[RHDNBot]

Update By: MKnightDH

Secret of Evermore was originally released on October 1, 1995. 25 years have passed and it stands the test of time with an underdog story, plenty of thoughtfulness by the developers covering unlikely scenarios, and especially inspirational game design leading to a product that invites being glass half-full. Of course, there are definite misfires within the balancing, which have added criticisms against the game.

The 25th Anniversary Balance Patch aims to breathe new life into Secret of Evermore and rectify key issues as well as highlight intended design philosophies to make the game more interesting. Although it's still not perfected due to deadline issues, with the bulk of the testing even being for making sure no new problems from something like the game freezing get introduced, rest assured that it is presentable as intended. Enjoy.

Non-malicious feedback welcome.

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link

[Special]

One of my favorite games(and better then MANA), been itching to play this recently so seems like perfect timing.

BTW: As of this writing the download link doesn't work, instead of a .zip file it's an HTML file, fix soon, this itch hurts!

[GhaleonUnlimited]

Haha, "non-malicious feedback welcome", nice.

I've still never played SoE. Would you recommend playing the original, this, or another patch for a first-time player? Someday I might get to it -- thanks! Congrats on your project.

[MKnightDH]

One of my favorite games(and better then MANA), been itching to play this recently so seems like perfect timing.

BTW: As of this writing the download link doesn't work, instead of a .zip file it's an HTML file, fix soon, this itch hurts!

Good to know with the first one. And as for the messy links, I think the DL and Readme got mixed up. I'm not sure where it happened, but if it's possible to bring it up to whoever is running the Queue, that would be appreciated. In the meantime, this should at least work:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/anaynzba5n40ly1/Evermore25AnniversaryBal.zip?dl=0
(And I know this is supposed to officially release tomorrow, but even so.)

Haha, "non-malicious feedback welcome", nice.

I've still never played SoE. Would you recommend playing the original, this, or another patch for a first-time player? Someday I might get to it -- thanks! Congrats on your project.

It depends. The original does still have the usual experience, although the difficulty curve is rather questionably handled. Ninakoru's balance patch focuses on adding challenge and new enemies in comparison to my own patch. My balance patch focuses on providing more kinetic and involved gameplay within improved variety. I say go with which one you feel most comfortable with.

Oh, and the user Special reported about the links being messy. I provided the link above, which should work properly and would include the ReadMe file.

[andrewclunn]

Umm the downloads appear to be corrupted in their present state.

[MKnightDH]

Umm the downloads appear to be corrupted in their present state.

Okay. I have figured out how to circumvent the problem: using cloudinary.com to link to the raw files without any extension name issues like what Dropbox provides with the "?dl=" ending. The Dropbox link I have provided above is, of course, reported by the SoE Discord members to work properly for the purposes of downloading the patch, so the confusion is ultimately a mix of factors.

There shouldn't be any more issues with this once the whole thing gets through.

[xnamkcor]

They had 25 years and they had deadline issues?

[ShaolinTechnique]

The zip file is unable to be opened with 7zip.

[Isao Kronos]

think mkdh meant they personally had a deadline, not the gamedev of the original game

[UncleDolan]

that game belong to my all time favorite games because the storyline is much better then those lovestory rpgs like ff. I also like the humor of that game. there are still some special items that i never found in the last 25 years. In some parts, this game could need some rebalancing but i hope it is getting harder not easier because for me as a child it was as hard as dark souls today *lol* i wish i had the time to play it again and again and again ...

[MysticLord]

Attempting to download the readme brings up this text:
https://pastebin.com/H129giWC

edit

Generic feedback from someone who played SoE but hasn't touched this hack yet:

• Fix all the bugs you can.
• Make alchemy ingredients more easily available, especially rare late-game ones that aren't OP.
• Do something to fix alchemy leveling up, so you don't waste as much time on spells you'll never use. Either make earlier spells scale better and give all spells specific uses, or group the leveling up of various spells together somehow.
• The Dog probably should to gain attack levels much more slowly as he has fewer levels.

[forpost29]

re-upload the archive, otherwise it's broken

[Gi Nattak]

re-upload the archive, otherwise it's broken

Thanks for the info that nobody else mentioned thus far in this thread and that the author isn't aware of.

[Googie]

I'm gonna have to try this baby out.

[SirDavey420]

First time playing thru just beat the 1st boss and loving it!   You dont hear about this game enough '.'

[manny082]

I wasnt able to get it to work with retroarch. The intro wont load but the square enix logo and other stuff did.

