Secret of Mana, Turbo - Beta 231108

[Mr X]

The goblins from gaia they do drop gumdrop (candy) but it said confusion ring when the chest opened. It was still a gumdrop.

Happens with some other enemies too, it says ac sometimes

[hmsong]

@zoolgremlin

Say, your [Monster Treasure Drops Data Table] document is actually AFTER applying the Faerie Coconut.  I noticed it after I compared it to my monster drop list.  I thought you should know.

[zoolgremlin]

@hmsong  Things seem... quieter here than I remember.  Then again, I suppose people are at work and stuff... 

Anyway, I checked the Drop Table document, and you're absolutely right.  The value 0x4B is used by kethinov's [Faerie_Coconut] patch to point to the Coconut as a "Common" or "Rare" drop.  In Vanilla that value was used for the dummied-out item, that either did nothing at all, or bugged the game.  I forget what the effect was...

What's happened here is that I've ripped the 8-bit values from a patched ROM with [Faerie_Coconut] enabled, since I really like that patch.  What I was supposed to do, is rip the values from a Vanilla ROM, as that's the whole point of the documents.

I'm now fixing it, thanks for letting me know.  See you again soon... 

UPDATE:

Aaaand... done!  Sad to say I didn't do much with the tables yesterday.  Was busy hex-editing the hell out of the algorithms for calculating:

      A.  The damage done by a physical attack, which is affected by a lot more values than you'd think, for such a simple game
      B.  The sub-routine that sets the ceiling and floor values for base stats like Strength, as well as derived stats like Hit%
      C.  Modifiers to Hit%, Evade%, and MagicBlock% as derived from Agility and Wisdom, respectively

It took a while, but I'm taking a crash course in 65816 assembly, so that my hex-edits can set Opcode values as well as raw data.  Once I can write them into the ZPS file and have them work, I might actually be getting somewhere!   

But I'll save the real explanation for later.  Time for sleep... 

[hmsong]

@zoolgremlin

Thank you so much.  I shall play around with it some more.  I still have absolutely no idea what 2nd and 3rd bit does, but obviously, they are related to the drop items (whether the content is money or items or orb?).

[Queue]

Version 2019-09-20:
https://ufile.io/ty3gk7yz

Changes:
- Implemented Magic\Revivifier_-_Turn_Undead; normal behavior if an ally is dead, can target enemies if allies are all alive; hurts ghost/undead enemies, but can also heal other enemy types, I think it only heals bosses, didn't verify behavior in that case
- Implemented Magic\Dispel_Magic_-_Target_Allies; normal behavior if enemies are in view, can target allies if not
- Added compatibility fixup to QuickSpell_Hotkeys for Herbal_Boost and the new targeting stuff related to new targeting options for Revivifier / Dispel Magic
- Fixed a graphics bug when multi-target casting Inferno Barrier

Technical Changes:
- Implemented new spell targeting types, basically:
- Allies first, enemies if no valid allies (only really viable with Revivifier and maybe Mana Magic since those have additional rules to result in no valid teammate targets)
- Enemies first, allies if no valid enemies
- Uses bit 0x10 in the spell data target field, defines of: SSE.Target.AllyOrEnemy, SSE.Target.AlliesOrEnemies, SSE.Target.EnemyOrAlly, SSE.Target.EnemiesOrAllies



hmsong, I'll probably recolor Mud Saber, but want to make sure I stick with that name.

If Wall is high level and Dispel is low level (or if you multi-target cast it, which divides its level by the number of targets) it only removes some layers of Wall, and you get a message related to Wall if it doesn't reduce the Wall use count to 0.

Not ready to mess with changing bosses at the moment. Also, when I tried giving the sword orb snowmen level 8 fireball (the dragon worm animation) the palette was wrong; not sure if that's a universal issue with enemies and the highest level spell graphics or was some other oddity I was running into.

Mr X, I haven't been able to reproduce the wrong chest messages yet, but my testing was somewhat artificial (high level characters). My first instinct is it's going to be related to the chest trap changes I made, but haven't spotted anything obvious.

[hmsong]

WHOA!!!

