Home › Forums › Destiny of an Emperor › New Mod: Hero of Chaos (Cao Cao Mod)
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January 21, 2014 at 4:08 pm #53187Xian Zhu XuandeParticipant
Any thoughts on what I wrote, good sir sonic?
As for starting off with 1 guy, I think we explored something like this before and it was more trouble than it was worth. You could just start off with CC, HS, LZ and have the last 2 auto-remove after a couple battles like you said.
I know some nasty stuff happens if the Guan Yu and Zhang Fei equivalents aren’t in the party when the event triggers to remove them. When working on the Cao Cao mod I wanted to allow their equivalents to be placed in billeting, but if the player left them in billeting at that point in the game bad things happened. I don’t remember what happened, and it wasn’t obvious at first, but the bad things were bad enough that I re-enabled the flag that prevented them from being, uh, billeted.
January 21, 2014 at 4:14 pm #53188MiDKnighTModeratorI know some nasty stuff happens if the Guan Yu and Zhang Fei equivalents aren’t in the party when the event triggers to remove them. When working on the Cao Cao mod I wanted to allow their equivalents to be placed in billeting, but if the player left them in billeting at that point in the game bad things happened. I don’t remember what happened, and it wasn’t obvious at first, but the bad things were bad enough that I re-enabled the flag that prevented them from being, uh, billeted.
That has been addressed. Check out:
http://doaerhguide.wikidot.com/destiny-of-an-emperor-rom-hacking-guide-page-2#toc22January 22, 2014 at 10:29 am #53190sonic.penguinModeratoryeah, there is a new code that allows Guan Yu and Zhang Fei to be billetable AND there is a code to keep them in the party as well even after the Liu Bei made king event.
I’d love some ideas on new script, but one major fix is completely altering Chapter 1. I have some ideas from Emeperor Ling (or He Jin, they just have to die) on traveling East on the Imperial Highway which takes you from Chang An to the original Turban area. A battle with Li Jue will be spawned after you fight w/ the turbans and you will be unable to return to Chang An until Dong Zhuo/Lu Bu is conquered, or at least that will be my intention w/ the high troop counts I will give them.
I’m fixing the agility of all the officers, no worries there. I’m actually trying to make stats the most* realistic in this mod than ever. My first mods, the lowest stats for someone was like 120, now I’m trying to use the 50-200 range for a majority of the officers with special cases being above 200.
There are some other fun things I wanted to include. Like some special difficult battles (which would have provided options to recruit). One change I really wanted to make was to include a secret battle later which allowed the players to recruit Wang the Tiger (ala DoaE 2.0).
Funny. I’ve made a dragon sprite as well so that was an option in some of my other mods as well to recruit a non-human member of the party. Wang was available for recruit in Flames of Wu if the player met certain condtions.
I’m going to try to modify events/the map to make it MORE realistic to history and flow similiarly to history in terms of battle fought. Much of the townspeople’s talk wasn’t modified and I’m going to have to chop sections/add some to create more room for dialogue unless I want to hex everyones text bank/line individually >_>
Question, wasn’t someone else supposed to take over after Emperor Ling (shao?) and Dong Zhuo put Xian in charge?
Do you think ‘War Fans’ can be a legitimate weapon in a game >_>
About when did Chen Gong join Cao Cao? It was after a falling out w/ Dong Zhuo correct? That’s going to be a hard event to emulate…January 22, 2014 at 10:37 am #53192MiDKnighTModeratorI’m going to try to modify events/the map to make it MORE realistic to history and flow similiarly to history in terms of battle fought. Much of the townspeople’s talk wasn’t modified and I’m going to have to chop sections/add some to create more room for dialogue unless I want to hex everyones text bank/line individually >_>
There should be plenty of room in the new text banks.
Also, I’m thinking of 2 new DoaEditor enhancements:
1. Load sprites from the ROM. Already started playing with this. Pretty tough. I can’t just copy Niahak’s portrait stuff because the way portrait graphics and sprite graphics are laid out in the ROM is completely different. I also have to “zoom in” on the sprite so that you can see it in DoaEditor. Otherwise it is too small to see. Also have to figure out how to load the colors.
2. Allow editing of individual villagers (sprite, text, location). This should allow you to move towns and villages around and still preserve a lot of James’ text. Simply by re-assigning villager text similar to the way we do with battle before/after text.
Both of these enhancements require me to dig deep into what Niahak was doing with portraits and battle text and come up with something similar for sprites and villager text.
Don’t hold your breath though, these could be pretty tough to implement.
