News:

The forum has been updated to SMF (2.1.3)!
Please be patient as we work to polish up the place and update features as we can.

Main Menu

[RELEASE] Golden Sun: The Balance Age

Started by Caledor, 24, January, 2015, 12:29:46 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Rolina

I still like my idea better, but sadly it's just not possible via a hack.  I mean, sure, mechanically you /could/ code it... but it won't be capable of loading that many sprites.  I'd need to use OpenGS so as to not overload the Vram...

Caledor

#861
Well... I only need a fix to summon rushes, I don't want to make summons a completely different thing, so there's really no comparison here. I like your idea btw.

EDIT: Summon Rush has been successfully killed in TLA. Considering that in GS is gonna be easier cause the tablet summons aren't there, i'd say it's only a matter of time before the whole thing is done.

dive_darkness

#862

Okay, last update on the first golden sun.

Lunpa: okay, it's not an end game zone, so it was easy. Maxed attack with divine spear 2x and high impact, then high impact again on second turn and wrecked the frog with planet diver and normal attacks with Ivan. Asura hits hard, yup. Mia on healing, and normal attacks when she can.


Went to fight Saturos/Menardi too. These two are huge bastards. Pyroclasm and supernova hits like a truck, death scyth's KO proc rate is high enough that menardi killed three times in a row, not mitigating a turn with both Pyroclasm and supernova -> Ivan dead.

Again, tried a few different strategies (no items):
base classes/no summon -> five resets because death scyth is just a pain combined to pyroclasm (200 +- 50 on everyone). And damage output wasn't good. Also had to reset because Pyroclasm + supernova.

Planet diver/ wish strategy: same, multiples resets because rnjesus decided that death scyth is Menardi's main attack (of course it OS 3x in a row. Yeah, so you have to waste 3 turns to revive). Still the same with pyroclasm + supernova turns -> Ivan dies.

I tried with Isaac on healing duty with mia, the two others on attack: it should be doable. Except that garet's damage is low in this fight so Ivan basically do 3/4 of te damages, Isaac have revive, mia use a wish-serie psy every turn.
Got killer still by a bad rng. death scyth on isaac, and next turn supernova (centered on Mia) + Heat flash on Mia -> mia dies. Lol.

I tried the ninja class. Yup. Isaac and garet hit the same as in the Black knight class. Except that Ivan is crap (or you mix Mia's djinn as well, which destroys her.) didn't even try that one.

In the end I did it with Djinns/summon (didn't cheese with flash and granite). Mia healer, as always.
That makes 4 djinns, then summon, then djinns, summon, and so on for all 3 others.

Fusion dragon is weak compared to Saturos and Menardi. Outer space hits like pyroclasm but he uses it less often. Dragon driver doesn't hit hard. Cursed breath, lol, he uses it often, and Haunt Proc'd EVERY TIME on all characters that were hit.
The only thing to watch out for are poison (he can poison you, but it's rare), Haunt (just use the water djinn and flash during this turn), his speed. He is extremely fast.
Easily doable with psy only (that's how I did it).

And with this, game finished !

Edit:

How did you kill summon rushing ?

Caledor

#863
QuoteHow did you kill summon rushing?
I think you actually meant "how will summoning work from next version onwards" so...

At turn 0 of EACH battle, you won't be able to summon anything stronger than Ramses/Megaera. You literally won't find Cybele etc in the summon menu.
At turn 1, the 3-djinn summon like Cybele, Procne, Moloch etc appear in the summon menu.
At turn 2, 4-djinn summons like Boreas and Ulysses appear in the summon menu.
At turn 3, Haures and Eclipse appear... and so on.
Charon appears at turn 7 and Iris at turn 8.

Obviously, each summon will appear only if you own the required number of djinn or if you've read its tablet.

As for how i actually accomplished that... i created 3 functions. One that counts turns, one that sets the turns to 0 at the start of each battle and a third that sets the available summons depending on current turn number. then linked the old code to use those new functions... et voilĂ . It's done!

PS: thanks for the report as usual ;)

dive_darkness

No problem.
Sorry, I thought I put the "" around "kill". Turns out I didn't.

I'll try TLA when I get back home in 10 days.

