hmsong

10 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

No, I mean it exactly as I said.
Some seemingly "normal" attacks are actually spells that don't freeze the game and may even have a different animation than expected or when used by you.

Oh my.  I didn't know that.  Crap, I hope me screwing with some spells didn't screw up some of boss attacks (ex: I gave Rainbow Dust a non-damaging self-enhancements, and gave Ghost summon the Angel's Grail effect).

11 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

hmm if you want to know... how about you put a read breakpoint on D7E204 and cast the spell in ST variant and then watch where it goes with that pointer?

it may be a pointer but noone says it has to be the same bank or even a neat +0000 pointer; it could be added to C81657 for all I know to find the actual animation data at C8E241. No idea without looking at it, but really, does it matter?
Just change the 2 bytes and see what happens.

Okay, I'll try that.  I just wanted to see how to make the caster finish the casting animation before the spell animation comes out.  That's really annoying for me.

Btw, something neat I found out (that you may want to use for 2.0).  The spell ID: F5 (it's called SBD) has a cool animation where the caster casts TransShape to the target, then immediately follows up with Thunder Jutsu.  And the caster finishes his casting animation too.  You may want to use it as a ST version of Double Spell.  I know I am.

Btw, which translation patch are you using for your SoM?  You don't seem to be using NCorlett+LNFT patch, since you called Detect "Analyser" and Iormungand "Jurmungand".  That means whatever patch you're using, you're using the more accurately translated patch.  But someone already said that the official Trials of Mana is incompatible with your SoM, so that must not be it.

5 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Sorry, but you are wrong here.
Just check Zable Fahrs side head - the firebreath one of them uses is actually the Gremlin spell (or that is one of the bugs the translation I use added)

I thought Zabel Fahr's firebreath is a normal attack completely unrelated to Gremlin spell.  Do they share the same stats or something?  Because obviously, they do not share the same name nor spell animation (well, its firebreath isn't even screen freezing spell, so I thought it was a melee attack that uses INT stat or something).

Wait, did you mean that some melee attacks don't freeze the screen?  Because if so, I know that.  But my point was that spells like Sky Attack, Feather Blizzard, Gas Cloud, and Revenge Spike are probably screen freezing attacks too, just like how Power Punch (from Jewel Eater) is a screen freezing attack, even though my character doesn't do any animation if I were to use it.

5 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Please read it again.

Okay, let me rephrase my question.  For example, Diamond Missile animation is at 17E204~17E207, and the values are EA CB 06 CD (EA CB is for ST, and 06 CD is for MT).  I understood that part.  I'm guessing EA CB is pointer to some another address in the ROM, and 06 CD is a pointer to some another address -- after all, each spell animation takes a lot of bytes, so there's no way EA CB is the animation itself.  The problem is, I don't know where the pointers are pointed at.  If the values were xx yy zz, I would think the address is zzyyxx in the rom, but there are only 2 bytes.  I initially thought it would be 17yyzz, but that turned out to be false, since some spell animations like Pink Typhoon is 59 E2 (17E259 would not be the correct address, since that's the address of the spell pointer for Power Up spell).  Perhaps I'm not understanding what "friends" pointers are.

10 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

There are no text pointers you can use without asm.
The pointers that exist vary by translation and version of translation.

I was specifically talking about NCorlett+LNFT v1.01 version, since that's the only English version I know exists.  I'm sure v1.00 existed too, but I was unable to find it (nor any other English translations).  In any case, if you can tell me the spell name pointer specifically for NCorlett+LNFT v1.01 version (the most common English version), then I'd appreciate it.  This isn't for any of my public release though, since as you pointed out, there are other language translations, and I don't want to mess with it.

10 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Sky Attack and Feather Blizzard should be used anonymously by Tzenker.
Gas Cloud should likewise be Lightgazer's "normal" attack.
Spined Kelp is Gildervine's.
For Bomb and Bloody Axe I wanna say Ogre Chest has them.
Revenge Spike - isn't that on Mispolm?

