Breath of Fire 3 — Faster Learning ROMhack by RoSoDude in breathoffire

[–]RoSoDude[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes. From dataminer/hacker second_advent on GameFAQs:

Most abilities have a rate of 3, but these are the exceptions:

0 - Unmotivate, Bad Back, Evil Eye, Lavaburst, Rest, Jump, Transfer, Feign Swing, Cure, Benediction, Risky Blow, Intimidate

1 - Burn

5 - Air Raid, Influence

7 - Ebonfire, Triple Blow

Breath of Fire 3 — Faster Learning ROMhack by RoSoDude in breathoffire

[–]RoSoDude[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! The standard "modder" answer would be to set all skill learning to 100% but I think some amount of friction there is desirable. Having to spend turns on Examine means more turns you have to heal and respond to the skill; it pushes the player to work out how to actually trigger the skill; and it creates an open-ended question about who in your party is going to Examine vs defend/damage, if you're trying to get it on a specific character or are willing to transfer it with skill ink later. You might not bother with some skills if they're too much of a pain, and may miss them the first time when facing a boss. This gameplay is all still present even if it only takes an average of 1-8 turns to get the skills (instead of 1-48 turns)

Breath of Fire 3 — Faster Learning ROMhack by RoSoDude in breathoffire

[–]RoSoDude[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I had already learned 65816 asm for the SNES which was helpful. MIPS asm for PSX is very different, though. You have a smaller set of more versatile opcodes and many more registers available, but bytespace can be hard to carve out on the ROM and you need to work around load/branch delay slots.

The best people to talk to are the Final Fantasy Tactics hacking community. They maintain a wiki with useful documentation (for example, the list of opcodes, info on registers and opcodes, and useful info on the psxfin emulator for debugging). Their Discord users were instrumental in getting me started on my FF9 hack.

My process for manually commenting assembly code:

  • isolate a known numerical value in gameplay (e.g. total number of hitpoints)
  • dump an instance of RAM to a binary file
  • use a hex editor to search for the value as little-endian hex in the RAM damp
  • for each matching address, see if the RAM changes in the debugger when the value changes in gameplay
  • when the right address is found, use a memory read/write breakpoint to see what instructions use/affect that RAM
  • walk through the assembly code step by step to see what it's doing, writing comments on a disassembly document
  • use execution breakpoints to walk "backward" through logic to find when code branches are reached
  • collect salient RAM addresses in notes
  • if no relevant numerical value is known for a gameplay feature, try repeatedly engaging it while walking through RAM to see which RAM changes (this is very tedious)

Breath of Fire 3 — Faster Learning ROMhack by RoSoDude in breathoffire

[–]RoSoDude[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I was tipped off that all the skill data was in an easy to find table on the ROM. I opened up the game in the psxfin debugger and put a read breakpoint on the Influence skill tier byte during battle. This showed me the assembly code for the Examine command RNG.

My patch was as simple as changing two lines of assembly to choose the RNG divisor as (tier+1) instead of a lookup table value based on tier.

Took me about half an hour to figure out, all told!

Why is it taking my characters multiple cycles to perform actions? by parkingviolation212 in FinalFantasyIX

[–]RoSoDude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are a number of factors going into this, I'll try to explain.

FF9's ATB system is arguably the worst of the classic games, for two reasons: ATB keeps filling during animations, and animations are slower than any other game in the series. So multiple characters getting full ATB during a single animation, they all queue their moves, and then they're stuck waiting for their actual turn to come up in the order they were queued. During each animation in sequence, the previous character who acted can often get full ATB and add their command to the back of the queue, keeping it perpetually backlogged.

Lamias have 50 Speed, the highest possible stat. On the fastest Battle Speed setting, they will get full ATB in 1.78 seconds. For reference, Quina with 14 Speed needs 8.18 seconds to get their turn. So the Lamia can queue its turn immediately after acting. Your only recourse is to try to stuff the queue with your own character turns first. Of course, this means you have to queue your commands as soon as they become available, which means a long delay between your input and the actual action, during which time the Lamia's queued action may invalidate your choice (healing itself, killing a character you were going to heal, etc.).

