[theonyxphoenix]

RE: The girl and MP...I think the best bet so far is just to have her MP growth be much higher.  By the time you should reach the mana fortress at level 40 or 50 her MP pool should be about maxed.  It would be nice to incorporate a Leaf Sabre that absorbs limited MP, but I don't know that adding spells is within the realm of capabilities. 

I really need to try to go through the game under normal difficulty or just gameshark past dragon worm and see if the game can be completed as-is (- Dragon Worm). I think my opinion of magic spells is a bit skewed by the difficulty.


EDIT: So the Dragon Worm...ended up having to use the game shark.  The biggest problem, I found, with this boss was his movements and his ability to just run you over dealing critical damage to all three characters simultaneously. 

As for the rest of the Pure Land.  I was able to defeat all of the bosses so far and I am up to the last dragon.  Using a combination of level 7 weakness-targeting magics combined with Moon Energy/Elemental infused weapons.  I had to resort to some Midge-Mallet Shenanigans to avoid some of the special attacks like Blitz Breath, etc.  I don't know if these could be evaded or not, but I found these to be the most deadly as they cannot be avoided, however they can be blocked, with the right timing.

I found that as soon as one of my allies was targeted I would press SELECT to switch characters and then target them with the Midge Mallet (Remedy works too, but Purim is too busy casting).  The battles would begin with me prepping with Moon Energy and the appropriate weakness element.

Putting the AI on attack/but not approach and have them select a charge 2 less than their maximum.  When they can charge to 4-5 and unleash a boosted physical once Popoi's magic animation stops helps me dish out damage.  Surviving later bosses is more of a blitz on damage because you cannot survive if the battle goes on too long.

If Speed Up would provide more evade/agility and the special attacks were adjusted accordingly then this would make a SpeedUp/Wall/Lucid Barrier a good trio of defense.

Having to strategically manage Cup of Wishes and Revivifier is good.  It actually makes the spell useful. You go through the CoW and you cannot waste them on anyone else other than Purim at this point and she can multi-target Revivifier (low HP multi-target or full HP single target).

- using saber-empowered weapons on normal enemies is beneficial with a bigger MP pool. 
- MP/HP absorb...why do some enemies not produce absorbed MP/HP

I am almost level 60 and I think that I could be more liberal with Sprite magic, especially since I have MP absorb.

With bosses I am never in need of MP with Popoi because they are dead before I get close to the end of my MP pool.  As I mentioned before, I think having one spell in each element be cheap and weak crowd control and the others like Evil Gate and Exploder cost much more, but do more damage with the intention of them being saved for bosses.  It would give you a reason to use the multitude of attack spells.


EDIT 2:  FINISHED HARD MODE!  Yay.  Finishing up the Last Pure land dragon wasn't hard when using the same strategies.  The Mana Fortress vampire boss wasn't bad.  The MF is made much better when your allies cannot get stuck.  Even with Lucid Barrier and Stone Saber I still found myself getting KO'd a few times.  You have to leave and restock after each boss, though which is a bit annoying.  It would be nice if the Magic Rope worked here.

For the Dread Slime...Wall and Popoi's Shade spells went the distance. I used the Bow because of it's distance and hit rate and enchanted it with Moon Energy and Lumina but with all of it's spells bouncing off of the Wall it didn't do much else.  Was kind of a pushover actually.

The final two bosses battles were much more prolonged than Vanilla.  I used Dryad with Popoi and Lumina with Purim.  Whenever the spell effects ended, I would let loose with my Moon Energy charged attack which usually amounted to 3-4 levels of damage. 

The most difficult part came from doing two bosses back to back.  If you don't know about cast-cancelling the final boss WILL kill you.  Popoi is all but useless.  It would be nice if it was weak to Dryad magic and you could use Dispel to eliminate the Wall.  Right now, Popoi doesn't do much.  The nice thing is that with the exception of Lucent Beam most of the attacks are physical and can be stopped with a well timed block.  Unfortunately the AI doesn't do this. Most of the attacks are near-lethal so you need to block them because you need your magic for cast-cancelling/healing.  Midge Mallet went the distance again and allowed me to avoid many of the attacks.  Mana Magic ST on Randi with Moon-Energy lets me dish out damage quickly in the short phase that I can.  Otherwise you need to do a 6+ weapon charge to do much damage.

