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How to make Summons in a new Slot

Started by VanishMantle, 28, July, 2014, 12:43:10 PM

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VanishMantle

I had wanted to do some unique stuff with my next Golden Sun and TLA mod However I want to make summons better for enemies to use without having to adjust the damage or have them as a skill without the damage being terrible I mainly just need the animation to play for this however looking in the editor the animation slots don't work on new slots I read (not sure where on the forum) that the summons are coded differently so is it possible to edit this in with a HEX editor? If so where would I even begin looking for this information. I apologize if this is confusing or has been asked before. Any help is much appreciated.

Lord Wolfram

Well one thing you can do is to replace graphic.
Haven't tried by myself but should work
for example.
Replace Quake graphic with Venus and there you go. summon spell in slot

Salanewt

I'm not sure which version you have, but Teawater released a basic update a little while back that allows you to define ability types as things like "EPA," "Morph EPA," or "Summon" and stuff. Changing an ability like Quake into a summon-type ability would let you use a number of the summon animations, Trident's animation, and so forth.

But if you want to use a hex editor, this page has some information on what the types are and crap.

Hope this helps!
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Misery

I believe all you need to do is change the animation argument for some regular psynergies, which can be done in the editor. This is the thread you want for that.

VanishMantle

Quote from: Lord Wolfram on 28, July, 2014, 02:51:11 PM
Well one thing you can do is to replace graphic.
Haven't tried by myself but should work
for example.
Replace Quake graphic with Venus and there you go. summon spell in slot


I had thought of that but then then I would have lost quake in the process. I can play around with this though in the future.

Quote from: Lord Squirtle on 28, July, 2014, 04:17:01 PM
I'm not sure which version you have, but Teawater released a basic update a little while back that allows you to define ability types as things like "EPA," "Morph EPA," or "Summon" and stuff. Changing an ability like Quake into a summon-type ability would let you use a number of the summon animations, Trident's animation, and so forth.

But if you want to use a hex editor, this page has some information on what the types are and crap.

Hope this helps!

Oh Sweet I am not sure what version of the editor I have currently because i have like 3 of them lol. I guess I can just download the most recent one again and see if that helps and thanks for the link. I had searched the forum prior to this post and could not find it.

Quote from: Misery on 29, July, 2014, 07:54:30 PM
I believe all you need to do is change the animation argument for some regular psynergies, which can be done in the editor. This is the thread you want for that.

I looked at that topic before and I changed the animation arguments to that of the summons however that do not prove beneficial. Thanks for the suggestions though

I really appreciate how everyone is so helpful here really motivates me to keep working on my mods.

Lord Wolfram

QuoteI had thought of that but then then I would have lost quake in the process. I can play around with this though in the future.
You can replace those cool spells/Psyenergy
[spoiler]?
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reflect
Contain
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?[/spoiler]
The empty slots.

Rolina

That's great, but why not discuss the more difficult issue of the summon's actual damage?  We have no way to do this in the editor, after all, and it's not just some formula the game calculates.  It's a hard number.  No amount of trying to make Coatlique an attack summon will make it do respectable summon-styled damage, not without a deeper understanding of how to implement it than I have. :/

There's plenty of dummy abilities that can be used for summons.  We just have to find a way to make the summon effects actually work. :/

Salanewt

#7
Vanish: Happy to help, and I look forward to seeing your hacks!

Wolfram: Erm... I'm sorry, but what?

Rolina: In all honesty, it's super easy to change the individual % values that summons use in their damage calculation; it would literally be the same as changing them in the editor, with the only difference being the lack of a clear interface. Single byte per value (basically). The slightly tougher part is separating them and making it so you can define the % values, but even then all you would really have to do for that is change the code so it reads each value from a table/bank rather than assigning them based on specific ability IDs. At that point, the toughest part is finding a suitable location to put the table!  :happy:

I take it you guys want a patch for this?  

Edit: Here you go. Took me about 30 minutes.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

VanishMantle

#8
Quote from: Lord Squirtle on 31, July, 2014, 12:24:25 PM
Vanish: Happy to help, and I look forward to seeing your hacks!

Wolfram: Erm... I'm sorry, but what?

