praetarius5018

Seiken Densetsu 3 Sin of Mana - Discussion

971 posts in this topic

I had no idea there were so many glitches in the original game.  No wonder it wasn't ported outside Japan.  I haven't played Trials of Mana (since that's incompatible with Sin of Mana, which has the awesome Run and none of that bullcrap enemy counter spell), but did it fix any of the glitches that existed in the original game?

Edited by Soul Knight

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Not sure why it happens more frequent now. I am in dark castle currently the part where tou fight the full metal hugger and I can't seem to manage to get past Genova and to the next statue without the game just freezing or glitching, this is like the third time trying. The screen glitched completely when I fought Jagan but at least the save was near, but that portion of Dark Castle seems impossible due to the game.

No wonder the original game never came outside Japan. Such a bug-fest.

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7 minutes ago, smileless said:

No wonder the original game never came outside Japan. Such a bug-fest.

That's funny. I've beat the game 12 times now, 9 times with the vanilla game, 3 times with this mod. I've never had crashes with the vanilla game. For this mod, most crashes I've had were due to the casting times bugging out and freezing the game, but they were in older versions, and a lot has happened after that to make the game more stable. Back then, I started to use save states after every battle on this mod just in case the game would crash. Nowadays, it's not really necessary, but I still do it just in case, and out of habit. Maybe it's your cartridge, ROM or emulator?

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17 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

That's funny. I've beat the game 12 times now, 9 times with the vanilla game, 3 times with this mod. I've never had crashes with the vanilla game. For this mod, most crashes I've had were due to the casting times bugging out and freezing the game, but they were in older versions, and a lot has happened after that to make the game more stable. Back then, I started to use save states after every battle on this mod just in case the game would crash. Nowadays, it's not really necessary, but I still do it just in case, and out of habit. Maybe it's your cartridge, ROM or emulator?

The original game crashed to me before too at thr corridor of wind when going back and forth to that area, was using zsnes back then, but that was a long time ago.

You are right tho, I should find a different ROM and see if it happens again, I have always used Snes9x, not sure which one is at fault but it's worth testing.

Edited by smileless

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Please also check if there is a newer version of Snes9x then.
We've had otherwise not reproducable issues with an older version of it in the past.

My "achievements" of vanilla SD3 crashes are mostly softlocks.
With some glitches it is possible to skip the weapon cooldown, with both Hawk&Kevin doing that at the same time to an extreme I once deleted a boss AI - which is kinda bad if boss death is tied to AI giving its ok.
Landumber went off screen once after his hypercanon and never came back.
Lightgazer similarly didn't feel like warping back in once.

I once read an article that claimed SD3 couldn't go oversees because the game had a glitch with repeated spell casting that could result in DKC2 castle crash level of game destruction on real hardware.
Though if that was true we'd have a lot harsher issues than now. Or the cast time work around keeps that one in check, who knows.

Still 90% less bugs than current day AAA releases *cough*.

1 hour ago, Serafie1999AD said:

For this mod, most crashes I've had were due to the casting times bugging out and freezing the game, but they were in older versions

Boy did I screw stuff up back then, huh..
Tbh, if I had to address cast time now with what I know of this game I'd go the opposite way,
set casttime to minimum and instead drive up MP cost and/or start you at 0 MP each screen.

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Tbh, if I had to address cast time now with what I know of this game I'd go the opposite way,
set casttime to minimum and instead drive up MP cost and/or start you at 0 MP each screen.

Lol.  Driving up the MP is fine, but starting you at 0 MP each screen?  I advise against that.  That would probably make most skills useless.  And very frustrating.

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Not to mention it would make the game impossible to beat: the beginning of the battles is the toughest part, and you'll need to set up Protect Up, Power Down and possibly some other buffs/debuffs too, or the enemies will one-shoot your characters. I don't mind the enemy spells being strong, but their physical attacks are way too overpowered in this mod.

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I wanna know what you do to get one shot there...
Lv90 21 VIT Kevin (900+ HP) only takes like 246 damage from a Lv91 petit poseidon on hard

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You fight 3 enemies. Let's say you encounter two Ninja Masters and a Swordmaster. Ninja Master hits you with a double hit, causing you to get stunlocked, and another Ninja Master does the same while you're stunned, and you're down from 900+ HP to 0 HP in less than a second. Not literally one-shotted, but that still happens extremely quickly, at the beginning of the battle, and it's actually very likely to happen while you're trying to get your defensive buffs set up. I've had it happen all the time on the screen south of the golden statues in the last dungeon.

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Eh, that isn't much of an argument; even if damage was half the current value enemies could stun lock you into death.
Less likely but they still could.

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Starting at 0 MP could work if MP regen was a bit faster, and then you could make any equipment/stat that currently affects cast speed increase starting MP or reduce MP costs or something. It's an approach that makes the game more dynamic as opposed to losing control of your characters for the duration of the cast time. 

I do agree that some spells that are most useful right at the beginning of each battle would have to be addressed individually as to not become unviable or outright useless (and I don't think you'd want to incentivize strats that involve entering a battle and waiting/running around for your mp to fill up before you can cast that first buff/debuff, sounds kind of counter-intuitive.)

