(New to Brave New World? Want to know what it's all about? Check out the Readme here.)
Nine months ago today, Synchysi and I released what was "very definitely the final update to Brave New World until 2.0, no seriously we mean it this time". It was chock full of new features that were initially slated for 2.0 and it marked the completion of our changes to the game's vanilla content - all development henceforth would focus on expansion. And... well, we actually meant it. In the months following the release of 1.7, we quietly gathered bug reports for a final minor update. It wasn't until the discovery of an actually significant bug - an overflow error in the physical damage formula that was causing high-vigor characters to do much more damage than they should - that we began working on what would eventually become 1.8.
In addition to the aforementioned bugs, the primary feature of this update was a new system suggested by Nowea (and pushed by Mishrak) to allow espers to provide on-equip bonuses just like equipment does to address the fact that 1.7's EL Bank had created an environment where players had little reason to care *which* esper anyone had equipped so long as they had one on. This system was coded by Think, who has thus far contributed more to Brave New World than anyone who isn't named BTB or Synchysi. He also fixed the above-mentioned overflow error and provided us with several other patches for this update.
Not to be outdone, our friend and colleague DN provided us with a myriad of hacks for the game's interface, something which we hadn't done much of in the past due to the Lovecraftian nature of menu hacking. The most notable of these is a vast improvement to the way that status buffs are displayed in battle so that boss battles are no longer a random clusterfuck of glowing characters. It also allows the Scan spell to report enemy statuses since it was otherwise a completely useless spell (and still kind of is).
Last but not least, seasoned FF6 hacking veteran Seibaby contributes his "Smart Cover" patch to the mix, which provides an elegant solution to our longest-running (and by far most aggravating) known issue of the "protect weakened allies" feature also blocking curative strikes. It does this by simply preventing the function from activating on any attack originating from the same team. My sincerest gratitude goes to him for finally hunting down this white whale for us and giving it a serious ass-spearing.
And, of course, thank you so very much to everyone who beta tested this release and provided feedback. Satarack, Mishrack, and Yuyu: you guys have been invaluable in making this update happen and preventing me from having to playtest my own work. It cannot be understated just how amazing it is to me that every time I have something new on the horizon, I have wonderful people like you who are practically champing at the bit to let me Tom Sawyer my work off on you. More so than any other release before it, 1.8 is truly a product of the community surrounding it - all Synchysi and I really provided for this one was a pot with a stone in it.
As for my own hand in this update, it was per usual largely the result of watching players LP Brave New World on Twitch and Youtube. I've tweaked the late-game experience curve given the tendency of players to unintentionally (and also very intentionally) overlevel their characters. While 1.7 was strongly focused on quality-of-life changes and making the mod more accessible to newer players, there are those who I feel run a little too far in that direction. Brave New World is adamantly *not* a difficulty hack, but it does require the player to pay attention; powerleveling your characters to the point where you can just phone in the rest of the game while you hold "A" to ROFLstomp everything runs contrary to the experience we aim to provide.
Finally, a reminder to everyone that Brave New World is now available as a reproduction cartridge courtesy of our good friends at Retro Circuits. Feel free to contact them with questions about their products or even just to chat; they're great folks and I'm glad to have the pleasure of dealing with them.
And that's about it, now and for a very long while ahead of us. Thank you all for your support throughout all of these years and for making Brave New World what it is today. I love each and every one of you.
What's new in 1.8.4:
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What's new in 1.8.3:
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What's new in 1.8.2:
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What's new in 1.8.1:
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What's new in 1.8.0:
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(Oh, and if liking things on Facebook is your bag, baby, then by all means go nuts.)
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