Phantasy Star II Improvement v4.4 | ReConstruct: Phantasy Star IV v1.2

[lory1990]

OK, last-for-now post about a few other stuff which I think are relevant. Again if you vivify93 or someone else has some questions, feel free to ask and I'll see if I can answer.

- dexterity bug

  Dexterity affects the chances of hitting an enemy. The dexterity value is first multiplied by 256 and then divided by the enemy's agility. According to certain values and
  checks, there will be 1 of 3 possible values saved in a variable. Then this value is compared to a random number and if that value is higher or equal than the random
  number, you hit the enemy. The problem is the dexterity number after being multiplied by 256 is truncated and only the lower two bytes are taken into account. This
  means that the value rolls back to 0 every 256 bytes. So after 255, it goes back to 0, and so does it after 511 and so on. Very simple fix: just include the whole
  number in the calculation.

- Palette swapped Central Tower portraits

  There are two unused palettes for the Central Tower portrait. Here are three screenshots, first one being the used portrait for a comparison:

                   




vivify93, if you want to include the dexterity fix, you'll have to re-submit the hack. I'm sorry about that.

[FlamePurge]

Oh, the Central Tower palettes are interesting. I wonder if a day/night cycling system like in old-school Dragon Quest was meant to be implemented.

I'll put in the Dexterity fix, sure. I really have no reason not to--as long as it's easy to do.

We should submit some of this unused stuff, like Anna's gun sprite and the Central Tower palettes, to The Cutting Room Floor.

[lory1990]

The idea of a day/night cycling system sounds interesting. To keep it simple though, if we wanted to include all the palettes, we could do this:

Spoiler

Use the first set of palettes from the start of the game until the dam quest, then the second one during the dam quest, and finally the third one after the dam quest

[close]

For the dexterity fix, go to address $2769 and change the value 48 to 88. That's it. For those who are interested, the instruction was

Code Select Expand

lsl.w    #8, d0

and now it's

Code Select Expand

lsl.l    #8, d0

[FlamePurge]

Nah, I don't want to include the palettes. I was just pondering on what it possibly would've been used for. Thanks for the fix!

[lory1990]

- I uploaded some screenshots about unused enemy data. There are six of them but I got only 4 because the other two were the same as the 4th one.



As you can see they share the same art as the ants, except for the 2nd one, and when they attack the game crashes as there's no functionality for them


- There's a technique after Megid in the list: it's called RRRRR and has TP consumption of 28. No idea what this was supposed to be used for and there's no trace of functionality for it. There are also 10 empty spaces in the list so you can include new ones, although functionality must be integrated as well


- There's some data about two unused items: one is called T, and costs 62000 meseta; the other one is called H, and costs 46000 meseta. No logic applied to them, just some data sitting there.


- vivify93, I noticed a line that doesn't sound totally right to me in this context. It's said by a woman in Oputa:

Spoiler

"Even if those monsters are gone, Mota has already been devastated. There's nothing we can do."

Since this line is used before the dam quest, the monsters are still around. So shouldn't it be "Even if those monsters were gone..."?

[close]

What do you think?

Edit - I made a little mistake: the 2nd picture of the unused enemy does reference the graphics for the ants, it's really messed up though

[tryphon]

A fix that could be useful : make shir reappear in the last visited town rather than at home (when you're on Dezolis, it can be bothering).

[FlamePurge]

I'll fix the Opta woman's line. And I would be very interested in that Shir enhancement. How would it work? You'd just reenter the town and Rolf would say, "Hey, Shir's coming back!" ?

[lory1990]

Are you actually interested or just wondering how it'd work? If you are interested, can I propose a simpler solution like prevent Shir from stealing in Dezolis?
I'll see if I can find a solution suitable for you in that case...

[FlamePurge]

I'm wondering about both, actually! I know it's been a major source of frustration for PSII players across the ages. I once made a topic on GameFAQs asking for veterans' help on assembling my equipment list and they all asked if I could somehow prevent Shir from stealing on Dezoris.

[lory1990]

For the first one (Shir joining when re-entering town), it's not easy due to having to add some more code. For the latter I'll check the part that deals with stealing and see what kind of fix I can work out for you. There's a flag which determines whether you are on Dezolis or not, so the logic is easy per se. I'll see how to handle it in your case without breaking the game.

[FlamePurge]

Alright. Thanks! I understand if you can't fix it, but I appreciate you looking into it.

[tryphon]

An easier hack would be to prevent Shir from leaving when she steals, but it would remove some spirit from the game (likely NOPing from 0xD0B6 to 0xD0E6)...

Also, I think I've written somewhere on this board how to edit the items she steals (don't recall where though).

[lory1990]

Among the conditions for Shir stealing there's one which is less relevant and important than others: when you steal the at the Central Tower Room. When it checks which building you get out of, it sees if you got out of the Central Tower Room. If you did, then it checks if Shir's level is lower than 10. If it is, it skips the routine. You have two options:

- Remove the check of which building you get out of. This means that in order to steal any item, Shir's level must be at least 10 no matter what.

- Remove Shir's level condition, so you can also steal in the room from level 1. The condition for which building you exit becomes useless so that can also be removed


Another thing I remembered which I think is a bug:

Spoiler

The ability of Kain in using his techs on Noah. It doesn't make any sense since the enemies there are not robots. It also makes Dark Force and Mother Brain battles easier.

[close]

[FlamePurge]

I don't mind leaving in Kain being able to use his techs in the final dungeon.

Is there a way to change the LV the level check looks for? Like, we could change it so that it checks to see if Shir's level is less than 2. And then we could remove the building check and implement the "No stealing on Dezoris" exception.

[lory1990]

Here's the patch:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nndzju2og79whp8/shir_steal_change.ips

I tested it removing another instruction dealing with a random factor for stealing, so that Shir always succeeds. She never stole on Dezolis , and always did on Motavia. You test it as well just in case. If there are problems, let me know.

[FlamePurge]

So she always steals 100% of the time whenever you go into any shop on Motavia? Not sure if that's a good compromise, but I think it may be a patch worth uploading to RHDN's database.

[lory1990]

No. The 100% thing was just a test of mine to see if it actually worked. The patch contains the change of Shir not stealing on Dezolis and when her lv is less than 2. Sorry, I should have been more clear.

[FlamePurge]

Oh, OK! Then this should not only speed the game's flow up a little bit, but it should also make shopping with Shir a lot less of a pain! Thanks, lory1990. I'll test it soon.

[lory1990]

Are you going to release the new version soon?

Anyway, I'm working on a little and simple hack (almost done) which contains mainly bug fixes, like music freeze, cut-off texts, and other things which could get kind of annoying in the whole gaming experience. I also polished it a little with some window expansions, using full names for the planets, etc... Still there's nothing that could be defined as improvement that I want to implement. I would like some advice about the sound produced by a technique: Fanbi. It uses the same sound as Res, but I don't like it very much. What sound could I apply to it? I also changed the sound made by Shift which was originally the same as Res as well, and I changed it to that used by buffs like Deban, Shu, etc...

Also just to let you know, I submitted a hack which ports the sound driver from the US and European versions to the Japanese version, so now those loud snare drums are gone and the quality is better. It must still be approved, though.

[FlamePurge]

I'll probably release it within the week. As for Fanbi's sound, you could use the noise that happens when you go from Motavia to Dezoris. It sounds like a "sucking" noise to me.

Speaking of Fanbi, it's a little useless in its current state, isn't it? It only does 7 damage and gives Anna back 7 HP, right? Would there be a way to make it do 30 damage and drain 30 HP? It'd be a little better than Res that way.