hmsong

Hmsong's non-SoM patches

237 posts in this topic

That's an excellent idea, but I have no idea how to do that.  I know how to reduce the cast time for each spells, but I don't know how to make Speed Up decrease the cast time for the target character.  And this seems like one of those "things that don't exist in vanilla" that praetarius5018 said before, so that is even more difficult to do.  The only thing I can do is change the existing logics that's already present in the game.  And even that depends on if I already know what I'm looking for.

 

@praetarius5018

I don't know if you're still willing to help me, but if you are, would you please tell me the values for the usage items? (consumables and magic items)  I'm guessing they are 2 bytes, since there are more than 256 items, if you included equipments.  I'm intending on making a new item shop patch, but I don't even know which values goes with which items, so I can't even search for anything.

Edited by hmsong

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For example, item shops sell things like Round Drop, Pakkun Chocolate, Puipui Grass, etc.  What are the values for those?  And in the black market, they sell magic items and throw items -- I would love to know the values for those too.  What are the values for those?  Based on the PAR guide in gamefaqs.com, Bronze Sword is 2C39 (item in the storage code), but I'm not entirely sure if that's even reliable.  And it didn't have the values for the usable items either.

Well, I'm not gonna touch the equipment shop, but I wanted to change the shopping items for all item shops (similar to what I did for Secret of Mana patch in Queue's Turbo pack -- I was only able to do that, because Queue told me the shop addresses and the value codes of the items).  I don't know how hard it is to overhaul the shops, but I wanted to try -- specifically, add one magic item or throw item in all shops, to make those item shops unique.  Well, maybe just the big towns.

Of course, I'd love to know the addresses for all item shops too, if you're willing to go that far to help me.

Edited by hmsong

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I can break your hopes here;
item shops are the same list for all regular item shops except the one in the tutorial I think.

Go into a shop and open the buy ring menu, look up the value at 7E2F00 (1 byte).
Double that value and add CFE880.
That is the 2byte pointer in the ROM to the shopping list.

E.g. 7E2F00 holds 0x05 so look at CFE88A, 54 E9, so the shop data is at CFE954

Each item entry has 3 bytes.
1st item id
2nd required char code;
    weapons: 04 - Duran, 08 - Kevin, 10 - Hawk, 20 - Angela, 40 - Charlie, 80 - Lise
    armor: 05 - Duran, 09 - Kevin, 11 - Hawk, 21 - Angela, 41 - Charlie, 81 - Lise
    consumable: FE
3rd required class code: 7F - any, 1A - light only, 64 - dark only

A shop terminates if the item id is 0.
Shops with 0 or 13+ displayed items glitch the game out.

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Oh damn it.  So much for my brilliant idea.  I really thought I had something there.  Sigh.

Okay, I went to Maia, and the opened up the item shop ring.  The value of 7E2F00 is 17.  So 17 x 2 = 2E.  Add that to CFE880 is CFE8AE.  The 2 byte values at that address is 16 EE.  So I'm guessing the shop data for Maia item shop is at CFEE16?  The first 3 bytes from that are 53 FE 7F, so I'm guessing Round Drop is 53?  Do I understand correctly so far?

Then is there a way to expand the items that are being sold in the regular shops?  I want to at least add Dreamsee Herb.  And/or Item Seed.

 

Edited by hmsong

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Sorry, I just editted my reply.  The question was, is there a way to expand the items for the regular shop?  If spaces are necessary, then I have no problem with using tutorial shops as regular shops.  Okay, I think I got that figured out.  My god, the weapon/armor shop is ridiculous.  Good thing I'm not gonna mess with that craziness.

Also, for the 3rd byte for the item entry in the shop, what is 7E?  Some of the entries have 7E for the 3rd byte.

Now, I realize that the seeds are way too cheap.  Do you know which addresses adjust the price for the seeds?

