zombero

Yeah, I can add something of that nature to the next update.

Yep, like GrandBenja said.

It's still possible for certain other enemies (and bosses) to waste their turns on hitting the limit, though.  There is not natively a way for normal enemies to check how many stacks of a buff/debuff are present (they can only check whether at least 1 stack is present).  But I'll probably be adding that functionality in a future version.

Yeah, I didn't notice any significant improvements in the DX11.

21 hours ago, Hordequester said:

The ws hack is the only thing that worked on my display. I tried every configuration in the settings and it would always go jittery randomly after awhile. This is with widescreen mode on in core graphics settings btw.

Huh, strange.  Even with widescreen turned on, it removed the jitters for me.  Guess it must be a GFX card or driver difference.  I assume you'd also need the ws hack to fix the jitters in vanilla Nocturne?  (using the same settings)

Sounds like the Tips for PCSX2 section is going to get complicated!

Hmm I was trying some things out, and Hardtype seems to look and work great in the current PCSX2 v1.5.0 using all default settings with OpenGL Hardware for the graphics plugin.  No disk swapping or anything else required.  Too bad its not a stable build, but that might still be the best option available.

5 hours ago, Hordequester said:

The ws cheat though is helpful in either mode for me anyway. Without it, the screen is nauseatingly flickery.

Setting interlacing to auto has always fixed the flickering for me.  But yeah, the transparency is a whole other issue.  Is there a particular reason for your interlace and CRC settings?

I hate what PCSX2's transparency hacks do to the map (making doors invisible or something, don't exactly recall).  Between that and no HD in software mode, there's no great option for me, and I typically just deal with the transparency glitches.

Having the ability to enable the transparency hacks for Hardtype is certainly a good addition to have, though!  So thanks again.  I'll have to include those in future releases, and see if there's any other PCSX2 improvements that can be made.  What did you do for the pnach?

Thanks for the info!  Though I tried the settings on my own machine and now I'm quite certain I will never sleep again.

You sir, are the GRRM of Nocturne Hardtype LPs.

On 1/1/2018 at 6:57 PM, Taylor_778 said:

Can they be made to stay and guard the town sometimes instead of eventually moving toward the player base?

I could have squads that wait longer than others, and give those more armaments.  I wouldn't really want them to wait forever.  Mainly due to the fact that the enemy can only deploy 10 squads at once.  Which will kinda suck in the game's larger maps...

On 1/1/2018 at 6:57 PM, Taylor_778 said:

The 3 tarot card limit per battle was a nice touch.  I'd like to see it even be set to 1.

Yeah, that's definitely a possibility... One problem right now is that you'd wind up needing to use a card in almost every fight just to keep up with what you get from towns.  To support a 1 card limit, I might need to make it so only some towns give tarot cards.  Which could also serve as an extra perk for temples:  always giving cards.

12 hours ago, Taylor_778 said:

Glad to get to play this again!  I definitely like the supply system over just deploying all your units to start.  Armaments looks good too and having elements play more of a roll now that you can see them in the status screen would be cool.  Not much to say about the combat.  Being an introductory stage it's pretty easy but that's cool.  Could maybe give some units a couple more armaments since they don't have a full squad.  

Glad to be providing something to play again!

Yeah, even for the first stage it might still be a bit too easy.  The money flow is pretty high, too.  I could have had a good 40 Cures or so after that stage.

How about enemies starting towns, getting immediate liberation money, and the temple healing?

5 hours ago, BigWampa said:

Looks Great Good sir

Thanks!

1 hour ago, Hart-Hunt said:

Congratulations on the release zombero! Sorry I wasn't able to catch the stream.

No Worries.  I also added a YT link of the vod for anyone who is interested.

And here's the demo!

Alrighty, the stream will begin momentarily.

This evening (probably within the next hour) I'll be streaming the new Sharom demo for this hack.

The biggest new features for this demo are:

-The Supply System:  Player deployment is restricted based on supplies secured from towns.

-The Attrition System:  Player vs. Enemy performance is based on armaments secured from towns.

There's a lot of smaller changes, but those are the biggies.  So stop by and check it out!

