General Hack Suggestions

[Rolina]

This is a thread for general ideas you have for hacks.  Feel free to comment on things, but remember this is mainly a place to just throw out some ideas you think are worth sharing with everyone.

I've got one to start us off:

While the items like Crystal Powder are probably too powerful to be just sold generally, making lesser versions that can be bought would be a great idea.  Do that, change the old items into artifacts so you can buy them back if you want them, and make psynergy tools sellable artifacts, and you can make yourself a nice Psynergy Shop.

On top of that, artifact armor isn't usually found in shops until you sell it, so it may be a great idea to merge the armor and weapon shops.  A great way to make it work in the current editor is to use "Item, Equipment, and Psynergy" shops as well as the General shop.  It's a good way to implement them.

[FelixWolf]

i like the idea of the psynergy shop and you could divide the psynergy shop in healing psynergy/attack or divide them via elements, althought it would resemble a bit to the final fantasy magic shop

[Salanewt]

I have a minor one for today, actually. Remember Magnet/Magic Circle, the one of the unused utility spells? An idea that I have for it would be that it magnetizes you. If walking near metal pillars, it will pull you towards them. However, it also add velocity to the attraction, so it would be possible to be launched too far from the metal. It basically acts as a form of Grab, but with a sort of launch capability added to it. I am not too sure if I am explaining it correctly, so I will provide a different example.

You know how gravity works with small planets in Super Mario Galaxy? Getting close to them allows you to land on them. However, going to far allows you to sort of swerve around them. That is what I was trying to say earlier. Yeah...

[Rolina]

So it's like the magnetic gloves in zelda?  Interesting idea.

[Salanewt]

Pretty much, except that this gives you the ability to be pulled past them and into other pillars. Because you can walk around with the effects of Magnet, this would be possible. I am also trying to think of a use for Arrow, but I can only think of having targets that one can shoot; similar to Zelda, where you get the eyes that you shoot with arrows. You could use it to hit objects from far away, but there would likely be alternatives to that when nearby.

As for the shops, an alternate way to get the Psynergy Shop would be to use the Item Shop. The reason why I say this is because of how shops are coded into the game; combining the Weapons and Equipment Shops requires ASM. While this is probably not too difficult to do, working with ASM can get kind of tiresome.

[Rolina]

...Actually, change arrow's name to fireball and it's animation, tweak a few things and suddenly HUZZAH!  Working fireball spell!

[Charon]

You know, I was thinking, maybe we could have more of the attack psynergies have field based effects? Since they're sprite based animations they wouldn't be crazy hard to implement, and they could be puzzle-solving ideas. For example, Ray/Bolt could be used to fire up electrical machinery.

[Aile~♥]

I can think of some uses for Volcano as well, and maybe even Fume to burn targets at a different altitude than the player.

Quake has an obvious use (replace Tremor), Spire could be used for some things, even Gaia could have a use (basically, just replace Scoop).

[Salanewt]

Role: Oh yeah, I never thought of replacing Arrow with Fireball because I was taking the Blaze route for some reason. Arrow would probably be much easier to change than Blaze anyway. Come to think of it, it might be possible to just change one or two values in the data to switch the graphics used. We should ask Atrius about this when he returns, as I think we are a tad bit too late to do it now.

Charon and Jamie: That would be nice too. Ray/Bolt would also be good in terms of breaking things from afar; like tree branches that can fall in place to form bridges and dams. As for Gaia, I can sort of see that working as an alternative to Grind due to how it looks like a fissure. Spells that could probably be combined or replaced easily include...

Tremor: Quake
Burst: Blast
Grind (or Scoop): Gaia
Blaze/Arrow: Fireball (Arrow is probably unnecessary because of Force, and you probably only need either Blaze or Fireball)