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I get the install running and direct it to the path, but on the music select page the program can't find a valid executable of FFVIII
Can you please explain me with few words to spare your time (not more than 20 lol) what the heck is going on ?? lol ^^
If you don't mind I'd be very interested to know how you did the changes in combat abilities. I don't think you can change it the way you did with doomtrain alone. I'm trying to improve on the limit break mechanic to allow GF only when in critical mode under magic command for example.
0: Shiva grants Mug to Quistis but with her low Speed the rate of it is low and Shiva never unlocks any Speed-related abilities. Whereas Irvine has a higher speed stat, and gains 2x +15% SPD, making him a much better candidate for this, and what I changed to when getting Mug at Fisherman's Horizon. Is this intentional?
1: Desert Prison Floor 2 gives a Pet Nametag as OG, but the item pickup said it gave 2x bioblasters.
2: Had a freeze when I had Rinoa, Squall, and Quistis versus NORG. Squall did a critical trigger hit and the screen froze as it landed. Not sure if it is just the mod or base game though.
3: The Chocobo World add-on wasn't considered during the mod creation, but for non-remastered it can play a big part in balance and is an avenue for Mog and Boko to be used. I'd prefer if these had some form of implementation if not just an easier way to get some items without grinding in-game.
4: I defeated Odin with 0 seconds to spare and it gave me his rewards, but also counted as a failure so it kicked me out. This allowed me to beat him again and get his rewards a second time.
4a: Tonberry King had quite a lacklustre reward since he really only gave the Kamikaze ability. For how tough he was, at least working around his almost Insta-kills and Junk counter, it didn't seem worth it. Especially since Kamikaze removes that character from the battle, making it have little worth as VIT 0 isn't as good as another character for their actions when considering most of the bosses can get up to 5 turns before yours.
5: The Card Club side-quest didn't recognise that I won 15 matches in the Garden, I finally was able to get into the CC quest, after 25 wins in the Garden. Did it all, but no item rewards, just cards, which are kinda pointless in the mod.
5a: Following on from Cards, since there is no CardMod ability the card game has a severe lack of purpose when compared to the base game. You can get the Card skill from the guy in Dollet, and a few items from the prison fellas that have been changed to be worse, but mostly there's not much point to play the card game from my experience.
6: Zombie has a weird texture glitch that makes the character see-through and like a MissingNo from Pokemon. Curse has a similar issue where the visual stops showing when it is still active.
7: Adamantoise's drop rate of Adamantine feels far too low, I had to grind on them for 10+ levels to get 3, leaving me at 50-60 levels.
7a: Probably too much to implement now, or too hard to do regardless, but it would be nice to be able to Mug an enemy and still get their normal drop. I agonised so much over if I should Mug or let the enemy drop their item. At least for Adamantoise, I believe you stated in the thread that it's better to let them drop Adamantine. I can't follow an online guide on who drops what as you changed most things past the Dollet Mission. At least some bosses had set drops, that you still get with mugging, but it was hard to gauge if a boss dropped anything good when just looking at their drops.
8: The Red Dragon in Fire Cavern I feel is a bit overturned. If not just for its harsh scaling with your level, you're unable to make yourself immune to fire damage or Daunt, plus the use of Flare and melee attacks dealing so much damage. The fire healing per turn would be fine if it wasn't healing almost 4k for every other action I can take. It seems heavily geared towards a mage party since the junction element doesn't stop the healing which isn't fun if you've spent so much making a physical team. It's just not enjoyably designed in my mind. Even after getting it done with Selphie doing Double-Blizzaga, the Red Dragon still had its regen at times and failed to show the text for the element stopping it. Not sure if it's just a chance of it stopping the healing or if it just glitched out at times.
9: There is seemingly a lack of enemies to easily get the -aga spells from before Disc 3. You gotta look in really small areas or story/boss fights to get those. This is seemingly prevalent with Blizzaga in preparation for the Red Dragon. Adamantoises of 56 still had Blizzara, and many other enemies seemingly stopped at -ara on the map before Ragnarok.
10: Seifer felt too harsh in his solo and duo fight with Edea in the Galbadia Garden invasion. His crit rate was so high he was doing 1800-2000 damage a hit, meaning most died in 1-2 hits, with a follow-up Firaga doing the job if I didn't have high hp or shell active. Edea was fine as she could be countered well enough with Auto-Reflect.
