the_E_y_Es_o_0

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Posts posted by the_E_y_Es_o_0

  1. Posted · Edited by the_E_y_Es_o_0 · Report reply

    I see a lot of disparate elements - a future world of magic & technology, an all-powerful alien race, an Empire, an Alliance, an epidemic - it's too much, IMO. I'd suggest simplifying your idea to the bare essentials of what you want to convey. "Outcasts finding hope" is a good starting point. But going from there to this cornucopia of stuff that you've added... you'll get lost in your own creation. And not in a good way.

    To be more specific, I believe the setting is needlessly complex and involved, and doesn't justify itself. Especially for the main idea (hope and healing), which is a simple and universal message. I'll be frank here, it's almost as if you're building a complex world just for the sake of it. What's worse, you run the risk of disappearing up your own arse very very rapidly. When it comes to storytelling, less is more, I say.

    Considering this is just your 1st chapter, I can only imagine the following ones will complicate matters further. Not to be negative, but this will eventually lead to a point where you're asking yourself what you're doing, and why. So before you proceed with adding more (and more...), you should take a moment and rethink your material.

    Bottomline, I suggest editing your idea to make it simpler. The core is good (outcasts, hope and despair, etc), so you have that in your favor. No need for byzantine plots and whatnot. The main characters, the main conflict - focus on those.

    Hope this helps.

  6. Posted · Report reply

    5 hours ago, KarotConCarne said:

    Made this account just to reply here and tell you how I absolutely LOVE the -idea- behind what you are doing.

    Mind you, I would love what you're -doing- if only I could get it to work :)

    I got double sure the .bin I got is US, and I'm using the program you linked, it tells me that all is fine and dandy when I patch the file, but when I get into the game itself, none of the changes seem present, well, except for the fact that the mobs in the "this is a big one" room are glitched and don't aggro on me, in stead, they freeze in place and refuse to die whenever I hit them. Otherwise they just fly/run around like blind little puppies, it's almost cute.

     

    Been trying the 0.92 version, could you perhaps reupload the 0.91 version so I can see if it has the same issue? Would be great, love your work and THANK YOU SO DAMN MUCH for reviving this great little gem!

    I had a feeling something was off with that file. The previous patch was about 7 MB, while 0.92 was only 230KB or so.

    I remade the 0.92 patch and now it has the appropriate size (7 MB). Do try it before falling back to 0.91. Here's both patches, just in case:

    VS_0.92: https://mega.nz/#!FBUVRCAZ!Eu11axAb2113G5ZENdLcATw0MYtXTqcF5IBN7GaBMBo

    VS_0.91: https://mega.nz/#!EZ9lUaRY!8Rn2e3ql4poajKZR4dgQIJDmNL83p81ozl1MU5kR9Uc

    I really wonder why that room is so problematic. For now I think I'll revert my changes to it and leave it exactly as in the original.

  7. Posted · Edited by the_E_y_Es_o_0 · Report reply

    Patch updated (version 0.92). link: https://mega.nz/#!NJ8XxIAK!XO0QEHtryrItrpdaua_Ye_istuzuR0oI8M24OxP-Xl8

    A brief summary of the changes from last version:

    - fixed Minotaur Zombie bug

    - workaround for Chamber of Fear freeze (needs testing)

    - Last Crusaders no longer teleport

    - numerous rebalance tweaks in several areas

    - Break Arts no longer deal variable damage

    - IMB2/B3 map is invisible again, like in the original

    I'm unable to test the Chamber of Fear bug atm, if someone could do it for me I'd be grateful.

    • Upvote 1

  8. Posted · Report reply

    22 minutes ago, Hyphen-B said:

    Anyone else gotten to the Zombie Minotaur yet? He won't die even if I reduce his HP to 0. He just kind of stands around like a dummy and doesn't do anything xD

    Lol, embarassing... I think someone else reported the same problem. I'll look into it. Been kind of busy but I hope to have some free time soon.

