Final Fantasy VI: Ray of Light - Timbo - 04-03-2017
I've created enough random threads that I think it's finally time I announced my project. It's kind of a vanilla omni-mod. The idea is to expand content without disrupting canon, add a modest and balanced level of difficulty to the game, remove censorship, and update artwork to more closely resemble Yoshitaka Amano's concept art. Like most of my projects I intend to work on this over a long period of time. The reason I've created this thread is because I want feedback and Ray of Light is still very early enough in it's development that almost anything can be changed. Please comment, criticize, suggest changes, and make requests This mod is supposed to be for the whole community, so I actually want and need your feedback.
Items in green are in progress.
Items in red are complete.
Global Changes:
- Implementing the GBA script with all of the best Woolsey parts kept in. It should be similar to the Woolsey-Slattery Compromise patch with a synched Slattery Opera, “Mr. Thou”, “Son of a Submariner”, “Call me a treasure hunter or I’ll rip your lungs out!”, etc.
- Modifying Sprites to look more like Amano's concept art.
- Implementing IOS portraits modified to look more like Amano’s concept art.
- Removing censored graphics and text.
- Rebalancing the difficulty to curve to add a modest level of challenge to it.
- Removing as many bugs as possible.
- Removing broken strategies and abilities, like Genji Glove + Offering, Vanish + Doom, and Quick + Celestriad.
- Adding B button dashing.
- Mini-map upgraded to show mountains.
- Music Player in the Main Menu
- Espers teach different spells
- Each Esper is only useable by a few different characters.
- Removing Esper stat bonuses in favor of diversified static equipment bonuses, whereby even starting would yield bonuses to one or more stats.
- Magic rearranged from Healing, Damage, and Effect to White, Black, and Time.
- Removing, replacing, and reshuffling Magic, Lore, enemy, and new spells to make room for new abilities for new command skills, tools, and throwable items.
- Changing the physical damage formula and rebalancing equipment to reduce the dominance of magic and put physical attacks on an equal playing field.
- Adding new events to make Mog and Gau more relevant to the plot.
- Moving Gogo and Umaro to guest character slots using the guest adder patch and using their slots to add new characters in their place.
- Using those characters to explain and expand on a few of the games dangling plot threads, namely the fate of Banon and Arvis.
- Removing Blitz’s Fighting Game style and Bushido’s Charge Gauge command inputs and replaceing them with standard eight skill command lists in order to enable two additional eight skill command lists, with natural ability learning, and menu displays for two additional characters and a Natural Magic list for Relm and an additional character. Which wouldn’t be possible if GrayShadows, who is my new hero, hadn’t already made it and generously decided to modify it and share it with me.
- Adding Omega Weapon and Kaiser Dragon superbosses to the game.
- Numerous Equipment Changes.
- Changing Critical Status from 1/16 HP to either ⅛ HP or ¼ HP.
- Increasing Desperation Attacks from a 6.25% chance to a 12.5% chance.
Character Specific Changes:
- Terra: She gains a redesigned Amano style sprite, Morph and Revert become a toggle that doubles damage dealt and received, and she gains a greater number of learnable spells than other characters due to the limitations of Morph.
- Locke: He gains a redesigned Amano style sprite, Mug replaces Attack rather than Steal, and Steal is replaced with a full eight skill command list called Tricks.
- Cyan: He gains a redesigned Amano style sprite, some of his Bushido skills will be replaced to add diversity to his skillset, his Bushido gauge is replaced with a faster eight skill list, and after being selected, each skill has a successively longer delay time according to power level before it’s executed.
- Shadow: He gains recolored Amano style sprite, his Throw command is limited to scrolls and shurikens, additional scrolls and shurikens will be added to the item list.
- Edgar: He gains a recolored Amano style sprite, some of his Tools will be modified or replaced to add diversity to his skillset.
- Sabin: He gains a recolored Amano style sprite, he gains a more useful skill in place of Spiraler, and his Blitz command’s fighting game style button input is removed and replaced with a standard eight spell list.
