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Brave New World 1.8.5 is now available!

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Download Brave New World Here

(New to Brave New World? Want to know what it's all about? Check out the Readme here or our list of Frequently Asked Questions.)

(NOTE: for current bugs in 1.8.5, see this post for fixes)

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, Mishrak, 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.

What's new in 1.8.5:

(See below post)

What's new in 1.8.4:

Spoiler

 • Fixed a major bug introduced in 1.8.2 that prevented esper equip bonuses from functioning

 • Corrected the spelling of two enemy names (Trillium and Djinn)


What's new in 1.8.3:

Spoiler

 • Fixed a minor bug in the config menu where window colors would not reset to default if A was pressed while on the "B" slider

 • The Clean New World patch now properly updates the version displayed in the config menu


What's new in 1.8.2:

Spoiler

 • Fixed a major bug from in the previous version that caused the piranha fight to be unwinnable

 • Fixed a bug where Phantom was only giving +4 M.Block instead of +10


What's new in 1.8.1:

Spoiler

 • Fixed a bug in the config menu where commands could not be rearranged in the "short" battle menu and the multiple controller option could not be set up at all

 • Removed an exploit where Rizopas could be skipped by killing Piranhas with a counter-attack

 • Corrected a minor error in the BNWCP

 • Added a note about RetroArch to the known issues section


What's new in 1.8.0:

Spoiler

 • Added a new hack that allows espers to provide on-equip bonuses just as equipment would

 • Added a new hack that greatly improves the display of positive status effects on your party in battle and allows Scan to report all status effects on enemies (in addition to showing their weaknesses)

 • Corrected an overflow error in the physical damage formula where characters who dealt high amounts of physical damage were hitting for about 1,300~2,600 more than they were supposed to

 • Slowed down high-level character growth by adding a third experience "hump" after level 30, pulling the "soft" cap back from 40 to the late 30's (expected end-game levels are mid 30's),

 • Per the above, also nerfed one of the game's more notorious grinding spots

 • Phoenix Tears now revive characters to 3/4 of their max HP (instead of 1/2)

 • Set Crusader's stat bonus to Speed+1/Stamina+1 (instead of Vigor+1/Speed+1)

 • Added the "randomly counters" property to the Zantetsuken

 • Removed the Atma Weapon's HP bonus and set the Omega Weapon's to HP/MP (instead of just HP)

 • Removed the Gungnir's HP boost and slightly boosted the Longinus's battle power (150 -> 160)

 • The Excalibur now has a unique appearance (it was previously identical to the Apocalypse)

 • Lowered the defense on the Mythril Kite (20/20 -> 15/15) so that it isn't just an Iron Shield without the speed penalty; also renamed it to "Targe" to distinguish it from heavy shields (kites are *big*)

 • The "protect near-death allies" effect on some relics should no longer activate when certain statuses are present or if the attack originated from an ally (this effectively fixes the "brush cover" bug)

 • Fixed a bug where using Dice with a Black Belt would cause three dice to be thrown instead of two

 • Fixed the incorrect stats on the Circlet (now set to Mag+5/Stam+3 instead of Stam+5/Mag+3)

 • Added a hack to allow Gogo to use MP for rod crits without needing Magic or Lore set as commands

 • Modified the "Blind Accuracy" hack to allow blindness to affect the Jump command

 • Enemy "special" attacks which inflict instant death no longer ignore death immunity

 • Fixed a bug where the Ice Rabbit dance step was not healing HP like it's supposed to

 • Made significant changes to the enemy scripts for Wrexsoul, the Battle on the Bridge, and the final tower of bosses (excluding Kefka)

 • Edited Vargas's battle script to make the Blitz execution more obvious/less punishing to new players

 • Removed an exploit where Rizopas could be skipped by killing Piranhas with a counter-attack

 • Chadarnook no longer absorbs Fire or Bolt damage

 • Zone Eater is now immune to the bserk status

 • Pugs should now fight back in the Colosseum

 • Fixed a broken animation in Wrexsoul's intro

 • Swapped the palettes of the Starlight and Moonlight animations

 • Removed the Mythril Dirk that was mistakenly left up for sale at Figaro Castle

 • Symbols no longer appear to compare equipment being purchased to what you already have equipped

 • The "hidden" screen which shows everyone's equipment now also displays equipped espers

 • Removed the small overlay which identifies the skill sub-menus (i.e. Espers, Spells, Bushido...) and displays the MP cost of a chosen spell; spell costs are now visible by default in the main menu panel

 • Removed the non-functional "Optimize" command from the equip menu and the also non-functional battle speed slider from the config menu

 • Condensed the list of known rages in the skills menu (only the first 64 slots are used now)

 • Modified the text for EL bonuses in the menu to read "EL Bonus" instead of "At Level Up"

 • Evade and mblock are no longer shown as percentages in the menu (since they are out of 128, not 100)

 • Some minor dialogue edits (along with a few other small changes not worth mentioning)


(Oh, and if liking things on Facebook is your bag, baby, then by all means go nuts.) 