  9. Posted · Report reply

    4 hours ago, Hyphen-B said:

    Seems like it's only the Beetle core that doesn't like the scene transition in Chamber of Fear, the one after Ashley says "This is a big one!". Works fine in the base game, but that room + Zenith causes the emulator to hang.

     

    4 hours ago, Rounard said:

    This is where the game crash on ps vita.

    This is useful information, thanks to both of you. I'm going to try and recreate the bug on my side, so I can work on it. I have some ideas of what the problem might be.

  10. Posted · Report reply

    11 hours ago, Hyphen-B said:

    Ah okay, that makes sense. I'm excited to play this mod. I always like to try out things that are made by people with a thorough understanding of the game they're working with, which you definitely have. To that end, I actually have another question. What do you guys use to run VS?

    I've tried the Mednafen libretro cores - Beetle PSX and Beetle PSX HW - but they always hang when I get to the quake in the Chamber of Fear. My guess is that it has something to do with the level geometry changing, but I'm a total layman so I really have no idea. ePSXe seems to handle that event just fine, but I'd really prefer to not use ePSXe if I don't have to.

    Personally I use epsxe. Ofc, pcsx also works, but it's too barebones for my tastes. I've been told that the mod is not compatible with the PS Vita, so I assume that's not an option.

    One user at gamefaqs said Retroarch runs the mod just fine, although I don't know what core he was using. I could try to find out if you're interested.

  11. Posted · Edited by the_E_y_Es_o_0 · Report reply

    16 hours ago, topopox said:

    Hey no prob man!

    I'm actually interested in donating for support! I really like this project!

    Merry Christmas!

    A Merry Christmas to you as well. I intend to put up links for those interested in donating, along with an official site for the mod. Nothing fancy, just a basic wordpress blog for my updates and stuff. It should be up in the next month. In the meantime, just have fun and report any problems you have with the mod. :)

    2 hours ago, Hyphen-B said:

    Quick question:

    What's the purpose of removing the Escapeway area? I haven't played this game in years, so I don't remember anything about it. Was it problematic for some reason? Isn't it just a shortcut locked behind a Rood Inverse door? Thanks.

    Nothing really wrong with it. It's just that I decided the data space which the Escapeway occupied was better used in favor of other areas (mostly Temple of Kiltia). That way I could expand ToK's enemy roster and add more encounters to its rooms. I had all these cool ideas, but not the bytes to accomodate them. So I thought, Escapeway is a pretty lousy area. No bosses, and all its enemies are recycled copies from other places. A more subjective point, its location is a bit annoying; merely an obstacle to get the Gold Key. Finally, after removing it I thought the new progression felt more natural than the original, so that kind of cemented my decision. To the point that even if I didn't need the extra space, I'd still remove the Escapeway because it's just better without it.

    Relevant vid: 

     

  14. Posted · Report reply

    4 hours ago, Maedroth said:

    Loving the mod. So much so that I've completed my first play-through with it and am on my way through a second.

    I'm particularly liking the quicken spell, it's let me clear a few gaps that shouldn't be crossed, at least not at the time I'm crossing.
    So far, it has allowed me to cross the gap that forms in the room with the first ghost, the gap in the room with the cloudstone before fighting the dragon and the river in the town straight after fighting Duane.

    The second gap I mentioned, after going through and beating the dragon, I went back to where you fight the Golem as I hadn't done that and he wasn't there. I'm just wondering if this will break anything. It seems fine so far though.

    Sequence breaking in VS?! Well damn... those are some unforeseen applications of the Quicken spell. I did wonder if the Town Center river could be cleared, I guess it can. Does that mean you skipped Abandoned Mines B1 entirely? As for the Sanctum river, I never thought of crossing it before the Golem fight. Did you land on the inactive cloudstone on the other side? In any case, what surprises me the most is that you jumped the abyss in The Lamenting Mother, Catacombs. It just seems impossible to me. Now I have to try it myself...