I ended up with no healing items, no walnuts, no barrels, and no MP by the end of the battle and was relying on the MM to survive.  It was close but satisfying. 

[Pizzano]

I'm very excited to see a Secret of Mana mod. I'm playing through Secret of Mana for the first time with a couple friends currently and really enjoying it.

Your mod seems really cool. Thank you for working so hard to make it. 

I started my current playthrough on an unmodded version of the rom, but I managed to load up my save state from my current playthrough of the game on a version of the rom that has been patched with your mod.

My one question is if I created the save state on an unmodded game and loaded the save state on a modded version of the game, what is the difficulty setting on my current game?
February 10, 2016, 01:44:40 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)So my friends and I tried out your mod for about a half hour . First off, I want to say that from a technical aspect, what you did was really impressive and kudos to you for putting the time and effort into the mod! Now here are our first impressions to the mod changes:

- AI controlled characters don't get stuck
A nice quality of life change. Really helps at certain points in the game.

- MP is shown at all time
Another great change. The visuals could obviously be tweaked a little bit, but definitely useful to have.

- Binding magic spells to A,B,X,Y (now for all 3 players)
Most controversial change you made. We really liked the idea of a quick cast, but the other players had problems with the way it was implemented. I was playing the fighter, so I can't really comment on what casting felt like, but I liked being able to continue to attack during the spell casting portion. My friends felt very vulnerable during fights because they could be attacked while casting a spell, but couldn't move at all to avoid the attacks.  They hated losing the cast on all option, seeing it as a HUGE nerf. The healer in particular, hated having to heal each of us individually. They had trouble figuring out how to cast spells without having to bind them. They also had trouble figuring out how to quit out of the casting menu. Maybe quick casting should only work while continuing to hold R instead of requiring them to press R again to quit out, or maybe my friends just needed to spend more time learning the new casting system. Perhaps there should be a brief invulnerability period when you start casting a spell, so you aren't so vulnerable. Overall though, it was the changes to magic spell casting that caused the other players to demand that we revert back to the standard game.

- Magic recharging time
My friends didn't mention noticing this change.

- Strong/Weak attacks (now for all 3 players)
I liked having a different type of attack, but it wasn't really clear to me in what situations a Strong or Weak attack would be better. I thought it was cool, but its purpose needs more clarity.

-  Manual blocking (now for all 3 players)
Cool in theory, but not so much in practice. This might have to do with my playstyle because I have played through entire video games that have a block button, in which I have never bothered to use the block button. I generally don't like having to worry about blocking and I liked that Secret of Mana handled that for me. 2 out of 3 players completely forgot that blocking was manual and didn't bother blocking the entire time. I would rather just concentrate on trying to land my attacks. As I said I'm not really crazy about this change, but maybe it would be better if you added something more satisfying to the block like the ability from the Soul Calibur games to create an opening against the attacker with a well timed block (plus a direction) or the ability from Smash Bros. games to deflect projectile back at the shooter with a really well timed block. As it stands now though, it just one extra thing for me to forget.

- Enhanced bow
The most universally beloved change. We REALLY enjoyed this one!

- Reduced hit-recovery time
I didn't really notice this change, but it seems fair.

- Reduced damage/healing time
Again, I didn't really notice this change, but it seems fair.

- 3 Difficulty settings
We had continued from a save state from the original game, where we didn't pick a difficulty setting, so I have no idea what difficulty we were even on.

- Misc.
We were playing on the Snex9xGx 4.3.2 emulator on a soft-modded Wii (this is a great way to get three controllers setup for this game). We used a rom that was patched using Lunar IPS. Anyways, every so often the screen would flash bright green for a second. I think it happened more often when talking to people, but I'm not sure. The glitch was kind of sporadic. It wasn't game breaking, just kind of annoying. This doesn't happen on an unmodified version of the game.

- Changes that I would be interested in seeing in the future:

- When I go to the weapon level screen, I kind of wish it was more obvious which weapons need to be leveled without having to review how many orbs I have for each weapon. When there is a weapon that needs to be leveled, maybe there can be an icon next to it or maybe it could be a different color or just have 00 xp next to it as soon as I give the dwarf an orb for that weapon.

- I think it would be nice if the characters could walk further from each other and walk closer to the edges of the screen.

