Seiken Densetsu 3 (aka Trials of Mana) Hacks Discussion

[Red Soul]

I could do that, but I felt that Navarre shouldn't have Magic Rope enabled.  No other kingdoms had Magic Rope enabled, not to mention Navarre outside had both Magic Rope and Wind Drum enabled, which was weird.  And as for Dark Castle, that was a somewhat known problem.

Yeah magic rope outside doesn't make much sense, but I think there's nothing wrong with being able to use an escape rope should the need arise - always possible to bite more than one can chew.

[Zimgief]

if it wasn't too much of a change compared to the base game you could make spells instant cast by using 4 tech points.

Interesting!
By forcing to go melee to fill the gauge, it goes a bit against the trope of squishy mages, but it would indeed balance the instant casting.
Do you think applying a damage malus to player's spells is enough ? (Again, only in the optional patch of course.)

player's luck / (20+enemy's luck)

imo better than the stair effect you get from having 13 luck vs a level 19 target = 65% safe and then going to the next screen and only getting 42% vs the level 20s there

If max luck for enemies is 16, and not every final boss has max luck, it may still be too strong. (Hawk with 22 luck: 61% to deny counter, or more.)
Maybe player's luck / (20 + (enemy's level / 2)), which avoids stair effect ?
Against level 50 final bosses, Hawk has 48% chances. 37% Duran.
An important note: it helps keeping Black Rabbite a menace, due to its lvl 99 (Hawk has 31% chances, Duran 24%).

The gap between 17 and 22 luck is not as important as in the original formula of the patch (a gap of 11% instead of 23% against final bosses), but as luck now favours critical hit chances AND critical damage thanks to you (plus trap desactivation), is the stat valuable enough after nerfing deny counters? (I think so.)

[praetarius5018]

You mentioned that enemy's AGL maxes out at 20, but given that most enemies' stats are based off Lise, the AGL will max out at 19.  Also, for current patch, how is Speed Up/Down affect Eva?  I'm guessing it's +/-20%, but where does the multiplier apply?  I assume it's all the way at the end, but just like other stat up spells, I have a feeling that may not be the case.  I'm guessing your +10/-15 Acc applies at the end.

the speed up/down effects modify the raw stats.
for evade it is 1/3 of base, cap at 100. so 60% evade becomes 80%.

I'm having a little trouble with Eva, because many enemies at the beginning have too high Eva if I try to apply something general.

Where do you get that?
E.g. a 0% modifier for the intro ninjas would give them about 18 evade (5 agl x 1.4 + 5) x 1.5 and Hawk has 6 agl so 9 acc, so 9% miss rate.
Or what am I missing?

Should I just leave the Eva thing with you?  I'm working on this (dungeon by dungeon), but you seem to have some idea what to do.  I don't think devils should have 100% Eva though.

I was thinking along the lines of devils typically being not easily affected by regular weapons; you'd need some special magic weapons or magical buffs; and a high evade rate is the next best stand-in for that.

Also, a suggestion to add to your next bugfix.

Do you have a list of the values that would need to be changed there?

Interesting!
By forcing to go melee to fill the gauge, it goes a bit against the trope of squishy mages, but it would indeed balance the instant casting.
Do you think applying a damage malus to player's spells is enough ? (Again, only in the optional patch of course.)

I'd rather focus on what would need to be done to bring magic up a bit if I were to fix cast time.

But for the insta cast version - a damage penalty wouldn't change much since you can still use all other spells at full power; healing, aura wave into L3 techs for basically unnerfed spell damage or just death spell, turn undead and stone cloud that care little about the actual damage value.

If max luck for enemies is 16, and not every final boss has max luck, it may still be too strong. (Hawk with 22 luck: 61% to deny counter, or more.)
Maybe player's luck / (20 + (enemy's level / 2)), which avoids stair effect ?

I'm fine with that.

The gap between 17 and 22 luck is not as important as in the original formula of the patch (a gap of 11% instead of 23% against final bosses), but as luck now favours critical hit chances AND critical damage thanks to you (plus trap desactivation), is the stat valuable enough after nerfing deny counters? (I think so.)

Sounds to me like the stat finally works like luck does in a lot of games: no single big/primary effect but a hundred small/secondary ones.

[Zimgief]

I'd rather focus on what would need to be done to bring magic up a bit if I were to fix cast time.

Indeed, that is a better mind set! (Going for what is intented, but implemented better.)

Sounds to me like the stat finally works like luck does in a lot of games: no single big/primary effect but a hundred small/secondary ones.

I'm glad I helped!

[hmsong]

the speed up/down effects modify the raw stats.
for evade it is 1/3 of base, cap at 100. so 60% evade becomes 80%.

So assuming Speed Up is applied, for monster Evade, it's: [AGL * 1.4 + 5] * 1.5 * [100% + modifier] * 1.33.
And for char Acc, it's: [AGL * 1.5] + 10.

