Insane Difficulty: Development Discussion - Insane Difficulty

kyozo22, on 01 February 2015 - 01:30 PM, said:

Phew... we're getting somewhere, I promise. I'll be releasing a little teaser video tonight, showing what will be one of the iconic moments of this mod. Stay tuned.

I finally cleaned up my desk.

To design the battle formations, I went from this:


To this:


Where I note MegaMan's position, the enemies position, how many eemies the battle formation has (based on a few reference sheets included), and it automatically gives me the hex output to modify in the ROM. I'll add a little line tomorrow that also outputs the whole code for the specific area. This should make it so that only need to design, copy and paste, instead of manually changing each byte.

Thanks to Augestein's videos and this new sheet, I'm now redesigning the battle formations to suit new players a lot more. Thank you Augestein for all of the feedback provided, both in gameplay, and in the commentary you added.

If everything goes well, a beta shouldn't be that far from now. I won't give any estimates though, for obvious reasons, one of them being that I'm on the edge of burning out and I want to control it.

I can see now the current problem in the Yoka Areas begins with the fact that I designed them as a different thing than the BeastMan scenario. I'm now linking both parts of the game a little bit more, which will make things a lot smoother for the gameplay. The BeastMan dungeon will be the middle goround between the two, where there will be Day 3 viruses, and Day 4 will be slowly introduced.

Also, I'm paying a little bit more attention to the roles of each virus, because the Yoka areas were a mess, which Metrids + Bashers + Volcanos + MetalMan's gears.

Just finished refining both the shops and the drops from viruses / Navis. The thing that's mostly delaying the next version is designing the battle formations, which is fun at first, but it gets old after a while (because I've decided to design the whole game instead of a single segment).

Things to do for the next version:
Documentation:
Document Green Mistery Data (Done!)
Document BMDs / PMDs / Battles offsets in the whole game (Done!)
Document Omega Navi survival battles (Done!)
Document Extra Folders. (Done!)
Document lotto tickets (or remove lotto machine).

List:
Make a list of all of the chips you get with unique rewards (Done!)
Estimate how much Zenny the player should have per scenario (Done!)

Design:
Design BMDs, GMDs, OW BMDs, and other rewards.
Design Battle Formations.
Redesign the CopyMan event and replace him with MistMan (Done!)

Polish:
Polish Extra Folders (Done!)
Polish chip damage (build it around auras)
Polish enemies HP (build it around Navi scenarios) (Done!)
Polish enemies in Yoka Area (relocate enemies) (Done!)

The lotto ticket will have custom lotto numbers, and will only have a handful of rewards (I count 8 iirc), so the first-time player can't abuse a guide to get the rewards. I'll fill you in a little bit more later.

As of now, I have every Mistery Data / Reward designed. I'm slowly modifying the Mistery Data (I'm halfway there, already modified every GMD except for the UnderNet and the Secret Area), which is no easy task because it's all scripted based (there isn't any handful tables like you would expect from a competent programmer. That only happens from BN4 onwards <.<). But it's all slowly working together, bug free.

Once I finish modifying the Green Mistery Data, I will move on to the non-random rewards, which should in theory be easier to modify. Once that's done, I'm moving on the lotto machine. After that, I'm designing the rest of the battle formations. And after that, there's the beta release!!

Hart-Hunt, on 12 February 2015 - 09:14 AM, said:

I would like German folders too pls.

Advent, on 18 February 2015 - 01:11 PM, said:

I'm extremely stuck right now.

It seems that the data for the Blue Mistery Data is compressed. I have zero experience with compressed files, and while the good folks in TREZ have tried to help me, I'm absolutely lost as of now. I've been wasting the whole afternoon, having acomplished nothing.

Supposedly, I have to open the ROM with a graphics viewer, decompress the bit I want to modify as if it were an image, modify it, and paste it into an empty part of the ROM (It's expanded already, so no worries there). But... I have absolutely no idea on how to proceed. Compressed data is a motherfucker.

3 days or so later, I got the way to do it. Decompressed the data of each single Blue Mistery Data, saved each area in its particular file, and now I need to manually change each file and re-compress it. After that, I need to relocate any pointers, pointing to the old data. Since I'm working with de/recompressed files, I need to add the data in an empty part of the rom, which will have to be part of the blank data added in the expansion of said rom.

tl;dr - I'm back to changing the BMDs. I've already finished Day 2 (mostly). But it will take a LOT more than what I expected.