I'll post here again just before going live, and post the demo for download later tonight (probably).

UPDATE:  DOWNLOAD DEMO HERE

OR WATCH THE VOD ON YOUTUBE:

Haha awe, fly Dante is adorable.  Yeah I suppose I lucked out on fly Dante not causing problems.  The Fiends in general tend to have specially rigged animations that can lead to issues when you try to use them elsewhere, too.

On 11/12/2017 at 8:05 AM, Nesouk said:

during my fight against Metatron I realise that I could use items with my demons and not only the MC however I also note that sometime I could sometime I couldn't

Ah, yeah, I'm guessing it's because you were Muted.  There's a known glitch right now where Mute can allow demons to use items.  I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet.

Yeah I heard about that.  Probably not much I can do with it right now, but I'm curious to see where it goes.

Mother Harlot is one of the toughest bosses (for her position in the game) right now.  Though she's skippable so you have options on how to respond to that.  She also seems to be a favorite boss of some people, so I'm not sure if it's a bad thing.

Huh.  Well that's good to know!

On 11/3/2017 at 10:42 AM, ihaha said:

if you could edit the thread to link the playlist instead of my first video then that'd be cool.

No prob.  I updated the link, though I don't think the site can show a preview for unlisted videos.

On 11/2/2017 at 2:38 PM, MountainSageValentine said:

On the topic of feedback, I am of the personal oppinion that death and expel skills could use a bit of a revamp.

This could be a possibility.  I took care not to directly increase the prevalence of unavoidable insta-death, but there's still what was already in vanilla, and the increased difficulty (enemy party size, enemy HP, etc.) can still indirectly make it more of an issue.  Although, if we're talking about the early game, crits and focusing down the MC can just as readily lead to unavoidable deaths.  It's just sorta ingrained in the MC death = game over system.  And while I didn't want to make this situation any worse, I'm hesitant to do anything to make it more lenient... just for the more fanatical players out there.

I can give it some thought, though.  Maybe if I can come up with some alternate effects for these skills that don't feel like they strictly make the game easier, then I'd be interested.

On 11/2/2017 at 2:38 PM, MountainSageValentine said:

Another thing I was curious about is if you would be willing to share any documentation or tools you use for hacking nocturne? I'd love to play around with it! Adding some more evolution demons and making the worst ones a little bit better would be a fun little project!

Sorry I rambled for so long, I just really love this project!

Glad you enjoyed it!  Any of the people you got to play are invited to share their thoughts here as well!  The tools I used are just PCSX2Dis for a debugger, a hex editor, and Cheat Engine for making changes mid-game.  Nothing fancy, really.  My documentation is pretty disorganized, but I could see what I can whip up when I have the time.

On 11/2/2017 at 5:38 PM, Nesouk said:

I think there should be a way to separate Instant-Kill and damaging moves for these element like Persona 5 did tough I assume that this isn't possible at the moment. 

It'd be a bit of work, but it's certainly possible to do.

On 11/2/2017 at 5:38 PM, Nesouk said:

Just out of curiosity I just beat Pale Rider and I was LV52 with MC what LV are you expecting the player to be at this point ?

I don't really have a log of expected levels, but that sounds pretty close.  Are you having trouble with him?

On 11/3/2017 at 10:42 AM, ihaha said:

Nocturne modding has come quite far lately. It's now theoretically possible to add new demons into the game.

Technically, Hardtype adds new demons to the game already, but I assume you mean new demon models?  It'd be pretty exciting if models from DDS and such could be imported into Nocturne and used in-game.

Nesouk is in the process of doing a Lets Play series for this hack

I figured I would post a link to it here, as well, since the content is relevant.  Go check it out!

I've updated the patch to v1.5.1 to hopefully improve its compatibility.  Enough people have had issues with v1.5 to make me think something is wrong with the patch.  Please let me know if this fixes the issue.

Ikebukuro Underpass could definitely use some toning down.  It was the hardest area in vanilla and that just gets amplified here.   I have given it one round of toning down, but it's still pretty brutal.

