[RELEASE] Golden Sun: The Balance Age

[Caledor]

yup, i think so too. Guess v1.26 will be coming very soon ;)

v1.26 is out!

[VardenSalad]

[unintentionally long post ahead, I got carried away]

Ok, first things first. The staff icon looks awesome, as does the robe, but the staff is really just top notch. You all get extra praise because not only do the full icons look very solid, the focal points of the new icons are above the skull and E icons (signifying cursed and equipped) allowing them to still look both unique and not out of place. Whoever put that jeweled necklace(?) component into the robe gets a high-five; the color contrast ties the piece together.

Well, since we're in the mood to dump some icons for new ones, did you ever consider making a cursed glove/bracelet-type armor to round out the cursed-equipment sets?

Granted, I have no idea what the stats would be and I'm hesitant to suggest another late-game item to the game (because of the potential of power creep). If I can suggest an archetype for the proposed item, should you choose to make it, I suggest a more mid-game tuned item, one that hurts a bit statistically when you put it in the set, but with an effect useful enough that it's worth using on someone who's already cursed. If you're going to make an end-game item, however, you need some more thematic elements to tie the set together.

Theory-crafting on the cursed sets (Warrior vs. Mage):

Your Warrior set does a good job of feeling synergistic by giving each piece +Ele. pwr, but of different powers for the pieces, simultaneously forcing usage of the entire cursed set by the player (in order to maximize the value of the Angel Ring) and giving a kind of 'set bonus' for completing it (the +Ele. pwr bonuses in all the elements). Your Mage set makes each piece too strong on its own and the set collectively lacks the cohesiveness of the Warrior set, mostly due to the lack of a third piece to balance around. So, I think looking at all the items' EFFECTS as a single stat ball works best to see this, since the defense numbers are relatively non-thematic and binding, besides being very high.

Warrior set:
+15 Power (from 3 different pieces)
+20 Attack (2 pieces, helm and shield)
+++ Criticals (3 pieces)
+50 Max HP (1 piece, armor)
-30 Max PP (1 piece, helm)
(Darksword has no effects beyond 'Cursed' so it's inclusion or not makes no difference besides Angel Ring efficiency)

Alright, what do we have? Looks like a Dark/Blood Knight. +MaxHP to take hits, +magical offense stats, -mental attribute stats(in this case PP), and a large emphasis on criticals. And look how many different pieces contributed to similar stats. Well executed.

Mage set:
+20 Power (from only the robe)
+30 Max PP (from only the circlet)
-20 Max HP (just the circlet again)
+6 PP/turn (circlet)
+ Criticals (circlet)
(In this case, the staff actually adds + Power and +Max PP, which is really nice and mage-y. By the way, this thing's icon just looks so great. Did I mention that?)

Ok then. As of now, the robe and the circlet do completely unrelated, but still helpful things. The robe adds so oomph with elements, the circlet with PP. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have anything to do with each other, which is kinda sad.

So, what if we did this:

Demon Circlet: +Defense (same), -Max HP (20 -> 20/25/30), +Max PP (same), + Power (0 -> 25), Increases Criticals (same), +PP/turn (6 -> 0)

I know what you're thinking, "where'd the +PP/turn go?" The answer: Well, here's the thing. Unlike with the warrior set, mages in this game are stuck between healing and casting, +PP/turn and +MaxPP. While your mod does an admirable job of making Psynergy much more effective, the fact of the matter is that you can't really make an item that is good for both healers and casters without making it either broken or too weak. You can either stick a good amount of +PP/turn on it and healers heal for free(-ish) or you stick +MaxPP on it and casters go to town. Since it's easier to balance healing around PP cost and casters don't invalidate the game if they're a bit too strong relatively (considering how weak they were in vanilla and the problem is closer to remedied but I don't think it can be perfect) I opted to take this set in a caster route. So, there may be a bit of +PP/turn in this set, but +MaxPP prevails.

Dark Robe: +Defense (same), +   Power (20 -> 25), +   Power (20 -> 0), +Max PP (0 -> 50), +PP/turn (0 -> 10)

There we go. Not only does the Robe half-mirror the Stealth Armor numerically (+50 HP vs +50 PP) where something like the Terror Shield adds crit, we add +PP/turn. If you think the numbers are bonkers on the +PP, you can always pull em back. For comparison, Spirit Gloves give, +20, Jester's gives +25, Minerva gives +20, Demon Circlet gives +30, and the Iridial Ring gives +15. There may be others.

