Seiken Densetsu 3 (aka Trials of Mana) Hacks Discussion

[hmsong]

Sure thing. I intend to start a new playthrough soon, and I want it to contain Praetarius' 1.5 bugfix as well as your skill, stat and gear patches to shake things up. Any specific party you want field tested?

Angela, Duran, and Hawk.  I'd appreciate it if you can test how the double hitter is, relative to single hitter, and the speed-up-casting Angela is.

[lexluthermiester]

@HMsong

Thank you for your excellent work on SD3! Your efforts have made recent playthroughs much more enjoyable! Well done indeed!

[hmsong]

You're welcome.  I'd appreciate any feedbacks, both positive and negative.  Feedbacks are how I get new ideas and improve.

[Red Soul]

Angela, Duran, and Hawk.  I'd appreciate it if you can test how the double hitter is, relative to single hitter, and the speed-up-casting Angela is.

Got it. If you have discord or something similar, I can more easily share my observations with you.

[praetarius5018]

However, the new bugfix hack probably ignores any cast time edits that I did, meaning all casts are now super fast.

Correct, I took the function that calculates the casttime (simplified it just does base of spell + penalty of caster and their current class rank; e.g. Duran casts slower than Angela but by a constant difference) and reduced it to: "return 1".

Wtf!  Lol!  Wow.  I did notice that Specter and Heath have high evade, but I didn't know why.  That is incredible.

As far as I can see all the other stats behave as expected: higher tier version of a monster type has either same or better stats. It is just evade where it is weird like that. But then again: evade didn't work so who'd even notice.

If you want another kinda underused mechanic that makes barely sense:
you have two magic defenses; one powered by INT against INT based spells (the one displayed in the menu) and another hidden PIE based one against PIE based spells.
Monster have those as well and for almost all of them the 2 values are equal, exceptions are:
-magician and wizard -75% int, -99% pie; however high wizard has -74% on both (why...)
rest are bosses:
-machine golem boss edition: -89% int, -99% pie (the mob version has -99% on both, they clearly twinked the boss version as an anti-angela version)
-black rabite: -68% int, -70% pie
-koren: +120% int, +125% pie; highest values by a mile and with his angela stats that should make his magic defs still about equal despite me expecting that he has higher int def
-heath: +50% int, +125% pie; makes me feel like Heath was someone's creator pet with his godly evade and magic defenses

for the record the 3rd highest m.def is only +0% and a tie between jagan and deathjester
after that come the godbeasts around -20%
gorva at -59%
the majority is -80% or worse

Despite those miniscule m.defs magic damage sucks, this game man...
How does the player fare? Well... most boss unique spells target physical defense, so you have 2 stats that very rarely do anything.

So to be clear, at Lv40 (for player), all screen-freezing skills (including Heal Light) will have increased power?  Does that include Lv2/3 techs?  Are there any other skills that gain power?

Only damage spells and heal light as well as their item clones; it does not affect Lv2/3 techs or fraction skills.

Yikes.  If you can't find it, then it's very unlikely I'll be able to find it.  But I'll look around.  Maybe I'll get lucky.

Not so much "can't" as just fed up with SD3's quirks.

Worst comes to worst you could just create a patch that add the seeds to the 2nd cat shop.

[hmsong]

@Red Soul

I don't often use discord, so I think this thread is the best place.  Besides, the feedback on this thread can be seen by everyone, so if I am able to fix some things, then it would encourage others to give their own feedback, which would encourage me to improve further.  You have your own hack, so perhaps you had people contact you for that, just as when I contacted you before.  That's how hacks get improve -- feedbacks.  Sure, some things may still go unfixed, but the first step in solving any problem is to know the existence of the problem.  That's why I value feedbacks (as long as it's civil).



@praetarius5018

Worst comes to worst you could just create a patch that add the seeds to the 2nd cat shop.

