praetarius5018

yeah, that would need a massive amount of ram to hold the character data and moving around like everything in memory.
that is more in the realm of theoretically possible.

patty is also one of those elements where something is started and then it just ends.

7 hours ago, BTB said:

The shaman system and Township are both very half-baked and need some work. If you do nothing else, unlock the shamans much earlier and do what you can to make them less mutually-exclusive.

Yeah, that's the plan; once you get access to the fusion hall you can use all 6 for fusions but until you find the real shaman the relevant stat bonus gets halved, like defense for the earth shaman.
Some potentially fun stuff that would be possible would be too allow different characters to share the sprite changing fusions; the game has absolutely no problem with giving e.g. Nina Katt's devil form but keeping her own base stats and spell list; the Keep command is added as well and the sprite works.

Not really sure what to do with Township - like 80% of the options are just "guide-dang it!!" level of traps.

7 hours ago, BTB said:

Swing by Discord and hash things out when you start working on this.

will do - lets see how much my productivity will suffer this time

31 minutes ago, Holy2tack said:

This sounds super fun. BoF2 is one of the games I will play over and over. I haven't checked out your tech demo yet, so if this is answered there I'm sorry. Are you building this over vanilla or over the Ryusui translation? http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1384/

the translation - the original was very questionable and the translation actually fixed some bugs and added a run button, so less work for me

I'm more at home with SNES asm anyway, so no real loss no matter what the differences would be.

11 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

Let's see...I havent touch BOF2 in a while but I'm always up to a new mod.

Tbh. I've never even finished BoF2, the high encounter rate just became unbearable for me,
which is why I cut it in half already.

11 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

Must ask: Can you recover LP? Even if the answer is no, I like the idea to actually know what guts do and plan ahead

with everything that recovers AP in vanilla: inns, events, some items and the Will command from unfused Nina, though that may get a different purpose, dunno.

14 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

More details please? I know the original condition stat was there to fill space and maybe affects the ending? (don't really remember)

Condition influences chances for crit/deathblow, spell crit (some guides call that well-cast since it applies to all targets of one spell and not each individual target) and counter, maybe a few other minor things as well but should be nothing with events.
The only event I know that checks for stats is the one NPC that teaches you spells at 1 HP+0 AP - speaking of, what to do with that one...

17 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

Sounds kind of complicated. What if everyone has access to 2-3 weapon types so everyone can excel at something while having secondary builds to fill holes in the active party

You've already individual base growth rates - I think what happens after that should be up to the player; do you want some more HP/LP for Nina so she doesn't die if someone breathes in her direction? or go for max WIS to play up her aoe clear abilities.
There's just some stuff you can't solve via stats; e.g. Rand doesn't really have many spells so building him like a caster won't do much unless you go out of your way to give him all the spells from events/npcs.

23 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

This is for the GBA version or the original SNES version?

SNES - there was a GBA version?

techdemo

I've no idea where the ideas came from this time but...

1) Each spell can be used once per battle but cost no AP (exception: dragon skills cost a fixed 3)
With some form of scaling damage/healing power this should make more spells relevant than the newest 2-3 out of a potential 32 spell slots you have per character.
Implementation is easy since one unique enemy skill can seal spells until end of battle, so the same mechanic can just be used.

2) LP replaces AP; this is kind of a secondary HP bar.
If taken HP damage exceeds 50% of remaining HP you additionally take some LP damage relative to the HP damage.
Fatal HP damage deals more LP damage; if at least 1 LP remains the death is avoided and some HP is recovered (this replaces the chance to survive fatal damage via guts stat).
Overall this should lower the risk of getting randomly one shot just from AI roulette choosing the right/wrong action while putting a limit to how long you can get by with just taking 90% damage hits and spamming full heals while ignoring (de)buffs.

3) The condition stat (tired/fine/great, measured on a 0-255 scale) gets a bit more involvement.
By default it only seems to go up (neither many battles, day/night changes nor death did decrease it in my tests) and it is mainly responsible for a massive crit rate (both weapon and spells) at the end.
Resting would now increase condition to 160 if it was below.
Taking damage would decrease it by 1, more if LP damage is taken.
Having a bad condition would reduce the received healing, at most -30%.

Not sure if any other events should influence condition tbh.

4) The whole shaman fusions feel a bit underdeveloped; half of them come only near the end of the game and besides stats and maybe changing the character's unique skill not much happens.
So once you unlock fusions at all you can already use all 6 shamans for fusion but until you find the real shaman the relevant stat bonus is halved, e.g. without earth shaman you'd only get +10% defense if the real bonus was +20%.
Additionally you receive a small bonus to damage dealt with attacks of the same type as a fused shaman (fire shaman boosts fire weapons and spells, dark shaman would apply that to non-elemental) and resist attacks of the element (non-elemental only -25%, other shaman -50%) but take 25% more damage from the weakness (fire shaman gives weakness to water/ice).

5) Stat growth is half fixed by character and half determined by the equipped weapon type.
To that end most weapons would be equippable by all and instead of sword/bow/etc. we'd work with weapon enhancement crystals or something.
E.g. a wind type weapon would give higher AGL growth but less defense and earth type would give more HP but lower AGL.