Also, I'm finishing the design of the battle formations in Day 3 (Nothing should be a mess anymore).

The good thing is that now that I've learned how to change BMDs, I can properly change any dialogue I want (it's absolutely tedious to do it though). That means that I'll be able to remove that "buy chocolates in Yoka for lotto numbers" mechanic, remove the gambling zenny mechanic (a really dumb one for this mod tbh), edit the BBSs to add more relevant info (that will be pretty awesome when done, I will eventually need some help with it), and most likely something else that I'm missing.

Hart-Hunt, on 18 February 2015 - 01:14 PM, said:

I might be really tired, but I laughed hysterically at this.

Edit: Five minutes later, and I'm still giggling.

Okay. Finished modding ALL of the BMDs. That was some serious work, it basically took me a whole day.

Next up, is one of the most important aspects of the mod, which is the battle formations. The idea behind them was noble in the earlier versions, ut the execution as simply awful, because it was too unorganized. Now my sheets are a lot neater. I'll keep the evilness way away in the first few days of the game so the player gets used to the new AI, chips, BMDs, shops and all of it.

In the meantime, I'll be revising the chips damage, to have a better balance by the end-game. The current damage values would be okay as they are, expect for one tiny thing: Auras. Since auras have a graphic attached to them, I can't really modify them to any value I want. So I want to have quite a few ways to disable Auras, up to 200 damage in the case of ScuttleOmega and BassOmega for the post-game.

About the BMDs, let's just say the player's gonna have a LOT more tools to deal with the hazards on the mod. You'll see what I mean, and I'm sure players will welcome this change (basically, BMDs are very worth grabbing now). It will not only affect gameplay for the better, but it will reward players for searching in the maps. It will all feed back to itself pretty nicely.

On a side note, added the GutPunch special codes in the chip's description. Can't do the same with VarSwrd, so I just mentioned that there's special codes for it. I'm too lazy right now to share some screenshots.

Also, the battles required to level up a style were dependent on each style, and the level you were in said style. So, for example, Guts Style needs in vanilla 80 battles, then 100, then 130 to level up to lvl 2, 3, and 4 respectively.

I changed that, because grinding is not fun at all. Made it so each style only needs 20 battles per level to level up. Same with the battles needed to get a new style. Only exceptions for this are Bug Style, which require 50 battles per level, because there's only 2 levels to elvel up, and the reward is... well, pretty damn good for those who don't know.

Oh my gosh thank you for that, leveling up styles was my least favorite part of the games. And totally understandable on the Bug Style part, I know full well how great the rewards for it are lol.

I'm halfway done with the design of Day 11, which is DrillMan's scenario (the undernet mission). Which means I'm closer to the goal.

After I finish the battle formations, I will move on to polishing some of the dialogues in the game. For example, I'm thinking of spreading the new lotto numbers throughout the game, and use the "buy-chocolates-in-Yoka" thing to give you error codes for the Mod Tools. This is because there's only going to be 5 lotto numbers, which I don't mind spoiling here: SpinRed, SpinBlue, SpinGreen, SpinWhite, and Wristband.

So! Since I'll be working with the dialogues, be sure to point me out of any piece of dialogue that could use some work. Let me give you an example - I'll be changing the L message Mega Man gives you in Day 3, when you're in the Yoka Inn. He tells you about going to the inn, but what you really have to do is inspect the fence on the back , and I can see players blindly running around with no clue of what to do. So yeah. If you can think of anything like that, let me know.

Oh, and one last thing. You've seen the Rank#1 Navi Customizer already. (If you haven't, here's a linky to it). There's still one more surprise, which I will reveal when I finish all of the modding. It will be in the trailer of the mod.

Just done polishing another area in the game that could use some work from vanilla: The Navi Customizer. I've changed the size of many of the programs, and luckily for the player most of them are buffs. Just to list some (not all) of the programs that got a buff (aka they're a little bit more skrinked): BreakBuster, ShadowShoes, Press, OilBody, Fish, AirShoes, UnderShirt, WeaponLevel+, Reg+5, Atk+1.

The most significant nerfs are HubBatch (complete redesign of its size), and BugStop (just added a tile, but it's still significant):

As you can see, it was inspired by BodyPack from BN6.

I've played up to and past Bubbleman now, and wanted to leave some feedback. Sorry if this is in the wrong place.

First, the good things: This is really well-made overall. I really like how the Mystery Datas and enemy encounter pools have been changed, and some of the enemy behaviour changes are also great. Note that I say some, there are also some issues with some of them which I'll get to.