Holy crap, you made a patch where you can target your own allies as well as enemies?  Hot damn.  That's awesome.  I'm gonna have fun with this one.  And yes, that Turn Undead spell sounds awesome.  Very awesome.  And Dispel too.  I always wanted Stardust Herb, specifically for that, and now, I can.

It makes me wonder if Remedy can be targetted to enemy to do... something to certain enemies.  Food for thought.  Kinda interesting, that Primm doesn't do "direct damage to everyone", but attacks specific types of enemies.

Awesome.

Btw, the MSU-1 music, while great sound, is a bit too slow (well, some of them are okay).  Is the new remake music as fast as the vanilla music?  Slow music just doesn't... feel right in an action RPG like this.

Also, I was reading up on some of the Mana wiki, and it reminded me about Black Rabite.  It might have been kinda cool to have that Sword Farm monster be Black Rabite than a snowman (same melee immunity and duplication, plus scary melee attacks).  But that's just my own opinion.  Maybe replace Fireball with Dark Force, since Dark Force is only used by two enemies -- Lime Slime and Dark Lich.

[zoolgremlin]

Ah well... I was trying to go to sleep, but my mind is too excited by new breakthroughs to go silent... 

@hmsong  It is always possible, that the second and third bytes in each monster's drop table set don't do anything.  That's the funny thing about computers - you can have all the data in the world stored somewhere, but if no function or subroutine comes to fetch that data and perform operations on it, then all that data... doesn't do any good.  In the case of video games, without sufficient programming logic to use the data, there is no game!  Or not as much of one as there could have been... 

There's a long story about how Secret of Mana was originally designed, to premiere on the famous CD-addon for the SNES.  Sony and Nintendo were going to partner up on that high-falutin rin-tin-tootin' project.  Of course, Nintendo screwed themselves up the ass, and that CD add-on... never happened.  So the game had to be redesigned to fit on a piddling 16Mb cartridge.  That's 16 megaBITS, not 16 megaBYTES.  So only an eighth as much as 16 megaBYTES would've been.  If an SNES cart could've even held that much data, Square would definitely have used it for even fancier graphics and sound.  They didn't have that luxury, so the Vanilla game is what we got.

Sorry I haven't formatted the Monster Drop Table yet, I'll get there eventually.

Not sure why the MSU-1 music would be slow for you.  If I had to guess, maybeeee... ZSNES can't handle the flow of data needed to playback those music files.  Maybe...



@Queue  Another quick update!  Luckyyyy... I'm intrigued by the idea of new Spell-Targetting logic, I will admit.  Especially for Dispel Magic!  How good is that!?   

Was not aware that bit 0x10 in the spell data blocks could be used for that...

If I'm remembering correctly, Regrs once said that Revivifier could only work on player characters and bosses, which is why Wall Face and Doom's Wall can use it.  But that's one more function I haven't located or analyzed just yet... with all these disassembly files and annotations, I've got reading material for miles and miles.  It's great stuff if you can get it, especially if you have a long-haul flight to fill in.  Which by the way, I would know nothing about.

Thanks for the latest release... 

[hmsong]

@zoolgremlin

Yeah, I too heard about the SNES was suppose to have CD or something.  MSU-1 was supposed to be used for that, I think.  I'm not saying the music in ZSNES is slow.  I'm saying the music itself (the original music) is slow.  I know, because I played it in Audacity to confirm the original speed.

Take your time with your Monster Drop Table.  You own that thing.  I'm just a part of audience.

I'm certain at least 3rd byte is used for something, because looking at the Faerie Coconut patch, Shapeshifter's item drop edit used that bit.  I just don't know what it does.  Or where that "40" came from (I'm sure there's some sort of pattern, but I don't see it).  Besides, some have the same code (ex: Rabite's 4 GP and Goblin's Headgear have the same "04" code).

Btw, I editted my Change Form possible monsters.  All different type (except one), and all different elements.  And all pre-Empire.  And changed some types.  And increased Mimic drop to 100%.

