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FF6 - Brave New World

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After nearly two years of development, version 1.0 of Brave New World is finally ready for release. What started out with my initial desire to properly case everyone's name turned into a rather innocent discussion between a co-worker of mine and I about ways to improve/fix the original game, which in turn became this.

Highlights
  • In order to keyhole characters into the character archetypes we wanted them to fit, espers are now restricted by character, and all espers have had their spell lists and level up bonuses appropriately adjusted.
  • Traditional levels and esper levels have been disassociated from one another to alleviate the feeling that players must LLG until espers have been gained. See the Readme for more information.
  • In an effort to make vigor a useful stat (as opposed to the dump stat it was originally), a brand new physical damage formula was implemented.
  • In an effort to make stamina a useful stat (as opposed to the garbage stat it was originally), several abilities now use it instead of magic power or vigor when determining their effectiveness.
  • Several modified or new special effects have been implemented to accommodate new or changed skills, including:
    • Mindblow: Does 500 MP damage - the new level 2 sword tech.
    • Mantra: Altered to use stamina as an additional modifier - along with this, Sabin is likely the highest-stamina character in the game.
    • Chakra: A Mantra clone that restores MP to the party instead of HP - the new level 6 Blitz.
    • Among many, many others.
  • Various bug fixes, including evasion, sketch, runic, genji glove, vanish/doom, and persistent statuses after death.
  • Periodic effect formulas have been re-worked to accommodate the emphasis on making stamina useful, as well as a lower HP curve. In particular, periodic damage is now reduced by raising stamina, while regen healing is increased. Poison will also scale a little slower, while seizure is almost universally useful.
  • Party level averaging has been removed at most parts in the game due to the added emphasis on stat growth via esper bonuses. An unfortunate side effect of this is that the World of Ruin has greatly varied difficulty depending on how it's chosen to be played.
  • Virtually all weapons, armor, and relics have been re-worked so few are dead weight, putting the onus on the player to determine what the best load out is for a particular character and/or situation.
  • All enemies have had their stats, resistances, weaknesses, status vulnerabilities, and battle scripts re-done or completely overhauled.
  • The game script has been largely re-written in order to be a bit more faithful to the original Japanese dialogue. A largely irreverent "clean" script has also been included for those with delicate sensibilities.

Further information can be found in the Readme. It's a bit of a lengthy read, as my partner is quite verbose, but at the very least section 4 should be perused.

As there was very little graphical and map hacking and no sound hacking (due to both being beyond the scope of the mod and being beyond our skills), I don't really have any screenshots, and only one video. Most of what we did is fairly difficult to show through screenshots and videos anyway.

A mini-review was written by one of the early downloaders of the release version, for those looking for something somewhat shorter than the Readme to summarize the mod: http://levantiner1.blogspot.com/2013/06/...world.html

Download
Download link: http://www.insanedifficulty.com/board/in...available/
Alternate link: [Down for now}
Readme: [Down for now - can be found in the archive via download link above]
Changelog: [Down for now - can be found in the archive via download link above]

Note that the alternate link and the Readme may not always be up to date, as they're maintained by my partner. The most recent version of the patch will always be on my site. With respect to the Readme, the only thing this should affect is the changelog, and I update the one on my site when I get a new one.

Installation
The archive includes four patches: two base patches, and two clean patches.

Base Patches
Identifiable by the version number in the file name, these contain the bulk of the hack. Applying one of these to a ROM makes Brave New World fully playable with an uncensored version of the script and with some uncensored enemy and esper sprites.

Clean Patches
These patches contain the new irreverent clean script, as well as a re-censoring of the sprites that were uncensored by the base patch. The clean patch should be applied after the base patch, otherwise you'll end up with a mostly vanilla game with a smattering of odd dialogue and custom enemy palettes.

Each type of patch comes in two flavors: headered and non-headered, identified by the [h] (headered) or [n] (non-headered) at the start of the file name. Use whichever flavor applies to your ROM. If you're unsure, try the non-headered patch first.