- But most importantly, the ability to cast spells on all needs to be returned and spell binding needs more refinement.

[PerryR]

Interesting read. I wanted to start a game with my friends tomorrow. Lets see if i come to the same conclusion.

[DragonArk]

Good work guys, I have yet to try the new mod yet, but the new magic system sounds a bit annoying as it stands. At the same time, I do like the idea of having shortcut to spells. Not sure how this can be solved, any ideas?

[zhade]

Pizzano:

First, are you sure you have the latest version ? (V.10) ? Some of the things you talked really about should not happen on the latest version and since you quoted from this thread's first post I went back to it and noticed I stopped updating it after version 0.7.. well actually I did continue to update it, but I still left the patch download link unchanged..
which means that anyone that is new to this mod who just try it right away have an old version that confusingly doesnt work like the description says...  Ain't that brilliant ? ...   

If you got the patch there, im sorry to have wasted your time... updating to V.10 should fix most of your friends concerns with the magic system and alot of what you talked about in general. 

Since I think it's probably what happened i'll comment as if you had 0.7
If you did use V.10, when you played with your friends


The main goal of the magic binding/targeting/cooldown, which at first was the only thing I wanted this mod to do, is to remove the annoying cut to the menu that casters need to do each time they cast a spell, making it alot more fun to play with more players because you don't get the game flow cut by the other or the feeling you are annoying the others each time you cast a spell. It also makes magic alot less abusable in general.

If the reason your friends prefered to play the original is the magic system only.. my job was not well done lol, hopefuly updating will fix most of the issues but then you would have to convince your friends to try again so ill tell you when an issue you spoke of is not one anymore .



-My one question is if I created the save state on an unmodded game and loaded the save state on a modded version of the game, what is the difficulty setting on my current game?
I don't remember exactly, but I think it should be  easy or "none", you should notice the enemies attack power if its on hard, easy doesn't do anything of the stats modifications so it should be the same as none but its risky, I changed how it works in my current build and it should put your game at easy by default, which would make your game have the same difficulty in general.

- Binding magic spells to A,B,X,Y (now for all 3 players)

-My friends felt very vulnerable during fights because they could be attacked while casting a spell, but couldn't move at all to avoid the attacks.
They hated losing the cast on all option, seeing it as a HUGE nerf.
The healer in particular, hated having to heal each of us individually.

I don't think I changed anything to vulnerability while casting, its probably before casting, when targeting. it takes some getting used to, but the new version makes it easier to make it fast so you are not vulnerable for long.

pressing R enters target mode
then a UP on the D-pad targets all ennemies,
down targets all allies,
left targets a single enemy
right targets a single ally

-They had trouble figuring out how to cast spells without having to bind them.
Its done by using the spell menu normally only when a spell is chosen it puts the player in target-mode with any A/X/B/Y resulting in casting the spell selected in the menu.

to bind a spell, when the spell has the menu cursor on it, hold R and A, B, Y or X to bind the spell to the button. A sound is heard on my current version but im not sure if it was in V.10.. it always works anyway but that lilttle sound

-They also had trouble figuring out how to quit out of the casting menu. Maybe quick casting should only work while continuing to hold R instead of requiring them to press R again to quit out, or maybe my friends just needed to spend more time learning the new casting system.
At first you only released R to end target-mode but by casting from the menu the target-mode would stop right away because you dont hold R, so I needed to make it so you need to press R in that situation and it became confusing if one time you had to hold and the other time it was toggle so toggle all the time seemed like the best option.
Perhaps there should be a brief invulnerability period when you start casting a spell, so you aren't so vulnerable.

- Magic recharging time
My friends didn't mention noticing this change.
This might be because you loaded a game from the unpatched game and have "none" as a difficulty, normally with v.10, casters have to wait a bit between each cast, their face-icon on the bottom flashes during the time they can't cast and a little sound is played when they are able to cast again,

- Strong/Weak attacks (now for all 3 players)
I liked having a different type of attack, but it wasn't really clear to me in what situations a Strong or Weak attack would be better. I thought it was cool, but its purpose needs more clarity.
Yeah its how they seem to me as they are now too. SoM has alot of animations for each weapon's attacks so I tought it would be nice to be able to use them but they are pretty similar in practice so having 2 attacks with 2 diffenrent animations doing the same damage and all seemed kind of pointless so I thought I could increase the damage of the "thrust" ones because they are a bit harder to aim. I couldnt make it hit too much compared to the other because its not that much harder to land a thurst, otherwise the other attack would be unused, so I made it recharge faster / make you start at about 25-30% instead of 0. But still I don't know how I could make them more different since they are so similar but I liked to have the option