6) Bleu gets actual stat gains instead of reading from the random encounter table.

7) Permanently stat boosting items get axed; will probably replace them with some tomes that can teach spells.

As written above, these are ideas. I've done some work on this already but not enough to be presentable in any way.
Feel free to comment on this madness.

yes, those have the same cooldown.
item, throw and mix vary, though.

recycle reduces remaining cooldown by 256 points when you end a turn
defending reduces remaining cooldown by 25% when you end a turn
otherwise cooldown ticks down at a rate of 3:1 per atb unit
so for simplicity just say that recycle roughly doubles item cooldown; more the faster you are

yes all items carry over

just have a vampire (job, the ability does not suffice) in the party with > 0 HP when the relevant enemy dies

well, if you had expert mode on you couldn't revive either way, so there it isn't a drawback anymore

no, there's no such plan.
this is more or less intentional and present since the base game, undead party members basically trade the option to be revived for immunity to several death effects.
not sure about the phoenix spell, that one may bypass that though.
at least you can recycle undead corpses via vamp's Genome/Sacrifice.

no, that is basically the intended use. the other is sacrificing a relic slot permanently for job combos that are on the overpowered side.

you only get the old status if you have a job that the current character either can't get or you have not unlocked yet; sage stone skips those checks and returns "nothing to see here, move along"

yeah, I got the same bug report 2 days ago but had no time until now to look at it, so....
 

v1.530

• shift now counts as the target using brave, so brave can't be used on the extra turns
• fixed a crash related to status effects

I think the option I have that would make the most sense is to treat shift as if the target had just used "brave", so it can't use brave to gain more mp.

On 11/28/2019 at 5:08 PM, TauzentBlitz said:

Edit: encountered a bit of a bug; vampire Faris somehow learned Siren during the fight with Siren.

well, you are supposed to get it from killing her, so that is nothing I'll lose sleep over.

On 11/28/2019 at 5:08 PM, TauzentBlitz said:

Also, is there a way to heal undead characters besides drain effects? Relying on ice damage to heal isn't exactly working well against Shiva.

regen status, sylph, white wind, death effects

44 minutes ago, Ninners said:

Actually, I do want to point out an interaction that I had forgotten to until now; with two time mages in a party, one can brave, then shift, then perform an action, giving an action to the other time mage. This can be used to brave, shift, and then perform another action, repeat ad-nauseum for as long as you wish.

I take that as proof that I have copied brave/default too well - close to my hero abuse in the original...
currently no idea how to circumvent that short of removing the skill...

v9

• reworked Daos's AI & stats again
• Unicorn (fish) can now use Meltdown (ATP debuff) to fit with its dropped jewel

v1.520

• nerfed !recover from target all to target one
• fixed !throw not being restricted by cooldown
• fixed after battle recovery setting HP to 0 if under the influence of giant potion
• corrected text in beginner house regarding run speed on the map
• fork tower (physical) no longer disables white/black/time/summon/blue/song spells
• fixed underflow in Minus Strike damage calculation
• if hidden and trying to use brv. !show is used instead to prevent a game lockup
• nerfed axe up property of crit up passive from [100..200]% damage to [100..150]% damage
• fixed bug in damage range of axes giving them > 2x the intended max power
• reduced the bonus rune weapons get from MAG to 1/4 its previous value
• increased atk of rune edge from 72 to 92
• certain enemies/bosses are now protected against polymorph effects and instead take damage when the status succeeds

I don't think you really need an optimized team to get everything in time; do you have encounters turned off?

The stats listed at the top are just a minor hint, they are worth maybe 2-3 points at base not much by midgame, really.

Technically magic would have weapon switching as well once you get your hands on some elemental boosting rods.

Also 1.130 is ancient at this point.
An update might help with the differences between Faris and the rest a bit.

sorry, but I disagree - I don't see it as a bad mechanic

this endure property is only present on difficulty 1 and for a specific few enemies on regular difficulties.

what makes you think it is out of date?
to me it looks like it has the current data

You couldn't be more wrong about that.
+3 stats per job level do not sound much but they add up fast, and I certainly do not want any braindead 99/99/99/99 characters running around.
Seriously, stats matter, a lot.

You always have the option of still switching a job which gives you that job's main abilities so you can't lock yourself out of those.

6 hours ago, Achelexus said:

I wanted to try to beat the hack in its highest difficulty level, however it might actually be impossible if I don't level the correct classes.

Hard is supposed to be hard. You don't need an exact setup but planning ahead helps.
Dunno why everyone just jumps ahead to the highest difficulty on their first run, 4 is supposed to be the vanilla-esqe normal grade.

Since you have only a few ability slots to use at a time it is kinda hard to screw yourself over, plus you get a few abilities just for being in a certain job; and if you want to play a caster and then spent all 30 levels on melee jobs that is entirely on yourself, really.

Character levels do very little here; a bit HP,MP and damage multiplier, all three you also gain from jobs.
And the effect of level on those falls off hard around 30.
The final boss iis meant to be fought around 35.