[RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloaded

[Guest]

Caps lock is activated.

[VardenSalad]

Still interested to see how this mod wraps up, emulator issues notwithstanding.

I use My Boy! for playing on my phone personally, but I haven't booted up one of these versions since about 1.6. I was sort of surprised that you haven't done a full playthrough of both games, Cal, but they are time-consuming.

[Caledor]

Still interested to see how this mod wraps up, emulator issues notwithstanding.

I use My Boy! for playing on my phone personally, but I haven't booted up one of these versions since about 1.6. I was sort of surprised that you haven't done a full playthrough of both games, Cal, but they are time-consuming.

The problem is not the time it takes for a single playthrough. It's the ideas that pop up in my head while i'm doing one, cause they force me to start again. Changing character growth forces a restart, so does swapping djinn, weapons, changing healing effectiveness... basically any change that isn't about endgame balance only. I think i've started a  TLA playthrough at least ten times in those 3 years, and each one of those could've been the last one. Yet sometimes i had to restart from TBS.

[VardenSalad]

On the other hand, I guess playthrough attempts lead to innovation. Not criticizing, more impressed that you went out of your way to fix issues you found so many times.

[Caledor]

Of course, that's what happened. Whenever i found something i didn't like i stopped playing in order to work on the next release.

[ShiFT]

Hey Caledor, really loving the mod so far! I just wanted to mention a super, super minor issue I noticed with Isaac's attack growth when I was checking stuff out in the editor. At level 79 it's set to 289, but at level 99, it's set to 253. So according to level ups in battle, you actually 'gain' negative attack :p   I say it's minor though since I REALLY doubt anyone's gonna be insane enough to grind out that much in TBS lol. It looks like this is fine in TLA though, there it's set to 353 which seems a lot more normal, and it's actually possible to level him that high.

But as for the mod itself, the difficulty is pretty close to perfect imo. I first started playing the games when I was 5, 22 now and I've always done 1 or 2 playthroughs of both every year, so I mean they're not REMOTELY close to challenging at this point, but I'm SO happy I can say that's not the case anymore with your mod :)   Last year I did full playthroughs of both games with Reloaded (can't remember which version anymore, whoops :p), just finished up a second run of TBS with 1.71 this week, and about to start TLA on my next day off soon. I really love that it's still completely feasible to get through both games with zero grinding, but I genuinely have to strategize for every boss, to the point where much of the time I'm anticipating what I might get hit with NEXT turn and preemptively have to setup a turn in advance for it. I find a lot of the time I'm not so much reacting to what my party gets hit with, and picking the 'best' option afterwards, but trying to read what a boss might do then covering as many options as I can, if that's a good way to put it?

It felt basically impossible to just have one person cast Wish each turn and everyone else spam djinn/summons, which is a very, very positive thing for me. If I wanted to use a lot of djinn and summons, it was definitely doable, but it required a lot of actual thought about not only when I'm using them to drop stats or inflict statuses, but actually the order I had to use them, and how long I could go without summoning, otherwise they wouldn't be set again by the time I needed to reuse them. Deadbeard was a great example for this, since when I fought him (around mid-late twenties I think), he easily out-sped everyone in my party, but Vine/Zephyr made Mia (who was healing of course :p) just fast enough to act before him. So that meant I ALWAYS had to be focusing on when their effects were wearing off, and again, when I'd NEED to summon or set them to get them ready again to either drop his speed or raise mine. Otherwise he hits last on one round, speed returns to normal, and downs most of the party at the start of the next round before I can heal, which at those levels was incredibly difficult to recover from. Managing Mia's PP (nerfs to healing in general were honestly really well implemented btw) while having to stall for a couple turns with Granite/Flash/Ground to let her recover PP, while now having to focus on when THOSE three djinn would be usable again, on top of STILL focusing on when to set/summon to keep Vine/Zephyr ready to avoid getting rushed by Deadbeard's buffed psynergy (loved the new damage formula for this too!) turned this into an incredibly cerebral fight. Whereas on Vanilla, running the same strategy meant just alternating Granite and Flash, Wish every turn, and summon whenever. This was genuinely the most fun I've ever had with a boss in any playthrough of the series.