So, we need a third item to complete this. The [insert new item name here] to the Warrior set's Terror Shield; something that has the offensive characteristics of the class without a relatively weird stat like the Stealth Armor's +MaxHP or the Fear Helm's -MaxPP. So, here's what I got.

Seker's Gages: +Defense (43), + Power (25), +Max PP (25), +PP/turn (10), Increases Criticals.

Defense is just a hair over the Big Bang Gloves, but Jenna wants the + Power for big Auras when combined with Atropos'. The +MaxPP is level with Jester's and The +PP/turn has to be just low enough that a Psychic Circlet/Mysterious Robe/Iridial Ring is still the go to set-up for healers, requiring a lot of dedicated resources to keep the PP flowing at the cost of some +MaxPP better used on a caster. If you think this is too strong because casters get +Ele. Power and +MaxPP from staffs, just dump critics and stick another -25 MaxHP on it and bump the defense one point to compensate.

Stat round-up with new item:

+25 Power (from 3 pieces)
+105 MaxPP (from 3 pieces)
+20 PP/turn (from 2 pieces, robe and gloves)
-20/25/30 MaxHP (just 1 piece, circlet)
++ Criticals (2 pieces, gloves and circlet)

Sacrifice life points, acquire +MaxPP. Blood mages trade life for power, and now so do the items. Can always make it cost more life and bump defense up a touch. Plus now the set now comes into its own, with each piece adding something complementary, as well as informing the unaware that there's another item or two necessary to complete the set. How are you supposed to know to go looking for Serek's if the Robe gives all the +Ele Power and the Circlet gives all the +Max PP? Or even to go looking for the Robe in general? Now there's clues.

I guess this got a little lengthy. Sorry about that. I don't expect a response of comparable length. I just like thematic consistency.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

*Actually looks at the first post for a sec, and then stumbles on a question(s).*

#1: GS1 PC id:

Getting rid of partial classes will probably be impossible in the first GS 'cause the character id is not carried over into the formula like in TLA.

Can you explain to me how this is the case?
Both GS1 and GS2 have the first argument (r0 at the beginning of the function) be the PC id... but for later use in the function, they move it to different registers. GS1 moves it to r5, while GS2 moves it to r7.
Anyway, GS2 does have r2/item as an argument, but GS1 doesn't.... and that's probably the main difference between GS1/GS2 class assigning....

080799B0 (GS1 class match function.)
080B0144 (GS2 class match function.)


@GS1:
080799D8 = Checks flag 0x20. (Basically if young Isaac/Garet/etc. or not, I think.) (0x21 would be the Machette flag, but it isn't used here.)
080799E4 = Compares PC to Isaac. (Class id=0xc8) (Only executed if flag 0x20)
080799EA = Compares PC to Garet. (Class id=0xc9) (Only executed if flag 0x20)
080799F0 = Compares PC to Jenna. (Class id=0xca)

^ These assign the class id directly... instead of class type.  But the code pass this deals with class type... (Only executed if none of the above conditions were meant, and if PC id is 0-7.)


Hmm? So you have it set up like this?
Felix and Isaac use class type 20 for base class.
Class type 20-29 = Isaac, going up by 10s for each character until 99?
And class type 0-19 are entirely unused? (With the exception of item classes.)
Three of Garet's classes get switched to Isaac's, and  three of Mia's classes get switched to Sheba''s. (All of which are not the respective class(?)....)
( Have to double check because I can be clumsy sometimes. :( )

(Not sure if there's a way to clean this up, but maybe....)
Doing something like (1 << primary) | (1 << secondary) ... instead of the class type chart.... hmmm.... may be interesting to think about, but haven't really thought much about it. (Except that you now will get unused class types in between the gaps doing that... so a better formula could do...)

(It could be useful to make sure dual classes are dual-only, and in the event you are sure you don't care about elemental priority and want to further separate things... maybe... and in that case..  you could also change the first bit so it just gets elements above level 0... instead of looking for the top two or more elements.  It might even be enough to insert your code without needing to branch outside the function, but I dunno.  - However, I doubt including the third and fourth elements would be worth doing... depending on what changes you make.)

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Removed. (Accidentally double posted. It happens. Kind of wish posts auto-merged... Or at least have a message pop up that you are double posting...  oh well.)

