You read my mind, I was just about to go to the liquor store to buy some whiskey
I think there’s merit in the way it’s set up for a sleep-inflicting weapon, but it’s always seemed a bit pointless for me when it comes to magic because usually your player phase attacks are rarely countered (since you have the choice to attack at 1 or 2 range) and it’s totally useless on enemy phase.
TRS-style uncounterable was at least super annoying in the hands of enemies because it meant that you couldn’t ORKO them with a double attack; you had to use either a brave weapon or a crit.
Now what we really have to implement is TRS’s AoE magic effects
It seems at least that the Aura Rain, Earthquake, and FE11 Geosphere effects shouldn’t be that hard to implement, although there would need to be some limitation to prevent the user from spamming the attack every turn.
paste write this at 0x28F42 and change the last 4 bytes to the pointer to free space where you want to insert the hack in little endian.
Here for instance the hack is at 0xD0B000 so we OR 0x8000001 and flip it so that the lo byte comes first and the high order byte comes last IE ABCDEF → EFCDAB
so here 0xD0B000 is written as 01 B0 D0 08
And paste this at the free space you desire
the implementation is simple, for half HP set the half HP weapon byte (3 in vanilla ROM, or 0xB if you applied Cam’s status sword patch), and if you want Hell effect (current HP - 1) set the last unknown byte to 1 in nightmare along with the eclipse byte like so
Prelude, Sylpheed, and Tomaharn all prevent the opponent from countering on successful hit. On player phase, this is a free attack if it hits. On enemy phase, it saves you from being doubled if your opponent would double you and you hit. Invert this for enemies that have the tome.
Aura Rain, Earthquake, and Geosphere are tomes or items that damage every enemy on the map. Aura Rain and Earthquake calc damage like normal attacks and can only be used on turn numbers divisible by 5. Geosphere is an item with 3 uses that does 10 HP damage to all units, including your own. Earthquake and Geosphere don’t hit flying enemies.
@Crazycolorz5 (aka Jesus) visited me in down in Sactown, and now I have a slick EN update. First hack with customized AI? #MiracleWeek
Basically, the function is as follows: Kaherdin will attack Karel at full HP, but will not move from his throne under any circumstance. After inflicting damage, Kaherdin will Talk to Karel a maximum of 5 times, at which point the battle ends. Because this was originally a forced loss, I wanted to include an alternate route to triggering the transition to Karel’s last map.
While I respect the technical side of this, I feel like the forced loss makes more sense from a character stand point. Karel seems like the type of guy to be moved more by actions than words. Being beaten at his own game seems like the kind of pivotal thing that would change him as a person. Not being talked into it.
I’m in agreement here(not that custom AI isn’t cool), I can’t see Karel just giving up because he can’t kill someone. His personality isn’t really one who will just change because he has a pep talk.
Also, why do you say forced loss is questionable design wise; seeing a character lose is one way to keep them human and relatable. If you win all the time, you forget these are supposed to be realistic characters.
Perhaps from a writing perspective, forced losses are okay, but gameplay wise, they’re entirely counter to the point of the game (i.e. trying to win). I feel the new way still has the feeling of Karel not being able to beat the guy while also giving more room for exposition in his backstory while being more sound gameplay wise. It’s like, you can’t beat him after trying a lot so, he realizes he can’t win. Later dialogues should reflect that, at least.
The issue is that you now have inconsistencies between the writing and the gameplay. The writing tells us that Karel would likely only change if he’s straight up beaten, yet the gameplay tells us that he can somehow just be talked into changing.
Forced losses are not inherently bad, and saying they are “almost always questionable” is too much of a blanket statement. There are several games that have done forced losses, such as Chrono Trigger and Tales of Symphonia, and they don’t come off as strange or questionable. Rather, they push the story forward by either making the characters seek alternate paths (Chrono Trigger) or they must become stronger (ToS). In this case the forced loss forces Karel to seek that alternate path.
Thank you, Prime. I love ya cuz you keep me honest :).
I’m going to do some revisions to the tale’s script as a whole – if you don’t mind, I’d love if I could send you the revisions for commentary. Thanks for makong me aware of your concerns regarding Karel’s characterization, and hopefully I can use this to strengthen the storytelling as a whole.
Specifically, I think that Karel is at least aware enough to recognize an insurmountable(ish) challenge (once the Runesword goes back to Str/2 and Kaherdin gets a result boost, lol), which would create cognitive dissonance which, if portrayed correctly, could be as psychologically damaging as an outright loss.
