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Well… I guess I'm necro-bumping this topic… but I couldn't resist. Flame away, I can take it :huohu:
Final Fantasy 1 is my pick. Loved the NES version, then I found the cart for GBA and was amazed at the facelift… and bothered by the lack of difficulty. So I fixed that.
Here's my (extremely) subjective hierarchy of Final Fantasy greatness. Only the ones I've played are rated:
1. The original- Pacing, replayability, open-ended exploration. Awesome.
2. V- An excellent engine for character customization. Could have allowed for more command picks.
3. IX- Steiner is gold for comic relief. Cartoonish story was most welcome after the last three titles.
4. VI- Memorable characters and good story. The World of Balance is quite linear and story-driven, while in the World of Ruin you have a very open-ended quest of exploration, and you don't have to do half of what is open to you if you don't want to. I felt the Esper system left the game a bit weak on character development and challenge, because you could make every character very vanilla if everyone learned everything. And if you wanted to increase their stats at level up via Espers, that wasn't easy to avoid.
5. IV- Best story of all Final Fantasies I've played. The DS version is gangsta, both in cool factor and in its ability to pretty much one-shot your party into oblivion.
6. III- I love the concept of III's job system, but you aren't rewarded for sticking with a character concept, and that's not cool in my book.
7. VII- Materia are a character's bread and butter. Weapon/armor system was too simplistic for my tastes. Summons blew me away back when I first got the game, just for the pure eye-candy factor. It's an okay story, I guess… if you like being depressed. :?
8. II- Again, character development system was good in concept, but exploitable. GBA version fixed the exploit, but weapons level much too fast, and magic levels far too slow. Am planning to mod this as soon as I revisit Final Fantasy 1/2- Dawn of Souls.
9. VIII- Couldn't stand this game, and is the only one of the first nine that I did not finish. Seriously, I think the only thing I like about this game are five of the songs… "Man with a machine gun" rocks. I did not like the Guardian Force system, for personal reasons and for its tediousness. Not too mention the levelling creatures, so when you hit level 30 after all of your magic drawing, all of sudden you get the crap kicked out of you. Repeatedly. And you only have a couple of Fira spells to fire off. Yes, I did suffer through the first two disks and half of the third. But I just couldn't finish it.
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
No problem. About those stat bar lengths:
Three bytes control how long the status bars are:
0x385cb: 1a <– how much a "||" character is worth
0x385d9: 0d <– how much a "| " character is worth
0x3ea47: 14 <– How long a Stat entry is allowed to be in the status screen
The above are default values. The bar begins on character #12 of a line. For every 26 (#0x1a) points in a stat, a double bar is outputted. When subtracting by 26 yields a negative number, 13 (#0x0d) is added, and if the result is again positive, a final single bar is appended to the end. With this configuration, a stat's visualization can only be 17 bars long, hence only 9 characters are needed (11 + 9 = 20 total line length).
My changes were:
0x385cb: 14 <– how much a "||" character is worth
0x385d9: 0a <– how much a "| " character is worth
0x3ea47: 16 <– How long a Stat entry is allowed to be in the status screen
The one note about this is that the bar maxes out when an officer has a rating of 240+, not 250. If I were to make the line #0x17, or 23, bytes long, the last single bar would be colored white, and I didn't feel like messing with the PPU colors. Then again, maybe officers with a 250 in a stat deserve to look special…
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
In the Liu Bei battle at Xu Zhou, Zhou Yun brought back Guan Yu with Life… but that was short-lived. Cao Cao was quick with his Raise tactic twice, and he brought back Guo Jia in the last battle, and Xu Chu in battle at Ru Nan (I believe it was). I wanted to get rid of the fighters while Thwart was active, leaving the tacticians alone… and that was a mistake in that battle.
Then again, Raise was my friend too. It saved a few officers who got Removed (including Zhang He who happened to get Removed by some penny-ante 180-something Int officer… boo-hiss random number generator). Raise paid off in spades again in Wu when I purposely let Yuan Shang go down to an attack (since everyone targeted him for like eight straight attacks) and Miracle wasn't keeping his men healthy. Worked like a charm :-)
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
Well, I finished pummelling Cao Cao. This was a very well done mod, and it is the first I have played that significantly changed the story line. It should spark the imagination as I begin pondering what I'd like to do with the Wu cast.
Final thoughts:
* It was interesting recruiting Jia Xu and Zhang Liao at the end… I only had to fight Cao Cao, Guo Jia, Xun Yu and Xu Chu and that made the last battle a bit more manageable. Three generals with Raise… had to be quick with that Thwart tactic!
