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Coming Soon: Brave New World 2.0

214 posts in this topic

32 minutes ago, Mugenhagen said:

I was curious if it'd be possible to use the Woolsey Uncensored Mod with the "Vanilla" version of this mod, and if not would it be a difficult task to make it work?

Unfortunately, the way BNW modified the rom moved a lot of shit around compared to vanilla, especially related to the dialogue, making this very difficult to do, and definitely not something you can do yourself without some significant hacking. My suggestion would be to wait until 1.10, because it will include a Woolsey-ish dialogue patch that will be compatible with BNW.

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8 hours ago, Deschain said:

Unfortunately, the way BNW modified the rom moved a lot of shit around compared to vanilla, especially related to the dialogue, making this very difficult to do, and definitely not something you can do yourself without some significant hacking. My suggestion would be to wait until 1.10, because it will include a Woolsey-ish dialogue patch that will be compatible with BNW.

I'm pretty sure that TWUE also runs on an expanded rom, which BNW is not.

The rom expansion moves the text to an entirely different location IIRC.

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Based on these listed patch notes, my only complaints so far are thus:

-The Reflect/Rflect change.  I liked how it worked on a timer.  (|=^(
-Death Ward/Quartz Charm no longer blocks instant death.  Arg.
-Royal Jacket is no longer fireproof.
-Big frowny face to Ribbon nerf.

I also understand this is done in the name of balance.

Mind you, this is a small list compared to the stuff I liked changed or didn't object to being changed.

Edited by Endarire

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Reflect working on a timer made it entirely pointless as a deliberate defensive effect since you never knew when it was going to wear off and it would often do so before being of much use. Changing it to behave like Image guarantees that it will defend against at least something before going away.

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A timer could potentially overpower reflect if enemies happen to scream at a magic wall all day until it runs out. Infinite runtime with a few hits to live seems the most balanced.

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Updated the changerog yet again. This should be the last of any major updates: note the (tentative) updates to status display and the status screen along with finally doing something about how difficult running from fights became following the introduction of nATB. Also, as part of our ongoing efforts to scale back on needlessly-hidden things, Relm will now come equipped with the Memento Ring. Finally, some terminology changes will seek to make things easier to understand: spell points ("magic points" in vanilla) will now be called esper points, while what is currently called esper points will be rebranded as esperXP.

There are a few more additions yet to go into this list, but that should be it for anything particularly noteworthy.

Edited by BTB

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So, progress report time! I've been quiet for awhile as I've been working on overhauling enemy AI from the ground up - a process which ate up about a year of BNW's initial development time. I am glad to say that has been COMPLETELY finished and I am very excited to see how the results play out in beta testing! I have updated the changelog for now; presently, we are waiting for just a few more hacks from outside sources, and all I have left to do is finish updating enemy stats (about a day's work, though I dunno when I'll have that day) before I have a working ROM to fire off to Synchysi.

Things are definitely starting to come along!

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Awesome news. Begrudgingly decided to put my playthrough of 1.9 on hold even though I had just started it out when I happened upon the announcement of 1.10 and that it would be a major update, despite waiting for 1.9 for an eternity too. At least I ought to have a ton of new stuff to discover, seeing as my last complete playthrough was with 1.7 IIRC... 

Now that I think about it, I bet it'll feel like a totally different game. I wouldn't wanna spoil myself too much, and I've gathered some bits and pieces myself by lurking around here anyways (such as the on-equip esper bonus being a new thing) but could I bother someone knowledgeable to hype me up a bit before the release and give a crash course on the biggest changes that have come along in recent versions and/or some of the new cool stuff&features that I have to look forward to, coming off from 1.7? I know I could just plow through the changelogs but I've never been into knowing every bit of detail about a game beforehand and there's just so much stuff. I'm mostly after the juiciest tidbits.

Edited by Hapanpappa

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Hmm since 1.7 the biggest changes if I recall are :

-Espers having equipment bonus.

-The ways buffs are display. That comes in 1.8 IIRC, basically there's now a window that tells you what buff your character currently have (as with the glowing you couldn't tell if all buffs were set), except for Reraise which is indicate by the ATB turning green instead of white and Haste which is still through Red glowing.

-Furthermore Scan now displays what statut the ennemy have.

-Stamina now play a role in the Cover and Counter, basically you can no longer Cover from the Back Row, and Stamina give you a chance to Cover allies even if they aren't on Near-Death statuts. Same with Counter Stamina now affect the odd of countering, hence the popular Cover/Counter combo in 1.9. From what is writting this gonna be nerf a little for 1.10 ^^.

