praetarius5018

Breath of Fire 2 - Defiance of Fate

27 posts in this topic

I've no idea where the ideas came from this time but...

1) Each spell can be used once per battle but cost no AP (exception: dragon skills cost a fixed 3)
With some form of scaling damage/healing power this should make more spells relevant than the newest 2-3 out of a potential 32 spell slots you have per character.
Implementation is easy since one unique enemy skill can seal spells until end of battle, so the same mechanic can just be used.

2) LP replaces AP; this is kind of a secondary HP bar.
If taken HP damage exceeds 50% of remaining HP you additionally take some LP damage relative to the HP damage.
Fatal HP damage deals more LP damage; if at least 1 LP remains the death is avoided and some HP is recovered (this replaces the chance to survive fatal damage via guts stat).
Overall this should lower the risk of getting randomly one shot just from AI roulette choosing the right/wrong action while putting a limit to how long you can get by with just taking 90% damage hits and spamming full heals while ignoring (de)buffs.

3) The condition stat (tired/fine/great, measured on a 0-255 scale) gets a bit more involvement.
By default it only seems to go up (neither many battles, day/night changes nor death did decrease it in my tests) and it is mainly responsible for a massive crit rate (both weapon and spells) at the end.
Resting would now increase condition to 160 if it was below.
Taking damage would decrease it by 1, more if LP damage is taken.
Having a bad condition would reduce the received healing, at most -30%.

Not sure if any other events should influence condition tbh.

4) The whole shaman fusions feel a bit underdeveloped; half of them come only near the end of the game and besides stats and maybe changing the character's unique skill not much happens.
So once you unlock fusions at all you can already use all 6 shamans for fusion but until you find the real shaman the relevant stat bonus is halved, e.g. without earth shaman you'd only get +10% defense if the real bonus was +20%.
Additionally you receive a small bonus to damage dealt with attacks of the same type as a fused shaman (fire shaman boosts fire weapons and spells, dark shaman would apply that to non-elemental) and resist attacks of the element (non-elemental only -25%, other shaman -50%) but take 25% more damage from the weakness (fire shaman gives weakness to water/ice).

5) Stat growth is half fixed by character and half determined by the equipped weapon type.
To that end most weapons would be equippable by all and instead of sword/bow/etc. we'd work with weapon enhancement crystals or something.
E.g. a wind type weapon would give higher AGL growth but less defense and earth type would give more HP but lower AGL.

6) Bleu gets actual stat gains instead of reading from the random encounter table.

7) Permanently stat boosting items get axed; will probably replace them with some tomes that can teach spells.

 

As written above, these are ideas. I've done some work on this already but not enough to be presentable in any way.
Feel free to comment on this madness.

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Let's see...I havent touch BOF2 in a while but I'm always up to a new mod.

On 16/12/2019 at 2:19 PM, praetarius5018 said:

1) Each spell can be used once per battle but cost no AP (exception: dragon skills cost a fixed 3)
With some form of scaling damage/healing power this should make more spells relevant than the newest 2-3 out of a potential 32 spell slots you have per character.
Implementation is easy since one unique enemy skill can seal spells until end of battle, so the same mechanic can just be used.

It reminds me of cosmic star heroine approach with items in battle. I like it since you have to actually use everything in your pockets to seal the deal

On 16/12/2019 at 2:19 PM, praetarius5018 said:

2) LP replaces AP; this is kind of a secondary HP bar.
If taken HP damage exceeds 50% of remaining HP you additionally take some LP damage relative to the HP damage.
Fatal HP damage deals more LP damage; if at least 1 LP remains the death is avoided and some HP is recovered (this replaces the chance to survive fatal damage via guts stat).
Overall this should lower the risk of getting randomly one shot just from AI roulette choosing the right/wrong action while putting a limit to how long you can get by with just taking 90% damage hits and spamming full heals while ignoring (de)buffs.