The only sort of 'complaint' I guess I might have right now is by the time you hit Tolbi and have access to the slots, the boots/shirts/rings from those provide a pretty substantial buff to everyone, which really lowered the difficulty of random enemy encounters. Not that they weren't still difficult, they were still MUCH tougher than vanilla, but I didn't really need to worry nearly a smuch about trying to balance PP between offense and healing to avoid running out partway through a dungeon, since I could tank hits much better, and kill enemies before they could do as much damage. Maybe either lowering the chance of getting a game ticket to get less equipment, nerfing the equipment, or slightly buffing the late game enemies more could help with this a bit, or some combination of these? Early dungeons though (going through Kolima Forest and Tret back to back come to mind actually) I'd often find my stats low enough that just standard attacks weren't really viable, so I'd be more inclined to use psynergy to end fights fast enough that I wouldn't risk downing anyone, with the trade off being it was much more difficult to manage keeping enough PP to heal between fights without running out entirely. I really liked this since it meant I'd always be aware of what I was making throughout an entiere dungeon, and what consequences might come from them. Again, later areas are still tough, just kind of inconsistent with difficulty in the early game, you know?

It seemed too that since by this point you'd have access to Scorch/Mist/Squall, smaller enemy groups in general became much easier. Even if on paper they should have the ability to be threatening, being able to basically remove one or two of them for virtually the whole battle with sleep/stun meant the party was taking very little damage, and I could almost always be back to max HP/PP by the next encounter. Single enemy groups, like Tornado Lizards, were basically impossible to lose to because of this, even though they had the stats and abilities to make for a challenging fight otherwise. But other than directly nerfing those djinn, or sleep/stun in general, I don't really see much way to avoid this. Neither this or the stuff with the slots equipment are THAT big a deal to be honest though, like I wouldn't be disappointed if these never changed, they're just spots that have a notably different feel to me in terms of challenge.

But yeah, overall I absolutely love what you've done so far, it's a HUGE improvement on the vanilla games! I'm really looking forward to how the mod progresses, I'm hoping you'll keep going with it  :)

(also I really didn't think my first post would be this long, my b :p)

[Caledor]

Hi ShiFT

Thank you very much for the kind words, i'm glad you're enjoying the mod.

super, super minor issue I noticed with Isaac's attack growth when I was checking stuff out in the editor. At level 79 it's set to 289, but at level 99, it's set to 253

Thanks for the report and for using the editor to check stuff lol. It's the classic typo that can go unnoticed for months. IIRC i have fixed a similar typo recently but i don't remember which one and if it's for the next version or if it's already released. I'm on a different OS atm so i can't check with the editor, but it's definitively something i'll check as soon as i can.

The only sort of 'complaint' I guess I might have right now is by the time you hit Tolbi and have access to the slots, the boots/shirts/rings from those provide a pretty substantial buff to everyone,

Noted, i'll check ;)

[Caledor]

Walkthrough progress report (and reminder for me): Just beaten Aqua Rock.

So far everything's good, made a few minor adjustments here and here.

Noted potential issues:

1. EXP might be a tad too much in the eastern sea, but i'll wait until after lemuria to decide if i should lower it or not
2. There is a huge coin shortage as soon as you enter the Eastern sea. Considered on having the Hydra boss give you something like 5k to 10k coins to compensate, but it might be a good thing to leave it like this: players will have to upgrade equipment and forge stuff as they go instead of being able to upgrade everything immediately.

Partial changelog:

Jenna's Inquisitor line loses Volcano, gains Raging Heat
Jenna's Guru line loses Beam, gains Juggle
Raging Heat line and Fiery Juggle are slightly stronger (BP 185 and 155)
Mud's base power down to 80 (from 100)
Fixed overworld enemies around Dekhan Plateau
Enemies in Dekhan Plateu, South Indra and Madra Catacombs give more Exp and Coins
Minor stat fixes to many early to mid game weapons
Jupiter Djinn in Yampi: -3 SPD (L10 Sheba outspeeds it now)
Briggs, Pirate +atk
Slightly tweaked a few learning levels (mostly MT healing and high-end spells)
Boss Hydra slighly weaker (less AoE, more venom)
Fixed Isaac's attack growth in TBS (typo reported b ShiFT)

Ps. curious stuff: whenever i checked the class doc in the past 2 months, there were 2-4 people online reading it with me. I don't think it ever happened in those 3 years and half, it makes me wonder if there's something going on that i'm unaware of, lol.

[bpat]

I liked the eastern sea coin shortage since it made shopping choices more meaningful. It could be worth making rusty forging cheaper though since they have the downside of making you go all the way back to Yallam. You have essentially infinite money after Lemuria which is bad, so you may want to consider heavily reducing the cost (and sell value) of the fountain items.

[Caledor]

I think prices should still reflect the overall strength of an item so i don't think i'll make specific tweaks. What can i do is:

- Increase all the prices. The growth is quadratic so the early game (up to level 20-25) will be left mostly untouched, with much greater effects in the mid to late game. The effectiveness of this depends on how many items you have to buy/craft vs the ones you find (free).