-Life (not Life 2) Spell (as well as Rerise) have been made more potent, now it revive the character with around 250 to 500HP and Phenix Downs only Revive with 1HP.

-Gau can now Leap anywhere (meaning no more time consuming grind in the Veldt), as long as you encounter a formation for which he can Leap (if he can't the Leap ability will simply be disable).

And I think these are the biggest changes, the rest is mostly bug fixing and rebalancing, I would suggest grabing the 1.9's Readme and see the Version's Change part, everything is listed here ^^

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It's been a while since I last posted. Sorry that I haven't said my thanks months ago, because I appreciate the answers I got.

I noticed the changelog mentioning Desperation Attacks. Were they in the romhack? Because in my 2 playthroughs of BNW (1.6.4 and 1.8.6) I didn't encounter a single use of Desperation Attacks (maybe I wasn't lucky enough). So what I'm asking is how Desperation Attacks in BNW are different from the original FF6? I tried looking in the printme and I didn't see any of them.

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First of all, Happy New Year everyone. May your 2019 be pleasant and C.H.U.D.-free (or may it be loaded with C.H.U.D.s if you're into that sort of thing. I don't judge.)

And now on to Brave New World. Back in 2011, when Synchysi and I started working on our humble little project, we initially envisioned a release date of that Thanksgiving, and then later that Christmas. But then I started working on enemy AI and the first public release of Brave New World was in May of 2013.

What I'm trying to say is that shit takes awhile.

I've been working more or less non-stop on this update for the last nine months or so, and the lion's share of that has been on a very long-overdue look back over enemies and their behavior. Armed with a damage calculator (a LOT of 1.9's enemy stats are pure guesswork, believe it or not) and 6 years' worth of design theory and player feedback, I've done a thorough re-balancing act that Synchysi and I have been talking about doing for years. This overhaul is so significant, in fact, that it along with the largest changelog by far of any update we've done in the past is telling me that version 1.10 (a name that was already causing some confusion) really shouldn't ever exist.

This is 2.0.

It's not exactly the handful of expansion ideas that we had in mind as far as additional content goes (a future version 3.0 isn't exactly off of the table), but make no mistake that everything going into this update will make it a brand new game.

So where are we at now?

My work on this update is now finished and has been shipped off to Synchysi. He has some assembly work to do, as well as putting together the two dozen or so other hacks that have been provided by outside sources. Every significant contributor to Brave New World over the last eight years has pitched in something for this update and it's going to be *huge*.

And it's gonna need some testing.

So while Synchysi gets a beta patch ready, I've put together two lists of things for testers to look for. The first is a list of definitive provables (i.e. here's my proof that the Earth is round) - shit to check off so long as it is verified working - while the second is a list of unprovables (i.e. does God exist?) to keep a constant eye out for since they can't really be definitively *DIS*proved.

Got it? Good. Here we go.

DEFINITIVE PROVABLES

___ Does the shop preview hack display properly?
___ Does the Max HP/ATB view toggle work correctly in battle?
___ Do spells display their colored "dot" in battle? (Do the dots look ok?)
___ Do status auras display properly? (check with multiple statuses)
___ Do Regen/Rerise display properly in the targeting menu?
___ Do Slow/Haste/Stop display properly in the ATB bar?
___ Does Reflect properly wear off randomly when activated and not on a timer?
___ Does the Ribbon properly defend against Stop?
___ Is the tombstone puzzle correct? (Note: please try every possible "wrong" combination)
___ Does the Chainsaw death proc use the "cleave" animation ?
___ Do the Doomsbane/Tarot (anti-undead) death procs use the "X-kill" animation?
___ Does the Doomstick X-Zone proc heal undead enemies?
___ Does absorbing a spell with Runic remove the "vanish" status from Celes/Gogo?
___ Do ground-based attacks (i.e. Quake) clear the "vanish" status from floating targets?
___ Does Seraph grant immunity to "condemned" (easiest test subject: Wrexsoul)
___ Do Glare and Blow Fish miss targets with the "vanish" status?
___ Can Mog/Gogo cover allies while dancing?
___ Does dying to the Guardian (as Leo) result in a game over?
___ Do enemies properly respond to MP damage? (easiest test subject: Soul Train)
___ Does the chest at Ebot's Rock require to be fed its booty all at once?
___ What happens if you feed the chest, it moves, you leave, and come back?
___ Does Shadow's name appear correctly as an opponent at the Colosseum?
___ If Shadow is dead, does the opponent for the Kagenui display properly?
___ Does the "wait" option for the Apocyllumina work as intended?
___ Can you purchase Alexandr at the Fanatic's Tower without incident?
___ Do the Crusader, Alexandr, and Ragnarok espers have the correct settings/users?
___ Does GP Toss do the correct amount of damage (test single and multi-target)?
___ Does ??? do the correct amount of damage?
___ Does Mantra heal for the correct amount?
___ Does the Kusarigama properly cast net AND do additional damage to human targets?
___ Do the Viper Darts still do auto-crits with Daryl's Soul equipped?
___ Does the Imp spell work out of battle?
___ Does the Imp status still affect healing items (namely Phoenix Down)?
___ Does an Imped enemy healed by harvester get its regular sprite back?
___ Do SOS Safe/Shell/Haste relics proc the correct spells?
___ Does Phunbaba attack again right away if you do Mobliz after getting the Falcon?
___ Can Gau use "Leap" in the final battle?
___ Can the Soul Train be properly MP killed?
___ Do bosses correctly give exp./EP?
___ Can an enemy who counters melee attacks counter a counter-attack from your characters?