[Caledor]

@Varden: i did consider making a cursed bracelet at first, and distribute bonuses among 3 items (circlet robe and bracelet) like you suggested (and for the same reasons: thematic consistency) but then i gave up and switched to two and the absurdly long post that follows (:P) is meant to explain why. The premise of cursed items is that they have to be very strong to maximize the effectiveness of the angel's ring. This lead me to designing items in a way that once you slap the items on a character, the full set just builds on its own cause the cursed items are simply the best among the other options you have.

For the cursed warrior set it was amazingly easy to do so. I just had to give each item + critical bonuses in a way that they were at least on par with others of the same category and the other bonuses (+hp, +power, +defense and +attack) shifted automatically the balance towards them. For example, try removing a measly 5 crit bonus from the terror shield... to me the riot gloves suddenly look stronger (despite higher defence and +15maPower on the shield) cause crits are just that important to warriors.

For cursed mages wasn't that easy. Mages have no must boost attribute like warriors do, but they instead rely on a limited amount of bonuses that depends on class, element(s), and purpose (caster/healer).
Those are +Power (usually distributed among robe and glove/bracelet) and +maxPP OR +PP/turn (usually on the circlet). +Resistance and + criticals are added bonuses of lower importance.
So here was my problem. "How do I spread 2/3 bonuses among 3 items in a way that EVERY (caster) mage picks them once i give him the angel ring?"

- Spread the 4 power boosts among robe and glove? Since this is a multi element bonus, the values are likely going to be lower than single element boosts despite the cursed status. This would lead to many situations where casters are more likely to renounce either the robe or the bracelet for a non cursed one that suits them the best. For example if i give + Ma/Ve to the robe and +Ju/Me to the bracelet, Miko Jenna picks the big bang gloves or the titan gloves all the time, while fateweaver Sheba wouldn't have any reasons to renounce the aeolian cassock for the dark robe independently of what other amazing bonuses i give it.
- 4 power bonuses on both bracelet and robe? Same issue: numbers too low on the bracelet and due to mages specializing in one or two element at most, other options would be better. Not to mention that i'd have no more space left on the same item for other bonuses.
- Broken combinations/Weak items. The "other bonuses" apart from +power are +maxPP and (especially) +PP/turn. There's a reason +PP/turn is mostly confined to circlets and it's that thing might get out of hand if i start spreading pp regen on too many items. For example, try replacing the demon circlet on the set you designed with the psychic circlet. You suddenly have the ultimate healer: someone that can spam Pure wish at 16 PP per turn with increased power and bigger PP pool on top of it. The first reaction to that would be lowering the values, but then the bonuses suddenly mean very little and the single items start getting overlooked for others again.

So here's why i got to full power robe and PP circlet. The robe power values are generally lower then the glove/bracelet (only exception is mercury IIRC, the element best suited for healing while the cursed set focuses on offense), so mages would pick the robe and specialize with the non-cursed glove/bracelet choosing either one of the 4 +power or the major +critical on the mythril bracelet. Something that, as explained above, would've more often than not happened anyway.
The circlet instead boosts both max pp and +pp/turn making it a very solid choice for any mage (despite the HP malus) while avoiding at the same time potential brokenness.

However, I must say that i didn't consider a cursed +Ve power bracelet. I like the idea of it complementing the Ker's Weight and it can exist alongside the Titan Gloves due to the +crit bonus it would surely have. I'll think about it but i really like the concept.

PS. thanks for the praise on the items looks :D

@Fox I really don't know which function you're talking about. in gs2, as you've seen, i edited the one showed in the class separation patch topic, so i looked for the same one in gs1 but i never saw the PC id there. Maybe it exists at an earlier point? Sorry but i'm writing from memory cause I still haven't checked the addresses you wrote, I'll probably do it tomorrow.

Class type 20-29 = Isaac, going up by 10s for each character until 99?
And class type 0-19 are entirely unused? (With the exception of item classes.)
Three of Garet's classes get switched to Isaac's, and three of Mia's classes get switched to Sheba''s. (All of which are not the respective class(?)....)

All correct. Felix gets switched to Isaac unless he's on base class. The reason Sheba doesn't do the same with Ivan is due to the function being also used for my Italian rom. In Italian nouns and adjectives change with gender (male wizard = female wizard -> magO/magA) so she takes hers from Mia instead.

Except that you now will get unused class types in between the gaps doing that... so a better formula could do...

the only reason i started from 20... i wanted to avoid as many headaches as possible.

