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Talk about weird. Today I was going through the Phoenix Cave cause I missed something for Gau's rage...So here I am going through battles, la la la...Okay, getting bored, so Terra, my strongest magic user, casts Ultima...Boom 100-150 damage on all creatures...Uh, ok...Next Shadow casts ultima, 6000 whatever. Note, Shadow is a weaker magic user, I don't get it. Try again, 100, again 100...Uh, any explanations?? Other magic works fine but Ultima has been reduced to Not-so-Ultima anymore. At least on Terra. And she is at 142 magic power. Maybe its the phoenix cave, cause I don't think Ive had this problem before. I would have tried with Celes, she is second with 135, but she doesn't know Ultima yet.

Yeah, my Ultima does 100 damage, beat that!

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"Leave us. The dog eats strangers." -Shadow

Here's what happened:

The game has two bytes to store damage in, kay? That's a total of 65535. But since it's a four digit system, it'll be reduced to 9999 after that.

If you're really obscenely powerful - as in, playing the game in such a way its mere existence is a mockery of itself and an insult to everything ever - you'll get enough power behind your Ultima's they'll actually do MORE than 65535. Past that magical number it hits 00 again, so the damage formula kinda gives you 65635 damage (or something) but it turns up as 100.



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The Collapse of Heaven and Earth

Well, thanks for letting me know that. As cool as I think it is and funny...It is also not cool and not funny...Well, that goes to show everyone one thing. Being powerful is sometimes not the best thing. This run through of FF6 I just wanted to do things differently, I never used to pay attention to those esper level up things. So, this time I tried to utilize them to the max. And what happens? I become weaker then my intial magitek riding self, lol. Well, somewhat...

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"Leave us. The dog eats strangers." -Shadow

Sounds like something you should make a patch for, Djibriel- There! I've given you something to do! You oughta thank me.

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

Quote (MogMaster @ 15th June 2005 19:53)

Sounds like something you should make a patch for, Djibriel- There! I've given you something to do! You oughta thank me.

That's not exactly possible short of writing dodgy code. It's a hardware issue with how the processor handles its values. The Dji-man would have to do something like checking, for every value calculated, if the addition would bring it over 65535. If yet, then he'd have to trim it to 9999. Otherwise, no action would be taken.

This sort of code seems trivial, but there are many places where damage is calculated, and once the calculation is over, it's over The values has already rolled over.

Wait... idea coming to light. I DO believe the carry bit would be set. It's unreliable at best, but it could be tested for and, if set, the damage could be set to 9999. The hard part would be making sure it was set from an actual damage calculation, and not something else along the way. Come to think of it, using the carry bit wouldn't work because it would be shifted around a lot before any potentially useful place a check could be inserted in the code, short of after every damage calculation. Which brings us back to point one.

Either way, it involves quite a lot more work than meets the eye. My hat off to you, Djibriel, if you have the patience to pull it off. The quickest and least tedious way would just be to alter the formulas so that they never produce a value greater than 65,535. This would alter the overall balance of the game somewhat, though, as certain select stats would have lessened effects.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Quote

Being powerful is sometimes not the best thing.

Well, think of it this way:

you can hit around 9999 with an ice1/fire1/bolt1 spell

So there actually is an advantage to being that strong.

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~ Aurora, exhale bloody air! Dark Holy! ~

Ummm... aren't we missing the point that it's pretty much impossible to DEAL 65535 damage? Or, if it is... DANG.

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The island bathes in the sun's bright rays
Distant hills wear a shroud of grey
A lonely breeze whispers in the trees
Sole witness to history

ICO-You were there-

You're not really doing 65535 damage in the game if your stat values allow you to make it that high. It's just calculated to that much as a max in the processor and any damage 10000-65535 is reduced to 9999 in battle, while anything 65536 and above is reset to 0 damage with the excess amount added on. The programmers of the game probably never thought that people would invest that much time into leveling with their espers, so it was never a problem for them. Unfortunately they underestimated the really hardcore gamers and thus this 'bug' was discovered. Next time you play through think of a limit for your stats and increases them to that point, once you reach the desired number switch to increasing another stat in order to make your character more balanced. Or you could try a natural magic game......

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"We could strap dynamite to our heads and roll around in fire. It would increase our chances of survival." ---- Red Mage, 8- bit theatre

Think of it this way... (mock up; these aren't REAL game numbers.)

Spell damage is calculated as so...
( ( (MPower / 35) + (SpellPower / 20) ) * (2 to 4) )²

So with a character that has 100 MPower casting a spell with a power of 50, you'd get from about 115 - 460 damage. With a character that has 150 MPower casting a spell with a power of 100, you'd get from 345 - 1380.

Suppose your character has 512 MPower and the spell has a power of 255. That's about 3000 to 12000. Oops, but we can't have 12000! The game figures, well, it's over 9999, so... I'll just discard the excess. 3000-9999.

Now let's keep one thing in mind: the game only knows how to count up to 65535. If it hits 65536, it loops around over to 0. That's just how its memory works on a hardware level: it can only work with numbers up to 2 bytes in length! So our spell ends up being so powerful that it does 70000 damage!! What happens?


Game calculates 70000
Memory chops it up (70000 - 65536: 4464.) <- This is hardware, not software; the code doesn't have control over this.
Is it bigger than 9999? Nope, it's just 4464.
Final damage: 4464 damage. Not 70000.

Yoink.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

http://assassin17.home.comcast.net/patches/ff3MDamg.zip

Done

Assassin, who lingers in mystery for most CoNers has shone his Light in yon dark alley long ago.

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The Collapse of Heaven and Earth

We're not worthy! We're not worthy!

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The island bathes in the sun's bright rays
Distant hills wear a shroud of grey
A lonely breeze whispers in the trees
Sole witness to history

ICO-You were there-

*bows to FFIV superiors*

why dont you exploit that bug and have an contest to see which person can get the lowest damage with Ultima? It would be rather funny to see those people in disbelief, looking at a small video showing Ultima do a whopping 12 damage...

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Its not denial. I'm just very selective about the reality i accept. ~Calvin and Hobbes

Yah, i dont post much if you havent noticed. I'm not used to large fourms so i usally lurk and post every now and then..

Ahhh, I see how he does it. He simply recoded the final damage calculation part to have a fix more or less like I described it (only definitely less vague ) And here I was talking about applying the effect to every calculation instead of just the final damage calculation.

Thumbs up to 'Sin for his great work!

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

I had never heard of something like that before. But, I guess I'm not all that surprised.