Code Select Expand


' Rabite --> Goblin Guard
@OFF $C8E5F3
RAW 0B

' Mushboom --> Dark Funk
@OFF $C8E5F4
RAW 0F

' Lullabud --> Zombie
@OFF $C8E5F5
RAW 12

' Kid Goblin --> Nemesis Owl
@OFF $C8E5F6
RAW 15

' Green Drop --> Pumpkin Bomb
@OFF $C8E5F7
RAW 17

' Water Thug --> Evil Sword
@OFF $C8E5F8
RAW 21

' Pebbler --> Weepy Eye
@OFF $C8E5F9
RAW 33

' Pumpkin Bomb --> Shellblast
@OFF $C8E5FA
RAW 34

' Mimic Box type = Fish/Plant -> Insect/Metal
@OFF $D02127
RAW 04

' Weepy Eye type = Fish/Plant -> Insect/Metal
@OFF $D021D5
RAW 04

' Mimic Drop-Percentage to 100%
@OFF $D03B31
RAW 64

I have you to thank, so thank you.

[Queue]

hmsong, in ZSNES's sound options menu, do you have sampling rate set to 44100HZ? If it's slow, it might be set to 32000HZ (which might be the ZSNES default? I forget). If that's not it, and you just don't like the tempo of the remake's music, you could set the sampling rate to 48000HZ in settings and the music will play fast, but you may think it's too fast then.

The tough part with Remedy and how my, uhm, let's call it "invertable targeting" works at the moment, is there would have to be no valid ally target, which would mean adding code so that Remedy won't target an ally unless they have a status effect that needs curing (not that that's a bad idea, just it's not zero work to add that check) before it could target enemies. OR making the spell target enemies by default and only usable on allies once there are no enemies.

I wasn't able to make the targeting simply able to pick between anyone freely because the targeting code only has 3 slots for targets, which it chooses early then cycles between; my code special cases if no targets are found, then inverts the target enemies bit (0x80) and reruns the targeting logic. I may be able to come up with full free targeting, but that didn't happen on my first attempt.

Things are likely stabilizing with the current crop of spell changes, so I want to get the Magic_Recharging values updated using your observations on when the timer starts for which type of spell cast animation. My goal isn't to necessarily have a fast recast option for every element for both characters, but to try and deal with some of the combinations that come out exceptionally long or exceptionally short and end up making some spells undesirable, or too desirable (especially between the simple damage only spells). I know this has been discussed already, but was hoping for a fresh round of reasoning now that quite a few spells have been changed.

zoolgremlin, bah, 2 megabytes is all the space a game will ever need. I'm just thankful Secret of Mana is HiROM and not LoROM.

ZSNES is lightning fast (in the sense of it uses very little processing power to work); it sounds like hmsong thinks the remake's music has too slow of a tempo by design. Regardless, the ZSNES MSU-1 implementation (which I wrote) simply takes the bytes straight from the PCM audio files and dumps them straight into the sound buffer as-is, with no processing to account for sampling rate difference between the PCM file (44100 Hz) and whatever the sound buffer is set to. At the beginning of each "frame" of sound, ZSNES normally zeroes its sound buffer, then mixes each SNES sound channel's data into the buffer; I replace this zeroing with directly dumping PCM data in so I didn't have to add any code to mix the PCM sound in (since it comes first). I don't do any processing on the PCM audio for a few reasons:
1) is effectively laziness, I burned a lot of time getting it working at all and wanted to be "done"
2) was I really wanted to keep code size small, since it's inside the SoM Turbo ROM
3) processing sound is pretty annoying, the silver lining is I learned a lot about digital audio data that I wasn't aware of, like how grossly misunderstood it generally is (e.g. the "stair-stepped quantized digital audio" complaints you generally see are a misunderstanding of what the data represents)

It's not that bit 0x10 of the spell data target field "could" be used for that, I just made it mean that. The target value has 4 used bits:
0x80 means target enemies
0x40 means target boy holding sword (if 0x80 isn't set)
0x20 means target chests (if 0x80 is also set)
0x01 means multi-targetable
The other bits just aren't checked so I could use them for whatever. I use 0x10 to mean "invertable" and internally use 0x08 in the QuickSpell code's targeting code since it needs to update targets in real time (not sure what I'd name bit 0x08; something like, "currently inverted"). The normal spell targeting code clears the 0x10 bit if it inverts since it's not real time so doesn't need a second bit to track state (clears the bit to avoid an infinite loop).

