raics

1 hour ago, Cagene said:

The suggestions are the following:

1 - The notable exception about weapons in the chart that I noticed is the mordred's song dagger that is dark elemental(combine well with mesmerize), strongest attack, great ward and great effect. That weapon is too ahead of the others i think, maybe a improvement would be to make it a different element and lower its attack power.

2 - The way draconic magic is limited in the cases of most of the unique classes is great, i think something like that could be done with necromancy as well. For example the wicce and heretic classes should not be able to cast all necromancy spells, only the non-undead related. I think the lich, the lord and the necromancer should be able to cast all necromancy spells as it is now.

3 - If possible would you make a spell chart detailing what you changed about the spells, it would be a better format to read than the patch notes.

4 - Can you make the windshot spell air elemental for the vartan? I noticed that spell was not air elemental in the skill section

Thanks for the input, it's always welcome

1. Sure, I can pinch it a bit, maybe remove the ward altogether.

2. That would make sense, I'll likely do it in some patch.

3. There's a consolidated changelog linked in the readme, that might be easier to read but there were too many changes to list every little detail.

4. Some like their vartans in different elements (lightning usually, maybe fire), and that would nudge people a bit towards air, I don't like element locking unless that's what the class is about, like necro or cleric.

1 hour ago, buttwag said:

I have also been trying to use the crossbow sidegrades (the ones that have 14 range and can't shoot diagonally). They are really bad. The trade-off of having a longer range is worthless, mainly because the vertical tolerance is so poor. I believe that improving the vertical tolerance a bit or adding a pierce effect (like spears have) would make them more usable and much more fun. Or even maybe adding a new gimmick to it, like status on hit or something. The documentation mentions that they can fire through some obstacles, but it does not seem to be the case with the usual obstacles found on maps. As they are now, it is necessary to come to an almost melee distance of the target in order to shoot, unless the map is very flat (there are maybe a couple of such maps) and there are no friendly units in the way. By comparison, a fusilier with a 2H fusil and course correction does all of the above and much better. The skill is cheap and allows the unit to safely snipe from afar, saving RT on move and gaining insane amounts of TP every turn.

They can't fire through destructable obstacles, they would go through a wall or set of stairs but not through anything with a HP bar, sadly, vertical tolerance for line attacks is hardcoded so there's nothing I can do about it right now and you can't just slap piercing on it. The whole system is pretty limited as a lot of things are implemented with one specific use in mind, it isn't very modular and modding-friendly in general.

It's a situational weapon of sorts and I can't relax the conditions but I could try increasing the reward when you are in a situation to use it, I suppose.

4 hours ago, buttwag said:

Hi raics, thank you for your continued work on this mod. I've been playing it for some time now and I really enjoy it.

Here is some feedback and some questions and wishes for the future:

1. The charm debuff wears off immediately at the start of the unit's turn. I have tried using it in different circumstances, and the result is always the same. Is this a known bug? I have not noticed it happen with other statuses.
2. stun disables mind's eye (this might be the case in the original as well, not sure).
3. the slow in sludgebind does not increase rt like a normal slow spell would.
4. floating units can stop onto water tiles and poison, but not lava. I know it's not a big deal, because there are not as many lava maps, but would be nice to have for consistency sake
5. How do burst spell work exactly, what is their formula? I have tried using them with different units, but they always seem to be much worse than just attacking with the equipped weapon, or casting a (low tier) projectile spell.
6. End game classes (buccaneer, and paladin and astromancer in particular) seem waaay overpowered and simply better in every regard than any other similar unit. I understand that they are meant as a reward to the player for making it that far in the game, but they make classes such as knight and wizard pale in comparison.
7. In the previous version, pumpkin bomb exploded bushes and other obstacles, but this seems to have been fixed in 0.93.
8. I like the new support abilities on beast tamer, however would it be possible to modify the class a bit to make it more desirable to use without pairing it with a monster unit? I tend to not use monsters very much, and it's hard to justify using a beast tamer in a monsterless party.
9. Walrocks/witches, on the other hand, got a LOT of love. I love the class, I have several different units in this class performing various functions, and they all have their niche function, which i really like. I would love to see such an evolution on other classes as well. "Smaller" versatile skills, such as mindblast and the warlock-specific instill skills, are the way to go in my opinion. At least, I've had most fun playing around with those.
10. I really like the end-game equipment, which defies the norm (two-hand 1-H katanas, 2-H fists etc.) and would love to see more of that. It allows for some interesting builds.

This is all what I can think of at the moment. Not sure if it is helpful to you, just wanted to share my thoughts on the subject  Cheers!