    To be honest, I'm not sure what the ramifications are for bypassing segments of the game. My first thought is you might miss some flags that spawn enemies and perhaps even bosses. For one thing, I'm pretty sure the Ogre boss fight in AMB1 triggers some Crimson Blades in Town Center West. So if you think the area is a little empty, it's probably that. With that said, I'm curious as to how a non-linear, sequence break'd playthrough would hold up. I take it you're still progressing, and haven't got stuck? Do keep me posted, as I haven't got any feedback on this aspect.

    Glad you're enjoying it, too. Makes it all worth it. :)

  15. Posted · Report reply

    On 13/11/2018 at 4:25 PM, Jazz-Man said:

    This mod looks amazing! I'm looking to try this out as soon as I get some time and give feedback. 

    One question: My biggest gripe with this game was that there's no shortcut to change weapons or skip straight to that menu at the very least. Any chance something like that would be feasible in this mod? 

    That's the biggest dream of any VS fanboy, myself included. I don't know if it's possible, since I lack coding/programming knowledge. I imagine it would be a fairly involved task to implement it. The straight-to-menu thing does sound more feasible, but again I'd have to enlist the help of someone with the necessary skills. I still dream of learning code just to try and make it happen one day.

  17. Posted · Report reply

    3 hours ago, Maedroth said:

    I'm running into a problem patching the game. When I select the ISO and ppf in ppf-o-matic and click Apply, it says it can't open the specified image file.

    I also tried with another rom that had 2 files; .mdf and .mds which worked fine as the vanilla game but when I applied the patch it would crash when starting a new game or loading an existing save.

    If you need to know I'm playing with ePSXe, I have the latest version of the mod and ppf-o-matic.

     

    Edit: I've also tried using ePSXe's ppf auto-load to no avail.

    The patch is designed for a .bin file, so .mdf is no good. But if you're using Vagrant Story(U).bin, it should work. Does the rom load and play normally without the patch? Is it the US version of the game? If yes to both, then I'm not sure what is the issue. Have you tried opening some other psx ISO with ppf-o-matic, just to see if it recognizes it?

  18. Posted · Edited by the_E_y_Es_o_0 · Report reply

    On 05/08/2018 at 9:08 AM, Cross said:

    EDIT: Thank god I got that giant hammer in the locked room. How much HP does this second fucking dragon have? He hits harder than any of the other bosses so far...and damn that tail attack, one shot and I'm dead, if I don't avoid it (which is 90% of the time).

    Sorry I didn't see this before. The Sanctum Dragon has 850 HP. It might be a bit excessive, TBH. The one-shot thing is intentional, however. Kind of a skill check.

     

    I've made an optional patch that gives Ashley the Tier 3 Warlock spells (Tornado, Acid Flow, Gravity, etc). Here's how it works:

    Explosion Lv4 becomes Tornado
    Thunderburst Lv4 becomes Thunderbolt
    Flame Sphere Lv4 becomes Fire Storm
    Gaea Strike Lv4 becomes Gravity
    Avalanche Lv4 becomes Acid Flow
    Radial Surge Lv4 becomes Judgment
    Meteor Lv4 becomes Apocalypse

    link: https://mega.nz/#!gIUQ1YpB!27WFQsehyMbkwtAlwtvGG0u1K64gf8sxCTsoUgwRI2Q

     

  19. Posted · Report reply

    This might be relevant:

    "Future Plans

    The most immediate future plans for this hack are to do a quality control sweep of bosses and full kagatsuchi encounters. I would say more than half of both of those could stand to be improved. I also want to see if there's anything more that can be done to make randomized skill inheritance from fusion less painful.

    My secondary plans are to consider adding/changing more skills and mechanics. Some of these additions and changes (such as Heat Riser and the 1/2 turn cost on Summon and Swap) have significantly altered and broadened how this game can be played, admittedly to a larger extent than I expected they would. So having more of that would definitely appeal to me.

    My more distant (and less certain) plans include:
    -Completely rebuild demon conversations from the ground-up
    -Allow the player to choose their inherited skills

    Both of these would be tons of work, and I generally don't see them as being as important as the other changes, but they'd certainly be neat to have.