Edited by hmsong

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dunno, those 3rd bytes are not bit masks to my understanding. maybe 7e is any promoted?

price index:
Item seed D1ABDF
Mysterious seed D1ABF0
Fly Item seed D1AC01
Magic seed D1AC12
??? seed D1AC23
W/A Seed D1AC34

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But literally ALL items.
This should be the list all of the indeces go to so if you change the price for one "item" there you mess up prices of probably 2-10 more items.

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Outstanding.  I can work with that.  Thanks.

Okay, that's weird.  I took a look at the addresses, and here's what:

  • Item Seed (D1ABDF): 0A 00
  • Mysterious Seed (D1ABF0): 1B 00
  • Flying Seed (D1AC01): 0A 00
  • Magic Seed (D1AC12): 11 00

The buying price for the items are:

  • Item Seed: 5 Luc
  • Mysterious Seed: 40 Luc
  • Flying Seed: 5 Luc
  • Magic Seed: 18 Luc

Hmm.  I don't see any pattern here.  For Item Seed and Flying Seed, I just divide the hex number by 2, but the other two are all wrong.  What am I missing?

Edited by hmsong

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You know, I checked out your patches.  They're quite decent.  Based on the compatibility (and your comment about the failed Freeze Breath), I'm guessing you specifically created them for the official Trials of Mana (and the fan translation compatibility is just a side effect).  You should probably say that in the document, just so people know why you created your patches in the first place.

I genuinely mean no offense (I'm so sorry if I offend you in what I'm about to say), but Sin of Mana is better than your patch in pretty much every single way.  In fact, I'm sure you realize it too.  The only thing your patch has over Sin of Mana is its compatibility towards Trials of Mana.  You should pitch your patch in that direction.  Don't get me wrong though.  I'm very grateful to you, because I only found about Sin of Mana from your patch document.  I'm just stating my opinion on how to sell your product.

Btw, maybe you should have Rainbow Dust also cause Trans Shape on all your allies (your v1.2 has only Life Boost).  Life Boost by itself is kinda boring and useless, since it wears itself out during the battle (I don't think Stat Ups or Saber wears off in vanilla until the battle is over).  Yes yes, Trans Shape wears out too, but it has cool effect (very useless in vanilla, due to how quickly it wears out).  Also, speaking of Trans Shape, 5 MP for that spell is just absurdly high.  It wears out so quickly, hence useless.  So unless you can change its duration time (similar to what Sin of Mana did), I suggest you to reduce its cost.

I could have PMed you on RHDN, but I felt that maybe others share my opinion.

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8 hours ago, hmsong said:

What am I missing?

These are as mentioned price indeces not the prices directly.
Basically like index of an array.
They should refer to the list at D1D3E3-D1D62B.

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10 hours ago, Soul Knight said:

I genuinely mean no offense (I'm so sorry if I offend you in what I'm about to say), but Sin of Mana is better than your patch in pretty much every single way.

The thing is, not everyone wants harder difficulty, death penalty, BS boss gimmicks that you have to guess out of nowhere (such as Dolan and Mispolm), not to mention Sin of Mana is way more tedious and grindy than the original game, and SoM 2.0 seems to be becoming even more tedious with its TP resource system. So I can totally understand why some people would just want class and ability rebalances without all the weird extra features and extra difficulty.

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@Soul Knight

Actually, when I first started making SD3 patches, I didn't even know about the existence of Trials of Mana.  I simply created the balance patch, because I wanted to.  I wasn't satisfied with how the vanilla's balance was, so I wanted to balance it.  But of course, I didn't know anything about which address contained what, so I couldn't even start.  Even my hacking skills were VERY limited (it still is), so I was completely lost.  Then I learned about the existence of Sin of Mana.  I asked Praetarius5018 about where to edit what and so on, and he told me exactly where and how.  So I created a half-assed patch (for the sake of creating, and not for public release).  Then I played Sin of Mana, and I realized how pointless my patch was, so I stopped working on it (and due to my real-life issues at the time).  After my issues were dealt with and after reading through the discussion board, I realized the existence of Trials of Mana, and that it had significantly better translation.  So I picked up a rom for that to see if I can edit anything there.  And surprise surprise, many things were at the same location as the old J rom.  So I started working on the patch again, which worked on both the old SD3 and the new ToM.