I already added Weapon/Armor Seed to one of the hidden shops for my Item Shop hack (and ??? Seed in the other).  And added the other typical seeds in the black market (although increased their price to lessen the abuse, at least until the middle of the game).  But the idea of adding Dragon Shield to one of the final shops sound interesting.  Maybe I'll add that to the final hidden shop.

[Red Soul]

@Red Soul

I don't often use discord, so I think this thread is the best place.  Besides, the feedback on this thread can be seen by everyone, so if I am able to fix some things, then it would encourage others to give their own feedback, which would encourage me to improve further.  You have your own hack, so perhaps you had people contact you for that, just as when I contacted you before.  That's how hacks get improve -- feedbacks.  Sure, some things may still go unfixed, but the first step in solving any problem is to know the existence of the problem.  That's why I value feedbacks (as long as it's civil).

No problem ^.^

I was checking your shop hack and while I like most of the changes you made, I'd appreciate if you'd make a variant that leaves the Angel Grail behavior untouched, if possible. That way, people that like the change will be happy, and people that don't like it (like me) will too. Up to you, though.

Also you mention in one of your readmes that you couldn't change the names of the skills to make new ones right? I'm just guessing here, but I think you'd need to dig into the game's text to change the names of things.

Speaking of text, maybe slightly offtopic, but is the font compressed? I really don't like the dialogue font of the fan translation and I'd love to change it.

[hmsong]

I was checking your shop hack and while I like most of the changes you made, I'd appreciate if you'd make a variant that leaves the Angel Grail behavior untouched, if possible. That way, people that like the change will be happy, and people that don't like it (like me) will too. Up to you, though.

Hmm.  Yeah, other people have mentioned something similar.  The reason I weakened Angel's Grail was because Angel's Grail really makes all other items obsolete.  But people have spoken.  I shall create a variant and release it, just as I did for Black Rabite.

Also you mention in one of your readmes that you couldn't change the names of the skills to make new ones right? I'm just guessing here, but I think you'd need to dig into the game's text to change the names of things.

Speaking of text, maybe slightly offtopic, but is the font compressed? I really don't like the dialogue font of the fan translation and I'd love to change it.

Yeah... but I have no idea where nor how to modify the texts.  If I could, I would have corrected numerous translation errors within the game.  I tried to contact the original translators, but I failed.  My idea was to create Freeze Breath (instead of Poison Breath), and give Blow Needle both poison and silence SEs.  Oh well.  You succeed on some things, and you fail on others.  Gotta work with what I have.

[Goros Lair]

Hey buddy! Is your hack compatible to this one? -> https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/179

[hmsong]

Hey buddy! Is your hack compatible to this one? -> https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/179

Nope.  That hack is for Headered rom.  Mine (and pretty much everyone's hacks) are for No Header rom.

I'm gonna do everyone a favor, since this seems like a frequent question.  In the first post, I'm gonna post a link to a rom page.  Download the 3-player pre-patched SD3 rom.  Problem solved.

[praetarius5018]

You could make an unheadered 3-player patch for your collection;
how to enable 3-player support is lined out here: https://tcrf.net/Trials_of_Mana#3-Player_Mode
literally just 2 bytes.

[Red Soul]

Nope.  That hack is for Headered rom.  Mine (and pretty much everyone's hacks) are for No Header rom.

You can remove headers from patches themselves using this http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1455/

Edit: I updated Hues of Mana to incorporate the correction noted by soul_knight (thanks) as well as modify the readme to include a link to HMSong's patches. Hopefully it gets approved soon.

Edit 2: Approved and updated.

[hmsong]

@Red Soul, Soul_Knight

Okay, my Item Shop patch was updated and approved.  Now, you have the option of not getting the debuffed Angel's Grail.

[Red Soul]

@Red Soul, Soul_Knight

Okay, my Item Shop patch was updated and approved.  Now, you have the option of not getting the debuffed Angel's Grail.

Thank you so much for making it, despite this version not matching your vision.

