FF6 - Brave New World

Phoenix's animation is weird. I was able to duplicate his glitchiness on a vanilla ROM, which says to me that the bug existed before we did anything. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere, though. It's a very heavy-duty animation, so it doesn't surprise me that it may mess up some other animations if used against certain formations. We noticed a similar issue when we tried to make Cave In a multi-target spell.

Phoenix can't be blocked, so what you're seeing there is probably just an alternate miss animation (since they're not dead). I'm not sure why it's doing that, though. I may have to poke around with Phoenix next chance I get.

I think the other part of it is that it's a little like Hit Girl from the movie Kickass, where it's just shocking and weird to hear that language come out of the mouth of a 10 year old.

Well, she directly quotes Hit Girl twice, so Relm is more than just a "little" like her. Also, Kick Ass is one of my favorite movies of all time, so take that as you will.

To be fair, I can say from a certain degree of personal experience that Relm speaks very much like a 10 year-old with absolutely no discipline would. either that or i just had a very weird upbringing.

Version 1.1.5 is up.

I played through this hack and I must say that this hack is awesome! The limited equips of the Espers are probably my favorite system for stat boosts, and this hack really shines in terms of game balance. I had serious problems choosing a character (besides Umaro) to leave behind for Kefka's Tower, unlike most hacks where it's pretty easy to knock off a couple of characters that are fairly useless. I also liked the changes to the dialogue (well, not the swearing, but you guys have already got that covered). All in all this hack is awesome! There were a few buggy thing that I found, though.

1: When you bid 16 000 GP for the imp robot, somebody outbids you with a bid of 15 000. What a cheater !

2: If you lose the Opera House sequence once and then go back in the next day, Ultros spouts an empty dialogue box.

3: When I slept at the beds in Kohlingen, Locke got into the bed several seconds later than the other characters. Unfortunately, I can't remember what I was doing beforehand anymore. I can give you the save state if you want, though.

4: One of the people in the school at Narshe says,
"Condemned"
When the timer reaches zero,
you dead.
If this is a reference to something, ignore me.

5: When is Discord supposed to work, and when is it supposed to fail? When I used it on Hidon, it would say that the attack had missed, but after several uses, his damage was suspiciously low.

6: Counter-attacks that are Reflectable get used upon the enemies' death in the Fanatics Tower. The problem with this is, if the enemy using the spell is the only enemy on the field, and it dies, counterattacking with one of these spells (the offender I'm thinking of here is Rasp), and then that Rasp spell gets reflected, the spell has no target. In this case, it causes the game to lock up for a while, though it eventually unfreezes.

7: Because the Holy Dragon absorbs Holy, it can be attacked with Cure, Cure 2 and Cure 3. I have a feeling you know about this issue already, as none of the other enemies in the hack absorb Holy, but maybe you can make the Holy Dragon nullify Holy instead to make this issue less apparent here?

8: Odin's description is:
"Death - All foes
Uncoutnerable

9: When you talk to Gau's father to start the cutscene where Gau meets him, he says:
...and you wouldn't
BELEIVE how bad the toilet's
been acting up.
I before E, except after C

10: Occasionally after coming out of the Old man's house in the WoB, the Merchant riding a chocobo will be riding twice as fast as he usually does. I'm not sure what's causing this or if it's worth fixing, though.

I'm playing on an older version and never bothered to switch (1.0.7, was it?), so some of these may have been fixed by now.

PS: The Mine Cart segment is doable in an LLG. It would be pretty crazy to distribute the EXP perfectly though...

1: When you bid 16 000 GP for the imp robot, somebody outbids you with a bid of 15 000. What a cheater !

I thought we'd fixed that >.>

2: If you lose the Opera House sequence once and then go back in the next day, Ultros spouts an empty dialogue box.

Damn, and I thought we'd found all of the empty dialogue boxes.

I'll have to remember to hunt this one down and put something appropriately lemony/easter-eggy in it.

3: When I slept at the beds in Kohlingen, Locke got into the bed several seconds later than the other characters. Unfortunately, I can't remember what I was doing beforehand anymore. I can give you the save state if you want, though.

I have no idea on this one. Is it repeatable?