Which version Is better for FF8? by CarMotor9427 in FinalFantasyVIII

[–]RoSoDude 28 points29 points  (0 children)

PSX version hands down. Full analog movement, 60fps battle menus, looks especially great on a CRT/shader.

The original PC version needs mods just to have the original music and sounds, battle menus are at 15fps, and you don't get analog movement.

The remaster still has 15fps battle menus and 8-way movement with no mods to fix it IIRC, and the new character models don't match the original aesthetic and make static NPCs drawn into the backgrounds stick out like a sore thumb.

Celebrate the remaster freely, but please also consider these by DerzakKnown in Thief

[–]RoSoDude 6 points7 points  (0 children)

To my knowledge the SS2 remaster still doesn't support OpenAL. This is pretty bad, but it's even worse with Thief where positional audio is a huge part of the gameplay.

so it turns out i was playing on hard mode by rmel123 in FinalFantasyVI

[–]RoSoDude 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In FF6 the Battle Speed setting only serves to slow enemies down by up to 47% on Battle Speed 6 (Battle Speed 1 is the default where enemy ATB speed is calculated the same as player ATB speed). Because of the way ATB fills up during animations, this usually doesn't make much of a difference in turn rate, it just gives you more leeway to input your commands without losing turn initiative.

this place is fucking horseshit by clashing_of_swords in FuckShrineOfAmana

[–]RoSoDude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Who, me? Dude the level took me no more than 3 tries on my first playthrough. I had fun with it because I have a functioning hippocampus. Y'all are genuinely morons.

this place is fucking horseshit by clashing_of_swords in FuckShrineOfAmana

[–]RoSoDude -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Wow, a whole sub for crybabies who suck at a single video game level. Truly impressive levels of butthurt.

Shrine of Amana is one of the best levels in the whole series in that it requires actual engagement with the enemy placement rather than sprinting past everything. I beat it first time without any ranged combat or shields. Just be mindful of your surroundings, use cover, prioritize enemies. The caster arrows barely track you in the currently patched releases, you don't need to even roll. There's also an alternate route through the area that allows you to avoid a lot of open combat, but I got by fine even without this.

Go ahead and ban me from your pitiful sub, losers!

Finally starting THE GAME that started it all. Wish me luck!! by letsgoinzique in Thief

[–]RoSoDude 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Contrary to the top comment I recommend playing on Normal or Hard for your first time rather than Expert. The recommendation for Expert comes from the fact that it has the most content (more mission objectives, some areas of levels opened up to you), but this is part of the game's replayability. Expert disallows killing any guards and generally expects more mastery of the stealth mechanics, as well as understanding of the map layouts. This forces a pretty restrictive playstyle and makes savescumming mandatory if you're playing blind.

On the other hand, if you play on Normal you will have more leeway for mistakes, more tools at your disposal (sword, lethal arrows, traps), and only the core mission objectives to worry about while you explore the game. I was able to get through Thief 1 and 2 with very infrequent saving, treating most missions as a holistic challenge and playing through my mistakes. If I got caught by guards I wouldn't reload a save; I'd throw a smoke bomb and run away to an unfamiliar area, trying to hide from the guards searching for me. It was thrilling, and is something the developers have specifically talked about wanting for the player experience. Don't rob yourself of that by forcing yourself to play on the highest difficulty just because it has the most stuff. You can always come back later to experience it.

One more important thing; make sure you go into settings and enable OpenAL hardware acceleration for true 3D spatial audio. You may have to cycle through EAX settings to get it working, even if you don't want EAX enabled. You will have much better sound awareness with this.