Do I have that right?

Where do you get that?
E.g. a 0% modifier for the intro ninjas would give them about 18 evade (5 agl x 1.4 + 5) x 1.5 and Hawk has 6 agl so 9 acc, so 9% miss rate.
Or what am I missing?

Crap!  I did the math wrong.  I forgot to multiply the char Acc by 1.5.  Whoops.

Btw, what's your end goal for "Accuracy miss"?  ~10%?  I started with 5~10% for Duran (before correcting my math error), but I don't know what's a good number.

I was thinking along the lines of devils typically being not easily affected by regular weapons; you'd need some special magic weapons or magical buffs; and a high evade rate is the next best stand-in for that.

I can see ghosts being that case, but I'm not seeing, "devils typically being not easily affected by regular weapons".  When I imagine demons, I typically think "monsters with gargoyle features that can breath fire".  But that might be my bias.

Do you have a list of the values that would need to be changed there?

This is from the ZPS I used (I used an old version of SoM Turbo ZPS to sort of save me the trouble of editing things).  I'm sure you can understand that nevertheless, given that you do way more hacking that I do:

Code Select Expand

@OFF $CB74EF 'Dark Castle, softlock - map 27
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB74F9 'Dark Castle, softlock - map 28
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope

@OFF $CB7F99 'Navarre, outside - map 300
RAW 84 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB7FA3 'Navarre - map 301
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB7FAD 'Navarre - map 302
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB7FB7 'Navarre - map 303
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB7FC1 'Navarre, treasure room - map 304
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB7FCB 'Navarre - map 305
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB7FD5 'Navarre - map 306
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB7FDF 'Navarre - map 307
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB7FE9 'Navarre - map 308
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB7FF3 'Navarre, throne room - map 309
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB7FFD 'Navarre - map 310
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB8007 'Navarre - map 311
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB8011 'Navarre - map 312
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB801B 'Navarre - map 313
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB802F 'Navarre - map 315
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB8039 'Navarre - map 316
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB8043 'Navarre - map 317
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB8075 'Navarre, cave - map 322
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB807F 'Navarre, cave - map 323
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB8089 'Navarre, cave - map 324
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB8093 'Navarre, cave - map 325
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB8499 'Navarre - map 428
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB84A3 'Navarre - map 429
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB84AD 'Navarre - map 430
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB84B7 'Navarre - map 431
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope
@OFF $CB865B 'Navarre, outside - map 473
RAW 84 ' -Magical Rope

@OFF $CB908D 'Dark Castle, softlock - map 734
RAW 00 ' -Magical Rope

[Messianic]

Noticing a really terrible side effect of the skill counter denial:

Many bosses are not transforming as they should be. Bill and Ben not splitting into two, Gildervine not transforming into his more vicious form, and most notably the Dark Majesty not changing into his more demonic form.

If there is a way to make these transformations NOT AT ALL effected by counter denial that would be ideal as that is pretty game-breaking imo.

[Red Soul]

Is No Skill Counter separate from Class Balance? if it is not, then something is afoot, because I've been having none of these side effects.

[Messianic]

I am NOT playing with "No Skill Counter," but I am playing with Hawkeye with maxing out his Luck stat as much as possible, and that apparently is treating transformations as something the Luck/30 effect from praetorius' changes is effecting.

I am playing with English patch + praetorius' patch + hmsong's full balance patch (love the skill changes)

[Red Soul]

I am NOT playing with "No Skill Counter," but I am playing with Hawkeye with maxing out his Luck stat as much as possible, and that apparently is treating transformations as something the Luck/30 effect from praetorius' changes is effecting.

I am playing with English patch + praetorius' patch + hmsong's full balance patch (love the skill changes)

So you're saying your counter denial is coming solely from the luck stat?

[Messianic]

So you're saying your counter denial is coming solely from the luck stat?

Yes, I got to Dark Majesty at lv 46, and had Hawkeye at 22 LCK, Reisz at 17, and Duran at 15, for an example of a boss not changing forms at a certain HP threshold as they should.

[Red Soul]

Yes, I got to Dark Majesty at lv 46, and had Hawkeye at 22 LCK, Reisz at 17, and Duran at 15, for an example of a boss not changing forms at a certain HP threshold as they should.

I'm starting to think Square disabled stuff because they knew the code was more messy than a piranha feeding frenzy.

[hmsong]

Is No Skill Counter separate from Class Balance? if it is not, then something is afoot, because I've been having none of these side effects.

"Separate" from Class Balance?  No.  No Skill Counter is a part of the package deal with Class Balance.  I think the question you were trying to ask was if Class Balance + No Skill Balance removes the effect of bugfix's Luck Denies Counter, in which case, the answer is Yes.