Right, about those

1. Charm and Bewitch are very powerful and cheese-prone status effects so there's a chance the target will snap out of it on its first turn, that's intended.

2. That's the way that interaction works, not much I can do about it.

3. Slow in sludgebind is the same as all other sources of slow, other effects that it inflicts are separate from it.

4. That's because if float gets cancelled by leaden you just drop down into the water, if you drop into the lava you'd probably die so it's understandable that it works this way.

5. Formula is same as area spells, however they also have a crushing damage component so are resisted more easily by heavily armored units (which is also why light burst doesn't do extra damage to undead and dark is still able to damage them), they're mostly intended to finish off a unit near death and hit another one so they aren't meant to be stronger than normal attacks. Properly covering the whole game with just two spells isn't the best scenario so the first burst will get outdated by the time you get the upgrade, not much that can be done about that either as the ability space is very limited, especially so for spells.

6. Yeah, there were a lot of complaints before that they aren't worth the trouble.

7. The AI was a bit glitchy with it so I ultimately reverted it close to what it was in vanilla.

8. Beast master is a heavily specialized class, fairly simialar in that regard to dragoon. However, if you haven't been looking at guides you have no knowledge or control over whether the next battle will have any monsters or not so I made dragoon more widely useful, bringing a beast along is your choice so it's perfectly fine if using a beast master is pointless if you don't.

10. Sure, I'll add more if I get any good ideas but the space in equipment list is very limited too.

Thanks for the feedback, it's always welcome

10 hours ago, Zanmato said:

I was thinking... Would it be possible to put each class active skill on Arts of War, as you did with ninja and swordmaster and make it learnable with scrolls or something, while keeping the restrictions?

No, only the first X ability slots are indexed in the spell list and there's no room left for more.

24 minutes ago, Zanmato said:

Yes, but in the knight class description it says "a capable defender and strong attacker"

Yeah, I think they switched that around, should be 'strong defender and capable attacker', and they're pretty capable, just not amazing and I don't think they should be.

The customization in this game happens on a different scale than in FFT, over there you got a 5 man squad of versatile units, here you got a 12 man squad of more specialized ones so there's no need for every class being able to do everything. I've been asked fairly often 'why are spellblades weak' or 'what should I do with my warlock', as the classes whose role isn't as clearly defined tend to stand out a bit.

Something like that, I've been doing a bit of thinking today and most weapons that make sense for each class seem to already be available. If I, dunno, gave spellblades more bladed weapons as in daggers or 1h katana it wouldn't really do that much for them.

It's about expectations, when you see a knight you're expecting him to be annoyingly tanky and hit not as hard as a terror knight or swordmaster, if I lower his stats so he doesn't do as much damage with 2h weapons, then he will do less damage with 1h than, for instance spellblade, and that isn't good. And it's the whole purpose of a knight, you're using that unit so you could have something that will always be standing and shield others, using 2h weapons goes against their core concept. Weapon restrictions are also a part of the overall balance, some classes don't have access to powerful weapons because that would make them too strong, a good example for that is warlock that would kick too much ass with his dragon magic if you let him use a 2h axe or hammer, and some have access to a lot of weapons because they're very specialized otherwise, like dragoon or beast tamer, so it expands the class a bit.

I could extend the weapon choices into similar weapons where it makes sense, though, rogue or warlock don't have access to 1h swords because they're dexterity classes but maybe I should just let the player make the wrong choice if he wants.

53 minutes ago, Zanmato said:

I found a bug, the Silver Brand (1h sword) shows as a 2h sword on the item menu. Looking at the tooltip it says 1h but when equiped it works as a 2h sword.

That's no bug, the 1h sword sidegrades are bastard swords. They still use the same skill but require both hands, not quite as strong as a real 2h sword but it's lighter and faster, can be handy if the class is already sturdy so it doesn't really need a shield and you want a bit of extra damage.

1 hour ago, Zanmato said:

Hi. 

Is it possible to change the player faction color? Green is so boring.

  

I don't think so, unlike portraits, it isn't specified anywhere which faction uses which palette so it's likely hardcoded.

It's semi-intentional, as it's the lesser evil out of very few choices, and it kinda makes sense.

High spell evasion is a side effect of sorts, as their avoidance scaling is different from humans, this probably doesn't fit their archetype that well so it will likely get tweaked later.

The version 0.93 is up on moddb, there are some problems with the version I'm uploading here so it will most likely be up tomorrow.

3 hours ago, Roryn said:

Any news about next release?

Actually, yes, it was supposed to be this evening so that's quite a nose you got carrying that monocle, sir.

