raics

7 hours ago, OneV8 said:

I could use the same argument for archers, yet here we have them inflicting silence and poison. Take a look into how characters such as Tryndamere work, he's a perfect example of a Berserker, and yes they CAN have self sustain, it wouldnt take away from their theme, it would just keep their skill slots more busy and make them more interesting to use. 

Swordmasters are about avoiding, countering, ultility and grace. Berserkers can be pure damage dealer brutes running on TP gasoline. It's awesome design and their positions don't overlap at all.

 

-When rescuing Cerya from Oz, even if you bring Cistina she won't say her lines. The reason for that is that apparently whoever gets a turn first gets the dialogue (From Bayin, Folcurt and Cistina) and the others stay without. The issue is that in the Vanilla Cistina would be much faster and would usually get dialogue preference, here if you bring Bayin as a mage, it's almost guaranteed he will talk to Cerya instead of Cistina, since he is much faster with lighter gear. Just a small tidbit, vexed me a bit, because it's obvious that Cistina is the one who should get dialogue preference here.

 

-While I do really like the evacuation system, using it on the 3 nobodies from the neutral route will send them straight home, and we wont get their dialogue from reviving them. It's a minor thing, but since it's basically all the interaction we will ever have with these characters, I missed their dialogue there.

You can't really use that argument here, berserker is frontline dps, swordmaster is an evasive all-rounder, spellblade is a light supporter tank, 'pure long range dps' is what archers were in vanilla and in the mod they are a backline harassment unit, art of war only reinforces that role. When berserkers need self-sustain it's usually tied to their dps in some way, with life leech or on-kill effects which are either tricky or impossible here, but the main thing is that berserkers tend to have that when they are on their own, this is obviously a team game so your healers and supporters are their sustain.

Minor finishers are usually tied to the only weapon the class can use so you will get them eventually, there's no decision to be made depending on it so the lack of information isn't an issue. For archer or necromancer it's just an extra to spice up the setups you won't normally use with the class, and those that like to plan everything ahead will use my class table anyway because the game doesn't tell you which skills or spells can the class learn so it's nothing out of the norm and I could just add the minor finishers in there.

The dialogue issue can't really be solved elegantly because I can't make a character or an entire class faster or slower just because of that or reintroduce revives, it would be nice to have both but in cases where I have to choose between lore and gameplay it's gameplay first.

11 hours ago, OneV8 said:

Terror Knight's are feeling a bit underwhelming however (not that they're weak, but that they are too much on the boring side). 

It seems like the only way to get spellstrike is with cudgels (lame) or lizard cocaine, so some things I thought were:

1. My best solution is to give an earlier spellstrike buff spell to warlocks, so we can pair them with T. Knights and wreck terror on everything. Right now I really don't feel the slightest inclination to use a warlock, so you would kill two birds with one stone.

2. Give Terror Knights a TP consuming spelltrike skill buff. This would be pretty good as well, and not overpowered since they keep this class keeps the skill slots busy.

3. Give Terror Knights earlier acess to lament of the dead. Right now with two handers they feel like quirky beatsticks, and cudgels aren't a option for me, so doing this would make them more exciting earlier in the game.

 

I don't think I'll ever agree with archers using art of war, but I really wish you would consider making the dagger bind finisher into an equipable skill, if only for aesthetical purposes. No class should be given a brand new finisher just from equiping a type of weapon , it's ugly and non intuitive. Then archers would have to use a skill slot, but it would also allow them to cripple and shoot in the same turn. Not sure about this balance wise, I just want to fix this aesthetical problem.

 

Also, you mentioned that archers felt a bit dry. That's what I got from Berserkers. The solution here would be pretty simple imo, give them HP infusion and make that "last stand" or something skill take more percentual HP, OR you could also look into a skill that gives them death resistance, like they use them, and their HP can't go below one until their next turn (unless someone, say a juggernaut, disarms them) this is pretty strong, so it would have to cost a lot of TP or be a late game thing.

 

A segment of the spears should really be DEX oriented.