January 22, 2014 at 11:58 am #53193sonic.penguinModeratorBoth of these enhancements require me to dig deep into what Niahak was doing with portraits and battle text and come up with something similar for sprites and villager text.
Don’t hold your breath though, these could be pretty tough to implement.
Editing towns and townspeople like we can edit maps? That would be pretty insanely awesome, but I understand that towns / warps and sprites can be a much crazier thing to deal with. I actually thought about what would happen if you pulled sprites from the rom and my thoughts on the miniature size was there too. How does the NES pull the data and enlarge it? I have already used those sprite sheets quite a bit to modify sprites already so that is an option.
In terms of text I’m trying to keep the main dialogue the same to the point it makes sense, but townspeople I’m trying to edit to explain new game features (weapons, stats, items, etc) as I think most people who are playing roms understand to feed their armies and recruit stronger officers >_>
January 22, 2014 at 12:04 pm #53194Xian Zhu XuandeParticipantI’d love some ideas on new script, but one major fix is completely altering Chapter 1. I have some ideas from Emeperor Ling (or He Jin, they just have to die) on traveling East on the Imperial Highway which takes you from Chang An to the original Turban area. A battle with Li Jue will be spawned after you fight w/ the turbans and you will be unable to return to Chang An until Dong Zhuo/Lu Bu is conquered, or at least that will be my intention w/ the high troop counts I will give them.
Sounds good. It would be wonderful to enrich chapter one and some of the interactions with Dong Zhuo. Chapter one, in particular, offers room for improvement given the limited options to work with in the original mod.
I’m fixing the agility of all the officers, no worries there. I’m actually trying to make stats the most* realistic in this mod than ever. My first mods, the lowest stats for someone was like 120, now I’m trying to use the 50-200 range for a majority of the officers with special cases being above 200.
Agility is one of the things I would have used better numbers for if I had more control over the mod. In any case, we didn’t become aware of the agility bug until down the road. Only toward the end did I start to notice that something wasn’t working properly (such as Red Hare resetting agility or levels adjusting it). I’m happy to share thoughts on stats as well. I would argue that game balance is probably the most important thing, though. If not careful, there will be lots of characters who just aren’t worth bothering over.
Strategists are a particularly good example. Jia Xu and Guo Jia were both brilliant strategists and if they are properly honored Cao Cao is never going to lack a good strategist and there won’t be much reason to put thought into this subject. Not to mention Cao Cao himself being top tier, another issue if he remains in the party. I’m not sure if new changes to the tactics system allows for variance and originality here?
Funny. I’ve made a dragon sprite as well so that was an option in some of my other mods as well to recruit a non-human member of the party. Wang was available for recruit in Flames of Wu if the player met certain conditions.
Sounds cool. It’s nice having options like this for the sake of fun inclusions.
I’m going to try to modify events/the map to make it MORE realistic to history and flow similiarly to history in terms of battle fought. Much of the townspeople’s talk wasn’t modified and I’m going to have to chop sections/add some to create more room for dialogue unless I want to hex everyones text bank/line individually >_>
This was my greatest struggle in the mod—the limited space for text in the ROM. The Cao Cao mod basically brushed against the maximum through much of the editing process and I had to cut what could have been some great dialogue to make things work. It is nice to hear that more text is now possible. On the topic of writing, I’m happy to help out here during the development process.
Question, wasn’t someone else supposed to take over after Emperor Ling (shao?) and Dong Zhuo put Xian in charge?
Emperor Xian was installed after Emperor Shao’s death, and Dong Zhuo used him as a puppet. Xian was used by Cao Cao (quite carefully) and later deposed by Cao Pi, who then declared himself emperor. Areas like this are some where some spice from the novel can add a lot of flavor to the game.
Do you think ‘War Fans’ can be a legitimate weapon in a game >_>
Well, war fans are more or less fictional weapons. How much freedom do we have with weapons? Would it be possible to create a weapon which does more than simply provide attack power? They might have a fun place in the late game as a special goodie, or perhaps as a unique weapon found after the first battle with Zhuge Liang. Or as an item that comes equipped with Sima Yi (if that’s a thing), or a weapon wielded by Zhuge Liang (if enemies bother with displaying weapons). If it is now possible to create items with special abilities I can think of some fun ideas.
