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Personal Projects / Secret of Evermore 25th Anniversary Balance patch official topc
« on: February 09, 2021, 12:19:27 pm »
Of course, "25th Anniversary" is now an Artifact Title at this point, but I may as well get this started.
Some time back, I made a balance patch for Secret of Evermore to celebrate its 25th Anniversary, found here. Of course, when all is said and done, it could have been more as I indicated but deadlines weren't nice, but considering how little certain people cared anyway to even do bloody research, I may as well be doing this on my own time and hope I can showcase what I can really do with this. For starters, I did make a more detailed changelog that will of course be updated between version. Also, I did make the Wings Glitch patch so now Prehistoria Wings is not as much of a balance problem once applied properly. (Keep in mind that it still requires a non-headered US ROM, of course.) Nevertheless, there would be more I can be doing with this.
Addendum: I should post the relevant coding to look for with the Wings Glitch; Spoiler Tagging for length.
I will need to clarify these points:
*First and foremost, I would need to know how the game handles Checksum before doing anything too active. I would be surprised if SoE has anti-piracy on the level of EarthBound, but I imagine it still has anti-piracy to some extent. It's also possible that SNES9X-RR, which is the emulator I have been using in general, also causes bad Checksum games to become messy to subtle effect.
*The perfect Magic DEF on certain enemies such as Bone Buzzards and Skullclaws is actually a bug; they are supposed to have -64 Magic DEF but I hadn't realized that the calculations omits the high byte and the low byte is practically unsigned with $C0 and below. The next version will fix this, particularly with the interest of revamping the handling of Magic DEF usage by enemies.
*Looking through enemy stats after getting some feedback, it turns out that overall, I had overnerfed enemy Physical DEF wanting to have enemies involve aesthetic, so methods of ignoring it (magic attacks, as well as the Axe attacks) were needlessly mitigated. They will be toned up, and I will provide a little extra something in the interest of both early game balance and aesthetic.
*I have been provided feedback that Spear usage is still dominant through the 20% ATK cut on projectile attacks from the player. I will want to have the L3 attack have a lower multiplier to keep the high velocity under control without touching the Bazooka, but also, I have noted that the AI doesn't even know to keep distance from their target when using charged Spear attacks; my idea would be to have the 20% ATK cut on projectile attacks only apply with attacks from the human-controlled character, which is where I would need to look into involvement of the 2P Patch to make sure this is consistent.
*There's also suggestion that I overnerfed magic a bit, when the nerfing was in interest of making sure that it would be more for utility that would encourage foraging, than an outright potential spam machine. I have no plans to reduce costs or increase any Might values, but I do have ideas for reducing the grinding needed for having new spells be in the competence zone. I won't go into detail yet, but let's just say you may be surprised by what I'm thinking.
*If it's feasible, I would want to have the Charms trader in Ivor Tower Alley also provide the Armor Polish where needed so that I can have the player actually want to consider getting the Silver Sheath and justify buffing the Armor Polish's influence in the interest of promoting progression. Of course, since the Sun Stone is one of the options, I can always replace that option to give its ATK boost a bit of sense of reward by contrast, as long as the player doesn't get shafted from 100% completion for what is supposed to be a preference choice.
Naturally, this topic's creation is in interest of obtaining aid, though primarily I am thinking of testers and people who would provide transition for different versions. Hopefully, things can at least go better now that there's no more real concern of a deadline.
Some time back, I made a balance patch for Secret of Evermore to celebrate its 25th Anniversary, found here. Of course, when all is said and done, it could have been more as I indicated but deadlines weren't nice, but considering how little certain people cared anyway to even do bloody research, I may as well be doing this on my own time and hope I can showcase what I can really do with this. For starters, I did make a more detailed changelog that will of course be updated between version. Also, I did make the Wings Glitch patch so now Prehistoria Wings is not as much of a balance problem once applied properly. (Keep in mind that it still requires a non-headered US ROM, of course.) Nevertheless, there would be more I can be doing with this.
Addendum: I should post the relevant coding to look for with the Wings Glitch; Spoiler Tagging for length.
Spoiler:
Spell Instruction $46:
11cb6a ae b4 0e LDX !$0xeb4
11cb6d 30 0a BMI $LAB_11cb79
11cb6f b9 14 00 LDA !$0x14 ,Y
11cb72 1a INC
11cb73 1a INC
11cb74 99 14 00 STA !$0x14 ,Y Next instruction
11cb77 38 SEC
11cb78 60 RTS
11cb79 a9 8a cb LDA #$0xcb8a "It didn't work!"