No offense taken.  And I'm glad you found your way to Sin of Mana (that's why I put the link in my document).  I did say in my document that any suggestion is welcome.  And yes, I'm aware that my patch will never be as good as Sin of Mana, and as you said, my patch will most likely be for people who play ToM.  But I already said in my document that my patches are compatible with ToM.  I don't think I need to advertise any more than that.  It's not like I'm competing or trying to make money.  I just wanted to throw my patch into the world, that's all (for my my own ego).  Ultimately, I guess I just wanted to be a part of the hacker community who put out the "improvement" hacks, just so other people can appreciate the original game more.  And partly, I enjoyed many hacks from RHDN, and I wanted to return the favor.

Your suggestion on Rainbow Dust is actually doable.  Had you suggested to add Counter Magic or Aura Wave or something, I would not be able to, because I wouldn't know how.  But TransShape can be combined with Life Boost.  Thanks for the suggestion.  I shall add that.

As for your request to extend the duration for TransShape, I honestly don't know how to do that.  I didn't even test TransShape much, but after what you said, I tried TransShape, and oh my -- it really has short duration.  According to SoM document, the vanilla behavior is [25 - Luck].  That is indeed terrible (what were the devs thinking?).  I shall inquire Praetarius5018 if it's something that can be fixed easily (and if it's doable, then obtain permission to use the fix in my balance patch).

Posting your thoughts here works great.  In fact, I prefer it, since I can edit my reply.  And other people can respond too.  As long as the comments are civil, I welcome all opinions, even criticism.  That's how I make improvements after all.

 

@Praetarius5018

Ohhhh, so that's what you meant.  I didn't really understand, because the addresses were different, and I just figured it was a typo or something.  You're right.  I should indeed adjust the price by pointing to different index, rather than change the price directly.  If I adjusted the price directly, it would probably affect other items too.  Thank you.

Also, a question.  Do Stat Up/Downs, Saber, and Counter Magic have time limit?  I know Life Up/Down has time limit, but I couldn't tell if other buffs have time limits (or in Counter Magic's case, # of times of reflection).

Thanks to Soul Knight, I realized that vanilla TransShape is really crappy.  You obviously made the fix for Sin of Mana, but could you tell me how to make the TransShape have your logic, instead of the vanilla logic?  I would love to put that in my balance patch (with your permission, of course).  Is there some sort of quick fix for that?  Or is this one of those, "gotta expand the codes, and therefore incompatible with Trials of Mana" thing?

 

38 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

The thing is, not everyone wants harder difficulty, death penalty, BS boss gimmicks that you have to guess out of nowhere (such as Dolan and Mispolm), not to mention Sin of Mana is way more tedious and grindy than the original game, and SoM 2.0 seems to be becoming even more tedious with its TP resource system. So I can totally understand why some people would just want class and ability rebalances without all the weird extra features and extra difficulty.

Thank you.  I'm glad that people enjoy my patches.

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1 hour ago, hmsong said:

Thank you.  I'm glad that people enjoy my patches.

To be honest, I probably won't start a new playthrough of the SNES version any time soon. However, I'm interested in playing the 3D remake of Trials of Mana for Steam. There is already a difficulty rebalance mod that makes enemies harder, supposedly creating a much more satisfying game, and if you could additionally create a class rebalance mod, I'd definitely be interested in trying it out. I especially liked your idea of making Vanadis and Dragon Master more competitive with Star Lancer and Fenrir Knight, so it would be great if you could implement these changes on the 3D remake as well. I'm not sure how hard the game is to edit, but considering there's already several mods out after the game has been out for 3.5 weeks, I suppose the game is easier to edit than the SNES version.

