 100% (armor)
21	drain water 100% (armor)
22	drain fire 100% (armor)
23	kills attacker
24	40% chance for instant death
25	instant death, no questions
26	60 % chance to inflict stop
27	60 % chance to inflict slow
28	stop on machine
29	60 % chance to inflict confuse
2A	resist confuse (armor)
2B	resist lock (armor)
2C	resist stop/slow (armor)
2D	resist all status effects (armor)
2E	80 % chance to inflict confuse
2F	4x critical
30	remove shield + barrier
31	Auto-barrier (armor)
32	Auto-confuse (armor)
33	Auto-haste
34	400% damage (like triple tech Spin Strike)
35	Remove all status effect resistances
36	60 % chance to inflict poison
37	60 % chance to inflict sleep
38	9999 damage on critical

thzfunnymzn, on 28 July 2016 - 12:07 PM, said:

For moving back to starting positions, I figured having an abundance of "return to start" was one of the things severely limiting the importance of positioning. As such, I made it a basic assumption that characters would stay where they are after most attacks. Figures it would be complicated.

The joke was, on my tests vs Henches the edit worked perfectly but when I hit bats with Slurp Cut the game froze.

One other thing, the horrendous implementation of defense should be changed;
it goes like
final damage = temp damage * (256 - defense) / 256
this has the problem that the first ~30 points of defense do almost nothing but the last few points towards 255 promote you to god. Mag. Def (0-99 scale) is simply multiplied with 2.5 beforehand giving it mostly the same scale as body armor (0-255).

#7 thzfunnymzn

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28 July 2016 - 02:24 PM

Thank you for that. I'm working on a couple of other projects now (incl. RBYPlus), so I will not be doing anything with this immediately. But thank you for the info.

Hmm...what is it about Henches vs. Bats that caused the freeze? Or do we have no idea?

Hmm, so Defense works like it does in FFVI Brave New World? It worked in FFVI because Defense / Mg.Def didn't rise on level up, & b/c BTB & Synchysi were careful about what armor / enemies had what defenses. It's either that or change the formula to be subtractive, though it's an large change.

Thanks though.

#8 Praetarius5018

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29 July 2016 - 02:27 AM

thzfunnymzn, on 28 July 2016 - 02:24 PM, said:

Hmm...what is it about Henches vs. Bats that caused the freeze? Or do we have no idea?

honestly, no idea.
I managed a change then that worked on both, but who knows what other mob will screw that up.

thzfunnymzn, on 28 July 2016 - 02:24 PM, said:

Hmm, so Defense works like it does in FFVI Brave New World? It worked in FFVI because Defense / Mg.Def didn't rise on level up, & b/c BTB & Synchysi were careful about what armor / enemies had what defenses. It's either that or change the formula to be subtractive, though it's an large change.

Yeah, it uses the typical "Square last millenium defense" system.
But pure subtractive may not be too good either because that is very unsatisfying on the high end. Def increases from 200 to 250, so damage taken drops from 600 to 550... so I still die in 2 hits, thanks?
Jfyi, I went with "both" but gave some skills the property to ignore the subtraction (e.g. Spincut).
That helped to differentiate Spincut better from Confuse.

#9 thzfunnymzn

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29 July 2016 - 06:19 AM

Substractive with a defense-ignoring property. Interesting. My thought for differentiating had just been the different ways the techs would deal with positioning. Spincut might've allow for ignoring enemies "in the way" of who you're targetting or strike a line. Though, probably more importantly, I didn't think it was important to balance the two since Spincut would be early game whilst Confuse would, essentially, be only for Ocean Palace onwards (since I made late techs come later).

Thanks for the information though. Maybe I'll get around to this properly someday. Maybe not.

#10 Praetarius5018

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Posts: 1,058

29 July 2016 - 08:47 AM

thzfunnymzn, on 29 July 2016 - 06:19 AM, said:

Substractive with a defense-ignoring property. Interesting. My thought for differentiating had just been the different ways the techs would deal with positioning.

One of my main goal was to keep most skills still useful through the entire game, new skills should just be more tactical options instead of straight power boosts. Ideally all, but I wanted at least 6 useful techs per character by endgame. And nothing like the base game where it can boil down to "equip MP cost reducing items and spam newest (multi-target) techs".

#11 thzfunnymzn

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29 July 2016 - 10:33 AM

Probably not a bad idea. Sides, Crono's Lightning would ignore positioning anyways.

#12 MagiTeKira

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05 February 2017 - 10:04 PM

REALLY like this idea. I cannot stand how easy it is to mash A through most of Chrono Trigger's early battles.

I've had some thoughts on trying to mod this, but there's a problem: I have zero modding experience, and drop projects as quickly as I pick them up.

Ideally though, I'd like to give it a shot. I've always loved Chrono Trigger, but felt it was too damn easy. Lavos Awakening is difficult, but ultimately requires you to grind absurd amounts to be able to win (I'm literally STUCK on the Dragon Tank) it's fun and intense, but it can also get very boring.

On the other hand, there's Level Zero, which as it implies, gives your characters set HP/MP, and stats, and the only way to increase those stats is with equipment set up, which is a GENIUs idea that prevents players from overleveling to get past a hurdle, however the game was also too easy, and not much more difficult than the original.

Something of a hybrid would be nice. I'd also like to try and alter character stats to be abit more balanced (Why in the fuck is Ayla the fastest AND the strongest while still having awesome defense?) granted I know very little about how Chrono Trigger functions in terms of its stats.

#13 thzfunnymzn

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06 February 2017 - 06:52 PM

I know zero of modding too, and have had no motivation to touch the modding after doing this design. : / Dunno if I'll eventually get around to it, or what.

Your thoughts on Chrono Trigger and its mods are the same as mine.