Devlog #3: Support Rework Rework Rework? (Part 1)
As I said last week, I wanted to work on the support system. And the result is…
…I’m not sure what’s happening. Also, those supports are for testing purposes, and will most likely be changed in the future.
So, the support system.
Vanilla FE8 has a table where up to 7 support partners are registered, with their own base support points and growths defined in it, another table that contains the support bonuses granted by each affinity, and 7 bytes of the character struct that allow to store the support points of all seven partners in the game’s RAM at the same time. Once certain thresholds are reached, support conversations become available, which allow to increase the support level. That being said, the game only allows you to view 5 of these support conversations, so you must choose carefully.
Snakey1’s Support Rework Rework, which I decided to implement, scraps both tables, and uses the first 2 bytes of the 7 allocated to store support levels (which now allows up to 8 support levels, in contrast of the 3 vanilla had) and the other 5 are used to store the characters’ IDs of the support partners, which allows the unit to have up to five supports partners at the same time. Since there is no support points anymore, the conversations are tied to specific chapters instead of support thresholds. As for the support bonuses, they are defined in a new table that allows to define specific bonuses for specific levels of specific supports, instead of having them tied to affinities.
What I’m trying to do, though, is to store the support partners in a table again (though this time without base support points and growths) and use 4 bytes of the 7 in RAM to store support levels (with the other 3 being unused for now). This would allow for up to 10 support partners at the same time, with up to 7 support levels (1 less than base Support Rework Rework due to “0” no longer being a level). That being said, I’m not planning to use all 7, only C-A in most cases while allowing S in specific scenarios like Amber-Merrin or Tharja-Robin.
I still have plenty to do starting from fixing that graphical bug, so I’ll keep working on that next week.
On another note, I recently played a bit with the previous version of the PME… and discovered that I forgot to floor Delilah’s Luck stat. I also got the idea of making a couple of changes to Death’s Grip, and some other minor changes. I’ll probably change Moonlight’s Grace too.
Anyway, see you next week!
EDIT: And it’s fixed:
Devlog #4: Some testing and many bugs
You’d think that, after “Support Rework Rework Rework? (Part 1)” would come a “Part 2”, right?
Well, I thought that at some point too.
So I was in the mood for some testing, so I picked a bunch of characters from that “special map I use to test stuff” that I mentioned earlier, and decided to tackle the Rausten chapter. And well, in the process I had to deal with several bugs.
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Remember when I “updated Weapon Skill Display and set up for future repair/forge shenanigans”? Apparently I introduced three bugs in the process: one caused consumable items to not break, another made staves still usable with 0 durability, and the last one caused Aether, Adept and Thunder Force to not work properly (due to the way they edit the hit counts). I fixed the first and the last, at least. I still have to look into how to fix the staves.
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I ended repointing the +5 Dex stat bonus (for Gleipnir/Levin Sword/Makhaira) since I wanted to use its previous location as part of the support partners table.
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I had messed a comparator in Thunderstorm and No Guard, which caused them to not work as intended. I also made Slow Burn and Musical Score to not display its bonus when in prep screen, which should be for the better.
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Some changes I made to the post battle skills caused Galeforce to not work properly for units with Canto+.
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I messed Emerald personal skill, causing her to take half of the damage inflicted when attacking. Hilarious.
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Norcarna’s personal skill wasn’t working properly when using the Luna tome. (I believe, due to the nature of the bug, that there may have been some similar issues with Luna and Apotrope/Dragonskin, but I haven’t checked that.)
Anyway, now it works:
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I added Ishtar’s personal skills (yes, I still haven’t finished making skills). For now, I’m just using Rally Strength’s animation, though ideally I would like to give it its own animations and sound effect. What sound effect would be good, I wonder.
Also, talking about rally animations reminds me that they’re bugged in the SkillSystem version I’m using right now, so I need to do something about that. And I need to give some animations to Edji’s Absolute Focus and Tulli’s Goddess Dance. -
Not a bug, but I decided to make it so that the green units in that map don’t move anymore. Now you won’t have to watch them suicide against any enemy that enters their range though they’re still very weak. Maybe I should raise their levels?