100 Tentacles, Squid Ink and Tidal Wave should be safe.

I think the attacks are all screen freezing attacks.  So none of them could be "normal" attack, and they would definitely display the names of the attack before it coming out (they displayed the name when I used it).  Some sources tell me that indeed Spined Kelp is Gildervine's attack, but I never seen him use it.  Gotta try again.  I tried playing around with Tzenker, Lightgazer, and Mispolm too (I basically gave myself infinite HP and sat stood around to see all their attacks, for all bosses, actually).  They never used any of the spells.  Still, I know you changed boss behaviors for SoM, so you're probably right about them having the spells available, but could you tell me how to make those guys use the spells?  Maybe there's a special condition to make them use it? (level?)

I think Kaiser Mimic has Surprise Box Bomb (ID: 85), not spell Bomb (ID: A9).  I never saw Ogre Box using any screen freezing spells.  But I didn't really explore the Mimics though.  Gotta check that out.

10 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Then it likely works like the escape rope by having the actual effect in the animation.

I tried that.  I first thought the animation is at D7E780.  But the animation didn't exist (it was a blank animation).  So I tried numerous other things, and the animation in D7E5DC resembled Dreamsee Herb, but it didn't have any effect either.

Btw, I thought all addresses are 3 bytes (before value), but the animation pointer seems to only have 2 bytes (assuming ST and MT are separate).

Whoa, really?  I figured that as long as I don't actually touch the text themselves, and only mess with the pointer, I would be okay (just like I'm messing with the animation pointer, rather than animation themselves).  Damn, that means I can't use the Ancient 2/3 slots.

Do you know any enemy spells that has a name and are not being used by the game, whether they are normal monster, boss or even events?  Here are the ones I can't find any enemies using (some don't even have animation, although they seem to do damage), but could you confirm?

• Sky Attack
• Feather Blizzard
• Gas Cloud
• 100 Tentacles
• Squid Ink
• Tidal Wave
• Revenge Spike
• Sandstream
• Spined Kelp
• Bomb (the non-trap version)
• Bloody Axe

Also, is there a way to give a spell the Dreamsee Herb effect?  I want to give that to Pressure Point, but the data in D1B090 isn't giving me any info, since it seems to be a dummy effect.

Btw, I figured out what spell flag 12 does.  It does fixed damage of the... spell ID (Diamond Missile is 01, so it does 1 damage, and Unicorn Head's ID is 3C, so it does 60 damage).  What a weird spell.

I see.  Thank you.  If I couldn't do werewolf boost or starting level edit, then I assume I won't be able to change the animation edit.  Oh well.  It seems that there are some vanilla spells that doesn't complete the casting animations, such as Axe Bomber and all of trap spells.

I assume what you posted for the animation was the animation pointer.  Is there one for the spell names?  There are unused spell slots (namely Ancient 2 and Ancient 3), and I want to use it to create new spells.  I can change the effect, and now the animation (well, use the ones available), but I don't want them to be called Ancient (I don't know if there are any spell names that are not being used).  Of course, since I'll only be changing the pointer, I assume I'll have to use the existing names instead of coming up with something of my own, but that's fine.  I intend one of them being Smoke (the trap spell), since it's one of the convenient spells that has ST and MT animation (ST animation isn't used in vanilla, it seems).  But I don't want to change the vanilla Smoke trap.

6 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

do you have an options button to the bottom right of the post?
I can delete it there.

No, I don't have the option.  I only see this:

The plus button is "MultiQuote".

6 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

items are still "spell IDs" $101+

Woot!  That is useful.  Thank you.  I'm only coping/pasting the animation, so I can make use of what you posted.  Sigh.  I can't give Demon Scream animation to Black Curse, since Demon Scream doesn't summon Shade.  Well, I can assign the animation, but I don't want to, because it doesn't have Shade animation.  That... limits my options a lot.

I just noticed this, but it seems that for some spells (like Detect or monster-only spells), my characters freeze in mid-cast motion, then finishes the cast motion after the spell animation is already finished.  Is there any way to fix that, at least for Detect?

Hmm.  I can't do anything with the type flags, since it's either too powerful (0C/0D) or too useless (23).  I'm not sure what you mean by, " set POWER1 1-5 to ORA respective resistance by spell's element, POWER1 6+ to reset all resistances ".  I'm guessing Power1 is the multiplier (14th byte).  Do you mean change the value of 14th byte to 01~05 to resist particular element?