[Pizzano]

Pizzano:

First, are you sure you have the latest version ? (V.10) ? Some of the things you talked really about should not happen on the latest version and since you quoted from this thread's first post I went back to it and noticed I stopped updating it after version 0.7.. well actually I did continue to update it, but I still left the patch download link unchanged..
which means that anyone that is new to this mod who just try it right away have an old version that confusingly doesn't work like the description says...  Ain't that brilliant ? ...   

If you got the patch there, im sorry to have wasted your time... updating to V.10 should fix most of your friends concerns with the magic system and a lot of what you talked about in general. 

Since I think it's probably what happened i'll comment as if you had 0.7
If you did use V.10, when you played with your friends

You are correct. I was using the 0.7 version. I didn't realize there was a newer version available. I seriously suggest updating your original post with a link to the most recent version of the patch (and the new patch notes) so other people don't make the same mistake.

The main goal of the magic binding/targeting/cooldown, which at first was the only thing I wanted this mod to do, is to remove the annoying cut to the menu that casters need to do each time they cast a spell, making it a lot more fun to play with more players because you don't get the game flow cut by the other or the feeling you are annoying the others each time you cast a spell. It also makes magic a lot less abusable in general.

If the reason your friends prefered to play the original is the magic system only.. my job was not well done lol, hopefully updating will fix most of the issues but then you would have to convince your friends to try again so ill tell you when an issue you spoke of is not one anymore .

I will try to convince my friends to give your mod another chance! 

-My one question is if I created the save state on an unmodded game and loaded the save state on a modded version of the game, what is the difficulty setting on my current game?
I don't remember exactly, but I think it should be  easy or "none", you should notice the enemies attack power if its on hard, easy doesn't do anything of the stats modifications so it should be the same as none but its risky, I changed how it works in my current build and it should put your game at easy by default, which would make your game have the same difficulty in general.

What are the differences between easy versus normal? At this point in the game, we are finding it to be pretty easy as is. We're around level 20 and we just got our third type of magic. Unless the game gets significantly more difficult, I think defaulting to normal difficulty would probably be alright.

- Binding magic spells to A,B,X,Y (now for all 3 players)

-My friends felt very vulnerable during fights because they could be attacked while casting a spell, but couldn't move at all to avoid the attacks.
They hated losing the cast on all option, seeing it as a HUGE nerf.
The healer in particular, hated having to heal each of us individually.

I don't think I changed anything to vulnerability while casting, its probably before casting, when targeting. it takes some getting used to, but the new version makes it easier to make it fast so you are not vulnerable for long.

You're right. I meant "while targeting," not "while casting." That being said, I think there should be a brief grace period where you are invulnerable when you start targeting a spell, so magic casters aren't so vulnerable.

pressing R enters target mode
then a UP on the D-pad targets all enemies,
down targets all allies,
left targets a single enemy
right targets a single ally[/b]

-They had trouble figuring out how to cast spells without having to bind them.
Its done by using the spell menu normally only when a spell is chosen it puts the player in target-mode with any A/X/B/Y resulting in casting the spell selected in the menu.

to bind a spell, when the spell has the menu cursor on it, hold R and A, B, Y or X to bind the spell to the button. A sound is heard on my current version but im not sure if it was in V.10.. it always works anyway but that little sound

I will try to explain that to them next time I start up the mod.

-They also had trouble figuring out how to quit out of the casting menu. Maybe quick casting should only work while continuing to hold R instead of requiring them to press R again to quit out, or maybe my friends just needed to spend more time learning the new casting system.
At first you only released R to end target-mode but by casting from the menu the target-mode would stop right away because you dont hold R, so I needed to make it so you need to press R in that situation and it became confusing if one time you had to hold and the other time it was toggle so toggle all the time seemed like the best option.

