Bropedio

Want to document in case I forget: Formation odds are off due to the 10-step battle RNG modification. Should be an easy fix, but as of now, the chance of seeing any given formation in an area is listed below. The only significant problem is that the rarest encounter formation is roughly 40% less likely to appear than intended. A: 33% (expected 31%) B: 34% (expected 31%) C: 21% (expected 19%) D: 12% (expected 19%)

I'm not sure about 300 working with the division subroutine, but I thought I'd describe the approach I took, in case anyone is interested: The existing approach calculates the low end first, then the high end. Then it finds the difference between them, gets a random value from 0...diff, and adds it to the low end. That yields the multiplier (out of 225) for variance. Looking at the low/high end formulas, it's possible to simplify the representation of the random diff: (255 - Stat) - (225 - 3/4 * stat) ---> 30 - 1/4 * stat So for my approach, I calculated the random diff first, then subtracted it from the high end, which is simpler to compute. The main benefit being that we never have to compute the low end at all.

Regarding this bug, I just want to document that it is game-breaking during Locke's scenario. He can't steal clothes from Merchants. You will have to revert to RC-20 to get past that segment. (This narrows things down a LOT since it means that the steal bug is RC-21 only and RC-21 only changed one thing.)

Some more notes on my playthrough of RC-18 (up to the Sealed Cave) Battle Balance Cave to S Figaro (1): Terra wipes everything with MT Fire before any enemy behavior is seen. Mt Koltz: Trilium bane counters are great. Area feels dangerous, enemies are interesting. Lete River: Autocrossbow + Suplex take out everything very quickly Cave to S Figaro (2): Celes MT Ice wipes everything except for Bears Phantom Train: Shadow MT Shuriken w/ Power Glove wipes most enemy packs. Conjurer's Dark spell is a one-hit kill for any PC not at MaxHP Zozo: Dadaluma’s Slim Jim usage seemed more fair. Gau seems like a huge detriment on the team for this fight, unless he has the Conjurer rage (which is still not very reliable). IMTRF: Things are starting to get more difficult (a good thing). The holy immunity of many enemies here makes Sabin a lot less appealing. Money Balance S Figaro (1): I had 9000 GP, enough to buy whatever I wanted (except the dragoon relic) Narshe (after Kefka): I had just enough GP to equip Sabin/Edgar/Cyan/Gau (including Tools) Jidoor: Only enough GP for 3 or 4 new items (note: I took the Chocobo from Colosseum guy) Post-Zozo: Still not enough GP for most upgrades, even after walking to Kohlingen and back. Buying Golem or Zoneseek is out of the question. Tzen/Miranda: Not enough GP for upgrades. I’m selling Phoenix Downs and TInctures to buy some new armor (note: I took the Chocobo from Tzen to Miranda, but I walked back to Vector) Pre-Sealed Cave: Just enough GP to buy Golem and Seraph. Sold some more items for Zoneseek. No GP left over for upgrades in Narshe (or Tzen, Miranda). Maybe Bugs I think I recall BTB mentioning that the Mt Koltz guard during Locke’s scenario had a joke dialogue, but in my game he says “The empire has taken control here” Nevermind, I found the joke. Was looking in the wrong place. Pincer Attacks I saw the already-reported Buzzard/RedWolf(2) outside Kohlingen. In Zozo, the Hobo/Junkie(3) pincer fit on the screen, but the right-most Junkie was close enough to the edge that stealing from him placed Shadow off the screen. I can add a screenshot later tonight. Edit: I was wrong about the enemy pack. I added a screenshot of the formation below. Some Checklist Items Shop preview hack looks great, it’s my favorite new feature by far Spell dots look great too, and they seem to display when appropriate Can confirm Safety Glove procs Safe on critical HP I saw at least one enemy counter a counterattack At least some bosses have rewarded Exp (I did not monitor all bosses carefully, though) Hints about beating bosses -- I thought I saw an NPC suggest that I deplete MP for MagiMaster (or I could be crazy). I took that approach, which seemed to prolong the battle rather than make it easier. (Are you sure you mean MagiMaster and not 024?) Whoops. Yeah, 024. (The hint was that Dispel can make it reroll its weakness, not to MP mill it >.>) I probably was just not paying enough attention. On a related note, my Celes did not have Dispel at all during the IMTRF. I didn't take her to Zozo, so she was only Lvl.10 when I went in. She learned Slow before 024. Subjective Opinion ATB Colors The ATB colors seem wrong to me. Green mean “Go”, but it also means “Tranquil”. Red means “Stop”, or it means the speakers are turned up to 11. The following scheme would feel more natural to me: Red (Hot) Haste, Blue (Cold) Slow, Pink or Yellow Stop Esper Legend (unchanged from 1.9, I assume) This is a small gripe about exposition, but to me, it weakens the mythology/themes of the game in a significant way. Ramuh, when describing the War of the Magi, says the ancient magic-infused human soldiers are now known as "MagiTek". This seems to suggest that MagiTek isn't a new development, but is just a resurrection of ancient power. I always thought of MagiTek as part of the industrialization of the world, something very recent, and due entirely to Cid's genius. The ancient war of the Magi would not have included modern technology or science -- more likely, the war would have precipitated when ancient humans discovered Magicite itself, and used it the same way the player does.