* Another smile-worthy moment: Guan Yu ending up on different sides of the battle than Liu Bei… Liu Bei was the one who laid a successful Doubt on Guan Yu in that battle. I see how much that blood-oath meant :twisted:
* Liu Bei didn't even make the cut for the final battles at Luo Yang! My final army lineup:
Yuan Shang
Ju Shou
Zhang Liao
Yan Liang <- Mr. I-Will-Kill-You-All-With-My-DragonS
Zhang He
* Tian Feng
Jia Xu
* What was especially interesting was how you edited some of the events in the game. I must research the Hacking Guide and learn from the masters…
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
Oh my… and there *are* 8 more Zhang Yans in my billeting 8O
No… no I won't use them. My conscience is not letting me.
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
More thoughts as I head into chapter 6…
0. Having lots of fun. Zhang Yan just joined me and I must say I didn't see that coming (I didn't read the earlier posts, so as to not spoil the surprises.
1. I love the sprites and officer portraits. You've put a lot of hard work into that.
2. Two words. "Level 19", baby. Guard is my friend. And I am using it often. Once I attained Level 19, I took down Chang Sha rather handily, and then went back to pummel Gongsun Zan into the ground. Ju Shou is just the man for the job to make sure Guard is used before the enemies attack.
3. Sun Ce harassing me after the Jing Zhou campaign is kinda funny. He's quite dangerous… until…
4. Some of the Agility-gaining officers are overflowing 255 AGI. Here's the list so far as I can tell: Chunyu Qiong, Zhang He (I think?), Tian Feng, and most hilariously, Sun Ce himself. After the chapter switched to the Hanzhong campaign, Sun Ce decided to fight with me again, but he hadn't eaten his Wheaties that morning and someone poisoned his horses, because his AGI was a measly 6. :crown: Zhang Yan and company had lots of fun pounding him into submission in one turn.
5. Met more Heishin Bandits on the way to Hanzhong after I recruited Zhang Yan… and someone said they'd join me afterwards. Did I just get Zhang Yan again? A full army of Zhang Yan clones… that'd be something to see :huohu: I also like that I'm gaining food every time I fight them.
And Yuan Shao marches on…
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
I'm kicking around some other (very) small gameplay edits for future versions of the mod, and in after hearing the feedback, here they are:
* Have Guan Yu and Zhang Fei not become obsolete (at least, not until the Shu campaign). I'm thinking that Zhang Fei needs more Speed and Soldiers, and Guan Yu needs more soldiers as well (though not as many as Zhang Fei).
* Make Huang Zhong generally more useful… it has bugged me to no end that he's not useful by the time Jing Zhou rolls around.
* Tone down the early tactics (especially Flame, Blaze, and Blades) in an effort to make warriors a bit more useful.
* Go through all the officers in the game, and make more generals a bit more average (like MiDKnighT's Yuan Shao mod does well)
* Make the early armor and helmets a bit less expensive. I wanted to make money management a bit more necessary, and I think I went overboard on that in the early going… if I wanted to make the early learning curve fairly lenient, I think that I made money too scarce early on.
* Have Zhou Yu have more soldiers in the middle game.
* Make experience a bit more plentiful in Wei.
What do you all think? How would you improve it?
Oh, and MiDKnighT… I really liked the sprites that you used in your mod… do you mind if I use the sprites you used (and maybe a few of your portraits?) :-)
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
Ah… yes you are right. I'm at work trying to remember my party, and now that you mention I do have Feng Ji in my army, and Yuan Tan is billeted (he got billeted after I was able to recruit Lu Bu). I cycle him in for Yan Liang (as Wen Chou has the Trident and Lu Bu has the Sabre) occasionally when I need an extra battle tactician.
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
I've made it almost through chapter 4 (I'm about level 17), and am knocking on big bad Gongsun Zan's citadel in the east. Here's my initial thoughts on your mod:
1. This is my first time playing through a mod with a different cast of characters, and it is a lot of fun.
2. It was an absolute blast giving the treaty to Liu Bei and gaining his services for a while. And I almost didn't feel betrayed by him when I was ambushed north of Nan Yang… almost :huohu:
3. I actually like how many officers (especially yours) stay a bit behind the curve for a while, which amps the difficulty up. I may have to look into rebalancing my mod a bit this way. I must say… I was disappointed that I could not recruit Li Ru or Ji Ling :tear:
4. I was amazed how relevant Yan Liang and Wen Chou continue to be. I play your mod much differently than I play mine, because the only battle-changing tactic my strategist has seen is Doubt (and to a lesser extent, Restore… but warriors use healing tactics just as effectively due to their Strength). My party right now is
Lu Bu
Zhou Renmin <– (sp?)