Makes sense

- Magic recharging time
My friends didn't mention noticing this change.
This might be because you loaded a game from the unpatched game and have "none" as a difficulty, normally with v.10, casters have to wait a bit between each cast, their face-icon on the bottom flashes during the time they can't cast and a little sound is played when they are able to cast again,

Okay. I see.

- Strong/Weak attacks (now for all 3 players)
I liked having a different type of attack, but it wasn't really clear to me in what situations a Strong or Weak attack would be better. I thought it was cool, but its purpose needs more clarity.
Yeah its how they seem to me as they are now too. SoM has a lot of animations for each weapon's attacks so I thought it would be nice to be able to use them but they are pretty similar in practice so having 2 attacks with 2 different animations doing the same damage and all seemed kind of pointless so I thought I could increase the damage of the "thrust" ones because they are a bit harder to aim. I couldn't make it hit too much compared to the other because its not that much harder to land a thrust, otherwise the other attack would be unused, so I made it recharge faster / make you start at about 25-30% instead of 0. But still I don't know how I could make them more different since they are so similar but I liked to have the option

I like the option too, but it still needs more work.

So, was anything done about the glitch about the screen randomly flashing green? What are your thoughts on the other changes that I would be interested in seeing in the future?

[theonyxphoenix]

I never had any problems with the screen flashing. I was using SNES9x on android.

As for the magic.  It took me a while to get used to the binding system (and later on I couldn't bind additional spells for some reason). Being able to quick-cast cure was a godsend on hard since it can be done even while your active character is stunned, etc.  The improvement to multicast has very helpful. Although not sure if it was doable, but binding targets as well as spells would be handy. Like binding Cure Water-All to a specific key.

I found myself not really using the block or varying attacks later on. With the accelerated charge and invincibility frames while releasing a charged attack...it is better to at least charge 1 attack. 

Blocking just was too much of a gamble later on as the enemies would 1-shot me anyway.  Occasionally I could block a boss special and you can even block a physical from the final boss with it.  Even more difficult to learn than the magic.

[f4ll5mui]

Awesome hack! So I am having a problem. I loaded a save state I found just to see how the binding of magic works. I can get the first spell I bind to cast, but if I try recasting it again (after the face stops blinking and the noise plays) It plays that error click noise and nothing casts. Am I using it wrong? I tried using zsnes and retroarch. version .10

[TheZunar123]

You shouldn't use save states, use hard save files. Save states tend to screw things up with hacks like this.

[SunGodPortal]

You shouldn't use save states, use hard save files. Save states tend to screw things up with hacks like this.

For real. The save state may have come from a ROM that has incompatible differences.

[f4ll5mui]

Okay I just used an srm. Same problem. Here are my steps

1. go to spells, go to cure, hold R, and press A.
2. Now I am out of the menu. Press R, select team, press A, cast
3. Wait for cool down, press R, select team, press A, try and cast.....nothing.....

[zhade]

Pizzano:
sorry, I was very sleepy when I wrote my last post, I ended up falling asleep in front of my pc and when I woke up I noticed I still was writing the post so I pressed post before I went to bed to make sure I don't lose what I had written but It ended up not having the v.10 link and messed up in general..

I modified the thread first post with the link to the latest version now.

- About difficulty
normal is not yet implemented, you should not use it as it might have unsuspected behaviors
Im still not sure about the difficulty that you get when you load from an unpatched game in V.10 , but I think it could be causing problems with magic cooldown so I would recommend not to do so or to manually modify the difficulty in the RAM, the next version should have this working and set your difficulty to easy.
the adress for the difficulty setting is : 7ECF64, I don't know the values for each difficulty but its either 0 - nothing 1 - easy 2 - normal 3 - hard or 0 - easy 1 - normal 2 - hard so you can make cheats and try different values and see what happens before the next version.

- About blocking
I don't really use it much too, alot of enemies have almost-instantaneous attacks so you have to block in advance so its not very practical.. Im thinking of removing it if I can't think of a feasable way to make it more usable.. that way the L button could be used to bind more spells or maybe bind spell and targets like theonyxphoenix proposed so you cast "cure on all allies" with just 1 button for example.
Giving some invincibility time when targeting spells could end up beign exploitable and I kinda like to have to move back a bit a be quick about selecting the target to avoid beign hit.

- About flashes
I never have seen these, it might have something to do with loading from an unpatched rom maybe? Other than it might be the emulator you are using altho it works fine on Snes9x on windows maybe Snes9x on the wii has problems with it for some reason..