11: In the Abaddon fight, the boss counters spells which interrupts and stops the second cast when using Double, which is a major pain. Unsure if that is a glitch or not. I found this happened a few times with normal enemies and a few bosses, where Double just didn't cast the 2nd spell.
12: Edea as an ally was quite underwhelming. She didn't have that great of a Magic stat, nor many spells or the ability to draw more. I had to give her spells to cast. In the end, I didn't use her much because she was uninteresting.
13: The Esthar enemies in Laguna flashback while on the elevator have way too high a crit rate too, being able to kill anyone who isn't Squall/Laguna in 2 hits or so, with a cracked speed or just double actions.
14: The Sorceress Memorial gauntlet was rather fun and felt fair, however, the steals from them are atrocious. I can buy shell stones and the like with ease, I don't want a hidden boss to give those. This might just be because they are the same ones you fight in the story, but I would prefer items to refine into Ultima, Flare, or Meteor.
15: When using Double with Selphie, she would sometimes not use the stock of spells, but other times she did. I am not sure why this happened, but it mostly occurred with Pain and Double.
16: I felt that the shops could have been made a bit more unique, it ended up being 3 or so stores I would use since the rest had nothing I needed. Possibly more options for buying materials from shops, like Esthar mostly did for Life Rings into Arise.
17: The Sorceress fight at Edea's House was a bit too long/reactive for me. It took 45 minutes to beat her since I had to keep healing, buffing, and reviving. Either I missed something or it's just a game of return damage and keep yourself alive to attack every other turn.
18: Diablos was a fun fight, but like the Red Dragon it is a massive pain if you're low-level with little skills to back you up. Same with Vivian, but I had two characters with Ribbon due to Chocobo World, so I feel I had more fun with it due to not having to worry about as many statuses. Vivian's reward was great, much better than Diablos who just gave Nightsword.
19: The behemoth for the third key was underwhelming. It didn't really do anything unique except the fire-counter and ending with Starfall. I had no issues with it except a crit on Selphie so I had to revive her. The reward was nice for it.
20: The Abyss Worm fight was very anti-climactic. I was expecting a different phase or something else to spawn. Nice rewards though.
21: Bahamut was an engaging fight with the affinity changes, however, I feel a copy of Darkside is kind of a lacklustre reward, since Squall gets it anyway and you're forced to have him in the party. I expected more stat ups, like VIT or SPR since he is meant to be Squall's Knight class.
22: The run down the Deep Sea Lab was not fun at all, and not really that hard. There are just so many fights against enemies with so much health that it's a slog. It took me 1hr 40mins to get to the bottom where you start getting the fixed encounters. Without easy access to gravity spells, this was just a terrible experience.
23: The Ultima Weapon fight was fun and engaging, having to keep everyone up, use actions wisely, and finally being able to double-ultima was satisfying. I will say that Licht Säule (Light Pillar) could be done with 50% usage, as it was a bit heavy-handed. The reward was nice, but I was expecting some more stat-ups due to the difficulty. I suppose drawing Ultima is a good prize on its own.
24: The Seifer fight in Lunatic Pandora was annoying with the Hellbiter, as he would get up to 8 attacks in 1 turn, with a good chance of making everyone zombied for his Alexander attack. The main issue is that this forces mega-remedy usage if you want a chance at even healing. I think he should have fewer actions, if not use Hellbiter a bit less, as it was mostly 2 characters using a mega-remedy and then mega-potion to not die. I had Selphie using double magic over and over to hope she could win it. Also, I stole 2 Shell Stones from him, and the boss gave no reward, that is terrible for how late in the game this is.
25: I don't think I understood how the Keys Geezard fight was meant to work. Is it just killing him x times? He died to a poison proc after I had run out his HP close to what seemed like 50 times. The reward for 6 casts of Wall is great if it wasn't the culmination of four bosses previously and all the work to get to that point. I feel like there should have been more hints as to how he was meant to work.
26: The Virtuous fight was pretty great, the double insta-kill was annoying but I had tons of Arise at that point. The full-heal was a bit confusing, I surmised it was just a DPS check at the end as I rushed it after the first time he used it. Though, the boss had normal fight music and the boss had no attack audio most of the time.