 

Weird suggestion:

Have you ever considered changing warrior/amazon sprites/portraits? They are easily the most boring/ugly in the game. I could get behind giving them a more medieval guerrilla look, I just don't know which sprite would fit, no recolors of other classes or important characters leaves me out of ideas.

 

Anyways, I'm having the most fun I ever had playing this game. Even now as the mod is incomplete I can say that the game's balance quality finally matches that of the story.

If you want your terror knights to be more accurate with spells you can fix it with gear to an extent, you have to sacrifice a bit of defense or damage potential, but that's what's keeping you from getting an efficient heavy armor mage too easily, if they're still too unreliable their caster stats can just be increased. There's no real need to introduce a buff dependence in this case, it's fine for beasts because they're supposed to hit their full potential only when paired with a tamer, I don't think a terror knight should be dependent on other units like that, they're a bit of edgelords after all.

A fair few classes get minor finishers like the archer, we got fusiliers, necromancers, priest, paragon, now hobyrim and you also shoot with gunblades that way, the usual reason is that designating something as a finisher is the only way to have a skill that fully uses your weapon stats and skill. Archer's hamstring move could work as an active or special, but it requires a dagger so you have to give up on using a 2h ranged weapon to access it, as I said, the move gives more purpose to a setup like that. Historically, archers would be reasonably armored and have a sidearm they're fairly competent with instead of trying to do the legolas point blank shot, so when they do get flanked the attack could go worse than expected, this surprise move is an homage of sorts to that.

Berserkers are supposed to be pure offense and they currently do their job well, if anyone wants a strong attacker with defensive skills he should use a swordmaster, that's what they're for.

A dex spear could exist, but I can't do a whole segment, they now have to cover 1h and 2h options in both the main and sidegrade flavor including as many elements in each as possible, there just isn't enough room to do dex spears too.

If I'm able to change the warren report portraits the other ones shouldn't be hard either, I wouldn't mind changing the portraits for soldiers if I'm able to match the art style. They're something of a staple in the series, however, so I'd have to pass it by the community first.

1 hour ago, Sparafucile said:

Not so.  Unless you tried and it messes up skill effects?  The skill 'metadata' table has an effective List Order field--magic skills are down in the list but still sorted at the top.  As long as you reorder each entry between the current and new position so each is a unique value, it looks like reordering works fine to me.

I did a quick test--switched Deathproof and Swiftfoot1 on an old save--and it appear to work fine: Swiftfoot increased Move even though it was 'out of order'.  The list order is part of saved game data, so my edit did not appear until after I reapplied the Default sort; the new sort was preserved if I saved.  Did not test if a new sort is natural for a new game.

I remember tampering with it before and it wasn't working right so I probably messed up somewhere. I'll give it another go when the next version is ready, if it works on re-sort it should work when starting a new game.

9 hours ago, OneV8 said:

This is it for now. I have you to thank for revitalizing this game for free with such great skill, also apologies if I come overly strong, I'm just feel really passionate about this whole thing

Don't worry about it, none of us would be here if we weren't passionate about the game.

Portrait issues

I will probably be able to change the warren report portraits down the line, it isn't a major issue so it's better if I spend the time chipping away at the mountain of things that need to be done, we'll see about portraits later. Meanwhile I released the code generator you can use to change the way any special character looks, that probably solves all of the issues regarding 'I don't like how the character X looks now'. Having Sara as a rogue is a good thing because there are some nice early game steals you can get with her.

Archers

I think it's fine if trajectory is a general skill, not many classes have access to heavy ranged weapons or are trying to go for being an exclusive ranged attacker so they can't justify using a skill slot for trajectory as easily, but I feel it's still important to give them the option because of how generally useful it is, rogues have bullseye but it's probably more useful in combination with sidearms. The main reason archers have art of war is that many have felt that the class is a bit dry, warriors have a large weapon selection and can be a discount tank, raw dps or light skirmisher but archers are a lot more specialized, disabling skills are what you'd commonly expect from an archer in games, so it kinda fits. I'm no historian, but they say good bowmen were often paid better than your regular man-at-arms and was hardly an exclusive job for the unwashed masses, especially if we look outside of medieval europe, after all, the samurai were skilled archers first and foremost, and then everything else. The finisher is there because even though an archer could equip a dagger, there would be little reason to besides spending less RT to use your weapon than you normally would and having access to different finishers, it's there for the sole purpose of making that weapon combo more tempting.