Revivifier specifically checks the targets type when cast, and if it's not a player or boss it skips to the function's return without curing status effects or healing. For Turn Undead, I changed it to jump beyond the end of the function's return, check if the target is a ghost/undead, if so, jump to the basic damage spell function, and if not, just jump back up to the healing part of the Revivifier function. If you time it right, it can revive a normal enemy as they die; hopefully that doesn't cause any bugs. Hm... I bet it does. Those might be fun.

[hmsong]

in ZSNES's sound options menu, do you have sampling rate set to 44100HZ? If it's slow, it might be set to 32000HZ (which might be the ZSNES default? I forget). If that's not it, and you just don't like the tempo of the remake's music, you could set the sampling rate to 48000HZ in settings and the music will play fast, but you may think it's too fast then.

I set it to 44100HZ, as instructed.  I even confirmed the speed with Audacity.  Some tracks are just slow for the CD version.  I just want to check if the CD version and the PS4 remake have the same speed song.

The tough part with Remedy and how my, uhm, let's call it "invertable targeting" works at the moment, is there would have to be no valid ally target, which would mean adding code so that Remedy won't target an ally unless they have a status effect that needs curing (not that that's a bad idea, just it's not zero work to add that check) before it could target enemies. OR making the spell target enemies by default and only usable on allies once there are no enemies.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.  You're right.  Nvm about my Remedy suggestion.  Love the new Turn Undead.  I still haven't tested thoroughly with that, but I shall.

Ahh, the spell recharge.  I'm thinking:

Code Select Expand


ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Earth Slide
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Gem Missile
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Speed Down

ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Mud Saber
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Speed Up
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Defender


ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Freeze, assuming this is powered down
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Acid Storm
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Energy Absorb

ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Ice Saber
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Remedy
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Cure Water


ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Fireball
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Exploder
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Lava Wave

ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Flame Saber
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Fire Bouquet
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Inferno Barrier


ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Air Blast
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Thunderbolt
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Silence

ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Thunder Saber
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Balloon
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Analyzer


ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Change Form
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' MP Absorb
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Lunar Magic

ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Moon Saber
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Lunar Boost
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Turn Undead


ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Sleep Flower
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Burst
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Mana Magic

ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Herbal Boost <- short, only because it "resets" the timer
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Wall
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Mana Magic


ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Shadow Saber
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Dark Force
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Dispel Magic

ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_SHORT ' Light Saber
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_LONG ' Lucent Beam
ADR.16 MAGIC_TIME_MEDIUM ' Lucid Barrier

Tell me what you think about it.

I also edited this earlier, but you may not have seen it:

Also, I was reading up on some of the Mana wiki, and it reminded me about Black Rabite.  It might have been kinda cool to have that Sword Farm monster be Black Rabite than a snowman (same melee immunity and duplication, plus scary melee attacks).  But that's just my own opinion.  Maybe replace Fireball with Dark Force, since Dark Force is only used by two enemies -- Lime Slime and Dark Lich.

[zoolgremlin]

@hmsong & Queue  Your new values for creature-types, and the Change Form table look pretty good.  It's possible that Square's original intent with Change Form, was to have it turn a strong monster into a weak one.  That way, you could kill stuff a lot easier, after you get Luna's magic.  Which is after the halfway point, so it sorta makes sense that a later-obtained spell would be potentially more useful/powerful than an earlier one.  But with hex-editing/patching, you can make it do other stuff.  Stuff that makes it more... interesting.     

I finally saw the spell function used for Revivifier in documentation, so I could see where the Branch instruction was.  Don't see why using Jumps or Branches in a different way would cause any bugs.  From what I can tell, the Branch out of routine instruction is the only thing that stops the spell from being castable on a monster.  So... if there's a bug, it might be because monsters are programmed to despawn immediately after receiving the Death flag, and play their "killed" animation.  The left and right Eyes with the Wall Bosses don't do that, so the game doesn't bug out there, but that's just speculation for now.  Let's see what happens, that's the fun of doing these things, I believe.   

I see what you mean about the MSU-1 patch.  It's quite a nice thing, that you were able to get the Remake music working with your patch.  At least, I think you said that you personally, were using those tracks.  Hmsong might be using the other ones I don't know much about.