[Rolina]

That's cute.  You guys think those posts are long. :P

It's really tough to balance for spell power when there isn't proper stat support.  I think you did a really good job on that front all things considered.  I think my only real complaint about this can be chalked up to a difference in philosophy, and that's the approach to classes - and that's solidly a "to each their own" kinda thing with no real right answer.  Still, good work all around.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

I really don't know which function you're talking about. in gs2, as you've seen, i edited the one showed in the class separation patch topic, so i looked for the same one in gs1 but i never saw the PC id there. Maybe it exists at an earlier point? Sorry but i'm writing from memory cause I still haven't checked the addresses you wrote, I'll probably do it tomorrow.

Oh yeah, that's right... @080799FE, r5 is overwritten with the contents of r8. (Which is 0xFFFFFFFF) - It's probably because they decided they didn't need it anymore at that point, so you can probably rewrite it to suit your needs. (Easy when the formula/function isn't that long. Well, not nearly as long as the damage formula/function, anyway.)

All correct. Felix gets switched to Isaac unless he's on base class. The reason Sheba doesn't do the same with Ivan is due to the function being also used for my Italian rom. In Italian nouns and adjectives change with gender (male wizard = female wizard -> magO/magA) so she takes hers from Mia instead.

Sounds useful to know. Thanks! - And yeah, I understand the male/female thing... since I think that's how it workks in Spanish as well.... (Although this might not be 100% of the time...(Not sure?) Basically, if it ends in O, it's probably male, if it ends in A it is probably female... And even in English you can see that a little bit with some nouns (Maybe cognates... words like pinata.), but it's probably quite rare in comparison... so mostly just names(?).)

the only reason i started from 20... i wanted to avoid as many headaches as possible.

Alright... (I think you quoted the wrong sentence(?).. well sort of, and sort of not... since that one was referring to my idea.)


---

That's cute.  You guys think those posts are long. :P

Well, it is a long post for casual chats... but for technical information and serious debate, not nearly as much at all.

[VardenSalad]

@Cal:

I agree, with pretty much the entirety of you post. Your line of reasoning was what I had pretty much guessed at for the decisions you made. While I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that people would go halfway with build options, due to the needed efficiency of Angel Ring usage, I didn't take enough of a sheer min-maxing attitude into account. Thank you for the compliment on the nature of the cursed gloves I pitched.

Mages are difficult, if not impossible, to balance for given the relative lack of balance "levers", per se. So the fact that two distinct archetypes rose from one simple combined stat pool. Add in the fact that at around Lemuria, dungeons become relatively easier and total psynergy pool becomes much less of a deterrent to simply healing after almost every battle. Given that random encounters go for 3 turns max and boss encounters can go for many, many more and it becomes simply impossible to balance for both states.

To Camelot's credit, there is in-universe justification for this problem, as every character casts spells and hits things with sharp objects of various make and model, so the lines between classes are blurred. Doesn't make it any less of a pain from a balance standpoint.

I don't even know if it's possible to create a 'set' for mages in the same way as for warriors, but the exercise itself was entertaining enough.

I do wish that this game did a better job at pointing non-wiki-using players toward rare drops; it really is impossible to know where the majority of them are. But that is an entirely different problem.

[Rolina]

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I've moved away from the editor as a means of creating what I want.  Separating it into PP, Casting, and Warding gives us those levers for stats, and making magnitude and ability type distinct from one another gives us more to work with over in the ability side of things.  These are things that Vanilla GS doesn't really have built-in support for, unfortunately.

With luck, OpenGS will have support for adding that kind of thing.  I really hope he doesn't just re-create what's done in vanilla beat for beat - a little flexibility will go a hell of a long way.

Man... could you imagine what a reblanced GS could look like if we could do that?

[Caledor]

@Role: just thanks. and yes, by now we pretty much know each other's viewpoint on classes. ;)

@Fox: the "probably" part is what makes italian a nightmare for foreigners. an example? prophet -> profetA/profetESSA. it's more like everything is irregular and you just memorize it.

@Varden: Thank you for your suggestion. Who knows, maybe v1.26a would just focus on that one. :D
I don't really know when i'll work on it though, it's more likely that i'll take a little break now with gs modding and focus on other hobbies at least for the coming week, unless something urgent pops up

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Has there even been a single open-source version of OpenGS yet (i.e. as a demo.) If not, then it could be interesting to do something like that ourselves. (From square one.) I mean, I doubt I'm afraid of having people end up with a number of different versions if it means getting into the programming business much faster. (Whether I do end up doing it is yet to be decided.... but I'd probably end up with tiny demos or something(?))
There's a GitHub ( https://github.com/opengoldensun ) , but nothing seems to be on it?

