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Well, back from work. Y'know what rocks about new contact lens? It's like getting a new graphic card installed. There's real-time anisitropic filtering, a higher resolution, textures are less stretched and blurry, and good god, everything looks so photorealistic...

So, here are the sprites. Some of these are complete sets, some aren't, most are more than 16 colors. Some tweaking will be required ultimately.



If some of these sprites look alike, it's because of a few reasons. Take the catgirl, for instance: she was going to be a character in my hack. But since it was scrapped, and since she looked so much like the main character in ES, I used her to make Lyris' sprite (third from the right.) The one right next to her is the same character, but under different circumstances.

Some are also tests. The guy with the grey cloak at the bottom, for instance, was a custom-made sprite for someone. At first I misunderstood and believed he had a cloak. "Naw, it's more open than that." ... "No, more than that. Like, it doesn't cover him like that." ... "No, no, it's like a monk's- yeah, yeah, that's it! That's it!"

The dude at the second-to-last space from the bottom-left who looks like he has a twin? That's Ethan, one of the ES characters. What's different between these two sprites? Look closely: he's missing his left (camera right) eye in the first version. Since he takes a bullet to the face and loses his eye, I needed two version of his sprite.

The girls right above him? If they look so similare, it's because they're the same character. Only, different versions. The second one was a beta version, whereas the first is currently what I intend to use.

Any other similare-looking sprites are that way for one of the above reasons. Also, a few of these are not originals: the earlier sprites I made were based on FF sprites. Most of these ARE originals, though. Pick whichever you want and I'll see what I can do about getting them in the game. If you want, I could just insert them myself and send you an IPS patch which you can apply to your hack. Insertion could take a few days if I don't have the full spriteset, though, so don't expect this to be an overnight thing.

Edit: Bigger is better!

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 29th June 2005 22:37

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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."

There are some impressive sprites there, RuneLancer. I don't know who I could replace with some of those, though. I can't replace Terra or her Esper form, due to storyline complications. Edgar, Celes, Leo, and Ghost all share a palette and none of them have been changed yet. I think one of them could stand to be replaced, but I don't know what with quite yet. Relm is free to be changed, but there is no way to make another character fit into that palette. Mog and Gau can't be replaced since they're so unique as is. So yea, really the onyl characters who I can possibly change would be Celes and Edgar. I want to keep Tools with Edgar, but Celes' Runic could be changed into a custom ability and she could become a whole different entity. Thing is, I'd have to change basically the entire story to work around that, and I don't know if I'm willing to do that.

Bottom line, I don't know if I can use any of those, or any new sprites at all anymore. I'm just not determined enough to change the entire storyline to fit them in. Thanks for the offer, though!

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Is PJ

Spell Idea:
Ultimate Nuklear
Effect: Formats the computers hard drive.
...
...
...
...
Just kidding. =^-~= Anyway, I really, REALLY like the red and white nuclear. It looks really cool.

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Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

Wait, you mean Nuclear doesn't do that already?

Anyways, thanks for the props, WGG. I really like it too. It looks much better in action, though.

RuneLancer, I sent you a PM with an inquiry for a certain attack of Cecil's that I need some help with.

Edit

Man, you had all best appreciate the work I am putting into this attack. Omnislash is an absolute monster...even worse than Nuclear to program, but it is incredibly fun and addicting. I'm working on like 500 bytes so far, and I'm not gonna stop soon, so look out!

Yea, this is absolutely ridiculous. I have a genius plan for the rest of it, too. I can't wait to show everybody when this is released...hahaha it's so amazing!

This post has been edited by Caesar on 30th June 2005 08:06

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Is PJ

Omnislash is using over 500 bytes? I don't wanna know what KotR's gonna use if you make it.

I don't know, either, and frankly, I'm not looking forward to finding out. I may need to have RuneLancer make that long jump fuction after all, so I can use that block of 2400 free bytes. Yea Omnislash is definitely going to use up all the free space I have at the moment, but it will be worth it.

Edit

Hahaha it is perfected now. I am still going to continue it into infinity (actually, no, it is very close to being finished, and I have the most fun part left. Currently, he just beats the hell out the target, stops, charges up his sword and beats the target even more furiously than before. However, after this, I am going to induce the screen shaking, every hit will move the target, and my a large amount, too, not just like 2 pixels. I mean he's going to whomp the target, who is going to go flying across the screen. Going to be fun to program and fun to watch), but I am waiting to find out if a custom long-jump command is possible. If so, then I'm going to wait until it is finished so I can use the other blocks of free space. If not, well, I will erase animations until I am fully satisfied with Omnislash.

I wish I could edit in a movie! Gahhh...so frustrating. I need feedback but nobody is available for testing.

Edit

I gave my hack to Phunbaba to test some things and give me some feedback. He might post his thoughts here if he has a chance.