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Also not a bug, but I decided to install Dragz’s Classlocked Weapon Ranks. Mostly since Olivia wants it if she’s planning to return to Falcoknight after reclassing to Kinshi Knight. I might take the chance to allow more people to reclass like that. That being said, now I need to see what do I do with Lenna, Hapi and Harvey, since they have personal weapon ranks in weapons their classes can’t use.
Also, this change made me notice that I somehow messed the weapon ranks of Gorgons, Mogalls and Arch Mogalls, so that is another bug fixed. -
I also messed up when giving Ganondorf his new level up skills, causing them to not get loaded. Now it’s fixed:
I’d ask if I’ve overdone the hard mode bonuses, but he still can’t hit Tulli.
You may have noticed the icon right of the character’s name: that’s the status effect icon I mentioned earlier (specifically, the poison one). It should also show a countdown next to it for other status (since poison doesn’t have one). …Now, looking at it, I’m wondering if maybe I should move it to the left of the name instead.
Also, I’d like to mention that I ended nerfing Dark Aura: now it is ±2 instead of ±3 for its buffs/debuffs. I did this change mostly due to the scroll, rather than Ganondorf himself, though I believe he’s still pretty strong despite that.
Here is Callista for comparison:
I guess that sums up this past week events.
I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do next week. Is there anything you guys want me to do or talk about?
Devlog #5: Slow progress
This week I have been sort of aimless, which wasn’t great. I did manage to get a couple of things done, at least.
So, those who have played skirmishes/Valni/Lagdou may have noticed that their bosses were unusually weak when compared to the other monsters in the map. This is because, in FE8, bosses use the same autolevel routine as playable characters which:
- Uses character growths instead of class growths.
- Doesn’t give extra levels to promoted units.
Since boss characters’ growths are still the same as vanilla and skirmish bosses’ bases are on the low side, this resulted on them being far weaker than they should be.
Here is the boss of Lagdou’s floor 1 (Hard Mode), for reference:
I need to fix those class cards.
And here is the same boss, after I changed the autolevel routine:
Quite the change.
I’ve also noticed that Gorgons born from Gorgon Eggs seem to be on the weaker side when compared to their peers, but maybe that’s fine, since they’re newborn monsters.
Another thing I did was adding a Strike weapon rank in the statscreen for those that use monster weapons. It displays a dash like when you don’t have a weapon rank in vanilla since, well, it doesn’t have rank.
I wonder why the dash is displayed two pixels down when compared to vanilla.
Aside for that, I have been considering changing the UI graphics, but I haven’t progressed much since I’m not even sure what do I want it to look like. I have also tried my hand at making the whole “using rescue arrows to convey stat bonuses” thing, but it’s not quite working yet…
Hopefully next week is more productive.
Devlog #6: Finishing unfinished business (somewhat)
Every week I post this later.
So this last week has been a bit more productive, when compared with the previous one:
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First things first, I have managed to make the “using rescue arrows to convey stat bonuses” thing work.
I’ve also tweaked the green arrows to have less white on them. Which led me to learn that the arrows used with Battle Animations On are different from the ones used everywhere else. Huh.
I still have to do the R-Text thing, but I’ll leave it for when I decide on a final layout for the Statscreen. -
I’ve also looked into how to fix the “staves usable with 0 durability” bug. It was actually pretty simple to fix (and I believe I could make weapon-locked staves now, if anybody wants that).
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Made Luna not activate if it would not add extra damage (e.g., if unit is using the Luna tome).
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Fixed Unlock’s subtitle help text, which only mentioned doors, instead of doors and chests.
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Fixed the “small display bug involving Obstruct” mentioned in the “TO DO LIST”.
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Fixed a small display bug involving Swipe and Skill Scrolls.
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Made Dire Thunder use Res instead of Mag because I can.
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Lastly, I started working on Gaiden Magic. Hopefully next patch’s version will finally be bug-free.
Aside from all that, I learned that, since vanilla Hard Mode Darkling Woods already has 50 enemies from the beginning, adding Callista caused one of the Shadowshot Arch Mogalls to not spawn due to exceeding the unit cap. I’m not quite sure how to fix it (or whether I want to fix it).
That covers everything, I think. See you next week!