26a: Diablos is an amazing reward, his damage is cracked. Easily deal over 15k with him in Ultimiciea's castle. It actually feels like an end-game reward, but I actually get to use it in this mod, rather than getting it after the final boss with no purpose. Siren and Doomtrain didn't have their status effect proc often, making them a bit underwhelming. I felt as if they should have come with more abilities, such as Elem x2 and Status x2 for defence and attack.
27: It was very surprising, and nice, to see you removed the damage limit. I only really got over it with Selphie and Ultima, and the GOAT that is Diablos. I am unsure if Boost stacks with Boost+ though.
28: Jet Engine says it grants +20% speed in the text, but it actually grants the 2nd variant of +15% when used.
29: Most of Ultimecia's Castle was fun, mostly from Diablos's damage output. I am glad you didn't make the bosses too difficult, due to us not having all our actions. Tiamat was a bit annoying though, as I couldn't keep my team alive except for Squall, who had to use Arise to bring the other two back up. Not sure if I just missed a mechanic here. I had Firaraga/Thundaga Elem Def and Shell active.
30: As with the base game, Omega Weapon is just not fun. I can't really build around him due to not having any of the normal junctions, plus his seemingly higher Speed stat and several actions. It did seem like you reduced some of the damage, as our HP stats cannot get too high, but I just gave up trying to attempt the fight. So I don't know if its rewards are even good.
31: Final fight gauntlet seemed like the base game. I had fun with it and was able to work it with mostly my normal team. No issues with that.
Overall, the mod was a fun change from the base game and a lovely time for actually being able to level up. I would mostly prefer if the Cards had more use in the mod, more quests in the towns to engage in, and the possibility to get 3x Ribbon for a whole team of it as statuses become an annoyance rather than fun in late-end game. I was sad there were no items to grant Aura either, as that was a major fun factor of the base game.
Many years ago, I made a self-imposed challenge run for this game in which every character was assigned a class that would eventually become the basis of this mod. In it, I gave Quistis stuff like Mug and Devour based on the concept of a Blue Mage "taking things from enemies"; her having Mug is a holdover from that more than anything. It wasn't until much later that I decided to add the Thief's Glove item and make Quistis start with the ability (you used to have to learn it). I also made enemies more likely to give up Blue Magic learning items through Mugging than killing, but I reversed this trend with abilities like White Wind and Mighty Guard since I'd prefer that the player have a reason to fight the game's tougher enemies instead of stealing what they want and then booking it. Same thing with getting Adamantine, which only drops from kills, though I don't remember which slot(s) it occupies so maybe it could be made easier to get.
About stealing in general, I used Mug because it's there but I don't care for stealing mechanics and generally, stealing from bosses won't yield more than slightly more/better items than a kill. I don't want the player to think they need to always have someone there to Mug bosses, but admittedly it gets muddy with regular enemies. If I started working on the mod today I may not have included Mug at all, but I started working this on 2016 and didn't stop doing significant updates until 2021. My way of thinking changed a lot in that time, but not everything in the mod changed with it.
This was mostly because I couldn't find where the item table was, but if I knew and could edit it I wouldn't mind players getting items from it. You can get MiniMog from Chocoboy and it works even without playing Chocobo World, though (only in the 2013 version, since I couldn't figure out how/where Remastered determines whether MiniMog is "here").
Elem-Atk Junctions not stopping its healing is an oversight. The regen effect still happening may be because the blockage is only temporary, varies in length according to the ability used to stop it (stronger ability = longer blockage, basically), and the Ruby Dragon can also nullify it by reflecting Firagas onto itself. The text only displays once.
One of my regrets about this project is not being more transparent about how certain mechanics work...or perhaps designing mechanics that the system wasn't really made to accommodate in that way. I could've/should've added more messages to battles but I didn't always know how to do it and the only method that existed at the time--it could be different now, I don't know--was hex editing, which was often annoying and tedious for me. Using the AI to do things it wasn't really made for was fun, though.
I'd have to look at the scripting to be sure, but I think it's just a side effect of how counter AI works.
I could do that for the red/purple type 2 sorceress, but you're correct about the other two; they're the same enemy as the ones you fight on Disc 4 and the Shell Stones are meant to be something you can fall back on in order to protect yourself against stuff like the worm sorceress' Ultima. My rationale for giving Disc 3 Seifer Shell Stones was likely the same, of wanting to help make sure the player didn't get stuck at Adel. However, you can just Draw-Cast Shell from Rinoa in that battle, I think, so I may give him something better.