11cb7c 85 22 STA <$0x22
11cb7e a9 91 00 LDA #$0x91
11cb81 85 24 STA <$0x24
11cb83 22 21 c5 8c JSL !>$DAT_8cc521 Signal to play next quick message
11cb87 4c 5c 9b JMP !$0x9b5c Ending instruction
Instructions at 11CB6F to 11CB78 replaced with just 4C829E (simple JMP to $119E82, which results in effectively the the same coding) with the jump length of the BMI just before reduced to 3 from 10 and the coding after shifted accordingly, and then using 3 of the added bytes of room to add in 20669E (a JSR to $119E66, Spell Instruction $48 (2 byte Pointer is at $118048 on non-headered US so THAT should be consistent between languages at least), which inverts the spell target invulnerability flag, the culprit of the glitch) inbetween the JSL to $0C5521 and JMP to $119B5C. These addresses may be different between ROM versions, so please keep that in mind.
11cb6a ae b4 0e LDX !$0xeb4
11cb6d 30 0a BMI $LAB_11cb79
11cb6f b9 14 00 LDA !$0x14 ,Y
11cb72 1a INC
11cb73 1a INC
11cb74 99 14 00 STA !$0x14 ,Y Next instruction
11cb77 38 SEC
11cb78 60 RTS
11cb79 a9 8a cb LDA #$0xcb8a "It didn't work!"
11cb7c 85 22 STA <$0x22
11cb7e a9 91 00 LDA #$0x91
11cb81 85 24 STA <$0x24
11cb83 22 21 c5 8c JSL !>$DAT_8cc521 Signal to play next quick message
11cb87 4c 5c 9b JMP !$0x9b5c Ending instruction
Instructions at 11CB6F to 11CB78 replaced with just 4C829E (simple JMP to $119E82, which results in effectively the the same coding) with the jump length of the BMI just before reduced to 3 from 10 and the coding after shifted accordingly, and then using 3 of the added bytes of room to add in 20669E (a JSR to $119E66, Spell Instruction $48 (2 byte Pointer is at $118048 on non-headered US so THAT should be consistent between languages at least), which inverts the spell target invulnerability flag, the culprit of the glitch) inbetween the JSL to $0C5521 and JMP to $119B5C. These addresses may be different between ROM versions, so please keep that in mind.
I will need to clarify these points:
*First and foremost, I would need to know how the game handles Checksum before doing anything too active. I would be surprised if SoE has anti-piracy on the level of EarthBound, but I imagine it still has anti-piracy to some extent. It's also possible that SNES9X-RR, which is the emulator I have been using in general, also causes bad Checksum games to become messy to subtle effect.
*The perfect Magic DEF on certain enemies such as Bone Buzzards and Skullclaws is actually a bug; they are supposed to have -64 Magic DEF but I hadn't realized that the calculations omits the high byte and the low byte is practically unsigned with $C0 and below. The next version will fix this, particularly with the interest of revamping the handling of Magic DEF usage by enemies.
*Looking through enemy stats after getting some feedback, it turns out that overall, I had overnerfed enemy Physical DEF wanting to have enemies involve aesthetic, so methods of ignoring it (magic attacks, as well as the Axe attacks) were needlessly mitigated. They will be toned up, and I will provide a little extra something in the interest of both early game balance and aesthetic.
*I have been provided feedback that Spear usage is still dominant through the 20% ATK cut on projectile attacks from the player. I will want to have the L3 attack have a lower multiplier to keep the high velocity under control without touching the Bazooka, but also, I have noted that the AI doesn't even know to keep distance from their target when using charged Spear attacks; my idea would be to have the 20% ATK cut on projectile attacks only apply with attacks from the human-controlled character, which is where I would need to look into involvement of the 2P Patch to make sure this is consistent.
*There's also suggestion that I overnerfed magic a bit, when the nerfing was in interest of making sure that it would be more for utility that would encourage foraging, than an outright potential spam machine. I have no plans to reduce costs or increase any Might values, but I do have ideas for reducing the grinding needed for having new spells be in the competence zone. I won't go into detail yet, but let's just say you may be surprised by what I'm thinking.
*If it's feasible, I would want to have the Charms trader in Ivor Tower Alley also provide the Armor Polish where needed so that I can have the player actually want to consider getting the Silver Sheath and justify buffing the Armor Polish's influence in the interest of promoting progression. Of course, since the Sun Stone is one of the options, I can always replace that option to give its ATK boost a bit of sense of reward by contrast, as long as the player doesn't get shafted from 100% completion for what is supposed to be a preference choice.
Naturally, this topic's creation is in interest of obtaining aid, though primarily I am thinking of testers and people who would provide transition for different versions. Hopefully, things can at least go better now that there's no more real concern of a deadline.