Yan Liang
Wen Chou
Zhang He
Guo Tu <– tactician
Yuan Tan <– pack mule
5. The DoaE2 Damage algorithm made the initial chapter a bit tedious (officers with Daggers still hitting for 1 to 2 kills each turn).
6. Speaking of that, I was not expecting the first chapter to be as tough as it was… those Zhang brothers were beasts! :blackeye:
7. It appears that buying a bit of food is necessary to keep your soldiers supplied when I engage on grinding campaigns… not that this is a bad thing. It appears you've subtly raised the amount of gold received from engaging enemies. This actually gives a bit more complexity to the game, which is good for veterans :thumright:
8. I can tell I'll be using those Life/Raise tactics in future battles, because Gongsun Zan and the Chang Sha battle are both looking really mean.
Looking forward to getting more time to play after work tonite.
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
Quote:Hopefully at some point you are inspired to do a mod with a new cast of characters (besides Liu Bei and the gang). I think we're due for a good Wu mod no?A Wu mod might be right up my alley. My favorite area in the stock game was always Wu, and part of my impetus for doing the Remix was being able to use Zhou Yu in the endgame.
If you'd believe it, I once beat Sima Yi on the console using this army:
Taishi Ci
Lu Xun
Zhang Liao
Zhou Yu
Gan Ning
Zhuge Liang was tactician.
It was ugly, lemmetellya. Ce Mian + Power pills helped a lot, but luck helped just as much.
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
Hey Sonic,
Just got back from Thanksgiving with my folks and finally released another project that I've been working real hard on…
Much of my effort on the Remix is based on this question: How can I make Destiny of an Emperor more accessible and fun to someone who's never played the original game before (or someone who played the original years ago and wants to get back into it)?
-> I didn't want to ramp the difficulty up too much.
–> I didn't want to meaningfully change the story, but I did want to make battles more interesting.
–> I did want boss battles to provide a good (not ridiculous) challenge.
–> I wanted to provide as many interesting possibilities to advance in the game as possible, to make the game as fun as possible to replay.
If I managed these things, I feel like I succeeded in my work.
I love the idea of using Hua Xiong, I never seem to be able to recruit him in time (I don't like his low Int). I do like using Xu Rong, though… he's quite a bit of fun and he gains soldiers pretty quickly in the early game.
Lei Bo is a beast too, if you can get him early enough.
Sorry about the "Bandanna" oversight… it will be fixed in the next revision. :cactuar:
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
I think that playing this mod will be my next project… I'm taking a break after releasing my DoaE mod and my MM3/4/5 mods. Thanks MiDKnighT, just downloaded it and looking forward to playing it!
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
Quote:Penguin, I've had my ROM borked a couple of times recently by the text editor. I think it has to do with extending the size of the text bank too large.My name is Ludmeister and I approve this message :cactuar:
In all seriousness, when I was doing my very simple text edits to finish off my mod, I borked my ROM a couple of times too, and this was exactly what I suspected was happening. Especially since text seems to not be stored in character-by-character format, but in a somewhat compressed way, it makes sense that even removing characters has a chance of making compressed size too large. I literally was storing a backup of my work every edit I made to make sure I didn't lose my work.
Text editing for Destiny of an Emperor seems to be a risky enterprise… not that it can particularly be helped (I wouldn't guess).
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
I just noticed that the Zanbato link in the post above was wrong. Sorry about that, is fixed now.
Also, Zhuge… about the possibility of using Evade/Thwart together… I'm curious about what you think about the costs of those two tactics. Should I bump them up in cost a bit so that this strategy might be employed every now and then, but not relied upon? It's undeniably effective, but prohibitive to keep up both tactics, especially if they keep wearing off, or if a pesky tactician (Sima Yi, to wit) keeps Negating them.
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
Ahhh… in other news, I have the separate portion of my site which is dedicated to Ludmeister's Remix.
MiDKnighT, whenever the fancy strikes you, you can change the link on the hacking page. Have I thanked you for all your hard work that you do on this site recently?
I also have a configurable tactic list page, so the changes I've made to the tactics can be easily viewed.
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