Was this with the fixed encounters on? I completely forgot to address those before stopping development, I meant to but it slipped my mind. Sorry it was such a slog. I'll likely reduce them greatly, maybe one per room, as I think it's dumb that you can get forced into so many fights over something you could easily stumble into without realizing it even in vanilla.
It just has "lives" that you have to burn through and its behavior changes with every other kill. It was a workaround made due to Geezard having really low HP by default and just giving it really high defenses isn't enough since there are a lot of abilities that ignore them. While there are many unused enemy data files in FF8, I'm unaware of a way to make the game read them and had to make those fights by reusing a normal enemy and changing its behavior and stats in its AI script. I guess I could've made it a different enemy, but I wanted something you wouldn't expect after fighting the other four and there was no better candidate than the game's weakest monster.
Well, I say that, but in hindsight part of me wishes I had made Virtuous Weapon the final boss of the keys sidequest and made the Geezard the item-based optional boss. Another one of my regrets about this project was that while I spent a lot of time planning specific aspects of gameplay and battles, I didn't have an overall plan for things like items and optional stuff and just added things as I went. Another consequence of having worked on this over such a long period of time, I guess.
Also, you may already know, but you can also refine the Crystal Eyes into a handful of Apocalypse spells or use one eye for Apocalypses and one for Wall Stones.
Glad you liked the Virtuous Weapon fight. I'm a big FFXI fan and making an homage to one of its most infamous enemies was fun. You're correct about Benediction, you just have to kill it before a certain number of its turns pass (a mechanic I think I used too much...) The audio thing is a bug I'm unlikely to fix; I actually didn't even know about it until I was basically finished with the fight because I nearly always tested things with the game's audio muted. Most enemies' basic attack is the same ability and the visual difference is based on each enemy's animation data (i.e., a Creeps' claw slash and Ultima Weapon's sword swing are the same attack mechanically, they just look different). From what I can gather, the executable or some other file must assign enemies an associated sound effect for their basic attack and the reason VW doesn't have one is because I replaced the Garden Faculty "enemy" you see in a few battles on Disc 2 with it, and I guess the devs understandably didn't bother assigning Garden Faculty an attack sound since it never actually does anything but say a line and vanish.
As for the music, it's a consequence of using the same item type as the Magical Lamp. As far as I know it doesn't have a byte for setting the music, just for determining which fight gets triggered. I initially planned to have the fight trigger through something on one of the game's maps on Disc 4 but had trouble getting it to work. I really wanted the music track during the fight to be The Legendary Beast, or maybe the unused Dollet invasion music.
Boost works like vanilla in that it only unlocks the ability to increase the GF's damage. Boost+ gives you that along with an innate damage bonus.
Thanks again for your feedback, and for playing the mod.
Thanks for accepting my feedback and being very understanding about it all. I was worried I might've been a bit too harsh or repetitive in things I would want changed. I hope your upcoming project goes well and if you do end up going back to do an update to this mod that it goes smoothly too.
Or is it a case of just avoiding using that?
I may look into changing the reward list if I ever update this again.
Another question I had but couldn't find anything for, is there a way to get GFAbl Med-RF or the other refining abilities that allow us to make the Stat-Junction items for the GFs, or are those totally off the table? Wondering if I should hold onto the HP-Ups and STR-Ups I obtained already for those refines, or just use them now.
You gave a few stat-ups out over the early-mid game so far, so was wondering what your intentions were with those.
The stat up items you get are just bonuses that you're free to use as you see fit. I didn't balance anything around distributing them in a specific way, same with sidequest rewards.
Are there any ways in the mod to keep getting the stat-up items? That'll let me know if the stat-ups from chocobo world should be avoided too if they cannot be farmed.
All of the stat ups are one-time-only and come from various sidequests and boss fights.
I'm on Disk 3, just before time compression and I've completed all of the side quests except for Ultima weapon and the final Aberrant monster, but I'm missing a few weapon upgrade parts. Where can I find Royal Crowns and Adamantine? I've fought some Adamantoise in the Deep Sea Research center, but I haven't found any Adamantine. Also, the Tonberry King didn't drop the crown, but I forgot to mug him. Have I missed my chance to get Squall's Lion Heart?
