Edited techs?

[FaustWolf]

Yeah, I figured that was a longshot guess. Did you decompress/recompress raw data from certain offsets or is there a feature specifically for editing tech descriptions in TF I haven't found? Either way, I'll want to work with the latest CE ROM to finalize the tech descriptions I guess.

Alrighty then -- here's the techs as they currently look/sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE5ZZvwy_bg&fmt=18

I think I might want to tweak some more sounds. Unfortunately I had to stick "Earth Song" into a more tightly-packed area I left room in earlier because pasting it over "Kiss" messed up Marle's "Provoke," which was irksome. That means there's less room for possible music notes in Earth Song now, but if there are any other player character techs with music notes as a sprite-layer object I might be able to add another object pointer to that and we could get lucky.

[justin3009]

Strings ---> Tech Descriptions.  FYI, editing those can force it to repoint into empty space.

[FaustWolf]

Ahaaa, excellent! That'll be a piece of cake to do, but I'll definitely want to hold off until json and '99 feel the ROM is pretty much finished and they won't need the space. In the meantime, I'll grab a beta copy and do the tech descriptions, and then get to work on the new previews.

[Agent 12]

Unless you're writing a novel it should be fine for you to do the tech descriptions you just can't do them in a static patch (i.e. a patch that can be applied to any rom because TF could move it around from rom to rom). I don't mind TF using unused space because TF knows about the unused space and thus won't overwrite it and corrupt it.


--JP

[Chrono'99]

That's some awesome work, but there are a few changes I would suggest for Robo:

1. Steel Crash

2. Cure Beam

3. Reactor: It looks like a water tech. I'd prefer Laser Spin here to be honest; it didn't look that bad and it was more useful overall. We could also keep the effect of Laser Spin and change only the graphics, but then there wouldn't be much point.

4. Thor Hammer: Lucca is the only character that can use fire magic early in the game, whereas we have two users for each other element by the time all six main characters are recruited. So perhaps we should put Incinerator here on the 4th tech position instead of Thor Hammer? The animation for Incinerator is a bit long and flashy for this position, so we would need to find a different one.

5. Heal Beam

6. Uzzi Punch

7. Incinerator: Thor's Hammer could go here as said above, and it's a really nice-looking tech, but that would give us three different users of lightning magic. Okay, it was like that in CT, but still... I think a second shadow tech might be better for Robo, and this would add a bit of cohesion to his tech list. I'm thinking it could be called Ultraviolet (from Oswego's list) and look like Poyozo Dance but without the Poyozo. The original Thor Hammer (with just the lightning bolt) could actually replace Magus' first tech, since ShadowBolt has that buggy green effect on its target.

8. GreenMemory: It looks blue :/ It would be great if this could be changed to green.


EDIT: Mmh, all things considered, Robo's 7th tech could be lightning without it being much of a problem... Apart from Magus, shadow magic is still accessible through dual and triple techs. We could either keep Shock or do the Ultraviolet stuff in lightning-elemental, though it would just be a visual change.

[FaustWolf]

GreenMemory
I don't think we have any control over the Layer 3 effect colors yet (that's the blue expanding ground circle), and I can't find a green palette for the Sprite Layer graphics (the little stars surrounding Robo) if I staked my life on it. The best I can do for GreenMemory is probably to make use of Magus' green "Magic Wall" effect. It might be a geometry function seeing as the palette used for sprite-layer graphics in Magic Wall isn't producing actual green colors for me. What we'd have for GreenMemory, essentially, is Magus' "Magic Wall" applied to the target character. Far less flashy, but we could keep the green screen flash and it gets the job done. Plus, Magus' OmniShield uses a gold palette now so it's still unique. If we're really concerned with making GreenMemory true to its name, the "Magic Wall" effects are the best way to go.

Incinerator
Given how awesome the current animation looks, I'm more inclined to call this a Shadow tech and rename it "Dark Gear." Queen Zeal had it in CT. It's far more impressive than Poyozo Dance's Layer 3 effect animation, which can be seen here by itself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVg7-WLks74

However, keeping it a Fire tech would still fit for the "DoublevBomb" double tech with Lucca. On balance, I'm not really much concerned with the double and single tech relationships making sense anymore because they're all screwed up by this point anyway.

Reactor: We could totally make this a fire tech. A simple Element swap and Layer 3 effect swap are all we need.

Thor Hammer: I'd suggest keeping this "Robo Tackle" (thus restoring Rocket Punch) and going with 99's suggestion of Shadow Bolt using the large lightning bolt but for the fact that I'm using Rocket Punch's space for Thor Hammer and Ayla's "Earth Song." I'll observe that it would be useful for Robo to have an early Lightning tech since he's facing dinosaur enemies with Lucca.


See what you think of the following options:

Option 1: There's a real need for a Robo lightning tech...

*Steel Crash
*Cure Beam
*Reactor (modified as a fire tech)
*Thor Hammer (lightning)
*Heal Beam
*Uzzi Punch
*Dark Gear (shadow)
*GreenMemory (modified for more greenery)


Option 2: There is no real need for a Robo lightning tech...
*Rocket Punch
*Cure Beam
*Reactor (modified as a fire tech)
*Steel Crash (keeping the line effect, giving someone a mid-level line effect tech)
*Heal Beam
*Uzzi Punch
*Dark Gear (shadow)
*GreenMemory (modified for more greenery)

In the latter case, I'd try to fit Ayla's "Earth Song" into space freed up by converting Robo's "Area Bomb" into "GreenMemory." The positions on the tech list would remain the same, to keep the trend that the last tech is the one that consumes the greatest amount of HP. Thus GreenMemory should always be last even if it uses Area Bomb's code space.