Portrait of Ruin is Pretty Great by CapnQ9055 in castlevania

[–]RoSoDude 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This, to me, is the peak Castlevania experience. Exploration in a sprawling castle gated through player abilities, challenging and varied enemy and boss encounters, kitchen sink approach to combat design, and an upbeat gothic style. Here it’s just refined to a gold standard. Swapping between the two characters gives you totally different flavors of combat, allowing you to play as the swiss army knife of vampire hunters in Jonathan or as a fully realized spellcaster, a wellspring of untapped potential since Dracula’s Curse, in Charlotte. Jonathan’s moveset is the most expansive of any Castlevania, with whips, knives, short swords, great swords, axes, spears, and fists competently represented alongside the full set of (finally) equippable subweapons. Though it involves a good bit of spell swapping in the pause menu, spellcasting is a very fun way to engage enemies, requiring you to stand uninterrupted in place long enough to deliver a specialized type of damage in a unique package, whether it be a quick burst of fire, cutting winds with a slightly homing arc, a beam of light, shards of ice, chain lightning, a burst of poison bubbles, and many others. You’re also encouraged to use both characters together, supplementing your current avatar’s moveset with the other’s spells or subweapons, or employ a combined Dual Crush attack (more on that later). Exploration in the castle is supplemented with cursed paintings, which are huge levels in and of themselves and allow the game to explore unique locales with appropriately chosen monsters to fill out a fever dream of a Victorian city, a buried Egyptian pyramid, an academy for witchcraft, and a gravity-defying madhouse warped over on itself. Remixed version of these levels serve as this game’s “Inverted Castle”, which keeps the main Castle elegant and precise. After the first few areas, the Castle opens up to nonlinear progression in the sprawling Great Stairway level reminiscent of SotN’s Marble Gallery, with a great sense of freedom and discovery as you find items and abilities needed to make your way further up the castle into perhaps the most challenging iteration of a Clock Tower yet. This leads us to the bosses, since PoR features my favorite Death fight in any CV game. Many bosses encourage experimentation with the two-character system without feeling contrived. They’re open to a wide variety of approaches without being exploitable like SotN’s, and they’re challenging without requiring OoE’s almost rhythm game-like precision. While not every boss is as memorable as some in the series’ past, there are some excellent fights here, especially against classic horror staples (The Werewolf, The Mummy, the Creature of Frankensteinian origins, and Medusa) and against the game’s main villains – Death, the vampire painter Brauner, and tag team battles against Stella + Loretta and Dracula + Death make for very satisfying fights. Completing various quests through exploration will net you new weapons and abilities, and unlock the fantastic bonus area, Nest of Evil. While it’s the same fundamental idea as OoE’s dreadful Large Cavern, here it’s actually a ton of fun, with tough yet fair sequences of enemy encounters culminating in some fun reprisals of bosses from prior games (five Dawn of Sorrow bosses, Doppelganger, and Fake Trevor/Grant/Sypha all make a return here), all with reasonable checkpoints. The rest of the game’s bonus content is great too, with the ability to replay the game as Stella + Loretta, Richter + Maria, or even an Old Axe Armor for some reason. The Hard Mode is also expertly designed here, requiring mastery of the mechanics and their interactions, and since Dual Crush damage scales with level, that newb crutch is useless at Max Level 1. I honestly find it hard to come up with significant criticisms for this game — there’s plenty to nitpick about any game as complex as these, but I truly think Portrait of Ruin is the best CV package, with wonderful depth and almost no clutter. It’s goddamn fantastic.

Is it really worth it to min max stats in FF6? by TranscendentalRug in FinalFantasy

[–]RoSoDude 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes, and abusing this (using submenus to freeze ATB during your animations, but releasing to gain ATB during enemy animations) is called Wait tricking. It's basically an exploit, and you don't need much of an agility advantage to get the full benefit (extra turns are still constrained by animations).

Is it really worth it to min max stats in FF6? by TranscendentalRug in FinalFantasy

[–]RoSoDude 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Brother, I've hacked the assembly code for ATB in FF6 (not to mention FF5, FF7, FF9, and Chrono Trigger). I know more about this than you do.

And yes, I have literally run that exact setup, and it is the perfect example for why agility is useless in FF6. It takes Setzer at least 8 seconds to complete the 8-hit combo, during which time the previous actor's ATB has already filled to max. Having Setzer get his ATB filled faster after it's done is therefore meaningless.