- Celes: She gains a redesigned Amano style sprite, and gains a greater number of learnable spells than other characters due to the limitations of Runic.
- Strago: He gains recolored Amano style sprite and some of his Lores will be replaced to balance his skillset.
- Relm: She gains a redesigned Amano style sprite, a natural magic list, a greater number learnable spells than other characters due to limitations of Sketch and Control, and Dog Block status when it’s appropriate.
- Setzer: His Slots command is derigged and it’s party targeted Joker Doom effect removed and possibly replaced with a different spell.
- Mog: His Dance skills no longer persist and are reselectable each turn.
- Gau: He gains a recolored Amano style sprite, the ability to equip knives and claws, a desperation attack, a smaller total number of learnable Rage skills, a[color=#33cc66] rebalanced Strength score with accordingly rebalanced Rage skills and monsters, the Attack command in place of Leap, and either his Rage skills are learned anywhere in the world by winning battles with Gau in your party or the Rage command toggles with the Leap command when on and off of the Veldt and the formations that actually appear on the Veldt are modified to make Rage learning less awful.
- Gogo: He gains a recolored Amano style sprite, becomes a permanently recruitable guest character, equipment no longer changeable (does not include relics), and possibly gains Esper use.
- Umaro: He becomes a permanently recruitable guest character and gains higher stats due to inability to do anything other than “Umaro Smash!”
- Kefka: He gains a recolored Amano style sprite.
- Magitek Armor: It's not really a character but it gains a redesigned Amano style sprite as well.
Actual Spoiler Content:
- Banon: He gains a redesigned Amano style sprite, a desperation attack, and a spot on the party selection screen in both time periods, the Paladin in place of Oracle, and his Pray skill becomes an eight skill command list. *This is an actual spoiler please use discretion and the appropriate spoiler tags when discussing this character*
- Wedge: He gains a redesigned Amano style sprite, a desperation attack, a spot on the party selection screen in both time periods, the Jump command as his special command, natural magic, and a greater number of learnable spells than other characters due to the limitations of Jump. *This is an actual spoiler please use appropriate tags when discussing this character.
Changes that are currently beyond my knowledge
- Stamina adds to Defense and Magic Defense
- Regen, Poison, Sap, and HP Leak are divorced from Stamina and become purely fractional.
Changes I’m still considering:
- Replacing the Poison Element with Darkness.
- Removing the Poison Status entirely, renaming Sap accordingly, and possibly making Sap Damage Poison/Dark Elemental.
- Removing Imp Status.
- Removing Freeze Status.
- Eliminating Desperation Attacks.
- Implementing GBA nomenclature either with Restored Ability Names or a combination of abbreviation and modifying the blank font tiles to create specific 1.5-letter and 2-letter font tiles for spelling a few specific words and names.
Phases of Development:
- Artwork: Sprite and Portrait design and recoloring. I generally do this phase intermittently when I want a breather from all of the following phases.
- Concept: Coming up with all of the cool ideas and creating a list of project goals.
- Planning: This phase includes allocating space, choosing existing hacks, creating spell lists, etc. I find that it's very necessary to fully flesh out this phase before moving ahead beyond phase 4 to prevent waste.
- Coding: This is a new phase for me. I plan to develop and test all of the hex edits, ASM hacks, and script edits I'll need right away in case I need to stop and go back to phase 2.
- Data Entry: Using the existing editors and utilities to get the game up and running.
- Event & Map Editing: I'll make a few minor event edits here to accommodate some minor changes.
- Balancing: This is when I make sure all my abilities, monsters, equipment, characters, economy, and the other various aspects of gameplay have a nice feel and moderate difficulty level.
- Alpha Release: Here I'll choose as many people as I can to stress test the hell out of this thing.
- Event Planning: This is when I plan to flesh out those events concepts created in step 2 with proper dialogue and storyboarding.
- Event & Map Creation: The biggest and hardest changes will all be made here.
- Beta Release: Testing, testing, testing....
RE: Final Fantasy VI: Ray of Light - Lockirby2 - 04-03-2017
The party targeted Joker Doom spell is removed... what about the one that targets the enemies? It will be broken if unchanged.