Caledor

#865
Aaand Summon Rushes are gone in GS1 too. Now i have to rebalance summons again, add the new wave animation and then v1.33 will be released.

For those interested, the functions I used to kill summon rushing:
http://i.imgur.com/GDTjiIx.png
http://i.imgur.com/enOlu78.png
http://i.imgur.com/agHPTFP.png

080B05E4: Called at the start of a battle, sets the current turn (02006000) to 0.
080B05F4: Called at the end of each round, increases current turn by 1.
080B060C: Called every time the Summon Flags (0200024C) are altered, it backups them into 02000248 and then sets the available summons depending on turn number.

The third image shows the values used by the AND instruction at each turn. After the 8th turn it always uses the last one.

Rolina

Quote from: Caledor on 26, February, 2016, 10:08:44 PM
Well... I only need a fix to summon rushes, I don't want to make summons a completely different thing, so there's really no comparison here. I like your idea btw.

EDIT: Summon Rush has been successfully killed in TLA. Considering that in GS is gonna be easier cause the tablet summons aren't there, i'd say it's only a matter of time before the whole thing is done.

To be fair, dropping the summon HP% damage to 2% per djinn instead of 3% does that, though I'd have not compensated with higher base damage.  Oh, figure I should ask - do summons benefit from the MaxPP Casting Power thing? If so, base damage reduction might be called for as well...

Caledor

It's enough against most bosses, but you can still waltz through the game with the strongest summons, killing djinn and mid bosses effortlessly. And a turn-0 Boreas is just wrong no matter how you look at it. As for the compensation, I'd just say i did it wrong the first time. Some summons needed a boost in power really badly (the tablet ones till Ulysses), but raising the 4-djinn power to 280 was clearly a mistake to say one.

I'm also lowering the djinn requirement for the 3 strongest ones to make them a bit more accessible, with the added bonus of balancing djinn requirements among summons. Catastrophe to 7, Charon to 8 and Iris to 10 (I already know I'll try to leeroy doom dragon just to Iris the first party back to life with the second :P)

About the PP Multiplier... No. The multiplier and HP% damage are mutually exclusive for any ability.

Rolina

Ah, cool.  Dunno why it never occurred to me to ask before, since there is a base damage component to summons.  Definitely agree in lowering the djinn cost for the higher tier summons - they fell solidly into the awesome but impractical category.  I trust you lowered their HP% damage appropriately?

As for first turn summons... I'd argue that it may be better to have monsters that can exploit you being weaker, but alt-class runs could simply have a Mercury-heavy party in your example I suppose, thus negating the large hit to your stats... 

Is it still possible to do first turn Megaeras, or would that need to be a second turn action?

Caledor

#869
Quote from: Rolina on 29, February, 2016, 07:25:46 AM
Definitely agree in lowering the djinn cost for the higher tier summons - they fell solidly into the awesome but impractical category.  I trust you lowered their HP% damage appropriately?
Of course. The 2% per djinn remains.

QuoteIs it still possible to do first turn Megaeras, or would that need to be a second turn action?
Yes again. Actually, I remembered you opening a lot of your fights with Megaera in your reports, and that ended up being the main reason i left 2-djinn summons available at turn 0. ;)

EDIT: Everything's done almost done. v1.33 will probably be released tomorrow.

EDIT2: Crawling through old topics i discovered how to the game determines which sprite to use for each weapon. With this i can finally make the strong Mars-aligned Mace i promised. Also, Matoi and Meditation Rod will become Ankhs.

Rolina

#870
Hmm... so, as for the pacing of summons, I wonder how that'll work out?  I mean, locking off 5-djinn summons for that long doesn't seem like that good of an idea, since they only need 3 turns to set up on base class runs... I feel maybe the scaling should be different? At the same time, I feel stacking it at two djinn per turn might be too much... Maybe stagger 2/1/2/1?  So: 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9?  Also, I imagine this will be hell for the Doom Dragon battle, since it's basically three fights.

@Strong Mace:  About damn time!  GS really needed better end-game weapon variety.  Though, I wonder how you'll add the new items?  Via shops, drops, or will you hide some new chests in the game?