4: One of the people in the school at Narshe says,
"Condemned"
When the timer reaches zero,
you dead.
If this is a reference to something, ignore me.

It's not a reference, it's just some gratuitous bad English.

5: When is Discord supposed to work, and when is it supposed to fail? When I used it on Hidon, it would say that the attack had missed, but after several uses, his damage was suspiciously low.

Discord utilizes the "miss if immune to ailments" bit, which causes it to miss against anything that's immune to bserk (which Discord now sets).

It employed a similar tactic in the original, instead using a special "miss if death immune" bit that used death immunity as a way of preventing cheesing it and fractional damage attacks against bosses (and, by extension, most of the enemies in the game that you might actually want to use them on). These two bits *should* function identically in theory, and I don't see any reason why discord's effect should take place even if the attack misses, but I can't say that I've ever tried spamming it against something that it clearly wasn't working against.

6: Counter-attacks that are Reflectable get used upon the enemies' death in the Fanatics Tower. The problem with this is, if the enemy using the spell is the only enemy on the field, and it dies, counterattacking with one of these spells (the offender I'm thinking of here is Rasp), and then that Rasp spell gets reflected, the spell has no target. In this case, it causes the game to lock up for a while, though it eventually unfreezes.

Hmm... someone pointed out a similar problem they noticed in the Stooge battle (I forget how they triggered it). Apparently, the game does weird things when it can't find a valid target for a Rflected attack.

I'm wondering whether I should address this by changing the enemy scripts or if it might be more prudent to address the root cause of the problem. I'll see what Synchysi has to say about it.

7: Because the Holy Dragon absorbs Holy, it can be attacked with Cure, Cure 2 and Cure 3. I have a feeling you know about this issue already, as none of the other enemies in the hack absorb Holy, but maybe you can make the Holy Dragon nullify Holy instead to make this issue less apparent here?

Yeah putting the holy element on curative spells interacts *really* wackily with elemental resistances. The White Dragon is the only enemy in the game with any resistance to it whatsoever, since I opted for the consistency of it absorbing its own attacks over the bug that it can be attacked with cure magic.

8: Odin's description is:
"Death - All foes
Uncoutnerable

9: When you talk to Gau's father to start the cutscene where Gau meets him, he says:
...and you wouldn't
BELEIVE how bad the toilet's
been acting up.
I before E, except after C

Both of these got fixed in 1.1.4

That first one in particular has been pointed out a lot... not sure whether I'm glad that people are paying such close attention to things I thought would be overlooked or ashamed that I missed it for as long as I did.

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Anyhow, glad you're enjoying the mod. Let us know what your Kefka's Tower lineup ends up looking like - I'm always interested to see peoples' final loadouts.

I'm wondering whether I should address this by changing the enemy scripts or if it might be more prudent to address the root cause of the problem. I'll see what Synchysi has to say about it.

I'm not really sure what I could even do about it.

The teams for me ended up being:

Team 1:
Gogo - Double Avengers + Darill's Soul + Cerberus Rage FTW!
Sabin - Built for as much strength as possible, which resulted in a large HP boost by happenstance. I didn't go for a Stamina build because I wanted more offensive options than just Aurabolt. His Chakra is just fine with low Stamina because I often incapacitate an enemy with something like Imp, and then I can just take my time healing my MP back. I did throw him some Stamina though.
Terra - Built with Mag/Stam all the way. She could heal the entire party to full with RegenX, as well as apply Regen in the same turn, which is great for dealing with attacks like Aero, and for getting revived party members up to speed. I don't use my Morph enough... I never boosted Vigor, as her magic is usually better, and I wanted as much power as possible where it counted, as she could hit truly massive numbers if she hit a weakness.
Locke - Given some Speed before I swapped over to Vigor. He could heal and attack very quickly, mostly doing pinch healing (although he didn't have the MP to be a full healer). He was very useful when my mages were occupied, and at low HP he could hit really hard. He also often provided a handy menu to wait in during animations.