Edited by BTB

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Here's the official changelog and documentation for 1.8.5 (NOW AVAILABLE!):

 • Added several minor menu hacks to show the names of blitzes in the menu screen, correct a display bug for max HP/MP in the party creation screen, and allow easy switching between the equip and relic
   menus by pressing the "Y" button

 • Made the Colosseum function more like a trading post by nerfing the only two opponents of any real difficulty (Siegfried and WEAPON) and changed many trades to improve end-game equipment availability;
    also improved the readability of the "prize" menu by marking all invalid trades with dashes

 • Overhauled enemy status resistances (again) and removed the "immunity to fractional damage" flag from all randomly-occurring enemies previously flagged as minibosses (i.e. Dante/Virgil);
    also rewrote the scripts for two bosses (Phunbaba and the Battle on the Bridge) impacted by this overhaul

 • Corrected an oversight in Final Kefka's script that allowed him to potentially use two devastating party-wide attacks in quick succession; also lowered the inappropriately-high damage dealt by
    one portion of the first tier of the final tower of bosses

 • Lowered the defense/m.def of several end-game bosses to shorten the length of the fights, as well as to reduce the dearth of high-defense enemies in the late game which was causing an
   over-emphasis on defense-ignoring attacks (and thus weakening character builds that don't rely on them)

 • Edited the battle scripts of several early-game enemies to give players more/better opportunities to learn how counter-attacks work in the mod (this lesson was previously confined mostly to Mt. Koltz)

 • Addressed the tendency of players to overlevel while cash-grinding in the early game by lowering exp. gains from certain enemies and increasing the availability of GP (both from enemies and from chests)

 • Swapped Cyan's and Sabin's base magic power (NOTE: this change requires a restart or save editing)

 • Swapped the summons on Odin and Crusader (thus making Odin a stamina-based attack)

 • The Siren summon now sets Bserk on all enemies (instead of dealing MP damage)

 • The Mute spell now targets all enemies (instead of only one)

 • Halved the power of the Osmose spell

 • Raised the power of the Bio and Storm spells

 • Raised the power of the Dispatch bushido

 • The Fire Dance blitz no longer ignores defense

 • The Aurabolt blitz now sets blind

 • Desperation attacks now set Slow in addition to Sap

 • Changed Discord back to being a lore (replacing Grav Bomb)

 • Swapped the 7/16 (Moonlight) and 5/16 (Specter) steps on the Love Sonata dance

 • The Specter dance step now sets Muddle and Mute as advertised (it was only setting Muddle before)

 • Changed the attacks on several rages, most notably the ones with healing moves:

        Adamiantite     2/3 attack swapped with 1/3 (Cyclonic)
        Allosaurus       2/3 attack swapped with 1/3 (Attack 3x)
        Chickenlip       2/3 attack changed to Net
        Gargoyle         2/3 attack changed to Holy Wind (was 1/3); 1/3 attack changed to Quake
        Griffin              2/3 attack changed to Razor Leaf; 1/3 attack changed to Harvester (was 2/3)
        Kudzu             1/3 attack changed to Bio
        Mesosaur        2/3 attack swapped with 1/3 (Sun Bath)
        Peeper            2/3 attack swapped with 1/3 (Rock)
        Rhinotaur        2/3 attack swapped with 1/3 (Cure 2); raised 1/3 attack bonus to 3x damage
        Spike               2/3 attack changed to Lode Stone; raised 1/3 attack bonus to 3x damage
        Tumbleweed   2/3 attack swapped with 1/3 (Harvester)

 • Overhauled the stat boosts on end-game swords to focus on the store-bought ones, Apocalypse/Illumina, and Zantetsuken for this purpose while specifically excluding the Excalibur and Atma/Omega Weapon

 • Raised the power of all spears except for Gungnir, which is now the second-strongest spear (Longinus is now the strongest) but now has a +50% HP bonus (and is the "only" item in the mod to offer it)

 • Reworked Shadow's knives to be more desirable for fighting by adding the "X-Fight" property to the Kagenui and more desirable as stat sticks by adding stamina boosts to them

 • Lowered the price of Shadow's weakest buyable knife (now renamed to Kunai) to promote it as an ideal single-target damage alternative to Shuriken (which are also cheaper now)

 • Changed Stormfang's random cast to Bolt so that the "vigor" claws now all cast direct damage spells

 • The random cast on the Quartrstaff will now multi-target (only) on MP-fueled critical hits, while the Doomstick will cast X-Zone instead of Doom (again, only on attacks that use MP for a critical hit)

 • Removed the evasion/magic evasion boosts from WoB rods and all brushes and added physical evasion to the Punisher (it now offers both).