@Italian: Maybe, but don't forget that I think Spanish has irregulars as well....
http://www.123teachme.com/learn_spanish/grammar_5 = But anyway, here are some nouns where the ending imply opposite gender... (I think this is always tthe case, though?: el = singular masuline "the" / la=singular feminine "the" / los/las are the plural ones)

[Caledor]

well italian and spanish are pretty similar and it's usually easy for speakers of one to learn the other... difficulties arise when you're a native english speaker... people tend to get scared learning that they're going from 2/3 words per verb (all modes) to more than 40, to say one.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

:D
Cool. Although... I always thought Portuguese was the most similar to Spanish. (With maybe different pronunciations.) Similar, but definitely not the same.
But anyway, you say Italian is similiar... I think French is also similar as well.. (But I know very little about French aside from a few things... like le and la are for "the"... and the word "no" means the same in English, Spanish, and French. Etc.)

German... is a bit weird... since even though it has many different the's... none of them look like el/le/la.... They all start with a d for one...

Copy-pasted:

Masculine Neuter Feminine Plural
Nominative: der das die die
Accusative: den das die die
Dative: dem dem der den
Genitive: des des der der

[javi3]

You not if I understand correctly , want to put this patch in multiple languages?
It is that my English is not very good ...

[Caledor]

i already answered you on this before, this mod will always be available only in english. With the sole, obvious exception of italian, if somebody happens to ask for it.

[javi3]

then you can put this patch in Italian? It would be great to have him in that language!

[Caledor]

The rar is in the attachment. It contains IPS patches for the Italian versions of GS and TLA.
2 things to note. While GS is ready to go right after being patched, after you patch the TLA rom you MUST:

1) rename the ROM to "Golden Sun - L'Era Perduta.gba"
2) put it into the gstlatoolkit folder
3) run the batch file "go_TLA.bat"

This is because i used gstlatoolkit for text editing, which expanded the rom to 24mb, while ips patches can handle files only up to 16mb. hence the additional patch.

The second thing to note is that a lot of text, names etc were edited to suit my personal tastes. While I won't listen to any complain to this, you have all the tools you need to tweak every line of text by yourself, for both roms. Just open either gs_script or tla_script, edit as you see fit, and then patch again (the rom must be inside the folder) by running the corresponding batch file (go_GS or go_TLA). The default names for the rom are "Golden Sun.gba" and the aforementioned "Golden Sun - L'Era Perduta.gba", but those names can be changed by editing the "go" batches (if you don't know what this means just stick to the default names and you'll be fine).

[javi3]

very very thanks caledor! 

[VardenSalad]

EDIT: Clean ROM patching worked. For anyone else who had this problem, this is the answer. Yeah, Cal, I know you said clean ROMs every time, but, ok.

Alright, I have a question.

I was using the editor after patching to 1.26 and I noticed that a very good chunk of the enemy list had names that looked like:

"[16][3]hed oulllllle[3]lllllllllllod oullllllloulllllid oullll oullllllly y oulllllllaie[3]he[3]hed ofoullllllly.[2]Goulllllll oknulll ounullllllly Whe[3]he[3]houlll.............[2]Goulllllllllicrid oulll...[2]"

for the Young Isaac spot (which is 0 on the list) or

"Ahe[3]httttttou[3]he[3]he[3]hesuttttt ounullllllisttttt'lllllll oullllllllllllllllllevw oulll.....[2]Goulid Whtttttowe[3]he[3]he[3]jid Favw oullllllllliap oulllllid Whe[3]he[3]caid oullllle tttttt.......... ounullllllllllllly ap oullllitrid ofou'snulllllllld Whe[3]he[3]Djoullllllllllllle[3]he[3]hem y oullllllloullll.....................[2]Goullllllo[3]he[3]he[3]he[3]he[3]he[3]he[3]he[3]he[3]he[3]h..[2]Goulllllltennuly oc"

for one of the Djinn. I can't really tell what to do about it, but I'll try a clean rom and edit this post.

[Caledor]

Which version are you talking about? I just tried with both clean USA and EU rom and it worked.
BTW this happens when the text section differs from the one i based my patch on (even a single byte is enough to mess the whole thing up). So it's either a non clean rom or another one that is somehow different from mine.