I specifically made +No Skill Counter in a way that removes the bugfix's Luck Denies Counter (assuming +No Skill Counter was applied after the bugfix patch).  You said you wanted to use No Skill Counter, and soul_knight said that having both is too crippling for enemies, hence I made it that way -- that way, you can pick and choose, sort of.  Having said that, as stated in the attached document, you can still have both Luck Denies Counter and No Skill Counter (having both is not recommended though), if you apply the bugfix patch after +No Skill Counter.

I can't speak too much about Luck Denies Counter, because I haven't really experimented with it (the time I experimented with the game, I used v1.2, which did not have Luck Denies Counter).

I'm starting to think Square disabled stuff because they knew the code was more messy than a piranha feeding frenzy.

That's unlikely, because there's so many problems with this game.  Not crippling bad, but still present.  I just think they didn't put too much thoughts, and they didn't have enough beta testers.

[Messianic]

"Separate" from Class Balance?  No.  No Skill Counter is a part of the package deal with Class Balance.  I think the question you were trying to ask was if Class Balance + No Skill Balance removes the effect of bugfix's Luck Denies Counter, in which case, the answer is Yes.

I think what is being asked is since you made "No Skill Counter" a separate deal that is now optional, was I playing with it enabled, and the answer is that I am not. "Class Balance 2.6 Bundle" is what I am using, NOT "Class Bundle 2.6 +No Skill Counter"

The heart of the matter is whether or not praetorius is able to still have a functional Luck Denial while making sure enemy transformations (and even counter-attacks if necessary) can be unaffected by it if they are based on an enemy being at a certain HP threshold instead of countering a lv2/3 tech or magic.

[Red Soul]

"Separate" from Class Balance?  No.  No Skill Counter is a part of the package deal with Class Balance.  I think the question you were trying to ask was if Class Balance + No Skill Balance removes the effect of bugfix's Luck Denies Counter, in which case, the answer is Yes.

I specifically made +No Skill Counter in a way that removes the bugfix's Luck Denies Counter (assuming +No Skill Counter was applied after the bugfix patch).  You said you wanted to use No Skill Counter, and soul_knight said that having both is too crippling for enemies, hence I made it that way -- that way, you can pick and choose, sort of.  Having said that, as stated in the attached document, you can still have both Luck Denies Counter and No Skill Counter (having both is not recommended though), if you apply the bugfix patch after +No Skill Counter.

I guess that explains why I haven't had any issues. I applied the bugfix first, and then went through the usual ordering.

[soul_knight]

@praetarius5018, @hmsong

Based on what was said in the first post, Anti Magic can neutralize enemy's absorb and reflect, but not immune, resist, and weak.  Why would that be the case?  I feel that Anti Magic can use a bit more "boost".  I mean, it's the very magic that neutralized Mana Sword itself.  It should be able to neutralize everything.  Can you make it so that it neutralizes all things related to elements, including weakness? (that way, it has both pros and cons).

[Red Soul]

@praetarius5018, @hmsong

Based on what was said in the first post, Anti Magic can neutralize enemy's absorb and reflect, but not immune, resist, and weak.  Why would that be the case?  I feel that Anti Magic can use a bit more "boost".  I mean, it's the very magic that neutralized Mana Sword itself.  It should be able to neutralize everything.  Can you make it so that it neutralizes all things related to elements, including weakness? (that way, it has both pros and cons).

I guess if it becomes this powerful, it's bound to see a noticeable increase in cost, MP wise.

As for neutralizing the Sword of Mana, I think they just recycled whatever animation they saw as the most appropriate. Hard to be sure if the intention was depicting Anti-Magic in fact. I mean Darkshine Knight does this to Jinn to summon Tsenker - if that were anti-magic where would the knight get mana from to summon that thing?

[hmsong]

@praetarius5018, @hmsong

Based on what was said in the first post, Anti Magic can neutralize enemy's absorb and reflect, but not immune, resist, and weak.  Why would that be the case?  I feel that Anti Magic can use a bit more "boost".  I mean, it's the very magic that neutralized Mana Sword itself.  It should be able to neutralize everything.  Can you make it so that it neutralizes all things related to elements, including weakness? (that way, it has both pros and cons).

That's beyond my ability.  Things related to mechanics (such as changing the mechanics of how AntiMagic works) is something that's way above my level of understanding.  It's an interesting idea though, so perhaps praetarius5018 can help.

[praetarius5018]

So assuming Speed Up is applied, for monster Evade, it's: [AGL * 1.4 + 5] * 1.5 * [100% + modifier] * 1.33.
And for char Acc, it's: [AGL * 1.5] + 10.

Do I have that right?

Looks right to me.

Btw, what's your end goal for "Accuracy miss"?  ~10%?  I started with 5~10% for Duran (before correcting my math error), but I don't know what's a good number.