Must ask: Can you recover LP? Even if the answer is no, I like the idea to actually know what guts do and plan ahead

On 16/12/2019 at 2:19 PM, praetarius5018 said:

3) The condition stat (tired/fine/great, measured on a 0-255 scale) gets a bit more involvement.
By default it only seems to go up (neither many battles, day/night changes nor death did decrease it in my tests) and it is mainly responsible for a massive crit rate (both weapon and spells) at the end.
Resting would now increase condition to 160 if it was below.
Taking damage would decrease it by 1, more if LP damage is taken.
Having a bad condition would reduce the received healing, at most -30%.

Not sure if any other events should influence condition tbh.

More details please? I know the original condition stat was there to fill space and maybe affects the ending? (don't really remember)

On 16/12/2019 at 2:19 PM, praetarius5018 said:

4) The whole shaman fusions feel a bit underdeveloped; half of them come only near the end of the game and besides stats and maybe changing the character's unique skill not much happens.
So once you unlock fusions at all you can already use all 6 shamans for fusion but until you find the real shaman the relevant stat bonus is halved, e.g. without earth shaman you'd only get +10% defense if the real bonus was +20%.
Additionally you receive a small bonus to damage dealt with attacks of the same type as a fused shaman (fire shaman boosts fire weapons and spells, dark shaman would apply that to non-elemental) and resist attacks of the element (non-elemental only -25%, other shaman -50%) but take 25% more damage from the weakness (fire shaman gives weakness to water/ice).

Love the idea. The shaman system is one that I would like to play the most with since from BOF3 onwards the masters system was installed (and abused to no end)

On 16/12/2019 at 2:19 PM, praetarius5018 said:

5) Stat growth is half fixed by character and half determined by the equipped weapon type.
To that end most weapons would be equippable by all and instead of sword/bow/etc. we'd work with weapon enhancement crystals or something.
E.g. a wind type weapon would give higher AGL growth but less defense and earth type would give more HP but lower AGL.

Sounds kind of complicated. What if everyone has access to 2-3 weapon types so everyone can excel at something while having secondary builds to fill holes in the active party

On 16/12/2019 at 2:19 PM, praetarius5018 said:

6) Bleu gets actual stat gains instead of reading from the random encounter table.

7) Permanently stat boosting items get axed; will probably replace them with some tomes that can teach spells.

These were needed regardless of all the above changes

 

This is for the GBA version or the original SNES version?

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11 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

Let's see...I havent touch BOF2 in a while but I'm always up to a new mod.

Tbh. I've never even finished BoF2, the high encounter rate just became unbearable for me,
which is why I cut it in half already.

11 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

Must ask: Can you recover LP? Even if the answer is no, I like the idea to actually know what guts do and plan ahead

with everything that recovers AP in vanilla: inns, events, some items and the Will command from unfused Nina, though that may get a different purpose, dunno.

14 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

More details please? I know the original condition stat was there to fill space and maybe affects the ending? (don't really remember)

Condition influences chances for crit/deathblow, spell crit (some guides call that well-cast since it applies to all targets of one spell and not each individual target) and counter, maybe a few other minor things as well but should be nothing with events.
The only event I know that checks for stats is the one NPC that teaches you spells at 1 HP+0 AP - speaking of, what to do with that one...

17 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

Sounds kind of complicated. What if everyone has access to 2-3 weapon types so everyone can excel at something while having secondary builds to fill holes in the active party

You've already individual base growth rates - I think what happens after that should be up to the player; do you want some more HP/LP for Nina so she doesn't die if someone breathes in her direction? or go for max WIS to play up her aoe clear abilities.
There's just some stuff you can't solve via stats; e.g. Rand doesn't really have many spells so building him like a caster won't do much unless you go out of your way to give him all the spells from events/npcs.

23 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

This is for the GBA version or the original SNES version?

SNES - there was a GBA version?

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1 hour ago, praetarius5018 said:

SNES - there was a GBA version?