    Timeline

    Unfortunately, the odds of any of these plans happening soon are slim. I am currently working on the battle design for a commercial game project, and that will have to be my primary focus for the next 9 months or so. The evenings and weekends may give me some time for hacking, but that time has to be shared with things like relaxing, having something that could arguably be called a social life, and working overtime on the commercial project. And then even for whatever time is left after that, one of my other hacks could wind up getting that attention instead, depending on what sounds the most appealing at the time.

    So yeah, just wanted to let everyone know what's going on with this project right now. I'm trying to increase my level of community interaction for all of my projects during this time period "away" from focusing on hacking. I tend to have a bad habit of basically just finishing a project, posting it, and moving on to the next one with minimal promotion and outreach. It means a lot to me when people comment, post, stream, etc. their experiences and thoughts about the projects I create, so it would be behoove me to do what I can to foster it."

    Full post: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/582958-shin-megami-tensei-nocturne/75943094

  20. Posted · Report reply

    2 hours ago, Cross said:

    Oh I see, I thought it only affected the attack strength of enemies. I don't actually know the game inside-out, sorry.

    No problem. Out of curiosity, are you new to the game or revisiting?

    2 hours ago, Cross said:

    Also is agility tied to accuracy? I dunno what to do with my shit accuracy with the body of the golem using my Pink-something (forgot the name of the club), is it just because the body is far above me that I have low accuracy on it -- or is there anything I can do to increase it?

    Yes. Agility and Risk determine your % chance to hit something. High AGL and low Risk will increase the %, low AGL and high Risk will diminish it. This applies to the enemy's hit % as well.

    Since you can't boost your AGL through magic yet, just keep your Risk low using Vera Roots, and attach the Braveheart gem to your weapon's grip, if possible. It raises your hit % by 20%. Very useful.

    The distance between Ashley and his target doesn't affect his chance to hit it. Either something is inside your weapon's range or isn't. So you don't have to worry about that.

    2 hours ago, Cross said:

    Your mod feels Dark Souls-ish, take this as a compliment. :)

    You're the second person to say that. Thanks.

  21. Posted · Report reply

    1 hour ago, Cross said:

    The thing about Degenerate is...I don't seem to feel or see that it works, I tried degen-ing the lizardmen but I still get hit pretty hard, up to a 100. Dunno if my armor is the culprit but I seem to have lower defense even when I degenerate an enemy.

    The enemies' base damage was increased for the mod, and IIRC those Lizardmen carry 2-handed weapons which are quite powerful. So even if you apply a partial decrease to their STR, their damage multiplier and their arsenal are against you. So don't count on Degenerate for taking less damage, but for dealing more damage to the opponent's weakened defense.

    Ofc, depending on the feedback I get, I might reduce the damage multiplier for enemies.

  22. Posted · Report reply

    6 hours ago, Cross said:

    Okay I'm at the Golem boss right now, I'm wondering how I'm gonna dish out some damage to this son of a bitch, I just died from him and was dealing 13 damage on his body and 1 on all other body parts...is there a trick here?

    Make sure you Degenerate him, that will help taking him down. Try using a Blunt weapon, he's weak against that.

    You'll soon get a spell (Analyze) that lets you view the enemy's stats and plan your strategy accordingly. I'm considering making that spell available earlier, to avoid these situations.

  24. Posted · Edited by the_E_y_Es_o_0 · Report reply

    3 hours ago, blackcat777 said:

    One another thing I forgot to mention about spawns is that the dragon boss in the very last room of IMB1 continuously respawns, and always drops an Elixir of Sages (so Ashley is well-educated these days).

    I noticed. >_> The latest patch (v.091) should fix that.

    Quote

    I cleared all of Iron Maiden for the first time on this playthrough and trekked back to Godhands.

    I did not take screenshots, but pre-Iron Maiden, outside Godhands, Death closest to the door dropped the (D) Brigadine and the one further back dropped the (L) Wizard Robe.

    Yep, that's it.

    Quote

    Post-Iron Maiden (*Last Crusader did not spawn with them this time... weird?), the Death closest to the door dropped a (S) Plate Mail, and the one further back dropped a (D) Brigadine.