Cudgels

They're available to all classes that can use magic, so it's just a side effect of more classes being able to, warriors can't use magic so they're limited to only the quarterstaff sidegrade. On that note, those transferable weapons are just supposed to mean it's something you wouldn't normally learn as that class, they probably wouldn't teach you how to swing a light sword on the berserker academy but if you picked it up somewhere else it can be put to use as a berserker, you won't be violating the rules and might get laughed at by your classmates only sometimes.

Clerics

I'd sooner make them a bit worse at other things if needed, healing is their primary role after all.

Other

Unfortunately, can't do anything about default skill sorting. About pumpkins, having to get 30 is a bit much so the plan is to have around 20-something from the campaign by the time you can get deneb so there's only a bit more to go, you will probably be able to get them in phorampa and other places for that last spurt, and there are other things phorampa will be good for. Can't do anything about titles at the moment, unfortunately.

If Leonar ends up recruitable, it will probably be in chaos, neutral got enough candy now.

3 hours ago, Sparafucile said:

Hmm.  Saw that the beast "weapons" are now all gone and that Instill does add bonus Touched damage to the basic beast attacks, unlike the unmodded game.  However, Augment does not increase the extra Touched damage from Instill very much, if at all.  Is the smallness of the Augment effect on Touched extra damage working as intended?  Maybe it's not something that can be adjusted anyway.

Yeah, it has no effect, but instills already add 25% extra damage which is pretty substantial, and considering that they already boost your damage when using elemental weapons they do affect instills indirectly. If they also affected them directly, that would be double dipping.

33 minutes ago, Cake said:

Btw do u hv a complete drop list of all dungeon like San borsa, potd, and woods. I'm looking for this mordred's song (dagger) 

No, but you can look for the location of "Assassin's Dagger" in vanilla guides.

Yeah, he probably has a more recent one.

Sorry, don't have a current one and the the characters in the old ones have wrong stats.

2 hours ago, Cake said:

Hey raics

It seems shaman class won't level up

Is it a bug or did I miss some information bout this mod

Yes, it's a bug with the game, the shaman class unlocks fully only by changing Sherri or Cerya into it, Olivya or Cistina won't work. Once you have changed either of those two into it, you will see it in class list and it will level properly.

6 hours ago, Cake said:

Is it available after coda?

I'm currently in chapter 4 but it seems deneb doesn't sell it

No, it's after the Heim battles.

1 hour ago, Cake said:

Yoo raics

Thanks for ur modding I really enjoying it

But now I hv no idea where to find this ars magna recipe as before it dropped in chapter 1

But now Im having hard time to find it

Or hv u changed it?

Yes, it was never meant to drop in that place, now that I redid those battles it doesn't anymore. It was meant to be bought from Deneb's shop and that's where you could always find it.

33 minutes ago, Darius87 said:

I see, so I guess you won´t even consider to change it in your mod ,right?

Already have a pretty long to-do list, and this change would be a double edged sword, trying to hit evasive enemies might become a bit too annoying on the player side and they already tend to have a speed, accuracy or mobility advantage over the heavy ones, they aren't meant to match their survivability too. If they aren't durable enough to function, it can be tweaked in other ways without introducing system wide changes. Because if you finally cornered that annoying archer you expect it to go down to your berserker without too much struggle.

2 hours ago, Darius87 said:

There is something that I always wondered, can the evasion cap be lowered? Characters that focus on evasion have a hard time surviving because the 40% side and 55% back caps are too high, expecially if you consider that there is 100 % hit attacks already like Mighty strike, Tremendous shot and a lot of finishing strikes. There is ways to deal with evasive characters already. Can the caps be removed or at least reduced to something like 10% front, 20% side, 30% back? That would make evasive builds more appealing.

It's probably possible, but that's a major system change and likely not easy to do.