Known Issues
  • The World of Ruin map tends to glitch or "tear," especially around the Serpent Trench.
  • The animation for the Phoenix esper can occasionally cause severe graphical anomalies. As far as we know, this is just superficial and will clear up after battle.
  • Characters wearing a Knight Cape or Hero Ring will cover other characters the player may be trying to heal with a brush.
  • Treasure chests containing key items will close themselves if you go to the menu screen (or otherwise reload the map) and will be empty if you attempt to re-open them.
  • During certain battles, most notably the Cranes, the menu cursor will become difficult to see or disappear entirely - this is an emulator layering issue and has absolutely nothing to do with the mod (ditto for off-screen characters appearing layered over the HUD during in-battle cutscenes).
  • More so here than in the original game, renaming your characters (especially those with short names like Cyan, Gau, and Mog) can result in weird formatting in dialogue boxes; the ones that appear during battle cutscenes are notable offenders since they don't wrap normally and can potentially result in text overrunning the dialogue window
  • When casting the Remedy spell out of battle, it ignores the flag we created to use the caster's stamina in place of their magic power, which will in turn affect the spell's power potentially significantly depending on the character in question and their build

Discussion
Aside from this thread, there are two other "official" places of discussion for the mod.

NGPlus - A community of hackers and hack fans that were kind enough to give us our own forum for further discussion of BNW. This has more or less become the official BNW forum. It has replaced Insane Difficulty, which has gone the way of the dodo bird.
GameFAQs - Where most of the developmental discussion used to occur when BTB and I weren't on shift together. Now pretty much all discussion takes place at the Insane Difficulty forums linked above. This forum is basically dead at this point, but it still archives some old developmental discussion.


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Brave New World
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#2
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Grats! It's always nice to see a project completed. The motivation to work through some more tedious tasks can be hard to muster. Great job, I will be sure to give it a whorl.
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I really can't wait to play this! The only issue is that I don't really have too much time right now that I can use to play it, so I'll probably wait until school ends. I think the fact that some of the mechanics are different is going to take me out of my comfort zone and add an extra level of challenge to this hack, and the characters seem very diverse in combat as well, which is awesome.


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I'm going to play this soon. I dropped my version 0.8 LLG, Number 128 was way too difficult for a low-level party. I'm probably going to enjoy version 1.0 and play it as a normal game.
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Good to see there is some interest.

Apparently there are a few graphical anomalies (in-battle projectiles flying off the bottom of the screen, things like that), probably caused by the last couple of patches we put in. I'll look over and attempt to correct these in the next week or so, but it's not a high priority as the game is still playable, and I'm rather looking forward to taking a short break from it.

Edit: Okay, so I got to it today. Sweat Version 1.0.1 is up.


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Brave New World
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#6
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There have been a small handful of updates today, fixing a few minor issues.

A changelog has been added to the initial post as well.


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Greetings! I'm playing on 1.0.4 and I found some issues!

1: Locke's red dot below his ear that doesn't look like an earring is still there.

2: Edgar talked to the Figaro Castle merchants himself, then I put Sabin in the lead, but the bros are left with but one question: "Where's my royal discount?"

3: In Kohlinghen, the woman who asks if I'm a friend of Locke is able to walk onto a space off the map to the left. (It's a black space.) If I move there, I leave town.

4: Kohlinghen: The weapon/armor/item shop is called the General Store. In other places, the item shop is called the General Store. Was curious about the why of this naming decision.

5: Setzer's ship: "The Empire... evil?"/"The Empire's made me a rich man!" I miss these classic lines.

6: Albrook: I enter town and there are green translucent overlays on some of the scenery. It just looks weird.

7: Zozo: Did y'all program things so if Celes goes before a Slamdancer, the Slamdancer doesn't use a Runicable ability? It happened at least 3 times. Also, whenever Celes went after a Slamdancer, the Slamdancer cast Fire.

8: Tzen: In town, I walked directly left and went 'behind' the gray stone. The stone's color turned darker because I was there. Odd. (May've been in the original game.)
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#8
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2. The royal discount was removed as part of a complete overhaul to the game's economy.

3. Weird.

4. This wasn't intentional. I didn't actually change the names of any individual shops; all I did was rename "Item Shop" (I think) to "General Store".

6. Also weird.

7. Nope, the RNG just really hates you. In fact, I don't believe it's possible for enemies to respond to Runic.

8. I'm inclined to agree that this was probably also present in the original game.
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#9
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Quote:1: Locke's red dot below his ear that doesn't look like an earring is still there.

Did you patch over an older version? I don't see the issue you're talking about when I patch 1.0.4 to a fresh ROM.

Quote:2: Edgar talked to the Figaro Castle merchants himself, then I put Sabin in the lead, but the bros are left with but one question: "Where's my royal discount?"

No more royal discount. Both Figaro brothers should admonish the merchant for suggesting it.

Quote:3: In Kohlinghen, the woman who asks if I'm a friend of Locke is able to walk onto a space off the map to the left. (It's a black space.) If I move there, I leave town.