RE: Final Fantasy VI: Ray of Light - Timbo - 04-03-2017
(04-03-2017, 09:50 PM)Lockirby2 Wrote: The party targeted Joker Doom spell is removed... what about the one that targets the enemies? It will be broken if unchanged.
Is it that easy to hit 777 with unrigged slots?
RE: Final Fantasy VI: Ray of Light - Lockirby2 - 04-03-2017
(04-03-2017, 10:34 PM)Timbo Wrote: (04-03-2017, 09:50 PM)Lockirby2 Wrote: The party targeted Joker Doom spell is removed... what about the one that targets the enemies? It will be broken if unchanged.
Is it that easy to hit 777 with unrigged slots?
If you pause buffer it becomes pretty easy. Even if you aren't willing to pause buffer, it's doable enough that a player could cheese any boss they aren't a fan of if they are good at timing, which is weird in an FF6 hack.
RE: Final Fantasy VI: Ray of Light - Timbo - 04-04-2017
As I see it, there are a couple problems with Slots in vanilla. First, it is rigged so unlike, Blitz, your outcome is out of your control. Second, it's rigged so you'll almost always get Lagomorph, 7-Flush, or Chocobop. Un-rigging the command, puts the power back in the hands of the player, but crafty and good players can exploit the system to get Joker Dooms on demand which not only ruins the game but makes all of the other outcomes meaningless.
It seems like the best course of action is to un-rig the command and balance it out so that even Lagomorph and all of the commands after it are successively more useful without going over the top. 777 and 77Bar will still be in the system but Joker Doom is going to die. I'm not sure what to put in its place yet.
RE: Final Fantasy VI: Ray of Light - Turbotastic - 04-04-2017
I must be in the minority because I can never get the slot results I want in an UNrigged game. Rigged slots make Setzer useful because he can actually do damage on a semi-regular basis in my hands.
RE: Final Fantasy VI: Ray of Light - Robo Jesus - 01-16-2018
I know that if you're still working on this project, that you're likely trying to figure out how to add more room and whatnot. There are two places in the ROM that can be essentually removed entirely to make a LOT more room. The first is the character-class-name and Bushido-skill names that were renameable in the japanese version. The second place is the entire Cyan scenario in the WoR (which can be reworked into a MUCH smaller coding scenario than what it currently is), as PowerPanda delightfully pointed out. These two areas would give you a LOT of extra room to add your own things in.
Also, JCE3000GT made a document showing other unused spaces in the ROM as well. Here's a link for that. https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/thread-3489.html
As for Relm's Sketch, the two big problems with it is #1. It relies on the Monster's stats, and #2. It pulls info for what to do from a list with only two attacks (same situation as with Gau's rages).
seibaby provided an ASM coding-patch (in text format you have to copy/paste into an asm file, no direct patches available atm) for how to change Sketch to use Relm's stats. https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/thread-3478.html
There has also been a patch made expanding the Sketch and Rage list by using the "Control" list (as it has four options to use instead of two). https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1395/
It may be possible for you to also remove those unneeded Rage and Sketch lists if you're using the Control-list as a "Master" list for those two commands, which would allow you to do more things with the extra room.
As for what you can replace Joker Doom with, have you considered a Bad Breath type of status attack? Something usable even on Bosses?
RE: Final Fantasy VI: Ray of Light - Timbo - 01-17-2018
I had some major life stuff happen shortly after starting work on this hack. It's not currently being worked on, but it's not dead. In fact, I've been thinking about it lately. I expect I'll resume work on it soon. There will be some revisions.
One of the big problems I hadn't considered is that the game's the ending has that big character theme medley and it's not easily changeable. The problem is when you add new characters their musical themes cannot be inserted into the games ending.
This is kind of a deal-breaker for me. The core of Final Fantasy 6 is Uemetsu's music. In addition to it being nearly impossible for me, changing it would feel like blasphemy.
However, it has recently occurred to me that I could insert a new character into someone else's ending scenario, so long as the new character was dependant on the old character for recruitment.
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