Ose

Yeah the general concensus seems to be that Ose is too easy right now.  Daisoujou, too.  Both these guys could use some tuning up.  Maybe Mizuchi, too, though I'm not as bothered by him being a bit weak...

White Rider (No Stone Gaze)

Eh, I kinda like how Stone Gaze is useful here.  I even added the Medusa Eye item (which can be acquired at Rag's Jewelry) to make it so you don't even have to learn the skill.  This is more or less the intended way to do the fight, though it can still be beaten without it.

Hey, thanks for the love, guys!

On 10/9/2017 at 11:19 AM, Sphinx said:

what's the status of the current download?  Do we have past stage 6 playable at this time?

Ah, yeah, that's something that I'm going to need to decide on how to address.  There's currently two versions:  Hardtype (older, far less features, but complete) and In the Lap of the Gods (newer, more features, but only 6 stages).  The version available on the Mods page right now is Hardtype.  In addition, I have an updated 1-stage demo that I'd like to release pretty soon which demonstrates the revised "morale" system, town supplies, and enemies spawning on towns.  That way, I can at least collect some feedback on it during this time that I'm not able to work on it.

That is the correct file size.  A checksum failure indicates that the contents of the file are different from what's expected, not necessarily the size.  The original image that was used to create this patch is called SMTNOCTURNE.MDF.  At one time, this seemed to be the most popular image, but it kinda seems like it has fallen out of favor recently... I'm going to have to investigate the differences between the vanilla images and see what I can do to make a more broadly compatible patch.

If xdelt3 will let you, you could try just patching it anyway.  I doubt the images would be different in any way that would affect my changes.

2 hours ago, Boss said:

Does anybody even care?

Approximately zero creativity would go into making this type of mod, so there isn't much incentive to make one.  Pretty much the only reason to make one would be if you really wanted to play it yourself:  enough so to actually do it.

2 hours ago, Boss said:

I imagine the requirements are incredibly meek compared to ambitious difficulty mods people have been making. 

That's not really the case.  The amount of time it could theoretically take may not be too bad (hard to say), but all of that time would be spent working on assembly, which is the most intensive part of modding, and few modders would have the necessary skills to make those kind of changes to a PS2 game.  So among those few modders, you'd have to find someone who wants to put in a fair amount of high intensity effort into an entirely mundane pursuit.  And putting effort into mundane pursuits is what paying jobs are for.

"Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

It was pretty satisfying to see players use the new mechanics strategically (such as cheap demon swaps and Heat Riser), and they honestly played a bigger role than I expected them to.  For future versions, I'd like to take these concepts even further.

I've noticed the same thing with XP coming being a bit excessive, and player's usually being higher level than what I planned for.  I hadn't noticed the money issue, though.  Prices are already 1/3 less expensive than they were in vanilla's Hard mode, so I'm not sure how much further I'd want to take that.  But maybe dropping some macca into a few Cache Cubes would help the issue.  In general, looting cubes and chests are pretty unsatisfying as-is due mostly to this game having no equipment, so they can use all the help they can get.

For bosses, there is certainly room for improvement.  One day, I'll probably make an effort to free myself from some of the AI shackles that bind my current options with them.  In addition to that problem, there are also just SO MANY bosses in this game that coming up with good ideas for all of them is legitimately difficult, and I kinda just got tired of trying to come up with good ideas for them by the end.  For these reasons, I'd say bigger and better things can be expected from bosses in a future version (eventually).  The same goes for Full Kagutsuchi Encounters.  I've already removed the AI limitations on those, but haven't done anything with that expanded freedom quite yet.  I would say FKEs are in an even worse state than bosses.  As for the lack of bosses with skills like Dervish... that's basically just because 90% of the bosses were already made by the time I started adding new skills.  Going back and looking for opportunities to add those in is a good idea, though.  As to having a boss that kills pivotal demons (like Satan's Retribution) isn't that basically what Baal does now?

Very true that healing mechanics are very lackluster in this game and SMT in general.  I considered doing something more drastic with healing skills for awhile, but ultimately didn't pull the trigger.  I'll have to revisit the idea again at some point.  MP design has issues, too.  Both in this game and in 99% of JRPGs.  That one is a lot more challenging to address."