1 hour ago, Darius87 said:

Hi. I played your mod when it was version 0.92 and I have been keeping track of your updates. I decided to try the version 095.a. but when I load my old save (0.92) a few unique characters have lost their unique sprites and returned to the vanilla ones like Folcurt or Felicia and some are differents like Sara which now is a roque. I tried modding both the 0.92a rom and a clean rom and in both I have the same problem. Did you change the sprites in a udpate and I was unaware of that?.

Yes, I reverted some of the more radical changes to vanilla by popular demand. However, you can now use a generator sheet that spits out CWC codes that let you customize everyone to your liking, you can find the link to the generator in the readme or here in the first post.

9 hours ago, Willus said:

Thank you Raics for this great mod. Maybe I am really bad at this game, but I am stuck on killing Nybas for the first time (chapter 1). I tried to power level, tried to gank the undead, bring 3 healers, bumrush the necromancer, nothing seems to work. I always end up getting my party member killed. Should I be expecting to lose some characters and plan for this? How have others done this? I could just ignore that map I suppose.

That map is now higher level than before and the npcs in the scene after krysaro will mention there's no hurry in doing it, just to give you a stronger hint that the map is optional and doing it can be postponed until the end of the chapter when your level is higher and you can have better gear. As casters are the biggest problem in that map, the easiest way to do it is gearing up a few warriors or knights for maximum magic resistance and going for nybbeth while the rest of the team keeps other units occupied, and by keeping occupied I don't mean exorcising them, as nybbeth will then just summon fresh ones close to him, which will make killing him harder for your strike team.

1 hour ago, Rucession said:

Hey raics, I just tried updating both an older version of the mod and a vanilla ISO to 0.945, but Ocionne seems to have lost the ability to change into her Dragonborn class. Any idea why that might've happened?

Thanks, I do have an idea why that happened and it won't be hard to fix.

7 hours ago, Squaresoft said:

Hello raics, I just started trying One Vision and I'm loving it,
I don't mind checking the entire changelog version by version, that's what I do,
But I'm curious about if there is an unified change-list, thanks in advance,

Sure, might not be fully up to date but checking two patches worth of notes is still easier than everything

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1T7TupkvrKhnH0HtmU2O_-csqQuYQrjHf?usp=sharing

With the release of Tactics Ogre remake for PSP, this game got a bit forgotten and it's no wonder, the new one looks better, plays smoother, feels more polished and has more content. Which is a good thing, of course, if all remakes outshined the original work, the world would be a much happier place, if nothing else but for the lack of disgruntled fans.

Still, as the remake isn’t just an improved carbon copy of its predecessor, but a vastly different game in many aspects, there is a certain point in replaying this one, besides the obvious nostalgic factor. So, that’s what this is, a tiny side project for those that get a craving to replay it but aren’t quite as keen on revisiting some of its quirks, which were a bit hard to swallow even for year 1995.

Q&A

Patch Notes

Download link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rAwIGSpHmd9zOt8szlMnv1aG1k7iUsaY/view?usp=sharing

4 hours ago, kkllkkg said:

could you tell me where to buy the Treatise on Seduction scroll (Demonpetal Dance)？

Same as in vanilla game, the earliest where you can get one is from last story battle in barnicia castle, the grand staircase, it can drop from a female templar swordmaster but only from the level 17 enemy, if you're overleveled so so enemies are level 33+ it won't drop. You can also get it from 8th floor of hanging gardens, enraptured dreams, also from female templar swordmaster and also from lower level battle which is at 22, if you're over 34 in all classes so you can't trigger the low level battle anymore it can't be obtained at all.

I'll change it eventually and there will be more places you can get it from regardless of your level.

16 hours ago, vhatever said:

I haven't played LUCT in quite sometime, but I recall something about losing skills on recruited characters/monsters if they had more than 4 or 5 skills. Something along those lines. If the skill was in the 5+ slot then they would lose them after the battle, right? Maybe my brain isn't remembering right. But there was something about that happening.

Yeah, but doing it with skills is a bit iffy and it's a ton of work.