Regarding the 2MB-ROM size thing, we could at least say that it worked well enough back in the day.  Only thing I could add to that, is hearing about the possibility of Square no longer developing for Nintendo hardware, due to being gypped by the deal going south.  Whether rightly or wrongly, they went over to developing for Sony hardware instead, which being CD-based gave them the storage capacity they wanted in the first place.  That may not be the true story, it's just what I heard.   

Ah well, I think I'm ready for a nap now.  Will let you all know more about what I have tried to do with hex-editing/ZPS modification when I wake up.   

[Mr X]

Vampire Lord (Buffy lol) does use dark force too if you are talking just about bosses. hmsong

From enemy mobs I've seen the dark knight use it as well, but I can't remember if the head enemy in mana fortress did it too.

Onto testing
September 21, 2019, 01:51:49 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
Also as a warning, the fire gigas boss became more difficult with the lavawave, since he multitargets that spell all your party members could get engulfed.

Personally wont mind it tho. But if you find that unfair maybe change it to single target, that can be an evil spell for that point in the game, or remove it as he already has a fire engulfing attack, real talk all he really needs is a strong fireball spell and the engulf attack, which would serve the same purpose and that being physical type can be blocked also.

But anyway, up to you to decide that, just my opinion on the matter.
September 21, 2019, 02:05:58 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
Tried out Revifier, definitely heals any other enemy that isn't undead.

And tried it on the vampire lord boss, healed him, so it doesn't matter if the boss is undead, all of them will get healed I guess.

[hmsong]

Mr X

I don't know about Vampire Lord, but you're right about Dark Knight being able to use Dark Force.  Fiend Head used Exploder, although Mana wiki says he can use Evil Gate and Lava Wave.

[zoolgremlin]

@Mr. X 

Vampire Lord (Buffy, lol) does use dark force too if you are talking just about bosses. hmsong

From enemy mobs I've seen the dark knight use it as well, but I can't remember if the head enemy in mana fortress did it too.

You're absolutely right.  Fierce Head in the Dark Palace can cast Dark Force LV 5, and Fiend Head in the Fortress can cast it at LV 7.  But as with Mimic Box's Lunar Magic, it's possible they don't stay alive long enough for their AI-roulette to land on that option.

I only just now remembered, having not played the game that far through while bugtesting and hex-editing.  I'm supposed to have tried New Game Plus to give feedback on it to Queue, but that I still haven't done yet.   

Lava Wave from the monsters would also be far more dangerous if it caused Petrify, which I think hmsong proposed a while back.  Hee hee, yikes... 

@Queue  Yes, the three Gigaseseses (lol) are indeed flagged as Ghosts.  I first found out the hard way when Magic Absorb got reversed on me, back in the Vanilla days.

By the way, I'm curious as to why you think your own [New_Game_Plus] feature needs work to make it "not suck".  It seems fine to me... apart from the graphical glitch with the Option Event Message, at the end of a first playthrough ("But time flows like a river... and history <OPTION 1: repeats...> <OPTION 2:  then ends...>").

I like what you did there... 

[hmsong]

@zoogremlin

Yeah, Lava Wave having Petrify is pretty bad.  Fire Gaia can use it too, on my entire party, so that was bad.  Now that Mire is another option, I'm gonna replace Lava Wave's Petrify with Mire, and keep the Stone Saber (at least Stone Saber is powered down).  I hope Queue comes up with a new stat effect (one of the unused stun/busy) that is the opposite end of Mire -- you can move, but you can't attack nor cast (let's call that Fear, or Scare).  I'm pretty sure Busy was suppose to be that.

Or he can use both unused stat effects -- one disables only melee (Scare), and the other only disables casting (Silence).


@Queue

To show that the victim is Mired, maybe you can temporarily make the victim sprites brown (similar to how Petrify turns the victim to grey).  Also, maybe Dragon Ring can defend against Mire.