Rolina: In all honesty, it's super easy to change the individual % values that summons use in their damage calculation; it would literally be the same as changing them in the editor, with the only difference being the lack of a clear interface. Single byte per value (basically). The slightly tougher part is separating them and making it so you can define the % values, but even then all you would really have to do for that is change the code so it reads each value from a table/bank rather than assigning them based on specific ability IDs. At that point, the toughest part is finding a suitable location to put the table!  :happy:

I take it you guys want a patch for this?  

Edit: Here you go. Took me about 30 minutes.

Sweet I will check out that patch Though i have been interested in seeing if there is a way to set up so i can choose whether an ability uses HP to use or PP as well. I think that would be a pretty cool mechanism. Similar to how if skill used the target dies works but instead it costs a % or portion of HP. Not sure if this is possible but more flexibility in Psynergy skills is always better than nothing.

Gonna look through the abilities list for GS1 which is what I am starting with since most people seem to focus on TLA more. I personally feel it is better to work on both so you have a complete experience. Anyway if you have any idea where the abilities type values are located in GS1 I would be super happy. If not I can locate it myself.

Also how would I figure out which abilities are which if i am looking to change that slot's Ability type value in the hex editor. I guess what I am asking does the ability list start from 0 to 733? or are they ordered differently?

Rolina

Oh, not bad.  I only wish the Editor was still being updated.  Imagine what other optimizations we could make to the game's code like that?  Lord knows that classes would be easier to wield if you checked djinn and character slot rather than element level, for example.  Great job, Sala. ^-^

Salanewt

Vanish:
HP Costs - I don't think it would be terribly hard, but I can't really say where one would begin in doing that. My best guess would be to add another table that would work like for summon damage, but located in the function that deals with deducting PP costs.

GS1: I don't think we have found it in there yet, but I can't imagine that it would be hard to find if it's similar to GS2. Though, I seem to be having some minor difficulty with finding it right now... There's also a small chance that it doesn't use a table, considering there are fewer types and such. It might be like how summons normally are in this game.

Slots: Oh, it's the same as the table in the new patch; abilities 0-733, same order too!


Role:
Thanks! Something like that class idea would probably take a bit of work (and sounds harder from the way you describe it), but you could still choose to assign classes based on character at any rate; it would be similar to how Jenna and Piers are given their unique base classes, but for every character. Although now that I think about it, a little code that ignores the first five or so levels of a given character's base element could help with that. Perhaps a new topic to discuss optimizing the game is in order?
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Rolina

#11
That sounds like a good idea.

As far as classes themselves, the fandom has always taken the approach of associating classes not with element level, but with equipped djinn.  That's why I think it'd be more ideal from a design aspect to go along with that mentality, as it'd lend itself well to class design.  Heck, it'd also allow for more variety in what we can do with classes, such as branched class paths.  IIRC, earlier in the days of the site, we had this idea before, though it wasn't exactly easy to implement due to how GS handles its class system.  By switching to a strictly djinn-based system, earlier attempts to make branching classes would be more successful (ex:  Venus adept using 5 :JupiterStar: 4 :VenusStar:, 7 :JupiterStar: 2 :VenusStar:, or 9 :JupiterStar: to achieve 3 different versions of the class, an attempt I tried unsuccessfully before).  If we had access to more user-friendly tools on top of these optimization patches, it'd likely cause a huge boon to the various hacks.

You know, we could probably make a version of the editor that works on these optimizations.  If we were to get a programmer to replace Atrius on the editor, we could make a version of it that has options for patches like this (similar to how Atrius has the name and RNG patches).  I imagine that by checking the patches, it'd update the UI for the editor to accompany them, allowing us to customize things such as HP Percentile Damage and secondary effects (ex: Megaera's team attack boost).  Other things I'd like to see is a patch that disables the text compression.  Because seriously, to hell with that crap.  Oh, I've got an optimization for ya - some ASM conversions.  There's plenty of people who would love to modify formulas, as well as customize effects and the like.

Oh, and a way to stop the djinn screen from auto-arranging djinn would be great.  If we could have it so that you could simply arrange them manually like in dark dawn, it would allow for quite a bit more player friendliness in the end.

Man, if we can make something akin to Lunar Magic for Golden Sun, that'd be awesome.

VanishMantle

Quote from: Lord Squirtle on 01, August, 2014, 12:40:47 AM
Vanish:
HP Costs - I don't think it would be terribly hard, but I can't really say where one would begin in doing that. My best guess would be to add another table that would work like for summon damage, but located in the function that deals with deducting PP costs.