2 hours ago, Caledor said:

Reached end of chapter 3, i'd like to hear your opinion about the following

- I'd consider giving back boulder throw to the flying beasts. Maybe by boosting the dragons to have the 6 range one and give the 2 fliers the 4 range one. I think it really hurts them to be left without a ranged attack altogether.
- Familiars have special skills both divine and dark but can't use dark magic at all (despite being able to use the other elements). I find this strange, i think the debuffing Dark magic suits them well, especially for the Pumpkin variant
- Rampart Aura feels a bit too exclusive. I think all the classes that are capped to RA I can affort the boost to II and TK can get up to 3.
 

Flying beasts have enough advantages as is, and they're a bit anatomically inadequate to toss rocks.

There's something I have planned for familiars, their current setup is just for compatibility.

I think it's a good thing, it gives tanks a selling point in endgame when strong damage dealers start edging out.

The goddess sword originally comes from a book, it was then implemented in Path of Exile (which the author generously supported) as a trio of swords but the idea later had to be scrapped after the game got restructured and it's currently two swords and an offshoot, it's mentioned in the readme. It was a good idea originally and I'm keeping it in as a homage of sorts, they're also fairly close to specs in function, for instance the first sword is heavy but costs no RT to swing, which is mentioned in the book, the second one has no physical damage component and pretty much disables casting and the final form is a hybrid weapon with a unique ability similar to its original effect. The names look fine in item list and when you equip them so it isn't much of a problem.

The point of something+board casters is you want to use a shield to be more durable, not to have whatever a 1h handed weapon offers, I can't have it compete in raw power with the 2h option in any way. More books would be nice but the item table is currently topped out, can't fit a toothpick in there and there aren't nearly enough books to cover the progression and also endgame options.

Coats and mails are strong defensively and can make you really resistant to an element with a focused setup but they could use something, got that one noted in longterm list but don't have anything good currently.

Two reasons, fusils don't really need it, and they're also a 'tech' weapon so they intentionally have nothing unnatural going on, as the Balboede are mentioned to be uncomfortable with magic.

2 hours ago, Rucession said:

Hey Raics, just a quick bit of feedback. I finally got around to completing CODA 4 (and the One-Eyed Knight Slayer title) and I feel that Balxephon's personal weapon is kinda underwhelming for how late you get it. It's basically a 1-handed spear that requires both hands to wield, but doesn't seem to have any unique advantages over using conventional 1-handed or 2-handed spears. If I needed a fast, lower RT spear I'd just use the 1-handed variant while retaining the ability to equip an offhand weapon or shield.

Yeah, it's using the 1h atk calculation by mistake, I've fixed it in my current version.

24 minutes ago, Caledor said:

ah, so it's a secondary hit effect and HP TP MP is what it damages with the second strike.
Btw, i forgot to mention the change to Meditate's animation before. Was it itentional? There's no sound nor particle effect

Yeah, each is technically a separate effect, but the parameters can vary to an extent, for instance doublehit and additional percentage hit are the same effect with different parameters.

It was intentional, the change was made while meditate was something you spammed every turn to make it less tiresome.

15 minutes ago, Caledor said:

Got it, thanks.
Here's the bugged descrption btw (same for -0 TP and MP and maybe for something else)

Ah, right, that was never intended to be a weapon effect so it has nowhere to pull the damage amount from to use in the description. It would probably be safe to replace that tooltip with something like 'Additional hit', 'MP damage' and such, though.

1 hour ago, Caledor said:

Strange, i thought it'd be easy to make an incremental patch with only the cosmetic changes in it.
Anything about the "process_" description bug btw?
Also, i noticed that you didn't "finalize" the renamed classes... the new names end with spaces (can be seen from the class description, there are spaces between the name and the ":"), in case you didn't know it. There should be a pointer or a value somewhere that enforces the length of the name.

Oh and could you please upload all the documentation you've gathered so far? I really don't care how messy it is, i'd just like some pointers to tinker with the data myself, so literally anything works lol

Which process description bug?

The thing with changing sprites is I then have to hunt down every cutscene where that sprite appears and change it too, done it once and I'm probably not doing it again in a hurry. The game is sometimes strangely constructed, as if they tried to make things hard on themselves intentionally.

I left the names with empty spaces like that intentionally for the time being, as long as I'm still changing things I might change it again and forget to set the length back, empty spaces are much preferable to things getting cut off, I'll go through it once I'm done and fix everything.

Sorry, I don't have anything now that would make much sense or notes as such, there's something on page 19 that Sparafucile was working on that might be useful.

42 minutes ago, Suppanut said:

Is it possible for mod to allow San Bronsa ruin to able to access post-game without CODA (so it could access in N-route in first playthrough)

Sadly, I don't think it will be possible anytime soon, I know next to nothing about campaign structure.

