Insane Difficulty: SOON. - Insane Difficulty

I'd dropped hints in a couple comment sections that I'd like to be back to this project by New Years. Well, I didn't quite make that goal, but I should be finishing up my other project in the very near future. I'm about halfway through the final dungeon in that project, so if all goes well it should just be another week or two, and then it's OB all the way.

So...

SOON.

Sounds great! I've been interested in trying out the mod, but due to my unintentional gaming hiatus, I'm not playing any game. Good to see you're picking up development again! I'll be sure to try it whenever I'm back into gaming again.

Let me know when you're ready to make healing work on console. I'll be all over helping you test this.

This is one of my mpst anticipated hacks for all gamed, so that makes me happy, regardless of any release date. Kudos, keep at it!

Kaffe Myers: Gaming Hiatus? Why would you do that to yourself?

Mishrak: Sure I'll let you know when I have myself organized. What was the issue with healing again?

Hart-Hunt: Thanks for the encouragement!

zombero, on 02 January 2017 - 06:38 PM, said:

I didn't do anything. I just never see myself turning on a game.

It happens from time to time, albeit rarely, though for pretty long periods.

Kaffe Myers, on 03 January 2017 - 04:45 AM, said:

Ah, I can actually kind of relate. I spend find more time on game design than I do on gaming. Can't keep the game design skills sharp without gaming, though, so I make a point to find time for gaming.

There was some console specific (and probably duplicated on BSNES/Higan) issue where healers weren't prioritizing who they should heal correctly. It's been a long time so I don't remember, but I do remember that healing was not behaving the way it should on console.

Mishrak, on 03 January 2017 - 09:42 PM, said:

Phew, it isn't palette stuff. Hmm My first thought is that could have something to do with me not giving multiplication/division enough time to complete on actual hardware. I made a point to allow for at least 8 clock cycles before reading the result, but maybe I either didn't for healing or I'm not quite giving it enough time across the board. Well, once I'm back into full swing on this, I'll take a look in detail. I also need to fix the currently horribly broken Sun card...

BNW had a similar issue related to that, so I suspect that's probably the issue as well. It's things that emulators like SNES9x would generally allow. Hopefully someone's play testing this on Higan/BSNES at least. I'll be playtesting it on console for sure though.

Looking forward to it eagerly, this hack is fantastic. One of my all time favorites. One thought as you move to the mid-game - in 1.04b, the enemies in the sky islands don't advance a level like they do in the other stages. That leads to a weird difficulty drop off after the sky islands as your army is suddenly over leveled with respect to the enemies. Anybody playing this game thirty years later is going to the sky islands, in my mind they should be leveled like regular stages. That would lead to your army and the enemies being a bit higher level in the endgame, but that seems like a good thing, as it would allow a little more time to use the cool fourth tier units you are proposing.

Big Fish, on 10 January 2017 - 04:10 PM, said:

Glad you're enjoying! The issue with increasing the level of the endgame enemies (and by extension, of the endgame player characters) is that many large monsters will hit the 255 cap on their stats, causing a sudden balance shift in favor of smaller characters. There is perhaps a better way to handle the levels for these optional stages, but that's the biggest reason for not having them increment. Hmm in the past, I've changed enemy and other generated units to receive +0.5 bonus stats per level, compared to the +1 (on average) bonus stats that the player gets for leveling their own units up. If that were changed to +0 and +0.5, respectively, that might give me more wiggle room. Something to think about, I guess. There could also be a way to allow breaking the stat cap.

Hmm. Trying to formulate a constructive suggestion here. Obviously there are a lot of interlocking considerations with the coding here that no one other than you is going to be able to fully appreciate. To put the issue in broader context, the game sort of bogs down after Muspelm and Organa for a couple of reasons. For one, by that point your army is pretty much in final form, so a lot of the fun recruiting and army building is done. Then, because you've in practical effect gotten two free levels for your army from Muspelm and Organa, and you now have Muses and other hit-all bangers and, most importantly, Monks coming on line, the difficulty drops off significantly. The hack is so fun, and so addictive, that I'm on my fourth run, but only once did I actually play past Shangri-la or so. This problem comes from the original game, not the hack, but once the army building is done and the challenge is reduced, the battles themselves are not enough to hold your interest.

Big Fish, on 12 January 2017 - 07:27 AM, said:

Quite true. Though, I don't know if you've been following the development version, but just about every class tree that doesn't already have a lv 20+ class upgrade is getting a new one added on.

I saw, I'm really, really looking forward to that. I think I also saw that you are un-nerfing neutrals, which will help as well. I love integrating new characters in to my army, even in later levels. Redesigning my units to take advantage of new guys is a big part of the fun, at least for me. I probably spend almost as much time on the army editing screen between battles as I do fighting battles, at least in the early going. So perhaps that will be enough to keep the end game engaging all by itself.

One thought I had was to level the optional stages normally, but then institute a level cap for the end game (if that's even possible). That keeps the game flowing, gets you to the new classes a stage or two earlier, and maintains end game difficulty, as you can't out level Diablo's army. It also works thematically that the last couple of stages would be battles between armies that were as powerful as they could possibly be.

Well there technically is always a level cap. Enemies 4 levels higher than you don't give any XP at all. That 4th level would require killing 100 enemies with a single a squad, though. Just to get that one level. I'm personally not really a fan of reasonably reachable level caps, though. Battles feel like a chore to me when I have nothing to gain from them.

Longtime lurker here and I just wanted to say I'm really looking forward to this project. Ogre Battle is perhaps my fondest game from my childhood so this is huge for me. I've played the previous harder types you worked on and quite enjoyed them, so I don't doubt you'll make something great.

Good luck and thank you!

I've had time to think about the 255 cap myself, and what you could do is add some kind of multipliers to them. Say, if a Titan reached 255 STR, you could increase his overall damage instead, something like 2-3% per level. Of course, defense would be something simllar. It would keep the powerhouses rolling along.