@Dive Darkness:  Yo, what level were you at for the Satty and Menny fight?
Also @Caledor:  What level do you plan for the party to be at in the Satty and Menny fight, and did you change the levels of default Team Isaac to match that level?  The target level for end game in vanilla TBS is 28, which is the level they join at, so... was curious.

Caledor

#871
@Summon Turns: I don't think I'll change turns for 2 reasons: first, no matter how you set it up you'll end up with "weaker" summons and "stronger" summons in the turn you gain two "tiers". second, it doesn't really change much.

@Doom Dragon is safe: on the round you kill a head the turn count increases by one just like for any other round. The issue exists for Agatio and Karst atop Jupiter Lighthouse and Fusion Dragon. Those reset the turn count.

@Mace: always drops. I actually never even tried tinkering with maps. About endgame variety... remember that there are also the Herculean Axe and the Rising Mace.

@Level: IIRC in TBS i never touched enemy groups nor exp gained. So it's safe to assume the levels are going to be the same of a vanilla playthrough. In my case somehow I always ended up being around 30-32, maybe due to some grind in Venus Lighthouse. 30 was mandatory before IMHO cause you learn Break at that level and you desperately need that for Deadbeard.

BTW, v1.33 is really close

Edit: v1.33 is finalized. Tomorrow it'll be uploaded and i'll discuss the changelog here.

dive_darkness

Rolina: about 28 for everyone. Maybe it's quite low. On Cartridge I finish the game between level 30 and 35 depending on how many fights I run from.

zman9000

QuoteRolina: about 28 for everyone. Maybe it's quite low. On Cartridge I finish the game between level 30 and 35 depending on how many fights I run from.

For a first play through i believe that 28 is too low. but multiple play through i think level 28 is kinda high.
I'm bad at strategy, i just spam stuff i think is good and i win. I've easily beaten the game, with no deaths at all, at level 19. it could have been lower except i leveled a bit before colosso because i every now and then mess it up and on that run i didn't want to mess it up.

I honestly don't know what to put the level of the first game at... since my first play through i sucked so bad, i wasn't able to beat it until i got to level 56 and even then it was a close call. really i think it depends on the person playing.
Check my youtube channel out for lots of cool gaming related videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/xXzman9000Xx

Caledor

#874
v1.33 is UP! Starting post updated.

The main focus of this version are the kill to summon rushes and the new wave animation thanks to Lord Squirtle.

About the other changes:

Break has been made available earlier cause you literally can't fight Deadbeard without it... and having to grind for a single spell seemed unfair to me.

Flash and Shade have been nerfed cause they were the most overused (with the former being downright broken) djinn in both games. Alternating between the two was a very effective strategy that allowed you to cut 3/4 of damage on average while losing only half of the offensive potential.

PP restoring Djinn have been improved cause they were underwhelming IMHO and not practical at all for boss battles.

About the weakness change for some enemies: TLA is VERY EXTREMELY unbalanced in weaknesses. I think that more than 80% of enemies are weak either to Jupiter or Mars. Here and here you can easily check what I said. In vanilla TLA there are 26 enemy lines weak to Jupiter, 28 weak to Mars, 3 weak to Venus and 6 to Mercury. Talk about unbalanced.

Catastrophe, Charon and Iris require less djinn cause they would've been too impractical to be summoned with the new mechanic.

Base damage values for summons has been rebalanced cause the way they were 4 and 5 djinn summons were clearly the best ones on a damage/djinn ratio.

Alecto's Mace is the strong mars-aligned mace i promised. It's supposed to be the opposite of the Rising Mace, which is mostly gonna be used for defensive purposes I think. It's dropped by the new enemy Nue. Alecto is one of the Erinyes, female deities of vengeance from Greek mythology. I choose that name to complete the trio since her sisters Megaera and Tisiphone are already mentioned in the game.

Acheron Grief's element got changed to Jupiter to balance out the elemental alignments of endgame weapons. With the addition of Alecto's Mace and this change, now there are 12 endgame weapons, 3 for each element.