- misc. stuff I forgot last time
in v.10 players can move all the way to the edges of the screen before they block the others !
I had the same idea about the weapon levels screen showing the orbs at all time instead of only when selected, but I gave up on trying to change text in the menus as I couldnt figure out how to do it after trying like crazy for a good amount of time. Hopefully there could be a way like you said to just have an icon or a color change that would indicate it without having to modify menu text. Ill keep it in my notes for later but I have alot of high-priority stuff that needs to be done
to make a first non-beta version and I to finish those before I start looking for other stuff I could add.


Since english is not my first language it takes me alot of time to write in here, in the last months i've spent more time writing here than actually working on the hack which doesnt feel right, so I think I'll keep quiet for a bit and come back when I have something new to show and answer futur posts then.

[theonyxphoenix]

I'm not sure that the final boss would be able to be defeated on hard were it not for the block mechanic.  It really only has physical attacks and 1 spell.

However, if the enemies were balanced down the road then the block could easily be replaced as this is the only time that I found it very useful end game. The final bosses' attacks are very predictable. 

A thought on another use for the L button is to have it somehow govern weapon charges.  Again...just spouting off ideas, but what about hold L to charge so you can save it later.  Release L to stop or press L to continue charging. This would free up your regular attacks and the ability to access menu items, etc. without worrying about firing off your charge prematurely.

I think that we are all looking forward to what you come up with next.  (I hope it includes elementals leveled up when you obtain them ) 

[Pizzano]

Pizzano:
sorry, I was very sleepy when I wrote my last post, I ended up falling asleep in front of my pc and when I woke up I noticed I still was writing the post so I pressed post before I went to bed to make sure I don't lose what I had written but It ended up not having the v.10 link and messed up in general..

Haha... damn. Didn't mean to make you do that.

I modified the thread first post with the link to the latest version now.

Cool 

- About difficulty
normal is not yet implemented, you should not use it as it might have unsuspected behaviors
Im still not sure about the difficulty that you get when you load from an unpatched game in V.10 , but I think it could be causing problems with magic cooldown so I would recommend not to do so or to manually modify the difficulty in the RAM, the next version should have this working and set your difficulty to easy.
the adress for the difficulty setting is : 7ECF64, I don't know the values for each difficulty but its either 0 - nothing 1 - easy 2 - normal 3 - hard or 0 - easy 1 - normal 2 - hard so you can make cheats and try different values and see what happens before the next version.

I'm going to admit that I don't really know how to do this. I tried hex editing the srm and the frz file, but I don't think either file went as high as 7ECF64. Are you saying that I'm supposed to use a game genie or modify the game itself? I just don't know that much about this kind of stuff. I might have to wait until you release a new version of the mod that addresses this game difficulty issue before I try it again. It's a shame because my friends want to play Secret of Mana again Monday night.

- About blocking
I don't really use it much too, alot of enemies have almost-instantaneous attacks so you have to block in advance so its not very practical.. Im thinking of removing it if I can't think of a feasable way to make it more usable.. that way the L button could be used to bind more spells or maybe bind spell and targets like theonyxphoenix proposed so you cast "cure on all allies" with just 1 button for example.

Either one of those ideas would be a better way to use the L button in my opinion.

Giving some invincibility time when targeting spells could end up beign exploitable and I kinda like to have to move back a bit a be quick about selecting the target to avoid beign hit.

You're right - the invincibility frames would need a separate cool down in order to avoid being exploitable. Otherwise, you could keep going into targeting mode.

- About flashes
I never have seen these, it might have something to do with loading from an unpatched rom maybe? Other than it might be the emulator you are using altho it works fine on Snes9x on windows maybe Snes9x on the wii has problems with it for some reason..

Next time I try your mod, I will see if that glitch comes back. Maybe it was just a one time thing.

- misc. stuff I forgot last time
in v.10 players can move all the way to the edges of the screen before they block the others !

Cool! 

I had the same idea about the weapon levels screen showing the orbs at all time instead of only when selected, but I gave up on trying to change text in the menus as I couldnt figure out how to do it after trying like crazy for a good amount of time.
Hopefully there could be a way like you said to just have an icon or a color change that would indicate it without having to modify menu text. Ill keep it in my notes for later but I have alot of high-priority stuff that needs to be done to make a first non-beta version and I to finish those before I start looking for other stuff I could add.

