Satarack

Remember how Smoke Bombs were killing undead characters. Well something we overlooked was that smoke bombs weren't the only items that used Extra Effect FF as a "nothing" effect. Nearly all the consumable items use it. I just had Gau die from using a Green Cherry on him, and looked through the list of consumable items, and with a few exceptions (Elixir and Dried Meat, for example), nearly all of them used extra effect FF. To recap, extra effect FF somehow applies the anti-undead effect to the items (I don't know the details, only that that's what's happening). First noticed when Smoke Bombs killed undead party members, the solution was simply to change the extra effect ID to 00. From what I can see, these are the currently affected items:

On the topic of what is objectivity, it's easy to define but hard to prove or disprove. Objective just means it's independent of the subject. It's a truth/fact/thing, that exists regardless what people think about it. It's not impossible for there to be objective standards for writing, music, beauty, etc. just because consensus doesn't exist doesn't mean objective standards don't exist (this is corollary to the fact that consensus can't prove the existence of objective standards). You can see this in situations where there clearly is an objective truth. The world is definitely round, but flat earthers exist. Just because flat earthers are wrong about the earth being flat doesn't mean the shape of the earth is subjective. Objective vs. subjective is really just a conversation stopper; it's better to look at writing functionally. The dialogue has a purpose, there's some goal the writer wants to accomplish; we can look at whether their goal makes sense, and at how well their writing accomplishes that goal. Leave the Objective vs. Subjective debate to philosophers, it's better that they waste their time then us.

AM2R, Samus Returns; which one is better? Well I'm not going to answer that question, but I am going to give my thoughts about both. Having not played either remake, I thought I'd play them back to back. Brief background: Metroid 2 was originally released on the Gameboy, it featured Samus on a mission to hunt down and exterminate the Metroids, genetically engineered super creatures created by the Chozo race, used by Space Pirates to threaten the galaxy in the first game. The metroids transform several times in their lifecycle to become stronger, thus Samus will encounter progressively stronger variants of Metroid. I played Samus returns first (11 hours 8 minutes, 62.7% items found), and then AM2R (5 hours, 6 minutes, 72% items found). Both good games, but with different ideas about how to do a remake. AM2R's goal is a Metroid 2 in the style of Super Metroid; retaining the original character of the game, but giving it a visual and control upgrade, making the Metroids more threatening, and adding some new content. Samus Returns is less concerned with new content and maintaining the character of the original game, and more interested in revamping the game. Metroid behavior is significantly changed, regular enemies have more health, do more damage, and are more aggressive, Samus has new abilities, and there's more focus on puzzles in the room layout and item locations. While AM2R gives the original Metroid 2 a modern coat of paint; Samus Returns only maintains the outer appearance of the original while being completely different under the hood. One example of these two approaches can be seen in the Spider Ball ability. AM2R retains the original characteristics of Metroid 2's Spider Ball: You can't jump in Spiderball, and bomb explosions force you out of Spider Ball. Samus Returns revamps the spider ball and lets you jump, and stay in spider ball when propelled by a bomb. It's not as restrictive, and moving around in spider ball is smoother in Samus Returns. Exploration is a major point of difference, and is largely why Samus Returns took over twice as long for me to complete. AM2R is more straight forward in its exploration, paths between major areas are simple hallways, items are usually just in hidden spots, or behind a single block you need the right weapon or ability to break. Samus Returns asks you to make more use of your abilities to navigate and find items; but only because it gives you a powerful cheat called the Scan Pulse. Scan Pulse fills in your surrounding map, but it also highlights all breakable blocks, and if a Metroid is nearby it will roar. It's a completely optional ability which you can choose not to use, but it does a lot of the hard exploration work for the player. Filling out the map to show room layouts is one thing, but highlighting blocks is, in many cases, equivalent to solving the puzzle for the player. On paper I understand that Scan Pulse lets players adjust the difficulty of exploration to their abilities; but that doesn't stop it from annoying me. Metroids are another big contrast between the two. Well this post has gone on long enough. As said, both are good games, and its interesting to see how they approached the same game with different goals in mind.

So Smoke Bomb sometimes kills undead characters in the Soul Train boss fight. Video in spoilers The thing is, it doesn't always kill Cyan. I've reset the fight several times, each time using Smoke Bomb on Cyan right away, and getting different results. Often he's killed, but sometimes it gives him Image. So the cause has to be something random. Maybe it's Evil Toot glitching the game? Oh, and yeah it can happen on Shadow or Sabin as well, if they have a Ghost Ring equipped. Edit: I've been testing it on random encounters, and it sometimes happens there as well. One theory I tried was seeing if the run away animation was involved. But I've seen both results from running away versus not running away during the smoke bomb. EDIT 2: Seibaby asked me to check RC4 and 1.8.6; it happened in both. So this has probably been a bug for a while.

Recording of characters covering confused enemies from other enemies.

RC3 is crashing on the first battle in the tutorial. The battle start noise plays, it fades to black and stays black as the howling winds background music continues playing. Video in spoilers UPDATE: I transferred save files over to test random encounters. Those crashed the same way. Also checked the headered patch and got the same crashing behavior. I also cross patched headered and non-headered on the "maybe but probably not" chance that the files were mislabled. They weren't, both crashed immediately.

That looks like the original problem where it conflates the left and right hand slots with the two relic slots. Could be that the unfixed version of the hack was used or something.

So after some testing on the 'Slumber missing Chimera' issue, these were the following conclusions: 1. It's not just Chimera, it also failed on Intangir. Both Chimera and Intangir are categorized as large sprites. I speculate slumber will miss on any large sprite enemy. 2. It's not just Slumber, Raven's Nevermore also misses. Nevermore is also a sleep monster special. 3. It's not the attack animation, Molest uses the same animation as Slumber, but still hits. Changing Slumber's attack animation didn't stop it from missing. 4. MY ROM EDITOR FIXED THE PROBLEM. This is an important one. Switching Slumber from Sleep to something else, and then back to sleep, caused the problem to be fixed. Meaning it's not a problem with the sleep effect per say, but some bizarre problem with the patches. I tested several other status ailments by changing Slumber's effect with FF3usME; but considering point number 4 I can't say those tests mean anything about the unedited patched rom (because FF3usME fixed sleep's problem, it could have simply fixed any other unknown problems). So we'd want to check other rages that inflict status ailments with monster specials. Molest hits Intangir though, so Blind isn't bugged. EDIT: This is beyond my technical ability, but here's a thought. So the rom editor fixed the problem when I switched slumber from sleep and back again. Something changed in that process; but by all rights the rom should be identical to the unedited patched rom. Therefore, if the unedited patched rom was compared to a "fixed" rom that's been fixed by FF3usME, any memory addresses that differ between the two have a high likelihood of being related to whatever problem is causing this. EDIT 2: Electric Boogaloo So Think tried hex comparing the sleep and back again change, and nothing came of it. But I realized FF3usME was remembering all the accumulated changes I had made because I never closed the rom editor during the testing process. Which means it reapplied all the accumulated changes when I edited the freshly patched rom. Nevertheless, something I changed allowed Slumber to put Intangir to sleep. So here's what I remember changing last night. 1. I changed Intangir's AI to do Nothing, Nothing, Nothing on its regular turns 2. I removed all of Intangir's status resistances 3. I changed Slumber's extra effect to a lot of different status ailments to see if those missed too 4. I changed Slumber's animation to the hammer strike to see if the animation was the culprit I think that's everything. Something in that list allowed Slumber to hit after I returned the Extra Effect to Sleep.

To the best of our knowledge, yes.

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.