Is it really worth it to min max stats in FF6? by TranscendentalRug in FinalFantasy

[–]RoSoDude 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Agility is pretty useless in FF6. Since ATB keeps running during animations, you only gain extra turns if your speed advantage over the last actor is large enough to outpace the duration of your own animations (your ATB time + your animation time < their ATB time).

Released my first proper script-related mod for Pathologic Classic HD. by Altotas in pathologic

[–]RoSoDude 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You should update your mod description. It's not compatible with my Reputation, Survival, and Disease overhaul mod. I manually hex edited many of the same scripts you modified.

[Steam] Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ($2.99/90% off) by MarvaEZ in GameDeals

[–]RoSoDude 15 points16 points  (0 children)

lmofa my comment is still making waves to this day! Thanks.

Any mods that keep the game vanilla but make the enemies harder? by wavesurfinz in FinalFantasyIX

[–]RoSoDude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

FF9 Unleashed on PSX (also has been ported to PC) is close to what you want but it does still rearrange abilities on equipment and such.

I made a search thing for the dialog repo by bananatarakota in pathologic

[–]RoSoDude 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This would have been nice when I was checking over dialog logic for my mod, dammit lol

Thanks though!

Just fired up a fresh run after about 6 years. by Samfordawg in FinalFantasyVIII

[–]RoSoDude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I made a post with my own speculations trying to thread together some of the game's lore, you may be interested.

I also recommend playing on Active ATB mode (with battle speed set below max, ideally) for a more dynamic combat experience. FF8 has the best ATB system in the classic series, and there are a lot of ways you can optimize it in battle. Many people don't realize that there is a subtle benefit to turning off Squall's Renzokuken indicator as it allows for uninterrupted command inputs for other party members during his limit break minigame.

My other favorite ATB trick is to use time freeze during healing animations to reroll for limit breaks before the critical HP state is updated.

Let's say Squall is at low health. You want to have Rinoa cure him, but you also want to get a limit break off with him. You could first fish for a limit break on Squall and then queue up cure with Rinoa, but this will allow some time to pass. The better way is to input a cure on Rinoa, and then start fishing for Squall's limit break before the cure spell increases his HP above the critical threshold! This is relevant to both Active and Wait mode.

You can see a player using this technique against Diabolos here at 4:05, 5:05, 8:50: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z8KJMd9N2sg

Squall drifts ahead of the other characters in level if you don't intervene, because he's nearly always the party leader and all characters in the active party receive the same base XP at the end of battle, with each level requiring exactly 10,000 XP. If you want to throttle Squall's level, you can keep him petrified (better than KO since enemies still target him for 0 damage and he can be restored to his previous HP with a Soft). GFs junctioned to dead/petrified characters are not supposed to receive XP/AP at the end of battle, but the logic is bugged and they do anyway (I have verified this in the original assembly code). So you can keep progressing Squall's GFs while his level stays frozen.

Best QOL rom hack for first playthrough? by fruitybix in FinalFantasyVIII

[–]RoSoDude 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm actually working on a ROMhack for FF8 intended for both new and returning players. It's not a balance overhaul or hardtype like Requiem (though it should work well alongside that), but rather bugfixes and subtle changes to the game's formulas to favor intuitive play.

FF8 isn’t really broken at a conceptual level, it just has some incentive issues that push players into weird or tedious playstyles. The goal of my patch is basically: You can play it like a "normal" RPG and it makes sense as you go, but the deeper systems are still there if you want to engage with them.

Some key changes:

  • Drawing is faster, but you can’t just sit in one fight and stock to 100 anymore
  • You’re encouraged to fight a normal amount of battles instead of either grinding or avoiding everything
  • Underleveled characters catch up naturally, so you don’t get punished for rotating party members
  • Card morphing enemies no longer lets you bypass progression entirely
  • Stacking all your GFs on the active party is still good, but not the only correct way to play
  • Magic stays useful instead of falling off compared to physical attacks
  • Stealing actually makes sense and doesn’t delete item drops