Intro through Sealed Cave (RC-18) -- selected notes Balance Shiva/Ifrit did not use much Fire 3 and Ice 3, though they were scary nonetheless. Ultros 2 was no problem (Locke/Sabin/Edgar) Maybe Bugs Haste status has close to no effect on ATB speed. I don’t recall if it was this useless in 1.9. (It hasn't changed since 1.9, but it is different from vanilla - the nATB system makes even small changes to speed very pronounced) (By the way... if you get a chance, would you mind having a look at the aura cycling code? We're trying to figure out why Haste still shows up there.) It’s probably just bad luck, but the Soldier rage seems like ⅔ attack, ⅓ Cure 2 (It's bad luck) In IMTRF, I had imp-ed a Templar. He cast Remedy on himself, and his sprite stayed as an Imp (Well, fuck. I'll add a note for everyone to test this out more thoroughly) If Scan’s initial target dies before casting, it does not re-target the next enemy. Is this intended? (Yeah, status spells on the whole don't retarget on death. It was that way in vanilla, too.) Looks like if the Healing Shiv’s target dies before attack, it re-targets an enemy, rather than a PC (This I'm not sure is fixable. Worth mentioning as a known issue.) No death animation or fanfare or anything happened at the end of the Cranes battle (Yeah, it just ends like the Tritoch battle does. I'd like to figure out a good way to indicate death on the Cranes, but that will take AI space that I don't have) When Jumping with dual-wielding Edgar, only one weapon attacks (is this expected behavior?) (Jumping and DW do not mix. Don't do that.)

I mentioned a potential source of the "Sleep rage attack missing large sprite enemies" bug in the Coming Soon: 2.0 thread. While the bug itself has not been confirmed in 2.0 beta, I wanted to post a potential fix, in case the need arises. I'm pretty green, so I would greatly appreciate if someone with more experience could look this over. I don't know (yet) how to actually make patches, and I'm not familiar with any asm compilers, so I'm just posting the hex below. This fix does not require any additional bytes.

I want to document an issue we noticed in the elemental mixing patch that would break elemental weakness if a target had both a resistance (+1) and two weaknesses (-1, -1). After the first DEX, the zero flag would be set, causing the loop to break before handling the second weakness. The bug can be resolved by adding 2 to the BRA arg, so the loop repeats at the LSR, two bytes after the BEQ. Edit to clarify: This bug would only affect attacks with 3 or more elements, so it is unlikely to manifest unless more such attacks are added. As it is, Tritoch is the only attack that would be affected (I think), and only if the target had resistance to one of the elements and a weakness to the other two.