GS1: I don't think we have found it in there yet, but I can't imagine that it would be hard to find if it's similar to GS2. Though, I seem to be having some minor difficulty with finding it right now... There's also a small chance that it doesn't use a table, considering there are fewer types and such. It might be like how summons normally are in this game.

Slots: Oh, it's the same as the table in the new patch; abilities 0-733, same order too!


I was looking into last night and it definitely seems like GS1 uses a different setup for abilities. About the slots I was more meaning for GS1 but since we haven't found where those are at that so it is fine. I'll do some digging later tonight after my stream is over. I figured out how to set that up in TLA and I cannot wait to start hacking that because there was so much that i wanted to do but couldn't. Now I can make the summoner class actually work like I wanted to.

Luna_blade

Quote from: Rolina on 01, August, 2014, 08:11:34 AM
That sounds like a good idea.

As far as classes themselves, the fandom has always taken the approach of associating classes not with element level, but with equipped djinn.  (quote shortened)
Wow that explains for me why GS1 & GS2 use so little of the total availible classes.
You might have noticed I posted some calculations about classes in the CBox a week ago.

That is indeed the better way of managing classes, and if I ever get to the point of making a fangame, I surely will implement this mechanic.
"Hear the sounds and melodies
Of rilets flowing down
They're the verlasting songs
Whispering all the time
As a warning that behind some rocks
There's a rigid grap even
Oreads fear the tread"

Rolina

Eh, I think it's a bit different.  There's whole class types (ex:  Mercury version of the Samurai line) that would have fit in fine and could be done (and were done by us), as well as the full class separation that should have happened between Team Isaac and Team Felix.  There's actually just enough spaces in the base version of the code to add a second Tri-Hybrid for both a Samurai and a White Mage counterpart, as well as duplicate the whole thing for the second team.  Throw on the three item classes and a single space between each class and you'd got a full assortment - as can be seen in my old class template.  I think Camelot may have been a bit pressed for time, especially with TLA, and that's why it wasn't used to its full potential.

VanishMantle

Quote from: Rolina on 01, August, 2014, 09:25:16 AM
Eh, I think it's a bit different.  There's whole class types (ex:  Mercury version of the Samurai line) that would have fit in fine and could be done (and were done by us), as well as the full class separation that should have happened between Team Isaac and Team Felix.  There's actually just enough spaces in the base version of the code to add a second Tri-Hybrid for both a Samurai and a White Mage counterpart, as well as duplicate the whole thing for the second team.  Throw on the three item classes and a single space between each class and you'd got a full assortment - as can be seen in my old class template.  I think Camelot may have been a bit pressed for time, especially with TLA, and that's why it wasn't used to its full potential.

Speaking of said template, I remember hearing word that there was some kind of corruption with it? I would love to make use of it for when I make my next TLA mod but hate having to 0 every class out and end up forgetting something in the process =___=

Lord Wolfram

This is rely interesting.
once we will restart the War of Alchemy project this information will be truly useful.

Luna_blade

Quote from: Lord Wolfram on 01, August, 2014, 12:55:27 PM
This is rely interesting.
once we will restart the War of Alchemy project this information will be truly useful.
Sure is. I wonder if we are able to change jjppof's engine.
Or perphaps he already uses this system.
"Hear the sounds and melodies
Of rilets flowing down
They're the verlasting songs
Whispering all the time
As a warning that behind some rocks
There's a rigid grap even
Oreads fear the tread"

Rolina

Quote from: VanishMantle on 01, August, 2014, 11:36:35 AM
Quote from: Rolina on 01, August, 2014, 09:25:16 AM
Eh, I think it's a bit different.  There's whole class types (ex:  Mercury version of the Samurai line) that would have fit in fine and could be done (and were done by us), as well as the full class separation that should have happened between Team Isaac and Team Felix.  There's actually just enough spaces in the base version of the code to add a second Tri-Hybrid for both a Samurai and a White Mage counterpart, as well as duplicate the whole thing for the second team.  Throw on the three item classes and a single space between each class and you'd got a full assortment - as can be seen in my old class template.  I think Camelot may have been a bit pressed for time, especially with TLA, and that's why it wasn't used to its full potential.

Speaking of said template, I remember hearing word that there was some kind of corruption with it? I would love to make use of it for when I make my next TLA mod but hate having to 0 every class out and end up forgetting something in the process =___=
Yeah, I think Teawater fixed it, though I can't remember what he goes by now - he changed his name soon after.