About when did Chen Gong join Cao Cao? It was after a falling out w/ Dong Zhuo correct? That’s going to be a hard event to emulate…
Here is the popular accounting of Chen Gong’s involvement with Cao Cao:
http://kongming.net/novel/kma/chengong.phpNot all of this is accurate. The actual history is *quite* dry by comparison (for example, he did not help to free Cao Cao from arrest), and the interactions between Chen Gong and Cao Cao here are some of the most famous stories from the novel and folklore. If you want to elaborate on Cao Cao’s interactions with Chen Gong, I would definitely borrow from this. I can see how it could become quite complex, however.
And there’s Cao Cao’s famous, “Better that I betray the world than let the world betray me.”
There are *many* excellent stories that could be worked in, though it is hard to imagine being able to pay too much of an homage to many of them. Some could be optional side-battles that have special rewards, if that’s possible.
- This reply was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by Xian Zhu Xuande.
January 22, 2014 at 2:43 pm #53196MiDKnighTModeratorEditing towns and townspeople like we can edit maps? That would be pretty insanely awesome, but I understand that towns / warps and sprites can be a much crazier thing to deal with.
Err not exactly. Maybe at some point… But for now I wanted to give the ability to change the villager sprite, location (in numeric format), and text (like battle text). The main benefit of this is that it’s much easier to find villager text and change it vs looking at the entire text banks. Especially when you are moving towns around.
I actually thought about what would happen if you pulled sprites from the rom and my thoughts on the miniature size was there too. How does the NES pull the data and enlarge it? I have already used those sprite sheets quite a bit to modify sprites already so that is an option.
I’ve got most of the sprite work done already! Just need to work on colors which I plan on pulling from the ROM palettes. You’ll also get to see the sprite facing forwards, sideways, and backwards. Sneak preview:
January 22, 2014 at 3:29 pm #53197DragonAtmaModeratorActually, Emperor Shao was still alive when he was replaced with Xian; Dong Zhuo was impressed by Xian’s superior intelligence.
Unfortunately, he didn’t survive much longer; Dong Zhuo was, after all, Dong Zhuo.
On a side note, speaking of map editing, any chance we can have DoaEd’s map editor redone? Dragging 2×2 tiles on works fine for small edits, but if you want to do a major map edit, the map editor really should be overhauled (hopefully to something like RPG Maker’s map editor).
- This reply was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by DragonAtma.
January 22, 2014 at 4:08 pm #53201MiDKnighTModeratorOn a side note, speaking of map editing, any chance we can have DoaEd’s map editor redone? Dragging 2×2 tiles on works fine for small edits, but if you want to do a major map edit, the map editor really should be overhauled (hopefully to something like RPG Maker’s map editor).
I agree, that’s one of the other tedious things about using DoaEditor that we should make better. Granted, the current way is 1000x better than editing the map via hex. I tried that at first and it took over an hour to do one region. :-x
January 22, 2014 at 4:20 pm #53202sonic.penguinModeratorI would agree on the map editor now. It’s function in its current state, just a little tedious at times.
I would argue that game balance is probably the most important thing, though. If not careful, there will be lots of characters who just aren’t worth bothering over.
Actually, this is something I’m going to have to free up to create more ‘interesting’ battles. What I did in other mods was erase a LOT of filler characters in lieu of more options for different stories, for example, a bunch of Shu officer nobodies who didn’t amount to much in terms of huge impact and don’t make very interesting people to wage war against.
I’ve got most of the sprite work done already! Just need to work on colors which I plan on pulling from the ROM palettes. You’ll also get to see the sprite facing forwards, sideways, and backwards. Sneak preview:
Awesome! Are those drawn right from the rom? Major props :thumright:
This was my greatest struggle in the mod—the limited space for text in the ROM. The Cao Cao mod basically brushed against the maximum through much of the editing process and I had to cut what could have been some great dialogue to make things work. It is nice to hear that more text is now possible. On the topic of writing, I’m happy to help out here during the development process.
Actually, through my (dear lord, 3 mods!?) three mods I’ve made from this game alread, there is actually quite a bit of unused dialogue that can be deleted without any harm to the game. The biggest problem with text editing used to be overflowing into other banks which totally borked the rom. Niahaks text editor updates allowed major fixes with that. Also, shortening a lot of merchant/battle dialoge helps clean up extra space as well. I must say I’m a little excited about this ‘townsperson’ editor, while a bear to do in Flames of Wu, definitely made the game more RPG’ish by allowing more than just ‘random’ recruits
January 22, 2014 at 4:47 pm #53203DragonAtmaModeratorIf you’re just planning to give the map a facelift, the current map editor is acceptable.
But if you want to redo the map from scratch (and I desire to do so; Jin Xuan map’s about 75% designed in RMVX), then the current map editor is nowhere near sufficient.