[hmsong]

Yeah.  I have my own hack package (3-player mode being a part of it), and I could have created a no header hack for the public, but I felt it was unnecessary, because the rom link I posted already had a pre-patched 3-player no header rom.  It was literally the 1st link, when I googled, "seiken densetsu 3 rom 3 player".  I figured pretty much everyone would be able to find it.



@Red Soul

You're welcome.  Feel free to suggest more.  I'm open to creating things, even if I don't particularly agree.

I have a question.  There are official arts (SNES version) for character classes, based on what I found in the fantasyanime page (there's probably more than what I found there).  For your Hues of Mana, did you choose the colors based on those?

[Red Soul]

@Red Soul

You're welcome.  Feel free to suggest more.  I'm open to creating things, even if I don't particularly agree.

I have a question.  There are official arts (SNES version) for character classes, based on what I found in the fantasyanime page (there's probably more than what I found there).  For your Hues of Mana, did you choose the colors based on those?

Some of them I did, yes. Charlotte's Evil Shaman colors for example, but I didn't use the ones I didn't think made sense for the class (Angela's Grand Diviner is red in the artwork; it doesn't seem to fit a light class, to me).

Others, like Kevin's colors, are mostly my own choosing based on the benevolent guardians' mythos (as the class names suggest), although Death Hand is indeed dark blue in the artwork too, to coincide with Seiryuu.

There's yet another different case where I did only changes to existing palettes (most of Duran's were fine, though I got creative with Knight), and some I simply kept but they were weirdly oversaturated on the stat screen on the vanilla game (Hawk's Ranger and Rogue, especially the sashes/satchels).

[hmsong]

@Red Soul

Awesome.  I gotta say, I like how Kevin's final colors match the 4 gate sacred beasts (or whatever their group name is).  It was white tiger, black turtle, blue dragon, and red bird.  I heard there's a 5th god in the center (yellow something).  Not sure about that one.



@praetarius5018

It seems that the Chibikko correction from one of the previous versions is now making Chibikko SE into a scary melee monster (kills everything in one shot while being Chibikkoed).  You may want to correct that.

Btw, is there any difference between Chibikko and Moogle SE?  I mean, other than Moogle being Chibikko + Silence.  And I think Chibikko only reduces physical damage to 1, but that's it, right? (in Secret of Mana, it also reduced physical defense).

[Red Soul]

@Red Soul

Awesome.  I gotta say, I like how Kevin's final colors match the 4 gate sacred beasts (or whatever their group name is).  It was white tiger, black turtle, blue dragon, and red bird.  I heard there's a 5th god in the center (yellow something).  Not sure about that one.

That's correct. So you have, in the same order you used: Godhand (Byakko), Warrior Monk (Genbu), Death Hand (Seiryuu) and Dervish
(Suzaku, my personal favorite).

I believe in the Chinese version of the myth, the fifth beast was a Yellow Dragon, but don't quote me on that one.

[praetarius5018]

It seems that the Chibikko correction from one of the previous versions is now making Chibikko SE into a scary melee monster (kills everything in one shot while being Chibikkoed).  You may want to correct that.

...and a game crash on top of it when I apply hammer to the full party... I hate this game...

Btw, is there any difference between Chibikko and Moogle SE?  I mean, other than Moogle being Chibikko + Silence.  And I think Chibikko only reduces physical damage to 1, but that's it, right? (in Secret of Mana, it also reduced physical defense).

mini = deal 1 dmg
moogle = auto miss, meaning you can't even build tp while you wait on your caster to heal you with tinkle rain


edit:
submitted with chibikko fix and casttime revert

[soul_knight]

You guys are good.  How do you people find all these errors?  I started a new game with v1.5, and I'm at Lampflower Garden, all the while looking for any errors, and I still haven't come across a situation about Chibikko error (despite having the hammer for a while now and using it often enough).  Do you guys have some sort of list you go through when looking for errors?