This post has been edited by Caesar on 1st July 2005 04:46

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Is PJ

Had a cool idea for a Desperation Attack for Edgar...
I call it:
Flare Cannon
\Edgar pulls out a handgun shaped tool, which proceeds to fire a golden light onto the enemies. It doesnt do one big burst of damage though- it drains their HPs until the animation stops. Kinda like the Gun Del Sol in Boktai.

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Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

The animation would be very easy to do. I could have it drain HP, as well, but I'm not sure about multi-targetting it and draining HP. I could do one or the other, I believe, but not both.

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Is PJ

Whichever you feel is best, go for! =^-^=

--------------------

Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

Caesar did indeed give me his hack to test some animations, mainly Nuclear and Omnislash. I'll start with Omnislash. Let me tell you, you will not be disapointed with this attack, it's quite impressive. And about Nuclear, though I thought it would have more explosions and stuff it's still pretty nifty.

Overall this is hack is an impressive feat.

Thanks, Phun! Nuclear was a little tricky to manage, and due to a lack of sprites available, I had to suffice with just the simple circular explosions from Bolt Beam for the entire animation. It's still a decent animation with some cool aspects, but it's not Omnislash. When I finish that beast, it is going to be incredible.

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Is PJ

Dammit! Still no screenshot!
How many times does it strike the enemy?

Fine fine fine. Here are some screenshots. They do not do anything even resembling justice, but they'll suffice, I suppose:


Cecil beating the hell out of that poor creature.


The second stage of the attack


Cecil charging up his sword for...


this monster of a sequence of attacks. Yes, the sword is flashing.

As for the number of hits, it's looking something like this: 1+10+12+16+15=54. 54 hits. That's one heck of a lot of attacks, and I'm not even finished yet. No, that doesn't mean it is going to deal damage 54 times. That would be nuts. It is impossible to detect each individual hit. You can see the sword move, and Cecil swining, and the slash from the sword, but there's no way to count it (I only knew from looking at the script). The 16 hit sequence is so fast it looks like there are 4 Cecils are once (see the first picture). Anyways, it is amazing and nobody should be disappointed after seeing it, even with me talking it up so much.

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Is PJ

Arf too bad it doesn't hit each time!

Emerald could have been much easier by dealing 54 hits of 2000-9999 depending on how powerful it would have been.

Wow good gob scripting 54 swinging sword attack. Must be so boring to copy/paste & edit all that.

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Sayonara

Caesar does not copy-paste.

Caesar is a scripting machine. His programming is above mere copy-paste operations.

Each byte outputted by Caesar is uniquely tailored to fit perfectly into the script and give a unique, rich visual experience that leaves the viewer reeling and stunned by its perfection.

Caesar is your god.

(Each sold seperately.)

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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."

Hahaha...well put, RuneLancer. That made me laugh...an unhealthy amount...and it probably shouldn't have. Thank you.

But he's right, Zodiac. I never copy + paste. That's cheating. But, yes, it did take awhile, and yes, it was time-consuming, but I love doing it. Just in case you were wondering, this codes a single swing of the sword:

00 00 81 06 04 C9 9F 01 02 83 7F 83 74 03 03 03 81 15 15

Now, I COULD copy and paste that all day and he would swing 54 times, or I could put it in a loop and achieve the same results, but I work the code so that he moevs all over the screen, or I'll change the background, move the target, etc. There's a lot of work that goes into it, and each line is unique from the last.

Oh, and even if it dealt 10,000 9999's to Emerald Weapon, he still wouldn't die. Due to the game engine, it would simply deal 65,535. Hahaha. SO that means you can't kill Caesar by using Omnislash or Knights of the Round, but he can sure kill you with either. >: )

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Is PJ

Another Desperation Attack, this time for...
The Ghost! (He's still replacing Sabin, right?)
Psychic Scream
Graphics: The rippling effect from Noisblaster.
Targets all enemies, causes them to disappear, a la X-Zone.

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Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

ohh do you mean that there is none of the 54 hits that have even something in paticular?

What I was meaning is that you copy your last line then modify things from it...

Personnaly it's a bit faster for me taht way because I'm not typing at 100 per hours :wacko: . I got an average speed of 70 words per minute.

00 00 81 06 04 C9 9F 01 02 83 7F 83 74 03 03 03 81 15 15
00 00 E3 A1 04 D4 7B 01 00 F1 B3 E1 6F 10 10 10 1A 15 15

The bolded ones are similarities... personnally I would just copy paste and edit to create the second code, but If you are NEVER doing it, then I guess making you stronger than Kekfa in that game was something right... O_o

Nah, I'm not really considering this as cheating. More, well, time saving if you are fast enough to place your fingers on Ctrl & C. :P

Hows much type it took you to type down all the codes for the flash effects, enemy's color changing, weapon swinging, character's sprites... hits.... um what am I missing....

