• Welcome to Final Fantasy Hacktics. Please login or sign up.
 
March 28, 2024, 09:06:29 am

News:

Use of ePSXe before 2.0 is highly discouraged. Mednafen, RetroArch, and Duckstation are recommended for playing/testing, pSX is recommended for debugging.


Questions About Weapon Formulas, Proc Rates, and ASMs and Patching

Started by ForestMagi, April 27, 2014, 01:55:55 am

ForestMagi

I registered specifically to ask these questions after spending a week trying to find the answer myself searching the forums. My patch still needs a bit more work before it's ready for a fresh playtest, but I want to double-check a couple of things before I apply them and mess everything up by accident. (I have a fresh ISO as a backup, so I'm not super concerned if things go totally awry, but I'd like to avoid it if possible. :))

So, I'm using Raven's Workbooks and altering a few things (thank you, by the way, to everyone who contributed; they're wonderful), but I'm curious about a few things and worried I may be interpreting it all wrong. Specifically, as the title suggests, about weapon formulas, proc rates, and ASMs and patching.

On Weapon Formulas:
1) I'd really like to change barehanded attacks to be ((PA+SP)/2)*SP, but I don't know if the STAT1*STAT2/CONST*STAT3 formula present in "FDC's Weapon Formula ASM" can be manipulated quite that much and give the result I want. If it can't, is there another way to achieve this?
2) This is sort of an addendum to the previous question, but is more about clarification: do I put PA/MA/SP in place of STAT, or do I put 36/37/38? (For the record, and so you don't have to run off and check, 36/37/38 are the numbers in the cells next to those stats in the reference block.) The instructions imply it's the 36/37/38 option, but I'm not sure if I'm interpreting them correctly or not.

On Weapon Proc Rates:
1) Does the proc rate indicated in the column indicate the chance a status will be inflicted or a spell will be cast? The instructions in Raven's master post seem to suggest that's the case, but I want to be certain before I mess with them.
2) If the former is correct, then what is the Ability Proc Rate % for? I was originally under the impression that THIS was the spell cast modifier, but in FFTPatcher a weapon that casts a spell on-hit can't also inflict a status on-hit, so I don't even have a guess as to what this does.

If these last two seem like odd questions, what I'm going for is this:

All knife-type weapons inflict negative statuses on-hit 50% (75%?) of the time.
All staff- and pole-type weapons will use the MA*WP formula and have 0 WP (and so do no damage no matter how much MA you have), but cast beneficial spells on-hit 100% of the time.
All rod- and book-type weapons are the same, but cast damage or negative status spells on-hit 100% of the time.

On ASMs and Patching:
Should I use FFTorgASM to apply the ASM hacks I use before or after applying my patch with FFTPatcher? I'm fairly sure I'm correct in assuming I should do it after, but I just want to be sure, as I've never done it before.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me. :)

RavenOfRazgriz

1. You can't make that kind of a formula with the current iteration of the workbook.
2. You put the value.  If you look at the formula constructor below the instructions you'll see that's how its built.  You only use the "name" of a stat when referencing WP.

1. That is what that number would be.  (It's in hex, obviously.)
2. Ability Proc Rate is the base proc rate of ALL abilities in the game that use the standard proc routine.  So if you wanted 100% status procs on all skills, you would set this to be 64.  It's a bit ambiguous because Pride just pigeonholed it there at the end and the rest of the workbook is strictly about items.

The AI doesn't like using 0-power weapons because it can't "see" the procs on your items, so I would recommend against that kind of design.  You would be better off asking someone to hack Formula 04 (the one used by Magic Guns) to suit your needs, since the AI properly understands that.

You should always apply your ASMs as the very last thing you do before testing out your ISO for bugs.

ForestMagi

Ah, thank you so much, this helps me out a lot. <3

I'll figure something else out for barehanded. I found a nice graphing website, so I can punch in a bunch of different formulas that are possible using the workbook and see how smoothly (or not :P) they transition from early to late game. (I've already finished adjusting human stat growths and using LvlSim to calculate the stat growth curve from 1-99, so getting smooth damage curves shouldn't be a problem.)

Hmm... Would changing their formula to MA*0 (using the STAT1*CONST formula) work better, or would that still mess with the AI? I'm not even halfway familiar with it, sadly, though I am making sure to flag my ability changes as properly as I can so it (hopefully) knows what the ability is intended for.

I'm trying to do as much of this as I can on my own (at least until I feel it's ready for public playtesting), so if directly changing the weapon formula is a no-go, I'll see what I can do as far as hacking 04 myself before pestering someone else to do it. :)

Choto

i'm not sure how the AI will view the status addition. I don't think they'll know it inflicts at the other rate, they may think it inflicts according to pre-hack rules. They will, however, see 0 damage/healing and say fuck that I'm pretty sure. I could be wrong though, Raven/FDC/SA know more about AI than me

ForestMagi

Hmm, more things that might mess with my plans. I suppose it was to be expected. :P

I'll run a bunch of tests when I finish editing the weapons, and see what I can find out.


ForestMagi

That seems like a very odd oversight.  :?

Hmm, now I'm wondering if it's possible to ASM hack status/spell proc recognition into the AI. Probably beyond anything I'd be able to accomplish, but I'll search around the forum and see if someone's giving it a shot.

RavenOfRazgriz

It's not really an oversight.  Most games make the AI intentionally inferior to a human because the game would be unwinnable otherwise.  All things considered, FFT's AI is fairly fierce and robust for a strategy AI developed by a major gaming company.  See: the way most battles leave the AI with almost no relevant options to fight you with, and yet Vanilla is still difficult for newbies until they get win-buttons like Orlandu.

ForestMagi

I suppose so. I don't remember having much trouble with vanilla except for the  battle with Velius, so I suppose I have the AI to thank.

I'm going to mark this thread as solved, since my questions have been (more than satisfactorily) solved. Thank you both for the help!