SHIT TO KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR

___ Random encounters that are too difficult
___ Colosseum encounters that are too difficult
___ Enemies that hit themselves
___ Enemy formations that look fucked up in pincer attacks
___ Typos in the dialogue
___ Blank text boxes
___ Beginner's (or Advanced) School dialogue that needs clarification or needs to be added
___ Enemy or item names that don't match up with the Printme (a lot of things were renamed)
___ Anything else that seems fucked up

I'll make a special note about that first item on the second list: enemy behavior is a *major* aspect of this update. The goal is for it to be more obvious when enemy attack patterns shift, which in turn should make it easier to figure out WHY they shifted. Under ordinary circumstances, enemies will be less aggressive than they are in the current version of Brave New World; when triggered, they will become much worse. The idea is to identify those tiggers and work around them.

SO, if you get your ass kicked in a fight - and you will - the first thing is to figure out why. What was it that killed you? Is it behavior that you can figure out how to prevent? If no, then post about it. If yes, then it's (clearly) functioning as intended.

Edited by BTB

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I wet my pants... 

Can't wait anymore, jumped straight to reading through some changelogs and I like what I see. It's pretty exciting to see just how much stuff there is to fix and tune in pursuit of perfection. But alas, it seems my worst fears are coming true:

• Lowered the HP of many enemies and several bosses who were deemed to have more than necessary

    --> Notable nerfs include Tentacles, Chesticle, Hidon, Inferno (a scripting error had previously
          caused him to have 40,000 more HP than intended)
, Guardian, Kaiser, and final Kefka

Argh, I find it so hard to believe that I'm the odd one out when it comes to enjoying long&difficult boss fights in these "supermods" as I like to call them... Especially since there's more strategic options and it incentivizes to explore the whole game, complete every quest and battle because you know there will actually be a worthy challenge that's gonna put all that epic gear, levels, builds&the party that you've built to the ultimate test. 

I really hope walking over even more bosses than last time won't ruin the otherwise wondrous experience for me, but what can you do. 

Edited by Hapanpappa

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To be fair tough the boss mentions regarding the HP for the most part, they were able to use all their abilities multiple time already before being done, so I think there's room to keep the challenge while reducing their HP a little + Their behavior will probably be better and so I'm confident their HP have been adjusted to their new AI.

Anyway I'm going to copy/paste all the things to watch for and wait for the Beta ^^.

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9 minutes ago, Hapanpappa said:

Argh, I find it so hard to believe that I'm the odd one out when it comes to enjoying long&difficult boss fights in these "supermods" as I like to call them... Especially since there's more strategic options and it incentivizes to explore the whole game, complete every quest and battle because you know there will actually be a worthy challenge that's gonna put all that epic gear, levels, builds&the party that you've built to the ultimate test. 

Difficulty is like a penis: just because it's long does not mean that it's hard, and there's a very important distinction between those two things. None of those battles are becoming any less challenging, merely less repetitive. 

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37 minutes ago, BTB said:

Difficulty is like a penis: just because it's long does not mean that it's hard, and there's a very important distinction between those two things. None of those battles are becoming any less challenging, merely less repetitive. 

Indeed; I do appreciate this sentiment as well, having had profound debates irl going to silly lengths&detail regarding this topic. It's a balancing act for sure. And I'd like to believe that just because it's shorter doesn't mean it's easier, even though this has usually been the case in rpgs, in my experience at least... I mean if nothing else, longer could mean more chances to make a mistake, more resource management required and so on. But I'll just take your word for it since you know the fine details best. I'll be optimistic. 