9 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

I doubt you'll manage to do with spell animations what you set out to do but give this a try:

the animations are at 17E200+4x spellId, 4 bytes per entry, first 2 bytes are the ST animation, other 2 the MT animation

if you try to set an ST-only animation as MT the spell will crash the game and blindly guessing is right out since those 2 bytes are our "friends" pointers.

So, Diamond Missile animation (ID: 01) is from 17E204~17E207, and the vanilla values are EA CB 06 CD?  And Earthquake spell (ID: 02) is from 17E208~17E20B?  Then what about magic items, such as Paladin's Proof? (ID: 01)

I suppose I'll just avoid giving ST spells the MT animations then.  Hopefully, giving MT animation to ST spell won't cause a crash.

I was quite sick for the last few days (hypotension, of all things).  That sucked.  I'm still having trouble.

I tried to follow what you were saying, but I... can't seem to actually do what I want to do.  I mean, I can see the addresses in [], but I don't see how one address links to another.  I can find the RAM codes of level, stat, etc, but I can't seem to apply that to ROM.  So sad.  And my physical condition isn't helping the matter.  I give up.  I truly thank you for your help, but I feel like what you're trying to teach requires prerequisite knowledge, and therefore beyond my ability.

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The simple way is - don't.

So I shall.  I don't want to mess with weapon logic.  I'm guessing it'll screw with Moon Saber.

On a different matter, for the 9th byte of spell definition, I found the following (including the info that you provided me):

00: Damage (+SE Cause, +Debuff)
01: Heal - Depends on stat
04: Saber
05: Debuff and SE Cause
07: SE Purify
08: Buff
09: Critical Hit, Aura Wave, and Counter Magic
0A: Traps (percent damage based on Max HP)
0B: Half Vanish (percent damage based on Current HP)
13: Heal - Fixed amount
15: MP Recovery - Fixed amount
18: Exorcism (works only on Undead enemies)
19: Weapon Special (Lv2/3 Tech)
1A: Magical Rope effect?
1C: Revive from Death
25: Anti-Magic
27: Death (checks for Level)

In addition, 12 does fixed damage on a target (not sure what determines the damage though), and 17 does some sort of unfinished Detect thing.

Are there any others that can be used? (maybe some spell logics are available, but were not used?)

Also, could you please tell me what address determines the spell animation? (ex: Saint Saber's spell animation is linked to xxxxxx address for xx bytes).  I can change the effects of the spell, but I can't switch the animation of a spell.  For example, I want to give Black Curse the animation of Demon Scream, but I don't know how to do that.  Or give Unicorn Head spell the multi-target animation (just does vanilla animation for all 3 targets).  Or give Good Luck Die the Counter Magic spell animation instead of Life Up animation.  Or use the Angel's Grail animation for some random spell.

I noticed that for the 9th byte of the spell definition (the one that decides what the spell does -- damage, buff, debuff, heal, etc), some values aren't used.  12 is for fixed damage (not sure how the damage is calculated), and I think 17 is unfinished Detect spell (it tells the current/max HP of the target and perhaps weakness, but it also has some weird texts too).  Perhaps you can apply some of those for SoM 2.0.

Wow, this is hard.  I couldn't do either of them.  This is... disappointing.  Damn it.  I thought werewolf would be easier, but in the end, I couldn't do either of them.  It seems I'm just... not understanding it.  I mean, I understand that LDA copies a value from the given address to another address (A), and STA takes the value from A and copies it to the given address.  But I don't understand how 7ff743 and 7ff753 are connected, since one is $34 and the other is $36, which means "A" is different for each address.

Sigh.

On a different matter... I noticed that if I give Luna element to a magic attack, it ends up hurting me instead (I figured Luna magic would allow me to absorb HP or something, since Dryad element absorbs MP).  Is there a simple fix for that?

On 6/18/2020 at 3:58 AM, praetarius5018 said:

As you should be able to see whatever is now in 7ff743 came from 7ff753 so you have to look further back where 7ff753 got the changed value from.