[assassin]

-(1.0) ATK and DEF values exceeding 32767 (basically negative numbers when Signed) set to 0 during damage calculations - fixing the saved stats buff bug wouldn't be easy, but this halts its abuses. No longer can negative ATK result in sub-100% attacks dealing 999 every hit, or negative Physical DEF provide effective invincibility against all physical attacks, both because of LSR instructions to make the numbers not care about being signed or not. Now any attempts to exploit underflow will be met with the stats being useless.

..?  have you tried the "Unsaved stat boosts fix" and "Death-defying stat boosts fix"?

i'm not quite sure which bug(s) you're referring to based off of one sentence, but it sounds like it could be up those patches' alleys.

[MKnightDH]

..?  have you tried the "Unsaved stat boosts fix" and "Death-defying stat boosts fix"?

i'm not quite sure which bug(s) you're referring to based off of one sentence, but it sounds like it could be up those patches' alleys.

I was on a deadline, so I was more concerned with getting other things done. I already did close off the abuses anyway, so they wouldn't be a problem, and I wouldn't want to carelessly mess with save-related things until I was at a reasonable stage for possible backtracking given my reliance on Hex Workshop and Ghidra.

I've been more focused on both trying to advertise the patch around, unfortunately to limited effect with how practically languid the game's community is; and focusing on my new video series, which is a No Damage/Effective Minimalist Run of Zelda: A Link to the Past. (Oh, and by the way, since you're here, I did mention you in my latest video because of your Monster Stats FAQ making clear that most Dark World bosses can't be damaged by the L1 Sword's regular attack, something I found when looking for anything that could have forced getting the Master(/Tempered) Sword even with the Death Mountain Descent.) I would want to revisit the patch more actively at some point down the road, though, but I'd have to figure out how the Checksum is handled before doing anything further because I suspect it is used in the middle of gameplay in some fashion that set off a bug that I had ran across.

I'd be up for talking if reasonable in the interest of coordination. My interest was in getting something presentable released. That doesn't mean it's complete. I couldn't even remember everything that was missing. I wouldn't mind aid in addressing key issues as long as it doesn't get too pushy.

[XETH]

Some experiences with the patch:

- Replacing PixieDust with Wings allows abusage of wings-unvulnerability glitch in first act. This glitch has not been fixed yet. Players can beat any enemy without getting hit at all. Imo not a good thing.
- Increasing ingredient amount for spells is great - very liked it.
- Decreasing earned money for killed enemies makes grinding more necessary. imo a good thing.
- Increasing magic def for bone buzzards makes pyramid and chessboard a pain in the ass. Although it increased difficulty, I didn't like it because of its pure nastiness.
- Incompatible with 2-player patch
- More balanced money/exp rewards

My other notes are temporarily lost (I might add them after they've been found)

It's _impossible_ to make a patch which fits everyone's needs. Some players want the game to be easier, some the opposite. There's no way to find a compromise for everyone. After playing the game lots of times since 1995 I like the game to be hard as hell, so for me this patch is still too easy, but it had many surprisingly good moments.

[MKnightDH]

I may as well make my response. At this point, too few people will care anyway, and when EVERYBODY is refusing to be sedulous because of that, I may as well make the "25th Anniversary" part basically an Artifact Title. Granted, I will have to get Link to the Past done before doing anything too active, but I can at least share my thoughts.

-Wings glitch's existence is known about, but I'll have to figure out how to patch the glitch. I didn't want people running around Prehistoria using Pixie Dust too easily anyway, although I HAVE changed Pixie Dust's effect, but even then, PD shouldn't cost too little.
-Good to know that the ingredient requirement increases do provide added challenge. Though I'm wanting to encourage exploration over grinding, so that makes me wish I could have a good way to increase the ingredient find counts reliably without breaking things.
-Bone Buzzards/Skullclaws are meant to have -64 Magic DEF, not 192; I didn't look at the calculations more closely, instead being too busy being OCD about the -63 Magic DEF. Of course, I'm thinking of revamping enemies' usage of Magic DEF anyway.
-I'll definitely want to look into 2P patch compatibility. I would certainly want to make sure only the human player's controlled character gets the ATK reduction to their range attacks, but the 2P patch will certainly complicate that.

I do also have other ideas that I will want to implement, at the very least a more detailed changelog as its own file to allow people to better see what exactly I'm thinking with the number crunching. I won't provide more details right now, but I can say I do at least have ideas in mind. (Also, some points about the game's checksum usage would be nice to hear about before I make any real progress.)