Okay. Cool. I understand.

Since english is not my first language it takes me alot of time to write in here, in the last months i've spent more time writing here than actually working on the hack which doesnt feel right, so I think I'll keep quiet for a bit and come back when I have something new to show and answer futur posts then.

No problem. I totally feel you.

[PerryR]

So we just started the game on hard difficult (3 humans). I will give you some feedback while playing.
We also played trough the "Hard Mode" Mod together, so i can compare and give some balance feedback.

First we noticed the shortened hit-recovery cool down for enemies. Its a good change overall making the game a bit more difficult.
We died several times in the beginning but once you get some defense gear and level its fine. This is one major difference to the "Hard Mode", the equipment there is so expensive that you have to farm A LOT. But still I would suggest that you raise the prices for equipment a bit, especially for cup of wishes, walnut and all the defense equipment!     

Up to now we made it to the witch castle but couldn't defeat the tiger but its only a mater of tries.

- About blocking
I don't really use it much too, alot of enemies have almost-instantaneous attacks so you have to block in advance so its not very practical.. Im thinking of removing it if I can't think of a feasable way to make it more usable.. that way the L button could be used to bind more spells or maybe bind spell and targets like theonyxphoenix proposed so you cast "cure on all allies" with just 1 button for example.
Giving some invincibility time when targeting spells could end up beign exploitable and I kinda like to have to move back a bit a be quick about selecting the target to avoid beign hit.

pls dont remove this block feature. We really like it a lot, because it gives something completely new to the game and its a fun mechanic.

The new bow is very nice. But it might be a bit overpowered. The are several spots where you can outrange enemies and farm like crazy without getting hit. So maybe shorten the range or buff the enemy range (if possible).

[SpRoUt]

This could possibly be the best hack ever for snes

[Maeriden]

About the strong attack, I don't know if it has been suggested before, but one option could be B for weak and A+B for strong.
The idea is that you charge at the enemy running.

[zhade]

About the strong attack, I don't know if it has been suggested before, but one option could be B for weak and A+B for strong.
The idea is that you charge at the enemy running.

I totally forgot that because of how my code that makes it so you can hold A and run in every direction is done, it makes it possible to do charge-attack : Video

In fact, that would make the strong and weak attack less alike, and would save a button, Ill have to find a way to make it less abusive tho, maybe make you move slowly for a bit of time after you do the move or fall to the ground or something like that, I don't see why someone would choose to do a weak attack otherwise.


I've been thinking of a better way to deal with stats multipliers / difficulty settings.. actually.. IIRC justin suggested it earlier but I didn't grasp how much less of a chore it would actually be and just dismissed it as "the proper way to obtain the same result" instead of "the way to not make easy to manage, test and edit".
basically, I need to use a table so that instead of having my multipliers in different routines on different asm files for each difficulty, ill just have it all at one place and can easily make backups, see the difference between difficulties all at once and even make it easy if anyone wants to try an edit those to their liking wihtout any need for asm knowledge. Its kind of like If you had to fill your fridge and went to a different grocery store for each item instead of buying it all at one place.. sure the fridge ends up with the all same things in it but you are not just doing it wrong, you(me) waste so much time going from one place to the other that once finished you realize the bread you bought at the first store has started rotting and so you have start it all over again

I probably still won't be working on this for a while tho because Regers and Enker are working on making a more complete disassembly and understand the things still unknown about the game, I think I'd better try to help them with that first, get to know more about the game's inner workings and then start working on the mod again with brand new magic powers at my fingertips
I'ver started to make an enemy AI script viewer to understand more about how AI works and most importantly make it readable by human beigns, hopefully ill be able to make it edit it too later and mess with AI at will

[SageOwl]

That charge attack is awesome. Definitely need to keep that in the game.

Take as much time as you need if it will make the mod that much better.

[DragonArk]

I think that might be a good idea, could save you a lot of time in the long run if you help them out and learn more magic so u can do (lv. 8 ) dragon fireballs  .

This could be a bad idea, but about the run attack thing, and in general, the way your character goes from 0%-100% after attacking, would it be a good idea to make the character move similar to that when you are charging an attack during that time? Or would that too annoying?