I will do my best to keep these items up to date as I work through the RCs. Apologies up front if any of these items are already present in 1.9, or are too nit-picky to be useful at this stage. Script/Text Typos and Suggestions Status Menu: Still calls magic evade “MBlock” (Status menu redesign is still pending/up in the air, and the label changes along with it) Arvis to Locke: “She needs our help and we may need her’s” --> no apostrophe in “hers” (Are you sure? I see an apostrophe here.) Beginners School: “it’s particularly reccommend” to do this for the “base” weapon… --> typo (Will fix) Beginners School: “Observe enemy behavior and learn whether it’s better to attack them directly or by disabling them before they can hurt you.” --> “...to attack them directly or to disable them before they can hurt you” (Will fix) Beginners (room 2): “Doing so cost a turn, however” --> should be “costs” (This whole line will be rewritten before the final release) Beginners (room 2): “Characters in the front row take more physical damage from physical attacks and deal less damage with their own.” This is not true. (Well, fuck... that's one hell of a typo) Before Kefka arrives in Figaro: “A general of the Empire has requested an audience of you” --> “an audience with you” (Technically, this one is Woolsey's fault. Will fix.) Edgar, after Figaro submerges: There’s a cave east of here --> This is misleading, since the cave is South by Southeast from where you gain control of the Chocobo ('eh... might fix this, idk.) Bugs (maybe?) “Gauge: Off” config setting doesn’t work in battle (maxHP shows briefly, then switches to ATB gauge as default) (RC4) (Bug confirmed) Bushido charging numbers (after 1) look wrong -- lighter, flickery (RC5) [I'm using OpenEmu on MacOS, which uses SNES9x] (Known bug as of now; Synchysi has an idea about the cause, but not sure about a fix) Killing Kefka (Imperial Camp) w/ Suplex bypasses “waiter” dialogue (RC5) (BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - keeping it) Fanfare music plays in Terra’s flashback after killing soldiers (RC4) (Bug - will fix) Sabin joins with no headgear (RC5) (Intended) Trillium appears to use Raid to counter non-ranged physicals, but does not counter Locke using Butterfly+Boomerang. I would have expected the counter to trigger unless both weapons were long range (RC5) (Not being fixed; combining short and long-range weapons is suboptimal in most cases, so this is a "feature".)

I noticed that the updated ReadMe no longer lists the following bug as a "known issue", but also does not mention it as being fixed in the version history: I only ask because I recently stumbled onto the cause of the bug, and wanted to share it (in case it hasn't already been fixed). I believe it happens in the subroutine that adds the "miss when protected from instant death" flag to any monster special effect with the "death" status. I don't have the address for BNW handy, but in vanilla, the address where BNW jumps to the new subroutine is C2/334B. In the BNW (1.9) subroutine, the status byte is checked for #80, and if set, it adds the "miss when protected from instant death" flag. The problem is, the status byte stored in the accumulator could be any of the 4 status bytes (indexed by X). That means any attack with Death, Sleep, Reflect, or Float will miss targets immune to instant death.

As a slightly different approach to my suggestion above, you could make "Spirit" (Stamina) the source of all restorative magic and defensive behavior. Severing restorative magic from damaging magic would constitute a new character dimension without distracting from the opposing damage stats Magic/Vigor. This approach would also be intuitive for veteran RPG players. With this approach, the changes are: * Vigor loses its damage reduction, but gains Counter % bonus * All restorative espers/magic/tools/bushido/blitz/rage/dance/slots -> Spirit (except drain) * Rock/Shrapnel/Tentacle rages, GP Toss -> Vigor Some Implications: Sabin would need access to Magic boosts, Gau might prefer Vgr+1/Mag+1 instead of Stamina, and Cyan's now-magic-based Bushido might be repurposed as primarily status attacks. Current stamina builds that can output lots of damage (???, Terra Morph, others?) might become too powerful as healers. In general, you would build your mages as either Black or White, and only balanced fighters could capitalize on Cover+Counter. I would expect these changes to encourage more strategic decisions regarding team planning, since fewer characters will be equally effective as healers and damage dealers.