Oh damn yeah I forgot actually that the max amount of HP was FFFF. Damn I just hate it that we can't increase it to FFFFFF. :wacko:

ROM hacking is sure too much restricted... -_-

Edit

Too much smileys, it makes my post ugly :\ Disabling them

This post has been edited by Zodiac on 3rd July 2005 00:24

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Sayonara

Nah, I never copy and paste. I retype the whole thing, because it helps to sort thigns out in my mind. For example, it is very difficult to remember where his sword is ebcause I keep it hidden for most of the animation whilst he moves around, so I type everything manually to make sure I don't lose it. Plus, none of the swings are the same. If they are, I just use a loop to conserve space.

It takes a long time to make an animation like Omnislash, but the long part isn't typing. The concept takes some time, and then debugging it takes the most time. It certainly doesn't work on my first try; I'll run it and his sword won't be on the screen, or it'll be across the screen, or maybe it'll just abruptly stop and freeze, or my characters will disappear and then I have to go back into the file and trace through the entire animation only to find out that instead of using B5 I used BF and accidentally sent my animation into the middle of nowhere. I try not to keep track of how long these things take because I would probably cry if I knew. I'd venture to say a few hours, though, including finding the animation, editing it into the game somewhere, finding space to make the animation, figuring out how I want it to look, and then finally doing it and debugging it. Not a bad pace at all.

As for the damage thing, Emerald Weapon has 1048560 HP. Well, he himself only has 65535, but with his AI included, he has the former amount. He fully recovers his HP 15 times during the battle. So you might do 1000000 damage with Omnislash, but his AI registers that as one attack, and therefore recovers his HP ONCE, instead of like 14 times or whatever it would theoretically be.

Quote

The bolded ones are similarities... personnally I would just copy paste and edit to create the second code, but If you are NEVER doing it, then I guess making you stronger than Kekfa in that game was something right...

Caesar isn't necessarily STRONGER than Kefka, he's just smarter. I have a nasty, nasty AI script. I use all 8 elements, and very wisely, I might add. In most cases, I'll attack with dual-elemental attacks, such as Antipode (fire and ice) and Scorcher (fire and wind), making it near impossible to avoid all my attacks. And that's not including the fact that I can only be killed after you use a certain spell on me a few times (it should be part of your strategy anyways), and that after you use it a few times, I begin to use Nuclear every few turns. Kefka can probably do more damage, but my attacks are strategically more difficult to avoid and counter (who can honestly handle a poison-elemental counter-attack?).

WGG: I like it. It can easily be done, and it frees up the sprite that Tiger Fang used to use. Hmmmmm...the possibilities that opens.

I'm just gonna run a quick idea past all of you. The Imp spell was replaced last year and a few months ago (one of the first spells I got rid of) with a spell called Plague, which induces a random status effect. Yes, I had intended to change it at a later date. For some reason, while I was in the shower this morning, I remember that Penguins can use that spell (penguin=imp), and I also remembered that since Throw is now Shoot, the graphics for a thrown spear, dirk, etc, aren't being used. Soooo....I was considering an attack similar to Omnislash for the penguin, where he just goes absolutely nuts with a spear. It would be taught by the PenguinPlate or PenguinLance, not sure which (I don't remember what equipment can teach spells, and I'm too lazy to check ). Two problems, though. First, Celes can learn Imp naturally. Maybe Terra can, too. Not sure. Second, the spell would still be usable if you weren't a Penguin, so you could just teach it to everybody and you basically win the game. That's why I haven't done it yet, but I think it'd still be hilarious.

This post has been edited by Caesar on 3rd July 2005 00:47

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Is PJ

I like it! The Berserker Pengu Assault!
...
And, yet ANOTHER Desperation Attack!
This time, it's for... Gau!
Stampede
Graphic: Chocobop, only not with chocobos. With... I dunno, anything else.
Effects: Big damage and muddle!

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Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

You could restrict the imp (penguin) spell to be learned only if a character has Imp ('guin...) status when the battle ends. A simple CMP with Imp ('guin...)'s spell ID and the spell being learned, and a BEQ to a subroutine that makes the check and skips over the bit that increases the learn rate if not imped wouldn't take too much effort.

Sure wouldn't involve anything as nasty as rewriting part of the animation script handling routines to gain access to additional banks.

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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."

Ooh, another one! For Mog! Ready?
Spire
Graphic: A spear is thrown into a single enemies side. Lightning then strikes said spear. Hits 2 times.

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Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

WGG: Strain of good ideas, yes?

RL: As per usual, if you make it, I'll use it. It's not a top priority, though. Long jump, final battle, RuneLancer rest, whatever else.

How goes that patch, anyways? Any luck yet?