 • The Dragoon Seal and Radiant Gown now increase the random spellcast rate of swords and paintbrushes, respectively; the Radiant Gown in turn no longer boosts MP or blocks fire damage

 • Raised the evasion/magic evasion of the Royal Jacket and Radiant Gown (respectively)

 • Lowered the stat boosts on the Moogle Hide and the elemental shields

 • Lowered the speed penalties on the Snow Muffler and Kusarigama

 • Fixed a bug with Setzer's (not fixed) Dice where three would be thrown if they were held in the left hand with another weapon or nothing in the right hand

 • Fixed a bug where the Ragnarok equip bonus was not working properly

 • Equipping Seraph now blocks Zombie as every other form of instant death protection does

 • The Tentacles (Figaro basement boss) are now listed in the correct order in the battle screen

 • It should no longer be possible to be blinded during the "Save Terra from the Guards!" sequence

 • Made several dialogue changes/additions, primarily in the form of advice to the player

 • Several other minor/insignificant changes

---

http://btb2.free.fr/ff6/Readme.txt
http://btb2.free.fr/ff6/Printme.xls
http://btb2.free.fr/ff6/Unlockme.rar
http://btb2.free.fr/ff6/BNWCP.xls 

Edited by BTB

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On 5/8/2017 at 9:13 PM, Lockirby2 said:

Woah, where's the 300 pages of discussion about the stat bonuses on the Zantetsuken?

I think you know what we have to do now.

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1 hour ago, Synchysi said:

I think you know what we have to do now.

I think its time to introduce the new feature:  Quad wielding.  Also auto-morph for every character that can use it on the Zantetsuken.  Lastly, please bring back the Imp set.

 

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Hey guys, Bahamut is my favourite Esper.  Do you mind if we allow him to be equipped on everybody now?  We can rebalance Flare a bit to make it a bit weaker.  Then we just need to weaken Holy to maintain their duality, buff Magic Celes to account for this weakness, weaken Cure 2 because now it's OP on Magic Celes, lower the HP of undead enemies to make sure Cure 2 is still effective coming from the other characters, make Sabin's Fire Dance weaker to avoid him destroying Cave of the Sealed Gate, give Sabin more offensive magic to give him a magical option against enemies that Fire Dance doesn't hit weaknesses on, and...

...

take all of Shadow's Espers away to make sure buffing Throw isn't too OP, and

...

make a new Relic for Strago that turns his Ice spells into Fire Spells because we removed Raze, and

...

and finally, give the Zantetsuken an extra 10 Evade to make everything perfect.

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Is it worth waiting for 1.8.5 if it's super difficult for me to patch the files to reinstall them on my game medium?  If it's days or a week and not months I'd rather just wait.  <3

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At this point I would say to go ahead and wait. The 4th anniversary of BNW's release is coming up soon and I'm really hoping to have 1.8.5 out before then.

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Thanks!  What's the anniversary date?  I'm super happy to have found this romhack for my favorite childhood game!

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So, just an update... 1.8.5 is currently going through some testing. We're looking at a proper release tomorrow if everything checks out.

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So, we were lucky enough that my good friend Leadbeer was starting up a new run just as we got the beta release created and he plans on blasting through the game over the next couple of days, so we're going to play this one safe and wait for him to finish and make sure there aren't any... unexpected surprises waiting for us.

In the meantime, feel free to stop by his stream!

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1.8.5 is up!

Thanks for your patience, everybody.

Edited by BTB

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So one thing I'm seeing with the Relic/Equip y button hack: If you first load the Relic menu, and then switch to the Equip menu, the game doesn't show the updated stats preview for the helmet and armour slots. It shows it for the hand slots though.

Don't know if this is known already or not.

It doesn't happen if you start from the Equip menu, only if you start from the Relic.

My guess is that this has to do with the relic menu's two slots, versus the Equip menu's 4.

 

UPDATE:

Figured out more on the Relic -> Equip preview bug.  The game is getting confused about the 2 hands slots, and 2 relic slots.  The preview is confusing the Right hand with the 1st relic, and the left hand with the 2nd relic.  If you Start in the Relic menu, and switch to the Equip; the stat preview for the hands slots assumes you're replacing the equipment in the corresponding relic slot.  And if you start from Equip, and switch to Relic, the preview thinks you're replacing the equipment in the corresponding hands slot.  Screenshots in the spoilers.

Spoiler

 

Final Fantasy III (n, 1.8.5)000.png

Final Fantasy III (n, 1.8.5)001.png

Final Fantasy III (n, 1.8.5)002.png

Final Fantasy III (n, 1.8.5)003.png

 

 

Edited by Satarack

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Weird. I'll toss it onto the 1.8.6 pile along with a potential Atma/Omega Weapon overflow fix.

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