Team 2:
Shadow - He was probably my fastest damage dealer, and I gave him an even mix of Vigor/Stamina/Speed, because I wanted all of it. Against Goddess, he was throwing two or three Ninjatos per turn of hers, dealing out 8K, I think, if he hit her from behind (yay for side attacks). His scrolls could rip things apart as well if there were lots of enemies, or they had a weakness. Funding him is expensive though, which meant he was mediocre until I had the cash for the throwing items, so it balances out.
Relm - I went for Speed for a while, then switched to Magic (getting MP for most of the game by association, though I could have cared less). Her usefulness basically came down to whether she could sketch something useful from a particular encounter. Otherwise, she could still throw out Flare/Meteor for decent damage, and the speed was nice for her paintbrush healing.
Gau - I gave him more Speed than I should have. He would have benefitted more from higher Stamina for Regen healing. He couldn't wait in the menu while Raging, so that speed advantage was often wasted. Still great for applying Image with Cerberus though, and his damage was fairly decent.
Edgar - He started fairly slow, but got pretty fast and strong by the end of the game with Vigor/Speed boosts. His jumping was often really powerful and meant he didn't need to be defended well. He also got some small Magic boosts, as Bio Blaster is really useful now against large groups of humans. He ended up pretty well rounded, except Stamina.

Team 3:
Strago - He ended up with a lot of Stamina due to having Shiva/Carbunkl on before I got Zoneseek. This meant he could be an extremely good defensive character with Refract, Shield and the Reflect piercing Holy Wind. After that, I boosted his magic stat as high as possible, meaning he could destroy large enemy groups with Black Omen. If only he didn't manage to die before the second tier of the final fight...
Mog - I tried to give him Vigor/Speed so his jumping would be strong, but it still fell far short of Edgar. I'm thinking that Magic/Stamina would have been better. I think he probably would have been better off dancing.
Celes - She ended up being my most well rounded character. If she could hit a weakness, she had decent magic, but otherwise, she could still do well with the Illumina (Terra's Vigor was awful, so that was an easy choice). With Runic, speed and MP for healing, and good Stamina for Regen, she was a pretty good tank as well. However, the jack-of-all-trades is a master of none, so if I needed a character to do a particular job the best, she often didn't fit the bill.
Setzer - The Dice work better in the lower scale battle system, and the Fixed Dice do amazing damage. Stat boosts don't affect those, so I generally just gave him magic to help his slots a little or HP/MP so he could heal more without running out of MP. I feel I really missed the boat here though, as he could have seriously benefitted from a high Stamina stat, and I had the means to give him one.

Cyan - I left him behind because he was slow, but I regret taking Mog instead, as his damage was lackluster. Cyan was pure Vigor, no questions asked. He had the highest Vigor stat, but his damage wasn't always worth the wait (mostly towards the end, though). Cleave also helped some random encounters along, if they weren't already killed before Cyan even got a turn
Umaro - XD

If you notice, I never bother with HP growth, at least purposely. My rationale is that, if the HP goes down farther, you just have to spend more time rehealing it. If I can at least survive the attacks being thrown my way, I'm good. However, I really do regret mostly ignoring the Stamina stat. I didn't realize just how much of my endgame healing Regen would be. After seeing the results on Strago/Terra, and noting that it builds faster than the other stats, I feel I should have given it more of a chance.


All my characters were between level 28/33, and I never felt annoyed that I was forced to use a character to keep their level up.

I am actually going to give it to you, I am what I would consider a veteran of the game. This hack has made me scale back quite a bit and act more conservatively with my actions. I haven't run from an average enemy since I first started playing the game in the 90's. For the first time in nearly 20 years today, I actually had to run from a fight. Seeing as how I was down to 11 hp with Sabin. Good work, I haven't had a challenge like this in quite a while.

Let me guess... you got ganked by a pack of Rabites? >.>

And after reading Lockirby's post and a few others, we've decided it might be prudent to beef Cyan's defenses and/or speed up a bit. Still not sure how we're going to go about it yet, but I imagine we'll probably end up adjusting his base stats a bit.

Actually it was Mandrake's and Bugger's, auto-Bio keeps poisoning and killing my peoples, Celes can only do so much with Runnic. >.> And I haven't even been to Zozo yet.

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HA! NICE TOUCH ON CHANGING THE CLOCK TO ROMAN NUMERAL SETTING! LOL