[Red Soul]

I'm not a programmer, sadly, so I can't really contribute in any meaningful way.
It just saddens me that Prince of Zenobia was stuck in a platform like the NGPC.

Also saddening is the fact that there are sour apples in every proverbial basket. Oh well.

[MysticLord]

It's in my queue, once I'm done making as much of Saga Frontier moddable I'll work on Ogre Battle next since most of the data is pretty easy to edit IIRC. I'm not sure about maps, map scripting, text, and a few other things but there are a lot of talented people around to help out.

If it's any consolation, sour apples do NOT enjoy seeing people reverse their changes at all, so with any luck we'll have the satisfaction of a public meltdown from the offending party. 

[DragonAtma]

When we do finally get around to OB, I see enough room for eleven (or fourteen) more stages.

Two maps are complete.
Five maps I finished the general layout.
Four maps I didn't start on.

Three more maps may or may not be added (I'd have to squeeze them in, and the last two are smaller than their neighbors), but it's not impossible.

[MysticLord]

If it's convenient for you, dump any data you have on maps - tilesets, map grids, city data, event scripting, and how to determine what is text (pointers? opcodes with range parameters?) as I remember it's compressed.

If anyone has any interesting hacks/mods which do cool things like add in content from the PS1 or Saturn versions, archive those for later perusal in case we can diff them against a vanilla rom and rule out known data to isolate changes. I think Zombero has a few interesting hacks where he made a resistance view in the menu, expanded the number of classes, and maybe dehardcoded a few things. I know finshore did a few dehardcoding hacks, as did I think Faustwolf - or was that palettes?

[DragonAtma]

Here you go:


Unfortunately, as I'm not a coder I have very little to dump; you've undoubtedly seen the three big topics on gamefaqs, and that's all (or almost all?) the info I have to offer. For those who haven't, they are:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/588541-ogre-battle-the-march-of-the-black-queen/40090402
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/588541-ogre-battle-the-march-of-the-black-queen/43853002
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/588541-ogre-battle-the-march-of-the-black-queen/54266112

[MysticLord]

https://finnshore.webs.com/
https://www.romhacking.net/games/1244/

[Red Soul]

https://finnshore.webs.com/
https://www.romhacking.net/games/1244/

I took a look at these and the patches are very interesting. I think the way the less useful classes were rebalanced is quite good;

It's been years since I played OB, so I have to ask: are maps meant to take a long time to clear? because when I finished it last many years ago, they sure did, something not at all helped by the fact enemies kept respawning squads so gaining ground took ages (which also meant my Chaos Frame always sucked by the end).

[DragonAtma]

IIRC there were 20-30 enemy groups in most maps... but since there are only nine types of non-boss groups, that meant 2-4 copies of each type of group, which is why it seems like they're respawning. It's certainly possible to lower the numbers.

Of course, the last stage throws that out the window by including 255 of every group (not counting bosses).

[Red Soul]

Interesting. I didn't know they were repeats.
I think an alternate patch that made enemy groupings more unique would be nice; another idea for an alternate style of play would be limiting deployment for both sides, so squad choice becomes more of a strategical consideration instead of just churning out squads.

[MysticLord]

IIRC you can only have 3 types of classes in enemy formations - leader, class 1, and class 2. That limits what you can do somewhat, and should be a factor in any hack/rebalancing/hardtype.

There's also a sprite limit of sorts - or maybe a palette limit - but I can't remember what it's about. It's purely aesthetic though and relatively minor so I never looked into it.

There's nothing stopping you from charging the enemy leader, but the smart way to win is to take a few towns for income, position tanks at choke points, and have mobile units positioned to eliminate weakened units before they reach a town or the enemy citadel to recover. Maybe have a mobile unit liberate all the cities for money or do sidequests.

If I made an event mod, I'd make the sidequests and recruiting more forgiving to minimize playthroughs needed to see and do everything.

[DragonAtma]

There's a limit of two enemy palettes, but someone found a workaround. Unfortunately, you'd have to dig through the gamefaqs board to find it.

[MysticLord]

So all enemy groups have 2 palettes between them? That's not a lot, though I suppose you could redesign sprites if it's an issue so they look good no matter the palette, or reduce the number of palettes used in sprites.

[DragonAtma]

IIRC eight palettes are available, five of which are reserved by the player and a sixth by attacks (or damage/healing numbers?) -- which leaves only two palettes.

That's why enemy units that share a palette (such as wizard and shaman) often appear together. Bosses tend to have unique palettes, so they almost always appear with only one type of class (e.g. Sirius + four amazons), even if some of them wind up in subpar locations. All three exceptions (Albeleo/Rock Golem/Black Dragon, Previa/2 Devils/2 Ravenmen, and Diablo/Diablo/Diablo) have the entire escort partners share a palette.

Two large escorts or four decent-anywhere units (such as ninjas) tend to be common, as that lets them all go in the proper row (something you can't do with four amazons!)

[MysticLord]

That explains why the enemy formations are so busted. No actual game-breaking or unspeakably ugly issues though, right? It just looks a little weird?

[DragonAtma]

It's been several years since I worked on OB (the .ods with my incomplete mod was last modified in 2012), but it probably just uses the wrong palette (more specifically, one enemy class would use the palette of a different enemy class). If that's the case, some classes would look a bit odd-but-acceptable in the wrong palette, while some would look like Picasso drew them.

[Red Soul]

I had no idea palettes were so constrained. Does this petain combat scenes? maybe the combat background could be simplified to free up some colors in the palette?

Edit: is this the Gamefaqs post in question?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/588541-ogre-battle-the-march-of-the-black-queen/78706838

If not, I'll keep digging.

Edit 2: this may also be of interest: https://kahran042.dreamwidth.org/53013.html

This contains the Saturn exclusive content. Maybe it can be transplanted into the SNES game via editing, especially if new maps can be added somehow.

[MysticLord]

You should quote, screencap, or archive any links you find. You never know when they'll disappear.

[DragonAtma]

No, that would simply make uniques keep their unique palette when they change class.

Unfortunately, adding the saturn content would likely clash with my planned expansion (simply because I intend to use up most of the land!)

But in the meantime, have the saturn maps, courtesy of google-fu:






They comes from http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xw8t-ymsk/Ogre/Episode-5/5-1/5-1-12.html (and similar pages), which utterly break google translate.

[MysticLord]

You can't translate entire web pages yet, but this engine supposedly produces better translations than Google.
https://www.deepl.com/translator

[Red Soul]

You can't translate entire web pages yet, but this engine supposedly produces better translations than Google.
https://www.deepl.com/translator

This is impressive. I fed it some scenario summaries from Langrisser 5 and the translation was excellent. Better than Google Translate.
Makes me wonder if this could speed up fan translations in general.