I think up to 10% at the start is ok and for endgame I'd fine with up to 30% for "ninjas" since you can (theoretically) apply speed up and down by that point. 30% with around 20-25 accuracy would mean ~55% base evade so speed down would cut 17% off => 35~40% before accuracy, 15~20% after, add speed up and we're below 10%.

This is from the ZPS I used (I used an old version of SoM Turbo ZPS to sort of save me the trouble of editing things).  I'm sure you can understand that nevertheless, given that you do way more hacking that I do:

ZPS?

That list looks a bit too easy even.
Luckily SD3 is hirom so CB:74EF -> B74EF in hex editor.
For SNES only:
you take such a 6 digit address, and translate it as such:
SNES address -> hex address
Cxxxxx -> 0xxxxx
Dxxxxx -> 1xxxxx
Exxxxx -> 2xxxxx
Fxxxxx -> 3xxxxx
4xxxxx -> 4xxxxx
5xxxxx -> 5xxxxx

Pardon the pun, but my personal Metroid Dread is going back to the LoRom addressing in Super Metroid >.>

Noticing a really terrible side effect of the skill counter denial:

Many bosses are not transforming as they should be. Bill and Ben not splitting into two, Gildervine not transforming into his more vicious form, and most notably the Dark Majesty not changing into his more demonic form.

If there is a way to make these transformations NOT AT ALL effected by counter denial that would be ideal as that is pretty game-breaking imo.

I can fix that for my patch, but I'd need to know what hmsong has done for his no counter patch as that would determine if he has to change anything and if yes, what.

Based on what was said in the first post, Anti Magic can neutralize enemy's absorb and reflect, but not immune, resist, and weak.  Why would that be the case?  I feel that Anti Magic can use a bit more "boost".  I mean, it's the very magic that neutralized Mana Sword itself.  It should be able to neutralize everything.  Can you make it so that it neutralizes all things related to elements, including weakness? (that way, it has both pros and cons).

repel, drain, saber, buffs, debuffs, tech points, ...
I guess it was only supposed to cancel the anti magic buff and they had no way to differentiate it from natural repel from... boulders? who had that again?

[Red Soul]

Looks right to me.
ZPS?

If memory serves that's a special format that a custom multi-patcher for Secret of Mana uses. One can use it to cherry pick (to an extent) features from Secret of Mana Turbo - a huge overhaul of the game composed of many patches. ZPS brings it all under a common umbrella to make application and customization simpler to the end user.

[hmsong]

That list looks a bit too easy even.
Luckily SD3 is hirom so CB:74EF -> B74EF in hex editor.
For SNES only:
you take such a 6 digit address, and translate it as such:
SNES address -> hex address
Cxxxxx -> 0xxxxx
Dxxxxx -> 1xxxxx
Exxxxx -> 2xxxxx
Fxxxxx -> 3xxxxx
4xxxxx -> 4xxxxx
5xxxxx -> 5xxxxx

Pardon the pun, but my personal Metroid Dread is going back to the LoRom addressing in Super Metroid >.>

Yeah, just subtract $C00000 to get it for hex editor.  I forgot to mention that, but as expected, you got it.  Also, I don't know what that last sentence was.  Maybe something is being lost due to English being my 2nd language.  I know that pun means something like, "play on words", but I don't get it .  Then again, I'm not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

I can fix that for my patch, but I'd need to know what hmsong has done for his no counter patch as that would determine if he has to change anything and if yes, what.

It's probably what you expected.  3 bytes from 10C62B, and 3 bytes from 10C6CC (changing back to vanilla values) -- exactly as you taught me.  Obviously, I'm willing to change all that (well, more likely just remove them, which I already did in one of the Balance variants).  I certainly would like the enemies to keep their "use skills if HP gets below certain point" thing, at least for the bosses, but also like to have Luck Denies Counter (that way, I may get to see bosses like Black Rabite summoning the awesome Lv99 Great Demons -- No Skill Counter makes that impossible).  As Messianic said, some of those define bosses, like Bill/Ben splitting and using Shadow Dive, and Lugar transforming twice (and using the Lv2/3 techs), and Gildervine and Dark Prince transforming, and Black Rabite using the spell combo and Ancient, and etc etc etc.

repel, drain, saber, buffs, debuffs, tech points, ...
I guess it was only supposed to cancel the anti magic buff and they had no way to differentiate it from natural repel from... boulders? who had that again?

That's Power Boulder.  Also, I think AntiMagic was supposed to remove at least the natural absorb/reflect.  Otherwise, Black Rabite would be almost impossible to beat, since you can't neutralize his dark absorb -- if you don't have kevin or hawk (who are not necessary characters for the necessary Duran/Angela scenario), he's pretty much impossible to beat without AntiMagic (Specter's Eye), because he'll just keep recovering his HP, and then spam his spell combo.