EDIT: Hah, sorry to keep throwing options out at you guys, but after doing some thinking on gameplay balance after considering '99's suggestions further, I've got the following tech set in mind. See if you agree:

*Steel Crash: Same as in the video, a physical line-targeting attack.

*Cure Beam

*Dark Gear: Weak all-targeting shadow tech using that very cool Layer 3 effect. Even though it seems like it's too flashy for such a low-level tech, I just can't condone passing that effect up. It's pretty short, so it still lacks the massive impressiveness of Dark Matter or Luminaire or Flare.

*Strong Arm: A resurrection of an idea Oswego had way back when, but it's so strong that it "paraylzes" a foe, having a chance of inflicting "Stop." The double tech "Boogie" with Ayla would make great sense if Robo actually did have a Stop technique. Uzzi Punch animations would be used.

*Heal Beam

*Thor Hammer: A powerful single-target lightning tech as seen in the video. This is something Crono lacks.

*Incinerator: A powerful single-target fire tech. This is something Lucca lacks. I've got my mind set on a neat Layer 3 graphics effect -  a bunch of Antipode 3 fire bursts to one foe - for this, just a matter of figuring out proper animations and not making it some sort of "Pyro Hammer."

*GreenMemory: As suggested above, Magus' "Magic Wall" would have to be replicated here because it's literally the only source of green spell effects I can think of.

EDIT: Backing up a patch that has Frog and Ayla techs working perfectly, and is prepped with Thor Hammer data but has everything else reverted in prep for a revised Robo tech set.

[FaustWolf]

New Robo techs, fresh out of the oven:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnw9KH_WnfI&fmt=18

'99, you should find these more palatable I think. There are two flubs in the video that shouldn't appear in-game under normal circumstances. First, the white stars that come out of Robo during GreenMemory now are black during the first casting in this demo battle, but the problem self-corrects somehow. First I've seen of that -- could have something to do with the Geyser palette function that might be active in this room (Geyser pulls its palette from the environment), but I'm really not sure. I'll test it out in different environments to make sure it's not happening elsewhere.

Secondly, the red blast that's part of the Dark Gear Layer 3 effect doesn't show up in the video. Purely Youtube's fault; it doesn't handle split-second effects very well, and the same thing happens to the copies of Frog in Braveheart. All the appropriate effects appear in-game.

[Agent 12]

oh man sorry I've been so out of of this...I finally got around to watching these.




That's all i got and really that's all you need haha.   You're doing great man. Does Earth song currently use water's sound effect or was I missing something there?


--JP

[Chrono'99]

This looks really good!

The one thing that might need change is the name of the StrongArm tech; Zeality devised a different origin for this weapon:

One of the reasons I have Sorin still alive in a Chronopolis safehouse is to sort of suggest that his arm will become the StrongArm later stored in Chronopolis.

I don't have a good suggestion for a new name... Perhaps RoboUnbound as a pun on the Greek play "Prometheus Unbound", but I'm not sure this sounds that good. It's up to you. (If this were up to Richard Honeywood from CC, it'd probably be called JustBeatIt or something )

[FaustWolf]

Oh, that's fine, I'll think of a different name for Strong Arm. Do you guys really want to go with JustBeatIt for kicks, or something more serious? Could even be just "Pummel." The description will say something about paralyzing a foe probably (I've got it set for a Stop status effect right now), in case that inspires anything.

Yes json, I do have a water spell sound effect on Ayla's Earth song. I figured it sounded like she was singing. I'll snoop around for better sound effects, but I'm not sure I'll be able to find anything more fitting.

I want to test everyone's techs thoroughly before providing a final patch for CE. For now, a backup patch is attached in case I get struck by lightning or something.

[FaustWolf]

Oh! Before I forget, now that someone's downloaded the latest patch: do NOT view Frog's "Slurp Cut" through the tech editor. I kept getting some kind of really weird corruption when I was putting the final touches on all the new techs, and suddenly all the techs stuffed into the Slurp Cut area would be disabled. I'm not sure whether the Tech Editor was trying to redirect objects or something, but viewing Slurp Cut seemed to be a common factor every time I managed to royally screw up the ROM.

That said, if anyone does view Slurp Cut's code in the tech editor and Nirvana X and Pangaea still do work, let me know about that. It would indicate that it wasn't the tech editor, but rather just careless mistakes I made, maybe having the ROM open in the tech editor and in a hex editor at the same time or something. It was like I entered the Twilight Zone for awhile, completing work on the techs only to have them completely discombobulate on me when I tested in-game.

[Agent 12]

hm goofy.....

you should be able to atleast VIEW slurp cut.....but it would definitely be a horrible experience if you wrote to slurp cut (it'd write 0's to everything it didn't know about that was in slurp cut's space.

--JP

[FaustWolf]

Yeah, doing something that involved writing to the Slurp Cut area may have done it. I think I used the tech editor to change some sounds around within the tech code stored there, and that's when I first noticed it. Everything's working in the current patch, but I just wanted to issue a general warning so that someone doesn't try to edit the code after it's in the CE ROM, and the proverbial house of tech cards collapses. It's amazing how fragile tech code can be.

[FaustWolf]

The only character who doesn't have at least one different or improved tech now is Crono. His techs all seem so classic, I can't think of one that could be spared. Only thing I can think of is making Confuse actually confuse. Any other ideas?

[Agent 12]

confuse causing confuse ....makes total sense....

But doesn't multi hit  mean you can't set a stat ( it's been awhile.....)

off topic: Are you inserting the status pics today?  If you can do them before I get home that'd be awesome I can't wait to see them in game.

--JP