3 hours ago, vhatever said:

Have you considered making a version of this with a raw sort of difficulty increase, something like increasing enemy hp/damage by 25% or more? Nothing too complicated, but a decent bump up in difficulty across the board. I think a lot of people who wish to replay these older games want to have a little extra challenge thrown at them.

It wouldn't be as straightforward as it might seem, the enemy uses the same racial templates as you do so any stat buff there would also apply to you, and if I use different templates for them, you could just recruit those and use them yourself.

If you had to level each character in the class so we had an investment, that would be a good idea, but as it is, once you have the class at that level it's just spending a few classmarks, which is the kind of trivial hassle people don't like to see.

I'm already automating a good part of it, the parts that can't be automated are troublesome, for instance I'd like to avoid each unit of the class to be exactly the same so I'm switching skills around on some of them, like giving wade to units on water levels, giving them different equipment and drops, steals should be the same so you know what to expect of each knight in the same chapter but for bosses they're different, so you can steal things like necro marks from nybbeth or 30 silvers from chaos vyce, things like that can't really be automated.

3 hours ago, cadence said:

ah, gotcha--you have to go through and change the skills for each unit for each battle? that does sound like a lot of work.

for the learning threshold, i'd imagine it's checking against a constant integer value, which would probably be a one-line ASM hack... is the hard part tracking down where this happens or am i importing the wrong expectations from romhacking other games? just curious.

also, i was wondering why every class seems to have the elemental Augment skills. is that hard-coded or did you have something in mind for it? 

Yup, every and the each one of 10,000+ unit entries because the game doesn't use any templates, when you add adjusting race templates, drops, steals and gear where needed it starts going real slow and I don't have much time recently either.

Exactly, fixing it wouldn't be hard but finding it would probably be tricky, of all the ways you could populate a list I can safely bet the devs chose the most awkward one.

Augments are just there because of weapon flexibility, I won't try to discourage knights from using a fire sword if they want. If an augment is missing that's because the class has limited or no access to that element, as is the case with knights and dark.

Those are old passive skills that got phased out, I'm removing them as I go, but the process is slow so only the first act is currently clean.

New skills show up when you're 5 levels from their learning threshold, changing that behavior is a bit tricky so it probably won't happen soon.

1 hour ago, VIStrings said:

Hey raics, great work, I'm a huge fan of what you've done here! A few years ago I put about 250 hours into the game and looked into modding it myself, just for personal satisfaction. I didn't do much at the time, just adjusted weapon balance, removed level-up bonus, 100% crafting, made claws 1-handed, made it so most non-unique equipment could be found on enemies... Stuff like that.

I was wondering... At the time, I followed a thread on 2channel (now called 5channel) where people shared tons of information about the hex-editing, all the different files and what encounters they contained, etc. They were all for the Japanese version, so I don't don't know how much of it is transferrable, but I wonder if they're aware of the existence of your patch/you're aware of their efforts? The thread is still active-ish (well, not dead anyways, but the SNES/Famicon one gets way more love) and I'm sure they'd love to learn from you, and I wonder was there anything they could help you with or something. Not that it looks like you need it, to be honest. You seem to have a great grasp of what you're doing, so massive kudos for that! I didn't follow the scene at all before One Vision, so I don't know how you went about figuring this stuff out in the first place!

As an aside! I was playing today and my Sidearms-wielding lizardman Hoplite had a funny interaction. I had Evade up and went to activate Trajectory to make sure I could hit an annoying Faerie. As I activate Trajectory, my Evade plinks out and I'm left with neither Nullify or Trueflight! Funny interaction, not sure if there's anything you can do about it? It's super niche anyways.

Thank you for keeping my love for this game alive!

Hi, thanks for trying it out, it's always nice to see more people getting back to the game.

Hard to say to what extent it would be compatible, I imagine the Japanese version would just have different offsets due to different amount of bytes spent on text but the file structure should be similar enough, haven't heard of the place before so it might be worth checking out.

I'd have to do a bit of digging around skills, trueflight is considered a physical effect so it would remove evade just as it would remove apostate if it was a magical effect. I'd have to see if it's possible for an effect to be neither physical or magical, if it's possible at all it wouldn't be hard to fix.