We didn't mess with any NPC movement patterns, so this was likely the case in the original game too. It seems minor enough.

Quote:4: Kohlinghen: The weapon/armor/item shop is called the General Store. In other places, the item shop is called the General Store. Was curious about the why of this naming decision.

Same as #3. We changed the text on some of the location names, but didn't change what locations used them. "General Store" was "ITEM SHOP" in the unmodified version.

Quote:5: Setzer's ship: "The Empire... evil?"/"The Empire's made me a rich man!" I miss these classic lines.

It didn't make sense from a narrative point of view that Setzer is on the Empire's side considering how quickly he turns on them. On top of that, the way it ended up originally was a product of shoddy translation; in the Japanese dialogue, he's upset at the Empire for ruining his business.

Quote:6: Albrook: I enter town and there are green translucent overlays on some of the scenery. It just looks weird.

This might be the same issue as #1, as I can't duplicate it either.

Quote:7: Zozo: Did y'all program things so if Celes goes before a Slamdancer, the Slamdancer doesn't use a Runicable ability? It happened at least 3 times. Also, whenever Celes went after a Slamdancer, the Slamdancer cast Fire.

Nah, that's just shoddy luck with the RNG. She doesn't really start favoring magic attacks until she's all alone either.

Quote:8: Tzen: In town, I walked directly left and went 'behind' the gray stone. The stone's color turned darker because I was there. Odd. (May've been in the original game.)

Sounds like an emulator layering issue, like when you see characters' heads detach from their bodies during battle events (like the first Ultros battle). We didn't do anything with Tzen's map, so you're probably right about that being a relic from the original game.


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#10
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(All points are for 1.0.4.)

1: Switchblade: If Locke tries to steal because this item's "Steal" effect triggers, do enemies still do their uber counters?

2: Do I get AP ("Magic Points") for enemies that are part of my formation, but escape? For example, a Commando and 2 Foxhounds was worth 2AP to me, but 1 hound escaped. Would I get the same AP had I killed all the enemies?

3: Magitek Research Facility (past Number 024): When the purple lights go on during the scene focusing on Celes, Cid, and Kefka, the top right parts of the capsules have a white square that looks like a bug. Reminds me of the minor graphical glitches from previous versions. Also, Sabin (my second party member) was lying face up in the top right corner of the "that's where we stand for this cutscene" platform with the background wall through his leg.

4: Maybe it's my loadout, but at level 21, Edgar the 'tank' has the lowest HP of my would-be front-liners. Celes, Sabin, and even Locke have more HP than Eddy (and Locke is 3 levels lower!) I haven't equipped Phantom and co yet, but maybe I'll make it up soon.

5: Reentering the Magitek Factory after Number 128 looks like it's kinda thumping to the beat.

6: In Zozo before Terra rejoins the party, she doesn't ask who Setzer is, why here's there, nor about the very important airship that's hanging out front. I assume the party recaps things for her, but it's never mentioned.

7: For the airship tutorial, Setzer says, "so help me." So help him... what? So help me... God?

8: Shop Menus: Being able to see party members who have left the party spoils their return. There's no wondering, "Will X return?" No! I just go to town and see that everyone who's joined me will eventually return. Can you change that?

9: Slot: One time, I used Slot and the slot machine became 777 and inverted its colors. I pushed A repeatedly and I got "Go Fish." Odd. It was in Narshe's mines, on the way to find Mog. Gau raged Sand Ray (Sand Storm) and Cyan had Dispatch going.

10: Dual wield glitch? I gave Mog a Full Moon in his right hand (top slot) then put a Stout Spear in his left hand (second slot from top).

11: The item descriptions say Mog can wear Sprint Shoes and a Black Belt, but his Relic screen won't let him. Doh? (I unequipped everyone via the airship guy then reequipped and now it's fine. Odd.)

12: Mog: If I use a dance that alters the terrain, then win the battle, I can't learn the dance from the original terrain.

13: Mog: Why can't I learn Earth Blues from the inside of a mountain, but I can from the outside?

14: Gau: When Gau returns from a Leap on the Veldt, why does he automatically go to the front row? This happens in FFVI vanilla too. Can we fix it?

15: An Antlion, a low-level creature found around Figaro Castle, can cast Doom. Doom! Why?

16: Does Berserk (Bserk) cause someone to activate a random rage? Mog went berserk then started raging Exocite. Dunno how that happened!
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