To better answer the question why, allow me to pose a hypothetical: What if we re-purposed the “Speed” stat by equalizing everyone’s ATB rate and changing several attacks/heals to use “Speed” in their damage calculation? It would definitely create several new character builds, but I think, despite its added complexity, it would hurt the *depth* of character building. Vigor/Magic as opposing damage sources makes characters 2D, but adding Speed as a third damage source doesn’t make them 3D -- it makes the existing 2D plane larger. On the other hand, adding Speed (in its current implementation) makes characters 3D. My goal would be to make characters fully 4D with an implementation of Stamina that provides a unique dimension to character building. BNW already does this to a large extent (particularly via Tank n Spank, status mitigation, damage reduction) -- but I am curious to see if I could make the stat stand completely on its own. I imagine this problem was debated extensively during development of the Stamina Redux patch, and I would not be surprised if there truly is no alternate approach that would satisfy the requirements I’m setting forth. But still, I think it’s an interesting puzzle to try to sort out, even if just for my own enjoyment.

Stamina Redux Redux With 1.10 on the horizon, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I would change about BNW if I had the hacking expertise (I’d like to make my own patch, someday). Above all else, I would try to streamline stamina to make it simpler and more intuitive. The change I am proposing runs the risk of making stamina useless again, and invalidating some character builds. I realize I am opening a very large can of worms here, but I am very curious to hear thoughts about how I could mitigate this impact. Basic Concept Rename “Stamina” to “Heart”, conceived as a hybrid of a character’s endurance and bravery. Remove all stamina implementations that are inconsistent with this description. No More Stamina Attacks/Heals Revert damage/healing calculation to use either vigor or magic (possible exceptions: Interceptor, desperation attacks, atma weapon, ???). * Make magic esper bonuses more available to previous stamina builds * Adjust base power of previously-stamina-based attacks * Switch Regen/Remedy to fractional healing to keep them viable on low-magic builds? Use Stamina for Magical *and* Physical Damage Reduction/Variance This would hopefully help with stamina’s usefulness, and would mitigate the change to cover mechanics below. Never Evade while Covering The in-game cover animation suggests that you are using yourself as a physical shield, so you should always take the hit. Preserving Stamina's Usefulness * With stamina more of a dedicated "tanking" stat, perhaps enemies need to hit even harder? * Could other uses be made stronger? (morph damage reduce, dance success, sap/regen ticks, counter/cover rate, status evade) I really appreciate any thoughts you all have!

I just finished my first playthrough of BNW. FF6 has been my favorite game for as long as I can remember, but I can safely say I will never play the vanilla game again -- it's BNW from here on out. What an incredible achievement. Thank you so much for making it! BUGS (possibly) * While fighting magic pots in the cultist tower, I used a warp whistle with Relm, then selected Setzer's slot command. The warp whistle executed while the slots were still open, and the game locked up. * I used Shadow extensively in the end game, and despite parrying many physical attacks, I never saw Interceptor in Kefka's tower. I can't recall whether I saw Interceptor in the WOR at all. Is it possible that Shadow lost Interceptor status somehow, or could there be another explanation? * I also encountered the reflected raze soft lock in the Phoenix Cave that someone else mentioned. However, the soft lock never resolved -- I tried fast forwarding for a very long time. * At one point on the Veldt, I started encountering battles with every single step (6+ in a row, until I got to my airship). I did not apply the separate encounter-rate patch. SUGGESTIONS * I learned all of my magic a bit too quickly -- I think it would be more rewarding if it took longer to buy each spell, and you were forced to think more carefully about which spell to buy, when. * Myria and Yeti were BY FAR the most difficult boss battles for me. Perhaps I was not paying enough attention to countering behavior, or perhaps they are slightly unbalanced. * I was disappointed by the final boss battle, which didn't seem to require specific strategies. * I generally loved the script modifications, including Relm's potty-mouth, with the sole exception of her calling Ultros a "douche", which seemed too anachronistic, somehow. Thanks again -- I'm looking forward to my next playthrough already!