Anyways, I recon It'd be a LOT of trouble to make that change now that you probably balanced the game around the current MP system, but I'd be interested in trying it out nonetheless.

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I'm actually entertaining the idea to make you start at 50% MP and rework the MP pool to start a bit higher so that the new medium weapon is actually usable for all without dumping 3 levels into INT.

But the 50% case still runs into exploits on screen where you don't start next to mobs, so you can just wait and prebuff...

Either way I kinda have to keep cast time.
If spells would remain as they are but would be instant someone like GD Angela could pump a lot of instant damage (big MP pool with spells that are quite cost effective) which would basically remove the relevance of random fights for spell heavy parties.
And reworking spell damage would escalate into a billion new problems as ofc the formula is shared with enemy spell casting.

And here's the big logic bomb:
if we have regenerating MP and thereby technically infinite of it while out of battle,
why do we enter screens without the all-purpose buffs.

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18 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

And here's the big logic bomb:
if we have regenerating MP and thereby technically infinite of it while out of battle,
why do we enter screens without the all-purpose buffs.

I look at the MP/cast-time costs of buffs at the start of a new screen as a kind of maintenance cost for these buffs. It is logically a little weird but gameplay-wise, if you could keep the same buffs from screen to screen, there may never be a team without Light Lise ever considered again.

Edited by rpschamp

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7 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

I look at the MP/cast-time costs of buffs at the start of a new screen as a kind of maintenance cost for these buffs. It is logically a little weird but gameplay-wise, if you could keep the same buffs from screen to screen, there may never be a team without Light Lise ever considered again.

How about invert armor Necromancer?

Those buffs could come with a upkeep cost (reduced max MP).

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14 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

How about invert armor Necromancer?

Those buffs could come with a upkeep cost (reduced max MP).

Invert-armor Necromancer would fall into the same category as Light Lise.

An upkeep cost would be a good solution; as a mechanism to remove the buffs/upkeep, you could cast the spell again on your team between battles. This still removes the cast-time cost, but maybe this isn't as important or even preferable to keep.

Edited by rpschamp

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I tried searching for "cast time", "bug", and "menu" in the topic and didn't notice anything, so at the risk of attracting ire I'm going to point out a (hopefully new) bug.

The "time spent in ring-menus advances the cast timer" vanilla bug seems to be back even though it's mentioned as hopefully-fixed in previous versions of Sin of Mana.  I don't know whether other time-freezing effects advance the cast timer yet, I'm still fairly early in the game.

I'm running the 1.200 patch and tested it by casting Fireball with Angela right after learning it on the Golden Road:

Cast fireball on your favorite rabite, bring up the X ring menu, wait about ten seconds, drop the menu.  Spell comes out instantly.

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1 minute ago, Nesouk said:

Where in Golden Road did you test that ?

It's happened literally every screen I tried it on, though I couldn't give you exact locations of every test.  The exploit works on the first screen left of Maya for sure, as well as one screen up/right of the entrance to the Cleft of the Earth.  I definitely tried it at least five times while level-grinding in the area and it worked every single time.

To be clear, I have also tested casting fireball like a normal person several times and the spell does have a cast time of several seconds.

If you'd like me to try something specific as I'm playing through the game I'll happily give it a whirl.

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38 minutes ago, Mr. Cantaloupe said:

I'm running the 1.200 patch and tested it by casting Fireball with Angela right after learning it on the Golden Road:

Cast fireball on your favorite rabite, bring up the X ring menu, wait about ten seconds, drop the menu.  Spell comes out instantly.

I'm guessing the Golden Road you're referring to is between Maia and Byzel.  And by that time, you'd have access to only one spell -- Holy Ball (and maybe Diamond Missile if you cleared the cave).  So it's not Fireball.

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Just now, Soul Knight said:

I'm guessing the Golden Road you're referring to is between Maia and Byzel.  And by that time, you'd have access to only one spell -- Holy Ball (and maybe Diamond Missile if you cleared the cave).  So it's not Fireball.

It is indeed that road!  And ordinarily you would be right.

But in Sin of Mana you can learn Fireball from Wisp, probably in a bid to make Angela more useful during the portion of the game between Fullmetal Hugger and the Jewel Eater.

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4 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Make sure there's no "npc" on the screen like a signpost.
A bug related to them is known.

That's a good thought.  I'm fairly sure no npcs are around when I attempt the exploit in other locations though.  (The presence of the signpost near Maya does seem to make spells insta-cast.)

It worked on this screen just outside (and to the right of) the dwarf town too, for example.  It also worked on the following six screens down the tunnel to the right there.  Except the ones without any monsters, obviously.

image.png.a93fb6979d577407e053d6548f76196c.png

Edited by Mr. Cantaloupe

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10 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Spells are supposed to be instant cast if no enemy is around.

I was using the menu exploit on enemies.

The screenshot I showed was just to point out the location; there were enemies in the room beforehand.  Hence the loot chest.

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