- Reduce the amounts of Lucky Medals found before Lemuria.

Btw i just finished Lemuria and i stand at 130k coins (80k before lemuria) so what you said it's kinda true (i was already quite rich before lemuria though). Still, there's also the fact that after level 24-25 you don't have to shop anymore (it's literally find vs craft) so it's normal that the coins keep increasing.

[VardenSalad]

Reducing the number of lucky medals is just going to turn the fountain into a save-scumming fiesta. It's already difficult enough to try and bounce it off the turtles in just the right way to get what you want.

On forging, Sunshine charges a good amount for his pieces. It's not like you get them for free; any monetary changes are still going to affect your ability to buy whatever he makes.

You could look at potentially decreasing money drops from enemies across the entire region.

[bpat]

I agree with VardenSalad that decreasing Lucky Medal drops would be bad. Perhaps additional shop items later in the game could help with the too much money problem.

[Caledor]

The more i think about it, the more it seems i won't ever reach a satisfying solution.

Coind drops from enemies are already extremely low from the western sea onwards, changing prices will only give minimal results overall (cause you increase the price of free stuff as well and you always get 75% of that back when you resell), and i think i'm out of space in shops: I already added zodiac wand in Shaman village, Kikuichimonji in Contigo and Viking Axe in Prox.

I might have 1 rusty weapon to reassingn, and i'm thinking of using it on the Lightning Sword: this will probably give the best results out of any other change i can do since it's a net -13k coins.

I'll probably still do the price rebalance cause until now i always winged it and following a function seems more proper.

EDIT: Other things i'm considering: make Ker's Weight forgeable from Darkmatter, swap Laevateinn and Rune Blade, put the first in a chest in magma rock, the other from mythril silver (to space them out more).

This is all minor stuff though: the change i feel the most it should be done is to have a lv ~37 jupiter mace. But to do that i also need another lv ~33 mace. I can make the latter and upgrade the Hagbone mace. Maybe upgrade Thanatos for the former?

Anyway, i think i'm running out of items i want or need to change.

[VardenSalad]

Are status effects from weapon unleashes luck-dependent? Aren't you basically RNG-ing twice at that point?

[Caledor]

Are status effects from weapon unleashes luck-dependent? Aren't you basically RNG-ing twice at that point?

yes and yes.

Statuses are effects in the editor, and they're shared by abilities: djinn, unleashes, psynergies, items are all "abilities".

Still, most effects from unleashes are not that important (the boss is usually immune to the effect), i wanted people choose between damage from unleash or the debuff from EPAs like odissey.

[Crystal Sonata]

The problem is not the time it takes for a single playthrough. It's the ideas that pop up in my head while i'm doing one, cause they force me to start again. Changing character growth forces a restart, so does swapping djinn, weapons, changing healing effectiveness... basically any change that isn't about endgame balance only. I think i've started a  TLA playthrough at least ten times in those 3 years, and each one of those could've been the last one. Yet sometimes i had to restart from TBS.

If you're looking for testers or other help, I have some time to spare. Might make things a little easier.

[Caledor]

Thanks for the kind offer, but i really don't want people to play the mod only for the sake of reports, or it'll feel like a chore. I think you should play it if you want to enjoy another run, not only for the sake of feedback. Also at this point the feedback i need the most is my own lol.

[Crystal Sonata]

I'm going to play it either way of course, just wanted to offer the help :D

Edit: Finally found the IPS program, downloading now.

[TwilightRealm]

I'm encountering a problem with Golden Sun Reloaded and I'm hoping I can at least alert people to it or can help me troubleshoot.  I primarily use mGBA for emulation and I'm trying to play Reloaded on it.  It runs phenomenally until a stat debuff happens, the game freezes up and I can't continue play.  It happens 100% of the time, no matter who's side the debuff happens.  I first encountered it in the 3 Thieves fight when one of them used Smoke Bomb.  It happened again when I attempted to cast Poison on an enemy.  It also happens when Ghost uses Impair, but not when Ooze uses Sticky Goo.  I can't progress without worrying about being unlucky, but I imagine that this will continue and make some bosses unable to be defeated, as they'll just freeze the game before I can do it.
I swapped over to VisualBoy Advance to bypass this, as I don't seem to encounter the problem then, but it runs very poorly, I'm not sure if it's my settings or what.  I have audio lag, where sound effects are delayed, but I also have audio speedup at random intervals.  Everything also sounds very choppy, and visually mGBA looks a whole lot better, so I'd prefer to use it. 
I use a US/Europe ROM, and I'm on a Macbook Pro 2012. 
The Reloaded hack is great!  I just can't play very long due to the possible bug.  Any ideas?  I hope people are still active on this thread.