Edit

RL, I just realized I misunderstood what you said. It doesn't matter if they have the status effect when they learn it. Heck, for all I care, they could START with the spell. The problem would be making it castable ONLY IF the status was applied.

This post has been edited by Caesar on 3rd July 2005 01:27

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Is PJ

I have a few item ideas, too..
Antipotion: Damages foe by 250.
Antielixer: Cuts foe's HP and MP by 9999.

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Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

In theory, I have a solution to the long jump command that would work just fine. I'm about to tackle it in practice, though, and that'll determine wether this is reasonable or not. Either way, it involves rewriting part of the parser as well as adding an instruction. The end results will require quite a bit of testing because I'm not sure if I've covered EVERY area that uses what I've rewrote, but like I said, it should work.

My sig should explain why I'm a little slow wrapping myself around heavy assembly hacks. But I'm taking a break and gonna start implementing stuff after a quick shower and a warm mug 'o coffee. At this rate, a string of raw hex values floating around my screen would be welcomed.

As for the whole casting imp only when imped bit, it sounds like there's a flaw in your idea. If you HAVE to be imped to cast it in the first place, but start off NOT imped, how's anyone going to use the spell? Unless you make a monster start off with Imp status, that is. Or have other spells/enemy attacks cause it without requiring the user of these attacks to be imped.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 3rd July 2005 02:23

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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."

Ah. That's understandable then, RL. Beta testing takes priority. Whenever you get around to it then.

Quote

As for the whole casting imp only when imped bit, it sounds like there's a flaw in your idea. If you HAVE to be imped to cast it in the first place, but start off NOT imped, how's anyone going to use the spell? Unless you make a monster start off with Imp status, that is. Or have other spells/enemy attacks cause it without requiring the user of these attacks to be imped.

Let me sort something out real quick. The spell Imp no longer exists (for all practical purposes). The lore Pep up was eliminated because, hey, who ever used it? Pep up is now Penguinize, which induces the Penguin status ailment. Becoming a penguin isn't the issue.

Now, if the spell formerly known as imp (we'll call it PenguAssault) is learnable through the Penguin equipment, anybody can learn it. To prevent the game becoming a barrage of PenguAssault spells, I would have the spell only usable as a Penguin. Simply speaking, the spell "Imp" is usable both as an Imp and as a human. Basically, I just want to disable the casting of the spell as a human, so you can ONLY use it as an imp.

...of course, that would simply mean that you could just make all the characters Penguins. Gah. Whatever. Screw it.

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Is PJ

Is there a way to make the spell only usable to the one wearing the Penguin gear?

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Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

Maybe. That would be the ideal situation, since there is only one set of gear, but eh, I guess we'll see.

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Is PJ

Ah, I misunderstood what you were trying to do with the spell.

How about giving PenguAssault a low success rate? That way, players won't be able to rely on it to beat the game. Alternately, you could use one of the elements solely for this and make most enemies resistant to it (though there are precious few spare elements... maybe wind could be substituted? This is, mind you, a game mechanics issue the player wouldn't actually see.) Either way, I'm sure there are plenty of means of preventing abuse.

As for the long jump animation command, I'm partly through with it. The new areas I've reserved in RAM don't SEEM to be used, and tests plugging values into them didn't seem to affect the game at all, so so long as I haven't overlooked places where the script is read from, it should run fine. I probably won't be able to get it to you tonight, though, as we became tomorrow three minutes ago. And I also want to test it a little, because these are semi-large modifications to how the animation script parser works. Having it cause problems down the road would be pretty bad for the hack.

I'm gonna test stuff intermittently until this morning and send you the IPS then. I'll get to work on the last battle's changes tomorrow.

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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."

Ah. I understand. This is turning out to be a crazy huge project for you, RuneLancer. I'm surprised you stuck with it. Thanks for the extensive test-runs; some glitches in the system could devastate progress indeed. If I get it tomorrow morning (this morning? Is today tomorrow already?), that leaves an entire day to program! Excellent. But hey, if you're not confident with it, don't rush.

As for the final battle, I'm sure this new gem will keep me more than occupied for awhile. I'm going to completely program the hell out of some of these animations, so I shouldn't begin work on the final battle, realistically, for another week or so, if then even. Whenever you get it is fine, as per usual.

As for PenguAssault, I could certainly use the element idea to make Pengu an element, but that would make the skill altogether worthless if you could only use it on a single enemy (or a select handful). Plus, I fully use all 8 elements. Read: battle with Caesar = elemental hell. A low success rate could certainly work, or maybe an incredibly low power or something, since the equipment would boost it to the moon anyways. We'll see what I do, I guess, and how confident I am with my animation programming...oh and how creative I'm feeling with spears.

Thanks a ton, RuneLancer. If this works, I'm building a shrine in your honor

...or maybe just an extra few lines in the credits page.

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Is PJ