The Adamantoises in the Deep Sea Deposit and the beaches around Grandidi Forest scale to your level, and only high-level Adamantoises (level 38+ in the mod) have a chance of dropping it. You're probably above that level, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. That aside, I recommend killing the Adamantoises instead of mugging them because their third and fourth KO item slots contain Adamantine whereas its Mug item list has Adamantine in the fourth slot only. They take double damage from Thunder and Earth and are susceptible to several status effects.
Royal Crowns are a common (second, third, and fourth slots) KO drop from high-level Malboros. It's easiest to find them on the Island Closest to Hell. Krysta in Ulti's Castle is also guaranteed to drop 5 of them. (I think Malboro having the Royal Crown is a remnant of an old idea I had in which you'd have to collect impressive-sounding items from some of the tougher non-boss enemies in order to get Lionheart...)
You didn't miss anything from not Mugging the Tonberry King btw, it doesn't have anything to steal so that it'll always drop the Tonberry Lantern.
(Note that I would consider "strong non-boss monsters" to be Ruby Dragon, Behemoth, Hexadragon, Malboro, basically anything that shows up on the Islands Closest to Heaven/Hell.)
So far the mod seems to work perfectly fine with Angelwing Ultima, BattlefieldPack and HorizonPack Ultima but I also just beat the fire cavern. I hope these mods work fine together because this is really like FF8 got a full blown remaster/reimagening.
So far I just have the question if the assigned GFs can be altered. In my headcanon my queen Quistis was always connected to Doomtrain and the (now sadly discontinued) mobile game Final Fantasy Record Keeper confirmed that by giving her the poison attribute and making Doomtrain her main summon in her ultimates. So I really want to change her GF to Doomtrain and maybe just copy/paste everything from Shiva to it because as far as i have seen Doomtrain is not used anywhere else in this mod.
Iam a developer myself and although my expertise in plain game developing or modding is next to nothing (except from some little projects in LUA and Java modding) I have no real problem understanding programming languages and logical connections.
EDIT: Btw I play the Remastered version but because there you link to this version for further information I thought the question would be better here ;)
To change GF assignments, you need these programs:
Deling - field editor, also lets you extract the other files you need to modify
Doomtrain - kernel.bin editor (this contains various battle-related data, including GF ability assignments)
Quezacotl - init.out editor (this is the "initial save file," the game's starting conditions)
The FF8 save editor, the name of which escapes me...
You can find all of these on Qhimm forums.
Open Crystal's main.fs in Deling and extract init.out and kernel.bin. You'll also use Deling to re-insert them when you're done. When re-inserting the files, delete the ones already in the archive and import the new ones twice. (I dunno if this ever got fixed, but I remember things getting f***ed up in re-insertion sometimes if I didn't do it this way.)
Use Doomtrain to swap the GFs' learnsets.
Use Quezacotl to change the GFs' starting abilities and equip Quistis with Doomtrain.
Use Deling to change which GF is given to the player when Quistis joins at the front gate. Look for an opcode called MENUNAME. The format should be like this:
PSHN_L4
MENUNAME
Change the 4 to 15. (https://wiki.ffrtt.ru/index.php/FF8/Field/Script/Opcodes/129_MENUNAME)
Alternatively, just skip this step and use the save editor to change which GFs you have.
Doomtrain is actually a late-game reward for beating an optional boss and has parameters I wouldn't have given it as a "normal" GF (the HP value and Doom, Death, and Curse infliction, mostly - I guess the other effects and the Status Power are fine). You can change those in Doomtrain (the program) if you want. You'll still see Doomtrain's naming screen pop up after beating said boss, but it won't actually do anything since you already have the GF. (The GFs rewarded by the boss can also be changed but isn't worth the trouble, honestly.)
Edit: I started replying before you edited your message, but everything here should still apply.
Yeah you are exactly right with the purposes of the mods, glad to hear that there should be no incompatibilities!
I surely will give it a try to customize your mod, thanks again for the very detailed explanation! I think I can take it from here ;) Sadly the infrastructure of Qhimm forums somehow seems to be dead? There was another thread I really liked to post to just some days ago so I tried to register an account but to this day I have not received any activation mail, regardless of my many tries... but Iam sure I will find the tools somewhere there without an account or in the internet now that I know what Iam looking for.