Rolina

28 is the target level of the end of vanilla TBS. 
@Caledor:  If you're making things more difficult, it'd make sense to change what the endgame level is appropriately.  The original TBS didn't really require much grinding, so raising a few levels isn't too much to ask for.  You shouldn't have to increase XP drops if the new target is, for example, level 32.  If the target is 35 or 40, you will need to increase XP drops because it's one hell of a grind to get to even those levels.

@Summon count:  My issue is that with the amount of turns it'll take to hit certain summons, it kinda seems like a different kind of awesome but impractical.  In that scenario, the amount of time it takes to be capable of seeing Charon or Iris make me think you'll rarely be able to even see them outside of longer bosses like the Doom Dragon. :/

Caledor

@Endgame level: Wait a min you kinda lost me. What do you mean with "raise endgame level to 30-32" without raising exp? Cause yes, I made the game harder, but in a way that's still doable at the same levels of the vanilla game, so I don't really get what you're asking me to do. Cause there's no way you NEED level 35 or 40 to beat GS1.

@Summon: Remember that by the time you get Iris, Doom Dragon is the only thing you haven't beat yet. With Charon instead, potentially all 4 superbosses can still be alive, and i don't really think you can beat them within 8 turns. So... unless you want to unleash those beasts against some random mob for the fun of it, the turn count shouldn't really be an issue.

Rolina

I mean those levels area easy enough to attain near the end of the game that you won't need to raise XP at all.  I'm not actually asking you to do anything here.  I mean, maybe if nobody can beat it without tons and tons of grinding, but I doubt that's the case.

@Summon:  And thus it's entirely possible that people never get to SEE iris.  That's the problem with the system you just put into place - it's basically walling up a core game mechanic so that the stronger stuff rarely gets seen.  Also keep in mind that you now have two anti-summon rush tweaks in place now, so this is likely to take some tweaking based on player feedback.

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#878
Maybe I should have read this more thoroughly, but quick thought:
What if all Summons were enabled, but that turn number had an affect on its power?
In example...
Turn 1:
Tier 1 = 100%
Tier 2 = 90%
Tier 3 = 80%
Tier 4 = 70%

Turn 2: Add 10% to each? Or by any increment you want.... But this is a quick untested example to make a point....
Tier 1 = 100%
Tier 2 = 100%
Tier 3 = 90%
Tier 4 = 80%

Another example would be:
Turn 1... First djinni at 100% power, 2nd djinni at 50% power, 3rd djinni at 25% power.... 4th djinni at 12.5%... add it all up...
Turn 2... First and second djinn at 100% power, third djinn at 50% power... 4th djinni at 25%... and so on... - Sort of makes me think about item rarity on the Tolbi/Lemuria springs... but that's a little bit different.
With this example.... stronger summons don't make much of a difference from slightly weaker summons until later turns, I think... or something like that. (Possibility in this adding to strategy? Hm.)
But also note... that the amount of damage would be similar to this: (If thinking in a way where you accumate all the percentages of each djinn req turn # power percentage.) Turn 1 will never be 200%+ summed up... no matter what summon... Turn 2... never 300%+, etc. - I have the feeling this idea probably would work better with GS1, though??? Hm. But each person must decide for themselves, I guess.
I wouldn't mind certain equipment affecting how summons may work to a degree... but anyway... (i.e. One item could act as though you are on the following turn after... but only for that PC. Shaman items, maybe... Or maybe that could be true if you are wearing the whole set.)

(There are probably many other examples you could come up with... like if some summons should first require that a different summon be casted first before use in the first place.)
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

dive_darkness

I just thought about it, but isn't it jut possible to give the bosses enough speed so it acts before you if you don't set the djinns ? That way, if you try to summon rush without properly buffing your team, you'd just take too much damage to survive the second turn ?

Like, Sheba has huge speed -> 400 base speed, no djinns set. All other characters are around 200-300. All djinn a set -> speed *2. The boss has a base speed of 500. (Numbers given don't mirror reality at all, and the speed stats given are for 0 djinns set) that way, he can hit first, then Sheba gets a turn, maybe Jenna too, then boss get its second turn. (Not accounting for the GS1 character).

That way, the drop in stats by getting the djinns ready to a point that without having buffed your speed/defense, you'd end up badly hurt/dead without having even a chance to act. But by buffing yourself properly, you could still use the summons.