Huh?  How did you figure out that 7ff743 came from 7ff753?  I mean, I know they have the same value, since they resulted in the same thing when I searched for Kevin's attack value, but looking at the picture I pasted earlier, I don't see how you got 7ff753 from looking at 7ff743.  The value is at  D0D871 is 91 34, which doesn't seem like anything close to 7ff753.  It doesn't even seem to be pointing at d0d86f.

I don't mind chasing origin after origin, as long as I know how to chase and know what to look for.

3 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Then why are we doing this?

As written way above, you need to find the RAM address of the joining ally's level AFTER they have joined (make a savestate BEFORE the cutscene), have you got that one?

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There'll be hundreds of 3s in the RAM, so how about finding out first where the actual attack power (NOT STR!!!) is saved, there should be 2 values, one for buffed, one base. Level should be close-ish by.

Apparently, I misunderstood.  I thought I have to find the ATK first, and for some reason, I misinterpreted that as solving the werewolf form first (I thought buff = werewolf).  Now that I read back, I feel stupid for misreading.

But it's true that I want to decrease the werewolf bonus boost, since I hated seeing Kevin being so stupid OP (esp with his Energy Ball).

Thank you for the specific instruction on how to make a logging file.  I was doing it all wrong.  Way wrong.  I started logging before Kevin transformed, then transformed, then waited until the game froze.  Boy, was I off.

One thing at a time.  I shall proceed with whichever one is easier first, then proceed with the harder one.

Here's what I got for werewolf boost:

I feel like there's some real progress there.  I hope that's a progress.  Okay.  They seem to give the same info.  It doesn't seem to point to any particular address, unless D0D871 is supposed to mean something.

As for the level joining, I have a saved state before an ally joins.  And I found the level edit RAM address for joined ally at the waterfall (I got this by simply leveling up the ally, which is 7ff111).  But what do I do with this info?

Btw, thank you for suggesting HiEditor.  I can actually open this file, and the computer doesn't freeze.

Damn, I wish I could upload a video or something, but I can't (can't record my computer screen, because Game Bar is not working).

Here's what I did:

Well, the log file from non-split resulted in a huge notepad file, so I couldn't even open it (my computer simply froze).  So I had to use Split.  Anyways, for the last file (before Breakpoint froze the game), I couldn't find 7ff743, but I was able to find its equivalent, 7fee43 (this code is used in different map for the same attack edit):

But now what do I do?

8 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

I thought you wanted to find where Kevin's wolf bonus is or did I understand you wrong?

Well, I certainly would like to find that, but my real goal is to edit the joining level for the allies (default is Lv04, which in code is 03, as you mentioned earlier).

20 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

I'd suggest making a new log; start the logging when 7ff743 is read first and then log until it is written to again.

And turn of the split option to have it all in one file.

Okay, I did that.  I don't see anything resembling 7ff743 in the log file.  And I don't know what value I'm suppose to search for.  Hmm.  What am I supposed to search for in the log file?  The value of Kevin's attack power?

37 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

You have to search where the value originally comes from. Which means going from the write to 7ff743 backwards until you find where the math happens.
STA writes to an address.
LDA loads from an address to A.
And all the other nice tricks like stack manipulation.

Uhh.  Sorry, but I did not understand that explanation.  "going from the write to 7ff743 backwards"?  What does that mean?  And math?  I remember there being 25 - Luck for TransShape, but I don't know which code goes with "Luck" or "-".  Could you tell me some of the math codes that I need to know to find the Kevin werewolf boost?

Also, so I need to search for "07" for Kevin's werewolf boost?  Or is it another number? (ex: Level was [Level - 1], so in my case, I had to search for 03 instead of 04).

Okay, for changing werewolf form boost, I found out that there are 3 addresses that deal with Kevin (P1)'s attack power -- 7e3390, 7ff743, and 7ff753 (in the final Mana Holyland).  I'm guessing it's 7ff743, since changing that seems to change the numbers shown in the menu screen.

I put the breakpoint, and I logged it -- lots of logged files, from 0000 to 000A to 0034.  But now what do I do?  Sure, I can open the files using notepad, and it has lots of codes, but I don't know what I'm supposed to search.