Edited by Hapanpappa

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The key to a good, interesting boss battle is for it to be DYNAMIC. The thing I look for when I watch streams is when a fight becomes repetitive - when any challenge it has to offer has ceased and the player is just in a loop of performing the same actions over and over waiting for the fight to end. That is the specific thing to be avoided and something that was given a great amount of consideration in this update.

I won't be so full of myself as to say that's what I've accomplished, but it is what I was aiming for :P

Edited by BTB

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Then how do you feel about fights with multiple stages rather than just having a single pattern or puzzle to be solved? As mentioned, it's been such a long while since my last playthrough so I don't really remember if you had any of those in BNW but surely that would be a way to make fights both longer AND dynamic so the 2 dimensions work in unison to create a multifaceted challenge that requires both short- and longterm planning? Because I interpret your words as indicating that BNW bosses are more about that one riddle - albeit complex, no doubt - that you have to solve and after that, there's not much at all except boredom. In that case, I wholeheartedly agree with shaving off some of the fight length.

Edited by Hapanpappa

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Well BNW does has a multiple phase boss with Atma Weapon, which transition to a second phase after buffing and basically use all new moves, Yeti going to Pissy Boss Mod and Final Kefka starting to use Goner can be consider multiple stages, problem is writting such fight would be complex I assume and from what I understand BNW AI script is almost fully use.

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1 hour ago, Hapanpappa said:

Then how do you feel about fights with multiple stages rather than just having a single pattern or puzzle to be solved? As mentioned, it's been such a long while since my last playthrough so I don't really remember if you had any of those in BNW but surely that would be a way to make fights both longer AND dynamic so the 2 dimensions work in unison to create a multifaceted challenge that requires both short- and longterm planning? Because I interpret your words as indicating that BNW bosses are more about that one riddle - albeit complex, no doubt - that you have to solve and after that, there's not much at all except boredom. In that case, I wholeheartedly agree with shaving off some of the fight length.

Multiple phases is not problematic in and of itself. The issue becomes when the fight simply becomes more difficult without changing in an appreciable manner. A bad example of this is the goddess fights in 1.9, who simply just start using stronger attacks halfway through the fight. A GOOD example would be Atma Weapon, who still becomes more difficult in the second phase but also meaningfully changes up what is making the fight so difficult. Another example would be Guardian, who has more HP than most any other boss but is not really problematic because the fight has several distinct phases that are each difficult in a completely different way.

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On 1/12/2019 at 10:44 AM, Hapanpappa said:

Argh, I find it so hard to believe that I'm the odd one out when it comes to enjoying long&difficult boss fights in these "supermods" as I like to call them... Especially since there's more strategic options and it incentivizes to explore the whole game, complete every quest and battle because you know there will actually be a worthy challenge that's gonna put all that epic gear, levels, builds&the party that you've built to the ultimate test. 

Nah, I've been saying the same thing. I'm also hoping that BNW doesn't become too easy. It's a tough balancing act because I want to recommend BNW to new time FF6 players and I don't want people to be put off by difficulty, yet I don't think BNW (1.9) is difficult at all. Hell, I've seen people seriously say that vanilla FF6 is a hard game. How do you win when people are that bad at a simple game? And those are usually the first people to start complaining. I've never even noticed that Inferno had "bugged" HP, fights have always seemed pretty normal and tense in BNW, as opposed to normal classic RPGs where the boss falls over as soon as you start figuring out the fight.

I do agree that fights tend to devolve into a "rhythm" of using the same abilities on your characters for a few minutes straight, but I'd rather that be fixed with more dynamic scripting as opposed to just slashing HP values.

Maybe at some point it might be worth branching off a "normal" version of BNW and a "hard" version of BNW. I realize that there's a hard mode mod for BNW already, but "enemies have doubled speed" just isn't a very interesting difficulty mechanic vs. different scripting.

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1 hour ago, Reiker said:

I do agree that fights tend to devolve into a "rhythm" of using the same abilities on your characters for a few minutes straight, but I'd rather that be fixed with more dynamic scripting as opposed to just slashing HP values.

That's actually what's been happening in most cases, I just really haven't been discussing it much because I don't want to give anything away. The bosses who got HP cuts were the ones who REALLY needed it.

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Yeah don't get me wrong, I have faith that you guys have done a good job with this, but I won't know until I get to play through 2.0.

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