3 hours ago, Caledor said:

...

Thanks for the feedback, it's especially interesting to hear from fellow tinkerers.

Sprites are indeed somewhat of an issue, as I've seen enough players asking for another version with default sprites for donnalto or rudlum, most commonly, and very few have problems with minor changes to deneb (red shoes on a witch are pretty iconic after all), voltare, lanselot, warren, gildas or vyce. Not that easy to solve, though, as enough people also like new sara or donnalto so I'd have to maintain two versions of the mod, and that's a bit too bothersome to do before final release. Maybe there's a middle ground somewhere as I've seen barely any requests to revert the named generics to change their sprites with class again, so it's just a matter of getting the right fixed sprite for the character.

Donnalto - probably the most controversial one, some love it and some hate it, can also break immersion by reusing an endgame portrait. could be reverted to his default, a bit of a problem with it is it isn't too different from a regular cleric, you just get a bag of different color with palette swap as it's mostly black

Felicia - the cleric sprite is fine, but also has a portrait issue like donnalto, she could use a normal cleric portrait

Sara - some like this combo a lot, as the blademaiden sprite looks a bit like orson from knight of lodis. She could be locked to female rogue instead as arycelle has the dibs on archer sprite, I could have her recruited as an early rogue too

Folcurt - saw some complaints that he looks a bit on the big side but the sprite and color scheme is also spot on for his portrait so his new look is fairly easy to get used to

Dievold - terror knight sprite barely changes, this is pretty much the only one you can spot easily

Oelias - her clothes don't match the portrait as well with this palette but hair does, it's the opposite for default so this is a lose-lose situation, best solved by editing the clothes on her portrait when it becomes possible as her hair is supposedly kissed by fire and brings good luck, the night is dark and full of terrors

Rudlum - heard it often enough to revert it, some like to have a playable templar but the warlock sprite looks pretty good

Ehlrig - the sprite is ok for a pirate captain but he has the same portrait issue as donnalto and felicia, could be changed to a normal beastmaster portrait

Chamos - some wanted an all-black ninja, his portrait would end up on ehlrig so that could be a good option

2 hours ago, mario2000 said:

k...cuz I  managed to recruit a lizard patriarch and was wondering

Yeah, you can see quite a few races in classes they can't normally use, it will be that way until I fix it in battle data and it's a ton of work so I changed class availability early to get some feedback before the long haul.

1 hour ago, mario2000 said:

Patriarch is not on the lizardman's class list. Bug?

No, each of those three classes is available to two races, lizards and skeletons get hoplite, lizards and orcs get jugger, lamia and orcs get matriarch/patriarch, humanoids have 6 classes total and other creatures, like ghosts or gremlins get 4. Lizards don't have good caster stats so their access to magic is poor, with dragoon being the only class that can kinda use it, orcs are roughly on par with humans in magic and are much better suited for a beefy caster.

There will be some changes in next minor patch that should (eventually) untangle the mess with familiar class.

3 hours ago, mercy said:

WTF is the point in getting them???!  Whose idea was this?

Not mine. When you recruit a unit you don't get all skills and spells it has, no idea why but I assume it's because skills are extremely grindy in vanilla and high level spells are hard to get, they likely didn't want to trivialize getting them and demean your efforts up to that point.

Anyway, it's something I can't change yet. You can buy those spells at deneb's or potd shops after you kill the last boss, I'll probably make them available earlier though, probably during chapter 4 when you get access to damasc gear.

31 minutes ago, Sparafucile said:

By the way, raics.  After my recent study of your changes to the 03E8.bin file, I think I could write an editor that would give you almost full control over item/spell names and descriptions; it looks as if, as long as the total length of the entire block of text strings is constant, you may be able to change the individual lengths of the names and descriptions at will... well, with great difficulty by hand.  Would you be interested in such a utility?

It would be nice to have for sure but I'm mostly done with renaming stuff so it wouldn't be really necessary at this point, especially if it's tricky to make one and use it. Dunno if it's an issue, but would the editor be able to preserve backwards compatibility? Where I had to change the length of names it was done in a way that would allow you to still use the mod on original hardware if anyone wants to for any reason.

For any future projects cracking it would probably be a must, it was extremely annoying to be restricted by it.

2 hours ago, zoiwillxx said:

Can you share the pointers if I wanted to Hex edit it myself? Have you thought about creating a tool to edit LUCT, so you could grow a hacking community for this game?

I could, but my notes are too messy to make much sense of, can't see myself trying to tackle tidying them up before 1.0 release. I'm no programmer so making an editing tool would be too much and the battle data is a bit hopeless too, as there's no pattern to it.