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5 hours ago, Serafie1999AD said:

BS boss gimmicks that you have to guess out of nowhere (such as Dolan and Mispolm)

I take offense at that one.

5 hours ago, hmsong said:

Also, a question.  Do Stat Up/Downs, Saber, and Counter Magic have time limit?  I know Life Up/Down has time limit, but I couldn't tell if other buffs have time limits (or in Counter Magic's case, # of times of reflection).

None of them do, HP Up doesn't have one either.
Are you ready for what actually happens?
Yes? Good.
Healing cancels the HP Up buff (flag) but only healing a second time forces a recalculation of your maxHP.

5 hours ago, hmsong said:

Thanks to Soul Knight, I realized that vanilla TransShape is really crappy.  You obviously made the fix for Sin of Mana, but could you tell me how to make the TransShape have your logic, instead of the vanilla logic?  I would love to put that in my balance patch (with your permission, of course).  Is there some sort of quick fix for that?  Or is this one of those, "gotta expand the codes, and therefore incompatible with Trials of Mana" thing?

There is a reason why they made it that way.
The timer calculation is shared between TransShape and sleep status.

If you want to remove the -Luck part change D0/D8D8 to EAEA
D0/D8D3 holds the base duration.

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Quote

None of them do, HP Up doesn't have one either.
Are you ready for what actually happens?
Yes? Good.
Healing cancels the HP Up buff (flag) but only healing a second time forces a recalculation of your maxHP.

Are you serious?  Jeez.  That's... umm... I'm at loss for words.  I assume Stardust Herb/Anti-Magic dispels that though, right?  It's not some error where the devs misplaced the dispel effect on healing, right?  And I assume healing (2nd time) doesn't affect other Stat Up/Downs or Sabers, right?

Is there a quick fix for that one?

Quote

There is a reason why they made it that way.
The timer calculation is shared between TransShape and sleep status.

If you want to remove the -Luck part change D0/D8D8 to EAEA
D0/D8D3 holds the base duration.

Oh damn.  I thought Spirit is the one that dealt with status effect recovery.  Oh well.

May I please use the TransShape fix on my balance patch?  Of course, it will not be a stand-alone, and I will say that the fix was your work.

Edited by hmsong

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8 hours ago, hmsong said:

Are you serious?  Jeez.  That's... umm... I'm at loss for words.  I assume Stardust Herb/Anti-Magic dispels that though, right?  It's not some error where the devs misplaced the dispel effect on healing, right?  And I assume healing (2nd time) doesn't affect other Stat Up/Downs or Sabers, right?

If I remember right it removes all of HP/MP up/down, spell cost double/half and transshape.

No simple fix.

8 hours ago, hmsong said:

Oh damn.  I thought Spirit is the one that dealt with status effect recovery.  Oh well.

May I please use the TransShape fix on my balance patch?  Of course, it will not be a stand-alone, and I will say that the fix was your work.

Yes, it is indeed luck, the stat half broken and half detrimental to you.

Go ahead.

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Hmsong, I'm glad what I said didn't offend you.  And you're welcome for the suggestions.

I see praetarius is helping you a lot.  If I had the skills to make my own hack, I would have.  Okay, that's a big fat lie.  I'm too lazy to make a hack, even if I had the skills.  So I appreciate people like you.

And while at it, why not include the agility and critical fix in your patch?  It'll help with spells not working properly (ex: Energy Ball).  Well, assuming there is a "quick fix" that praetarius is willing to help you with.

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@praetarius5018

In vanilla, all seeds (Item Seed, Magic Seed, etc) heal all your character by 50HP.  Is there a way to change that?  Maybe change the healing amount to 1HP?  I want to include Item Seed in the regular item shops, but its Heal-Everyone-By-50HP effect would make it too powerful in the beginning of the game.  If I can't change the healing amount, then is there a way to target only one character, instead of all characters?