Stronger enemies is a big plus for me. Lots of the enemies and bosses in the original game are a pushover, so now that they're beefier it presents more of a challenge. I also like how the power of some chips has been reduced whilst others have been increased. VarSword is no longer broken, whilst AirShot 3 is now something I can't wait to get 4 of in my folder. The lack of access to Invis chips early on is a double-edged sword. So far I have only found 1 Invis chip, in S code. This is fine overall since Invis is incredibly abusive, but I hope there will be greater access to them later on.

Now, the things that possibly need addressing. Whilst there have been tons of changes, mostly for the better, I feel like some of them just do not work well in practice. One thing I've noticed about enemy AI is that Brushmen now come into your area to break your panels. Whilst this is a fine idea in and of itself, if you move onto the panel being broken and don't move, you are effectively standing on a broken panel and can't be hit by shockwave-based attacks. I doubt this is a deliberate feature, so I just wanted to bring it up.

Bosses are the proverbial elephant in the hack. I realise that they're meant to be a good deal harder, but they're perhaps TOO hard. Flashman Alpha was already a considerable challenge, but Beta is ridiculous, especially for how early into the game you can access it. It took me two attempts to beat Flashman Beta, and I only found it possible with considerable pause buffering and a fair degree of luck. You just don't have the tools necessary to be able to handle him when the best thing you have at that point in the game is LifeSword and Rockcube/Airshot combo. Flashman also has some AI issues, as his usage of Areagrab after stunning you is so fast that if one of the light posts is in your front column, it actually interferes with his Areagrab. He immediately Areagrabs again, so this isn't a practical issue, but again, I bet this wasn't intentional.

As ridiculous as Beastman Beta's speed now is, I'm perfectly fine with the way he is. Maybe he could even stand to be a bit faster/harder, because he's located in an area that you have to specifically hunt in to encounter him. You never HAVE to jack in to the Doghouse, so if you encounter Beastman Beta, it's only ever because you're trying to fight him. This is the fundamental difference; Beastman is something you have to try to fight, whilst Flashman is something that can just leap out at you at ANY time after beating his Alpha version, and if you're not adequately prepared (and you probably won't be at the Bubbleman scenario) he will absolutely mop the floor with you, doubly so if you're in Aqua style.


Those were just some initial observations, I may keep playing even though the enemy pools from this point onwards haven't been edited, really enjoying it so far. Looking forward to seeing what changes have been made with the other bosses.

Oh, and removing the NO. enemies' regen was a great idea. Those guys are bullshit.

I'm waiting this mod out, don't want to play it until it's at least to version 1.0

But it's looking god damn awesome so far. BN3 is easily one of my all time favorite games.

Some ideas I had that I thought would be cool:

The bosses have been shown to command virus's in the past, but they never do so in battle. I think it'd be cool if some of the boss fights started with a couple of virus's along side them. This is one way to make it really interesting. And if you made it so that the boss ghosts on the net had different virus's with them, each time you fought them would play out very differently.

I'm glad to see you're re-balancing the navicustomizer. I think the less useful ones should be much smaller, so that you might actually have a reason to use them.

For some of the ghost versions of the fight it would be cool to fight two bosses at once. Now I know that this won't work with most bosses since they're all over the place and it would be too much chaos, but I think it could work with some bosses. Perhaps you can create all new ghost fights by changing the fight for some infected data or something. Fighting two protomen at once would be awesome.

If there's a limited number of battles in the game to work with, I think some of the battles in the undernet could be replaced. For example the walls that require you to deal a certain amount of damage to progress. Chances are anybody playing this mod has already done that, and they don't really amount to much more than a puzzle or a locked door, not a real fight. Those would be perfect to replace with some crazy challenge like two bosses at once.

I absolutely agree that that content should be in the mod, and indeed it will be. But it won't be as early as that though. I'm leaving all of the "Boss + virus", double bosses, and all of the hardcore stuff for the late / post-game. Don't worry though. I have a huge amount to space to fit all of that in, and I'm absolutely planning to do that.

Thank you so much everyone, every single user that has expressed interested in the mod these days. I really, really needed this amount of motivation, because I've been stupidly burnt out.

I'll be working a lot now on this, now that I have a decent window of time to develop my coding skills, and basically design the rest of the battle formations slowly, but thoroughly.

Again, thank you all for your constant support.