Yes, they do exist but I guess it must be the same case as with the advance version of FFVI: Not much changes but somehow the games is more broken

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31 minutes ago, Holy2tack said:

This sounds super fun. BoF2 is one of the games I will play over and over. I haven't checked out your tech demo yet, so if this is answered there I'm sorry. Are you building this over vanilla or over the Ryusui translation? http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1384/

the translation - the original was very questionable and the translation actually fixed some bugs and added a run button, so less work for me :D

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The shaman system and Township are both very half-baked and need some work. If you do nothing else, unlock the shamans much earlier and do what you can to make them less mutually-exclusive.

That's off the top of my head. Swing by Discord and hash things out when you start working on this. I've got more than a few things I can probably suggest once I get to thinking on it.

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7 hours ago, BTB said:

The shaman system and Township are both very half-baked and need some work. If you do nothing else, unlock the shamans much earlier and do what you can to make them less mutually-exclusive.

Yeah, that's the plan; once you get access to the fusion hall you can use all 6 for fusions but until you find the real shaman the relevant stat bonus gets halved, like defense for the earth shaman.
Some potentially fun stuff that would be possible would be too allow different characters to share the sprite changing fusions; the game has absolutely no problem with giving e.g. Nina Katt's devil form but keeping her own base stats and spell list; the Keep command is added as well and the sprite works.

Not really sure what to do with Township - like 80% of the options are just "guide-dang it!!" level of traps.

7 hours ago, BTB said:

Swing by Discord and hash things out when you start working on this.

will do - lets see how much my productivity will suffer this time :P

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I always felt like Bow, Karn, or Patty should have been playable characters. At the very least Patty. Maybe a special battle with Bow and Karn when you reach that island would be fun. I think there was a guy over at romhacking.net that looked into it, and it was too difficult to implement another PC.

Edited by Holy2tack

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yeah, that would need a massive amount of ram to hold the character data and moving around like everything in memory.
that is more in the realm of theoretically possible.

patty is also one of those elements where something is started and then it just ends.

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So wait, if you're replacing AP with LP then are Ryu's dragon spells going to cost 3 LP. then? Also LP stuff reminds me of the SaGa games. Do you play any pen-and-paper RPGs btw?

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5 hours ago, Thirdtwin said:

So wait, if you're replacing AP with LP then are Ryu's dragon spells going to cost 3 LP. then?

That is the current scenario, yes.
Though they'll also deal a lot less damage now.
I'll probably increase the cost a bit later.

I currently have them at:
mob fight damage: POWER x (37+curLP/2) / 37
boss fights damage: POWER x (30+curLP/2) / 30
and then plug the result into the regular spell damage routine so that e.g. the adult dragons now actually have their elements work.

The adult dragons are power 40-42, kaiser has 50.
So at 0 LP you deal 50 damage with kaiser before randomness, element and whatnot else affects spell damage.

5 hours ago, Thirdtwin said:

Also LP stuff reminds me of the SaGa games.

I never played those.
And in the GB titles there was no LP afaik.

5 hours ago, Thirdtwin said:

Do you play any pen-and-paper RPGs btw?

nope. At most I played pnp derived cRPGs like Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights 2 but never the original stuff.

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demo v2

  • added timed hits; this has no visual effect besides making damage numbers yellow or red (perfect timing) instead of white
  • turn order is modified by the action used, e.g. item goes a bit sooner, spells vary depending on the exact spell used
  • added 25 new skills/spells, made rest usable in battle as a small heal
  • changed which spells are learned on level up, some are variable by equipped weapon type similar to how stat growth changes
  • changed a few weapon shops

timeddefend.gif.2e0d9513e3339d0bb49eca205a3c71a0.gif

finally a half-decent reason for the one by one handling of attacks against your party..

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Timed hits seem neat. I honestly found offensive spells kind of weak in the core game. The spell formula is mostly just fixed damage iirc and there weren't many ways to boost them. I'll be interested to see what you do with spells, especially your new ones. Also what are your plans for the architecture style choice for Township? Normal/cooking outstrips the other two very readily in terms of optimization even without stat-up items, and I don't know if making condition matter more will make the tavern style house (with the condition up drink) worth it in the long run. And the gambling one is just kind of sad. Honestly if there were some way to get all three on the same map, it would make the architectural style a purely aesthetic choice without you getting bored of always choosing normal houses to get those cooking bonuses.