 

@Soul Knight

My balance hack is specifically for balancing, not bug fix.  I'm only including the TransShape fix, because of how bad vanilla TransShape is (which affects the balance of Ninja Master).  And it's the same for No Skill Counter -- without it, Angela is useless, except Rune Maiden (and that I cannot release it as stand-alone).

Agility and Critical don't play any part in balancing (in terms of class balancing).  As for Agility, it already plays a functioning role in the game -- power of throw weapons (and some skills).  True, it's not the most useful stat, but I intend on bettering that slightly by making Dart available in every single item shops (I will eventually release a patch that tweaks the item shop items).

And as for critical hits... if praetarius5018 is right about how critical hits throw off the balance in the game, then that's all the more reason to AVOID making critical hits exist in the game.  And I definitely don't want to see Hawkeye's non-buffed melee attacks having 20+% critical hit rate (it can be as high as 24%!!).  He's powerful enough as it is.  No need to make him even more powerful.  If anything, I want to make everyone's melee attacks less powerful (since it dominates most of the battle).

I made a separate Energy Ball patch (buffs all stats), specifically because criticals don't play any part in the game.

5 hours ago, Soul Knight said:

Well, assuming there is a "quick fix" that praetarius is willing to help you with.

Okay, this needs to be said.  Please don't ask on my behalf.  If you want to know, then you're free to ask him yourself, but what you said just now seemed like you were asking on my behalf.  That's just wrong, and I think you know that too.  Don't do that again.  If you really must say that, then please PM me directly, instead of posting that.

Edited by hmsong

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7 hours ago, hmsong said:

@praetarius5018

In vanilla, all seeds (Item Seed, Magic Seed, etc) heal all your character by 50HP.  Is there a way to change that?  Maybe change the healing amount to 1HP?  I want to include Item Seed in the regular item shops, but its Heal-Everyone-By-50HP effect would make it too powerful in the beginning of the game.  If I can't change the healing amount, then is there a way to target only one character, instead of all characters?

Items are the same as spells. In case of regular item seeds they are spell id 0x119, amount healed should then be at D1ABE6.

7 hours ago, hmsong said:

And as for critical hits... if praetarius5018 is right about how critical hits throw off the balance in the game, then that's all the more reason to AVOID making critical hits exist in the game.

If you don't believe me change D0CAE1 to EAEA and see every attack crit.
The math is quite simple, regular damage is atk-def.
Crit damage is (1.5x atk) - def, same as Lv1 techs.

Changing that is ofc. much more involved.

7 hours ago, hmsong said:

If anything, I want to make everyone's melee attacks less powerful (since it dominates most of the battle).

You'll have to get down to asm proper for that.

The game is programmed around a multiplier to atk before def mentality which makes every bonus super strong when atk is barely above def.

30 atk, 20 def, 33% power up? 10 -> 20 damage
250 atk atk, 240 def, same buff? 10 -> 92 damage, 820% extra

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14 hours ago, hmsong said:

Okay, this needs to be said.  Please don't ask on my behalf.  If you want to know, then you're free to ask him yourself, but what you said just now seemed like you were asking on my behalf.  That's just wrong, and I think you know that too.  Don't do that again.  If you really must say that, then please PM me directly, instead of posting that.

Now that I look back at what I said, you're right.  I can see why you read it that way.  I didn't mean to do that.  That was weird of me.  Sorry about that.  Won't happen again.

Okay, I get why you don't want critical hits.  Personally, I don't find criticals to be such a big deal, but I never played the "bug fix" version.  I only played the original and SoM.  And I'm personally very much for "make your characters OP, and you get to destroy all your enemies while laughing like a maniac, and you get to experiment different ways to rip your enemies apart" thing.  It's one of the main reasons why I loved Castlevania SotN so much.  This game is all about "trying new methods" to kill your enemies (character, class).  I don't see why you'd take away the means to destroy your enemies.