[zoolgremlin]

@hmsong:  That's a neat idea with Fear opposing Mire or the proposed Silence.  It would be good for the monster data sets to have an extra byte, or maybe just 2-4 bits, used for new status defects that are defined elsewhere in the ROM.  But that might require moving the entire monster stat table somewhere else in the ROM, and then separating each monster set by 1 byte to make room for a 30th 8-bit address per monster, to be used as status-defect flags.  Unless the data sets have an unused byte or nibble, which could be used for the same purpose.  In the former case, it's quite possible, but would take some forward-planning and a fair bit of time to reallocate data, and redefine what it's used for.   The latter case may be more straightforward...

The other option is to change an existing status defect into the Fear defect.  Would have to really think about which is more desirable, as well as easiest to implement.

[hmsong]

@hmsong  :That's a neat idea with Fear opposing Mire.  It would be good for the monster data sets to have an extra byte, or maybe just 2-4 bits, used for new status defects that are defined elsewhere in the ROM.  But that might require moving the entire monster stat table somewhere else in the ROM, and then separating each monster set by 1 byte to make room for a 30th 8-bit address per monster, to be used as status-defect flags.  Unless the data sets have an unused byte or nibble, which could be used for the same purpose.  In the former case, it's possible, but would take some forward-planning and a fair bit of time to reallocate data, and redefine what it's used for.   

The other option is to change an existing status defect into the Fear defect.  Would have to really think about which is more desirable, as well as easiest to implement.

Yeesh.  All I understood from that was that it's difficult to implement.  Well, just food-for-thought.  Also, "Fear" doesn't quite work, at least in the sentence structure (ex: Rabite was Feared).  What's the better word?  Maybe Horrified?  Terrified?  Frightened?  Sounds a bit long.  Scared is the best one I can come up with.

[Mr X]

@Mr. X 
You're absolutely right.  Fierce Head in the Dark Palace can cast Dark Force LV 5, and Fiend Head in the Fortress can cast it at LV 7.  But as with Mimic Box's Lunar Magic, it's possible they don't stay alive long enough for their AI-roulette to select that option.

I only just now remembered, having not played the game that far through while bugtesting and hex-editing.  I'm supposed to have tried New Game Plus to give feedback on it to Queue, but that I still haven't done yet.   

Lava Wave from the monsters would also be far more dangerous if it caused Petrify, which I think hmsong proposed a while back.  Hee hee, yikes... 

@Queue  Yes, the three Gigaseseses (lol) are indeed flagged as Ghosts.  I first found out the hard way when Magic Absorb got reversed on me, back in the Vanilla days.

By the way, I'm curious as to why you think your own [New_Game_Plus] feature needs work to make it "not suck".  It seems fine to me... apart from the graphical glitch with the Option Event Message, at the end of a first playthrough ("But time flows like a river... and history <OPTION 1: repeats...> <OPTION 2:  then ends...>".

I like what you did there... 

Yeah those monsters wont live long enough for them to use these spells or get patalyzed after one hit allowing me to easily outrun them. Lol

Lava wave now does engulf which thanks to this became more powerful as a status effect. Fire gigas would basically one shot you if he went lava wave on your party as it uses that on your whole party, take that into account if you wanna apply those changes by making it single or have one of the rings in that point of the game be resistant to petrify (preferably equiping it on the girl so then she would heal your whole party)

Making Lava wave inflict mire works also. At least you would be able to use items/magic/attack still but not walk, unlike Engulf or Petrify which can mean your doom without some piece of equipment reisting them.

[zoolgremlin]

@hmsong  "Rabite's scared!" would work okay, I believe... well any of them actually.   

@Mr. X  Lave Wave inflicting Mire would be less hazardous than the improved-damage version of Engulf, certainly.

I'll be back shortly after I've looked at all my notes about hex-editing and putting new scripts into the ZPS file.  Cheers, guys...!   

[Mr X]

If only there would be more equipment with status or elemental resistances, engulf or petrify on your whole party would still be manageable.

You need a bit of luck to survive fire gigas attacks otherwise, if he follows up with an exploder while engulf eats your hp, might as well be your doom.

Status/elemental resistence rings are a neat idea but it depends what is easier or harder to implement, not for me to decide that. I remember reading they were supposed to be a thing originally but got scrapped for the most part, except end game equipment some protecting you against multiple statuses (faerie rings, amulet rings and I think the imps ring).