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There was no real way to boost spell damage;
it was fixed damage with chance to deal +50% damage based on WIS and maybe a terrain bonus before elemental resistance and percentage magic defense.

Spell damage starts now much lower but scales with WIS and the +50% chance is based on the LUCK stat instead of WIS.

I've currently no idea what to do with township.
The 3 base styles are heavily leaning towards one being strictly better - exactly as you said, for cooking - 80%+ of the tenants are also useless,
like really... +4 def for ONE battle.
That'll be a lot of work to fix...

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I'm trying to play your tech demo, but the patched rom doesn't boot. I'm using Breath of Fire II (U).smc

Edit: Nevermind, got it. Timed hits and item priority are working.

Edited by the_E_y_Es_o_0

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On 30/01/2020 at 2:09 PM, praetarius5018 said:

would you mind saying what the issue was or what you changed to get it working?

I'm not sure. The clean rom was working fine, but everytime I patched it with the tech demo - or the retranslation - it broke and wouldn't run.

Then I found a pre-patched retranslation rom (v1.2b) and applied the tech demo on it. Then it worked fine.

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the retranslation is already included since I had to modify a few things - applying it on a retranslated rom or adding a retranslation afterwards is just asking for bugs

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Dunno if this is still in the works, but gonna chip in anyways since it'd be a damn shame if this game never got an overhaul mod.

Ah, BoF2 - probably the most bittersweet jrpg experience for me, with all that missed potential. So many great ideas that would've legit been ahead of their time had they been properly implemented, mainly the township & fusions come to mind. 

Maeson's mod rebalances some things but sadly it ends up feeling like a new coat of paint rather than anything that actually unearths the system's potential. The dragon system is still gimmicky and totally boring in how its implemented, half the content is still absurdly cryptic, recruiting tenants is a total crapshoot, and overall mechanics feel pretty limited/barebones with really only a couple relevant stats (att, def, speed, hp&ap) so there's only so much room to make characters and different fusions stand out and have their unique skills not be entirely worthless. I'd say those would be solid starting points, and it looks like some you've tackled already. 

A fantastic idea with the timed hits, way to make the most of the game's peculiarities and add engagement on the player's part.

Torn on the single-use spell system; depends on how it feels in practice. Another idea for something a little less drastic would be to just rebalance the spells by tinkering with targeting, power and elemental properties; for example, flare would do more damage than fireblast because it's single target so you have situations for both spells, and just kind of expand from that basic idea. The spell system as a whole would benefit greatly if elemental properties were made far more relevant and many more enemies were completely resistant to one element and weak to another, and mix the enemy formations so that you have more of an incentive to use the single target spells for sniping rather than just spam AoE's.

Probably what I'm most opposed to as an idea is allowing every fusion right off the bat - I think it's important to save some of the more prestigious fusions until later to maintain a sense of excitement & progression; the tried & true gist of getting the good stuff little by little. First you just get power ups from fusions, then someone changes color and you're like "oh yeah baby, getting stronger", and finally the super fusions to blow your socks off. The transformations are literally the coolest part of the entire game and it would absolutely destroy the excitement if they were handed out like candy all at once. Agreed that the shamans came in way too late in vanilla, with only 1 dungeon remaining in the whole game after you got the last shaman which is just horrendous. So a logical solution, I think, would be to let you customize more freely right off the bat, but the epic transformations came more steadily as rewards for progression. That way you wouldn't have to "nerf" them & their unique commands that much either and it would feel rewarding and worthwhile to start using them upon acquirement. I remember drooling like a dog and rushing into battles after I successfully transformed someone to see what their unique power would be so I think it ought not to be totally underwhelming(as many of them were originally). And yes, they should still be acquired earlier than in vanilla though, so you actually get to properly use all the fusions you like. Also, the less mutually-exclusive thing BTB mentioned, I'd love that. I never could form my true A-team because the shaman requirements overlapped.  