Oh.  Too bad then.  Well, it was worth a shot.  It's an interesting idea though.  Damn hard limits.

Another idea.  How about creating a spell which actives the treasure trap wheel? (target is enemy)  And depending on what the player selects, it activates different trap spell (or any other spell).  You can probably use the slots for Trap Level 1 and Trap Level 2 (Genova uses that).  Trap Level 1 can have Arrow, Spike, and Smoke, while Trap Level 2 can have Stone, Bomb, and Mr Death God (which slot comes up depends on Luck).  Or hell, you can also have OK slot, which is basically a dud (doesn't activate anything and ends up wasting time and MP).  On the other hand, when an enemy uses the spell on you, you can purposely select OK to make the enemy spells miss.

It'd be neat to have Ogre Mimic and Kaiser Mimic that will fight by your side (similar to how enemies can spawn enemies), but I'm guessing that's pretty much impossible to work with, given how the game can only have 3 enemies on the screen.  Not to mention you'd have to program an AI to fight by your side and attack enemies.

2 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

There'll be hundreds of 3s in the RAM, so how about finding out first where the actual attack power (NOT STR!!!) is saved, there should be 2 values, one for buffed, one base. Level should be close-ish by.

Ohh, so that's why I couldn't find the werewolf change  I was searching for STR values.  I guess the number I'm looking for is the one displayed on the Equip screen.  I gave up mid-way, because I couldn't find it.  Dang it.  Okay, I'll approach it in that sense.  Thanks.

Yeah, I found out (the hard way) that level displayed is actually Level-1.  I struggled for a bit to find that info.  Thanks for telling me nevertheless.

4 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

He has his final weapon for exactly that effect.

Ah, so it's already being used.  I didn't see it in the change log (or maybe I missed it), so I thought I should bring it up.  I'm just generating ideas.  Then again, of course you would have figured out anything I can think of.

4 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Deja vu

Okay, I guess I was not being specific enough when I asked that question.  As you said for werewolf, I can change his STR stat and then change to werewolf form to see the difference -- 2 reference points to compare.  But for the initial level of joining, I can't.  There's only 1 reference point.  I can change a character's level just fine during the gameplay (RAM), but I can't change the initial level when they first join (neither ROM nor RAM).  There's no 2nd reference point for me to experiment.  That's why I can't use the same method.  Or is there?  If so, could you tell me what I should look for as a 2nd reference point?

4 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Try the NPC tab. Priority for mobs is their level (+128 because the $80 bit is used for something)

For adding $80, are you talking about the "Memory Check" part? (shown in the picture above)  So for FM Hugger (I'm guessing my picture is looking at that map), it's $FE2F32?

4 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

As you may have guessed by now, vanilla enemy levels are very stair-ish. Going from 4 to 6 doesn't do much since the stat cap it is based on is the same. But going from 6 to 7 is a massive leap. That makes the whole thing even better.

Yeah, I noticed that.  It's esp noticeable in the beginning.  Of course, that can be changed if you changed Lise's stat "cap" (which what I'm trying to avoid doing, since that may really screw up the enemies' difficulty in mid-dungeon).

I know you already improved Half Vanish so that it'll affect bosses.  But you can use the former Half Vanish's effect to Hawk's trap spells, except instead of doing %-dmg of current HP, you can have the traps do %-dmg of max HP.  Just use "0A" for the 9th byte, instead of "0B".  You can even give it some element so it'll be affected by the day (already tested and confirmed).  However, just like the original Half Vanish, it won't affect the bosses.

Hmm.  I played around with the exp points, and apparently, when a character joins, it doesn't matter what the exp is -- it checks for Level.  And in this case, it's Lv4, regardless of what the required exp is for Lv4.  Damn it.

My intention is not to reduce the boss strength (nor its level), but not increase it either.  That's why I'm trying to reduce the character's level when they join.  That way, I only need to edit the stats for the first 3 levels of a character, and it won't affect the bosses' strength.  Do you know how I should go about that?  It would help if I at least knew its bank.

