Is there anyone capable of making these romhacks work properly with VBAGX / VBA-M? I'm quite fond of VBAGX, and would hate to have to switch to GNUBoy just for one game.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/175/
OR preferably
http://aderack.com/m2/
The first one is probably the easiest to fix, as it seems that the only real problem is black elements appearing as bright red. The second one looks quite nice, but suffers far too many graphical bugs to likely be worth anyone's time given that this is a request.
EDIT: I see some work has been done to this end, but I can't tell if a conclusion was ever reached beyond the last post, or if either patch is available in some form somewhere.
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=15989.0
I've been testing mGBA, and while it works with DX (nice!) and it has vast performance advantage over VBAGX, it's still pre-1.0 and leaves a LOT to be desired from a User Interface standpoint. Also it has different but equally problematic graphical bugs with the EJRT hack, so maybe that one is doomed to never make it on real hardware.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4388/This man is a champion!
Has anyone given any thought to a Sword of Mana (GBA) hack that would allow one to achieve 100 Amigos in a non-traditional way? Obviously the easiest method would be a hack that allows you to just log 100 dummy Amigos when you choose the Communication option, but I'm sure there's more creative ways for a one to collect Amigos through a single-player experience.
It looks like Sword of Mana hasn't gotten much love at all on the site. I don't know if anyone is up to the task of trying to pick it apart when resources are scarce, but a couple ideas I had in mind while playing, I'll detail below.
The Amigo system requires connecting with another Sword of Mana cartridge via GBA Link, and only works once per unique file. Amigos, to my knowledge, only provide two benefits, and that's to use the once-per-game-day Amigo Whistle (which summons a rain of Amigos from the sky for a screenwide attack), and more importantly for completionists, the Seven Wisdoms. It is impossible to mark your game as 100% complete without collecting a whopping 100 Amigos! That means that on real hardware, you'd either have to link with 100 people, or have two GBAs, two Sword of Mana cartridges, a link cable, and patience to rival the gods, as you'd have to make a file, get through the 5-10 minutes of intro, link, delete the game file, rinse and repeat. I'm wondering if it would be possible to patch the Communication option in such a way that it could award, say, a randomly-generated Amigo (name, male/female, level are the only 3 parameters I can think of, though what bearing they have is beyond me and may in fact be meaningless) once per X amount of time or some other condition. More ambitiously, a way to acquire Amigos through in-game means might be interesting, but more difficult to implement. It at least feels less cheesy and more rewarding than just grabbing that 100 Amigos save off of GameFAQs.
The leveling of weapons and magic seems designed in ridiculous opposition to grinding, in spite of the fact that grinding is the core mechanic to level them. It requires 20 "hits" times the next level to reach said level. What this means is that to get any weapon or spirit from 0 to 99, you must land 99000 hits. And there's 8 weapons... and 8 spirits. There's a limit to how Korean of a grindfest your game can be, but this takes the cake. I basically went to Marsh Cave and switched to my second character so my main character spammed the bow on the spirit stone, and then left the game running for around 16 hours. That was just for one weapon, mind you. I'm sure that someone must have a better idea of grindy, yet reasonable numbers for weapon and magic progression. Be it lowering the 20 multiplier or (more complicated and potentially exacerbating the problem) basing the experience on the enemy you're hitting. For magic at least, even just making it so support magic counted towards level-ups would be miraculous.
Finally, with the "BLACK" status existing in the game for enemies you kill 1000 of, one could argue that a true complete file would have all 119 monsters BLACK. This isn't very feasible considering that, from my understanding at least, as many as two enemies are only accessible in an area that becomes permanently closed off as soon as you finish it. Take it from someone who spent 5 hours on a roadtrip grinding Skull Beasts in Vinquette Manor: That shit is unreasonable. Compound that with the fact that Zonbines only take damage from magic, which at this point you've just gotten your first spirit. So enjoy doing 6 damage with your Level 0 Fire Spirit and killing 1000 of these suckers. I have not played far enough into the game to see if there are other similarly missable enemies that you would have to grind as soon as you encounter them, but I figure the easiest way to at least address Vinquette Hall is to make the front gate still open at night even after the story takes you past it, with all doors being locked that lead to rooms without enemies in them. Conversely, if there's too many enemies throughout the game that suffer this problem, it might just be easier to distribute missable enemies in always-reachable areas.
Topic: Hack ideas: for those without the skill but with all the ideas. (Read 2335429 times)