I like that there's some customization you can do via equipment or whatever. Is the guts stat "gutted" completely or does it still do something? That's one less stat to play with in terms of customization if it's removed entirely... But the general direction seems promising.

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Hapanpappa said:

Dunno if this is still in the works, but gonna chip in anyways

It's currently on hold but will be continued later.
The way enemy specials "calculate" their damage (they don't) bummed me out a bit.
They are just burried deep in their AI and set damage to a fixed value.
So I have to grind out every single enemy type and hope that I don't miss a 10% chance for a random hobo to use a special...

For extra fun I can't just exchange enemies in a single encounter since the graphics are somehow linked to the specific encounter - e.g. I can't just put a skeleton rider in a battle where normally rocks are, the game doesn't like that at all.

2 hours ago, Hapanpappa said:

Torn on the single-use spell system; depends on how it feels in practice. Another idea for something a little less drastic would be to just rebalance the spells by tinkering with targeting, power and elemental properties; for example, flare would do more damage than fireblast because it's single target so you have situations for both spells, and just kind of expand from that basic idea. The spell system as a whole would benefit greatly if elemental properties were made far more relevant and many more enemies were completely resistant to one element and weak to another, and mix the enemy formations so that you have more of an incentive to use the single target spells for sniping rather than just spam AoE's.

That would change next to nothing.
Random encounters can be up to 6 monster so aoe spells are clearly better.
Bosses rarely more than 1 so single target spells are clearly better.

Any attempt to make elements matter much more would nerf Sten and Spar since they only have 1-2 elements - and those 2 are already less appreciated characters.

It would also cut into how much freedom you would have with character/stat customization;
if you want the fire type stat growth you need to equip a fire type weapon and are in an area with mostly fire immune mobs weapon attacks are out which would suck a lot for mostly physical attackers.

Atm I'm more looking for a gimmick on what to do with excessive spell charges in random fights; when you later have your up to 30 spells 20+ will see no use in a random battle as they shouldn't last more than 3-5 turns at most.

2 hours ago, Hapanpappa said:

I like that there's some customization you can do via equipment or whatever. Is the guts stat "gutted" completely or does it still do something? That's one less stat to play with in terms of customization if it's removed entirely... But the general direction seems promising.

Guts/will still exists - it now handles magic defense and how much HP you restore on "death" while having > 0 LP.

2 hours ago, Hapanpappa said:

Probably what I'm most opposed to as an idea is allowing every fusion right off the bat - I think it's important to save some of the more prestigious fusions until later to maintain a sense of excitement & progression; the tried & true gist of getting the good stuff little by little.

I understand where you're coming from but since I can't move NPCs to different maps I only see 2 main options:
1) as late as vanilla so you barely can play around with the fusion system at all
2) all at the start when fusions unlock but with stat penalties until you find the real shamans

I prefer 2 on the grounds that it lets you actually do something.
It might also help some of the otherwise less useful characters; Jean is basically dead weight until you can give him a good fusion.

And its not like you don't gain anything as you progress through the game; increased stats from the "complete" fusion and elemental resistance might shift the preference from fusion A for just the ability to fusion B for the better survivability or something.

Also because the fusions are more "safe" now with the protection from LP I have to nerf them anyway. In vanilla 90% of the endgame mobs can just take them away with death spell whenever they feel like it.

I'm not sure I feel about "sealing" the major fusions until you get the required shamans; if I require all involved shamans we're back to the late gain of vanilla. If only one is required it is basically the same as not needing them for a good amount of the fusions. Just take fire+devil, it is either available only for the final dungeon or right of the bat.

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On the Shaman Timing. Did you see a possible way to lock some of them away and not others? Say for example, you unlock the basic shamans right off the bat, but after some story events unlock the rest? Such as expanding township. Then as you find their physical counterparts they get full strength?

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