    That Last Crusader (and a couple of others) appears at different locations depending on where you are in the game. IOW, before you reach a certain place (or point in the story), it appears at site A. After that, it moves to site B. I like playing around with such things, and that's something I intend to expand on for the next version of the mod. Like having enemies move around the dungeon, or even migrate across different regions. IMO it would add another level of authenticity to the world, make it more interesting and less static.

    Quote

    I'm going to clear it again and see if anything changes. Let me know if there are any other drops you would like me to check.

    Thanks!

    Quote

    After leaving my fight with the two liches, I warped to Crumbling Market and this guy popped up. He dropped a Muramasa like the one who should have spawned outside Godhands. Not sure if he was supposed to be here, but thought I'd post a sighting. Like bigfoot, but with better loot.

    Aye, it's all part of the plan. :ninja: There is one LC sighting that is more obscure, I wonder if you'll find it.

  25. Posted · Report reply

    On 28/07/2018 at 5:42 PM, blackcat777 said:

    They only spawn at < 150 HP (I double checked this), but their own HP levels are laughably low. Another thing to possibly consider would be raising their stats/HP and making it extremely dangerous to win some loot? After clearing IMB2, right before the exit... it would raise the stakes a lot. I would probably be greedy and die a few times.

    Sounds like I didn't rebalance their stats. There's still work to be done in IMB2/B3, and other NG+ dungeons like Forgotten Pathway, etc.

    On 28/07/2018 at 5:42 PM, blackcat777 said:

    I won three (D) Pole Axes from them and want a (D) Brandestoc. BUT. Here's the snag, it's not as broken as it seems - by that point in the game, I had almost 90 dragon affinity on a (H) Brandestoc. I had gotten two (D) Voulges from boxes - not even from an organic drop - until that point. If there are no training dummies, and I want a (D) Brandestoc with my affinities, the only choice is to downgrade my (H) Brandestoc, and take the insanely long route of converting that into a (D) Pole Axe. (D) Brandestoc is another one of the game's worst challenges. Other (D) Polearms, and other necessary components, like (D) Katana and (D) Langdebeve are so incredibly complicated to craft, that I'm still on my third playthrough and nowhere near actualizing a (D) Brandestoc WITH the affinities I've built up through my playthroughs.

    I mean, the alternative is to just scrap my old polearm and make a new one with drops from the blood lizards, losing all my affinities, BUT, who plays a Vagrant Story mod and makes Hoplite Leather just to cheap out on the Brandestoc? :P The lack of training dummy forces me to cheap out or go hard, so there's lots of existing built-in challenge, even with some help from the Blood Lizards. The increased drop rate is also an incentive to try and figure out how to take the long way, like the game rewards you for experimenting instead of punishing you. But it's still pretty punishing!

    I was thinking of restoring one dummy in particular, the affinities one. I'd place it inside of Godhands, but I'm still undecided if I should do it. Like you said, their absence adds another level of challenge. TBH I don't know how I feel about "ultimate weapons" anymore, and whether I should facilitate their creation or not. Right now, if you want any increase to your weapons' classes or affinities you must get it from actual enemies out in the field. I like that notion.

    On 28/07/2018 at 5:42 PM, blackcat777 said:

    What I also like about these leather drops is the frequency of them - I end up with *just* enough in my inventory where I am like, "Do I take this next big step toward hoplite leather, or do I combine this with silver for some damascus armor?" The balance is awesome and they remain in high value.

    Good to hear. I'm starting to think there is a % drop chance that is ideal, or at least a range that tends to work best.

    On 28/07/2018 at 5:42 PM, blackcat777 said:

    There were a few battles where I was pleasantly challenged because of the teleportation (especially in Temple of Kiltia), so I'd personally choose having the challenge with a bug than no challenge.

    Noted. I guess I should weight the pros and cons in each situation. The whole Last Crusader teleporting was made for that Temple of Kiltia boss fight; later I applied it to other Crusaders. So it makes sense that you liked that one in particular.

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