I actually tried using map jester some time ago (found it on RHDN), but I couldn't really figure out how it worked.  It loaded the game, but after that, it didn't tell me anything.  The only thing I could do was look at some of the maps.

 Really, there's no guide of any kind for me to use this to its potential.  Do you know if there's any kind of guide somewhere?  I only read the attached document, and it simply tells me what some of its capabilities are, but not tell me how those are done.

Why would you not want the Jutsus to be AGI based?  Hawk has high AGI, so I figured jutsus based on AGI would make sense.  It's got weak multiplies (6), so it doesn't do much damage though.

Btw, I can see why you decided to change everyone's max stat limit, strength, level, equipment power, and everything else for SoM.  Balancing is hard.  Very hard.  Christ.

38 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

She has 1 INT less than PIE. And Angela already has to deal with the same split because light spells are PIE based.

Yeah, so I thought about making Holy Ball and Saint Beam into INT based (but keeping Heal Light as PIE based).  But I felt that it would mostly make PIE even less useful, since it means that most enemies will be using INT based attacks.  I figured one typical spell that can be bought from black market should have PIE based attack.

42 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

30 is STR. Every boss aside from Heath and Koren uses Lise's stat base so there is no boss that would have sudden absurd AGL or anything. In fact STR is her highest stat - that is probably the reason boss unique spells are based on STR, they've already used the max multiplier of 15 and that wasn't enough with her other stats.
On the downside that makes those spells be subject to the higher p.def so that doesn't even help as much as it could.

Ah, so that's what it is.  Thank you.  I shall test to see if making some boss attacks using AGI stat instead of INT will make some fights more interesting.

Btw, here's what I found out about the beginning few bosses (I used Ghost's Eye to manually test out what the bosses' levels are):

                                    Level

• FM Hugger          04
• Machine Golem    04
• Jewel Eater         06
• Tzenker              10
• Genova               12
• Bill & Ben            12
• Gorva                 13

I tried to make the first two bosses (FM Hugger and Machine Golem) easier by giving higher stat to the player characters in the beginning (+1 for all stat), but that also raised bosses' stats, which made them even harder (even with the bonus stats).  But I can't just lower the Lv4 stats, since that'll lower the stats of the players later joining (they all join at Lv4).  Is there a way to make the later characters join at Lv3 instead of Lv4?  Perhaps an address where I can edit their initial experience points?

16 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

SPI wouldn't help much, that is 4 damage less taken per point.
M.def in general is a rather weak stat, imo.
Spells are rarely thrown at you (boss-only spells are mostly physical even), the best you can get is 8 damage reduction per point (physical goes up to 15), and then half of them are INT other PIE based defense. For a rebalance it might make more sense to make all spell damage INT based and unify the m.def to PIE or something like that, so you are not getting nothing out of your displayed m.def 90% of the time.

Yeah, M.Def is rather weak.  Or rather, Def/M.Def is much weaker than offense, hence why this game suffers so much.

I noticed this while testing some things yesterday (I've been restarting over and over again to test various things), and as you said, most of boss attacks are indeed INT/PIE based non-screen-freezing attacks.  Very interesting logic.  No wonder you used that for SoM.

I thought about what you said about making all spells INT based and making M.Def based on PIE.  Hmm.  In addition to it probably being not an "easy fix" (meaning I probably can't do it), it would make Carlie quite useless in fights, even more so than she already is.  Then again, that might be a good thing.

As for rebalance, I was actually thinking about making some of spells based on PIE or AGI rather than INT.  Most of them were too INT based.  For example, things like Poison Bubble and Evil Gate/Dark Force would be PIE based, while Dive Attack and Power Punch would be AGI based.  However, not much was tested --  for all I know, one boss may have some absurd AGI or something and just one-shot my party.

Btw, for the multiplies for spells (ex: 11994E for Diamond Missile), I know that 00 is INT attack, 10 is PIE attack, and 20 is AGI attack.  But what is 30?  Spells like Hypercannon, Spiral Moon, and Hell Cross seems to use it.  I don't think it's based on STR (although I haven't tested on it), but I highly doubt it's LCK based either.  I can't tell at all.