January 22, 2014 at 4:59 pm #53205MiDKnighTModeratorNot going to tackle the map thing for a while.
That said, if I can super size sprites, why now double the portrait display size in DoaEditor? Time to “Super Size” some portraits. The only slightly annoying thing right now is that it is “slicey”. Ie…you can see the 6 slices clearly:
But this makes picking portraits via the portrait selector uber fun:
January 22, 2014 at 5:06 pm #53206Xian Zhu XuandeParticipantActually, Emperor Shao was still alive when he was replaced with Xian; Dong Zhuo was impressed by Xian’s superior intelligence.
Unfortunately, he didn’t survive much longer; Dong Zhuo was, after all, Dong Zhuo.
Thanks for the correction. I was thinking of Emperor Ling and somehow forgot about Shao. I must be getting rusty.
AD 189
Emperor Ling dies.
Emperor Shao is enthroned.
Dong Zhou deposes Emperor Shao in favor of Emperor XianAD 190
The deposed Emperor Shao is murdered.Here are two chronologies of major events which should serve well for considering what might take place. There is always some mixup between the novel and actual history, but they generally serve their purpose and any mixup tends to have more to do with fact vs. fiction than order.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Three_Kingdoms_period
http://kongming.net/novel/chronology/Actually, this is something I’m going to have to free up to create more ‘interesting’ battles. What I did in other mods was erase a LOT of filler characters in lieu of more options for different stories, for example, a bunch of Shu officer nobodies who didn’t amount to much in terms of huge impact and don’t make very interesting people to wage war against.
I was speaking about the more prominent characters. Cao Cao had so many wonderful people through his career that it would be easy to create a scenario where the player pretty much ignores the vast majority of characters that come along; even those who are meant to be useful. Thus it would be nice to include variance between Guo Jia, Jia Xu, and Xun Yu, somehow. Same deal with the warriors. It is tricky to balance them out.
January 22, 2014 at 8:55 pm #53207sonic.penguinModeratorThus it would be nice to include variance between Guo Jia, Jia Xu, and Xun Yu, somehow. Same deal with the warriors. It is tricky to balance them out.
My thoughts were to make officers such as the two “Xuns” to use the new stat “POL” with lower intelligence because that was a HUGE beef of mine with the original mod was that instantly you got a bunch of dudes with 250 INT and it just seemed worthless to hire a bunch of dumber guys. So we’ll figure something out.
This actually really helps. thanks.
That said, if I can super size sprites, why now double the portrait display size in DoaEditor? Time to “Super Size” some portraits. The only slightly annoying thing right now is that it is “slicey”. Ie…you can see the 6 slices clearly:
slicey-ness doesn’t matter too much, albeit a little annoying, but I’d rather have the sprite-import thing working properly. Color pulling would be a plus too because that is something I often messed up since I change the sprite colors.
But if you want to redo the map from scratch (and I desire to do so; Jin Xuan map’s about 75% designed in RMVX), then the current map editor is nowhere near sufficient.
Let NOTHING stand in the way of Jin Xuan; Master of the Universe!
Well, war fans are more or less fictional weapons. How much freedom do we have with weapons? Would it be possible to create a weapon which does more than simply provide attack power? They might have a fun place in the late game as a special goodie, or perhaps as a unique weapon found after the first battle with Zhuge Liang. Or as an item that comes equipped with Sima Yi (if that’s a thing), or a weapon wielded by Zhuge Liang (if enemies bother with displaying weapons). If it is now possible to create items with special abilities I can think of some fun ideas.
More or less, i felt the “fan” icon was just a little spiffier than the shepherd stick. The other icons I liked though.
I’m not sure if new changes to the tactics system allows for variance and originality here?
Try any of my mods that are new or recently updated and you can see the variance that is possible amongst differing intelligence levels of officers, its incredible with the new unique tactics code, and even more so with assigning ‘enemy profiles’. I can even force them to use ‘An-Sha’ every turn!
January 22, 2014 at 9:08 pm #53208DragonAtmaModeratorTechnically, they DID invent war fans… but not for centuries, and in Japan.
Takeda Shingen (1521-1573) is often shown using a war fan, because he DID use a fan in combat…. but not willingly. In the fourth Kawanakajima battle, Uesugi Kenshin’s charge actually involved him entering Shingen’s tent, and the fan was the only thing Shingen could grab in time to deflect Kenshin’s attack.
Of course, games aren’t always 100% accurate to history, especially if you’re SHOOTING LASERS FROM A FAN SEVENTEEN CENTURIES EARLY! :/
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