But you should still try to make agility work, because vanilla Speed Up/Down are literally useless spells, which will affect the balance of whichever class that has those spells (that technically affects the balance in some way).  I know it says that Acc/Eva changes, but we already know that acc/eva don't work.  Besides, since you want to make melee attacks less powerful, having agility work would be good, since it'll make melee attacks miss from time to time (the vanilla game makes melee attacks have 100% accuracy or something).  And it'll make shields actually do something productive, which is a part of balance of Duran's L classes.

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@praetarius5018

Ohh, awesome.  Now, I can implement Item Seed to the shop (just changed 32 to 01).  Thanks.

You were right.  Criticals are... more than what I'd bargain (not that I doubted what you said).  I wouldn't mind implementing Criticals if the frequencies were significantly less (max 10%), but 20+% by the end of the game is just too much.  And I'm not going to lower the cap on Luck stat, since that affects the traps in the chest.  And normal enemies doing criticals on you was... less than likable (my allies died way too quickly).  Hell, I can already tell that getting mobbed by moderate normal enemies would end up killing you (which is just ridiculous).

Btw, you said that TransShape and Sleep SE share the same duration time.  What about Freeze and Petrify?  Does that share that same code?  Or is it different code?

Sigh.  I'm sorry to ask you again, but could please you help me to make Acc/Eva work?  Soul Knight had me convinced.  I'm sure it's more complicated than anything I've done before, but if it's doable, then I'd like to try as much as I can.

 

@Soul Knight

Wow, you make a compelling argument about Agility.  I forgot about Speed Up/Down spells, despite Serafie1999AD said above that Speed Up/Down not working properly (and therefore literally useless).  Boy, my mind is wondering off a lot these days.  And you're right.  Enabling Acc/Eva probably would make melee attacks weaker (less frequency of hits), which is in line with what I want.  But that probably applies to enemies too.  I think someone somewhere said that most normal monsters don't have any accuracy, and therefore would make high EVA characters (such as Duran with shield) immune to normal attacks.  Well, I can just lower the EVA bonus from all shields to fix that.  But I think someone said that Jewel Eater and Gorva has very high EVA, which would make them impossible to hit with the normal attacks (softlock, unless you have Angela or some ways to attack them with screen freezing skills).

This is something I'll have to test and see.  Even if AGI works properly, there are probably some additional "corrections" that need to be done.  I think praetarius5018 mentioned that somewhere (I think that was from an older board).  This is going to be a tough work, but it'll be worth it, since it'll have Speed Up/Down actually do something, and it'll make Shield actually do something.  Unless it's something beyond my ability.

In any case, thank you for bringing that up.  I can't guarantee that I can implement ACC/EVA though, whether due to lack of skills or impracticality (if it makes it impossible to damage some bosses, then I can't use it -- it'll soft lock the game).

As for the Criticals, I tried what praetarius5018 said, and oh boy.  That makes everything ridiculous.  Christ.  Critical hits do too high damage.  And you take just as high damage (normal enemies were doing 150+ per hit in the final dungeon).  Although I can see why some people would like that (assuming it is default crit, and not "crit every hit"), I don't like it.  If people want that, then they can just use the old bug fix patch on top of my patch.  The point is, I have no intention of making criticals exist.  Still, thanks for the suggestion -- you made a valid argument, but I have decided not to implement that.

 

Edited by hmsong

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7 hours ago, hmsong said:

You were right.  Criticals are... more than what I'd bargain (not that I doubted what you said).  I wouldn't mind implementing Criticals if the frequencies were significantly less (max 10%), but 20+% by the end of the game is just too much.

I mean technically you could change it to a fixed rate or change the luck-in-X rate from 100 to say 255.
And the +50% damage could be turned into +25%, that would be a one-byte change.
The major issue (for you) would be actually loading the luck value for the crit rate instead of the constant 0. THat would need some bytes of unused space somewhere.

7 hours ago, hmsong said:

Btw, you said that TransShape and Sleep SE share the same duration time.  What about Freeze and Petrify?  Does that share that same code?  Or is it different code?

Petrify doesn't wear off before battle end. Freeze is probably the same as sleep, didn't check that one.

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