[Luna_blade]

Given your hardware no Gameboy Advance emulator should have lag or audio trouble.
It is likely your setting in VBA that make it behave strange.
Make sure "Options>Emulator>Synchronize" is on as well as "Options>Frameskip>Throttle>No Throttle".
For the visual look, check the "Options>Filter" menu out. As well as "Options>Video>Render method".
With the filters you can apply a few effects the whole of the screen, like scanlines or smoothing out.
When looking at render methods, make sure VBA uses one that your system supports well and full. If you have screen tearing make sure Triple Buffering is on in Render Methods.

Hope that helps!

[Caledor]

In addition to what Luna said, if nothing works try with an older version of VBA. I never liked the releases from 2.0.0 onwards and i'm still using the 1.8.0 myself. As for the stat debuff thing... i'll probably look at it when i'm done with the current TLA playthrough.

[Fox]

February 17, 2020, 04:54:34 AM

Fox: I guess one thing this game has going for it is the Day and Night cycle.

[Fox]

February 17, 2020, 04:51:46 AM

Fox: Also, I noticed since the very beginning of the game, that usually the dresser drawers (whatever you call them) have items in them.

[Fox]

February 17, 2020, 04:48:20 AM

Fox: (And I only recently got Karn, the fourth PC.)

[Fox]

February 17, 2020, 04:36:01 AM

Fox: Was playing Breath of Fire I.... and I must say.... that game's pretty bland.... listening to the same songs basically everywhere... and multiple NPCs saying the exact same thing.  Most of it plays about the same... a maze with common useless items in chests, maybe you'll get one or two fine equipment, but yeah.  ... I want to check #II again later, the game I remember playing like... over a decade ago.

[Salanewt]

February 04, 2020, 08:06:18 AM

Salanewt: We're more active on the Discord though.

[Salanewt]

February 04, 2020, 08:06:01 AM

Salanewt: Oh hey! It does, yeah.

[Mastermind]

February 02, 2020, 06:42:38 PM

Mastermind: holy crap this place still exists?

[Fox]

December 24, 2019, 09:33:09 PM

Fox: Even just plain Editor work can make some difference. = At least these forums are indexed on the Search engine. I was also curious about whether to um... go through all the topics on these forums and take all the important stuff out/placed into a folder for a bit of organization. Would be a bonus since if something ever happened to this forum, or if we ever wanted to start afresh again, it wouldn't be that difficult to do so.

[Fox]

December 24, 2019, 09:23:03 PM

Fox: One thing is for sure. This place has become completely dead. (Mostly because of Discord.)  = I don't think much will happen with this forum unless I, Salanewt, or someone else does a thing.

[Fox]

December 24, 2019, 09:18:05 PM

Fox: Probably not?

[Luna_blade]

December 24, 2019, 06:51:08 PM

Luna_blade: I suppose this is the last Christmas of this forum? 

[Luna_blade]

December 24, 2019, 06:50:51 PM

Luna_blade: Yay thanks for the coins

[Fox]

December 19, 2019, 04:39:45 AM

Fox: Okay, another thought... "gsmagic" could be the code name/project name... and "Golden Sun Magic" could be the more formal official name... (As in using both names.)  -  I still need to look into these other games as well... so who knows if it could be better to call it Camelot Magic if those should ever be supported to a decent standard.  Would probably be a long time from now, though. As I can be pretty lazy.

[Foreclosure]

December 18, 2019, 10:01:39 PM

Foreclosure: gsmagic is fine

[Fox]

December 17, 2019, 05:44:32 PM

Fox: Also. I call my program "gsmagic" and not "GSMagic" =P (Not asking for correction/I being silly)... Had to call it something, so picked something short.  Maybe I should rename it to Golden Sun Magic later. *shrug*

[Fox]

December 17, 2019, 05:35:04 PM

Fox: (And "Golden Sun" instead of "GS" to reduce confusion that would likely not be there anyway... when "Golden Sun" doesn't take up much space to start with. (Imagine being new and thinking GS meant GameShark, or some other oddity. Ew.)) - All just thoughts...I'm still going with most of this not mattering that much, though.

[Fox]

December 17, 2019, 05:12:55 PM

Fox: "Misc. GS Hacking" = That name looks odd, so I'd probably just go with "Golden Sun Hacking"

[Fox]

December 17, 2019, 05:08:05 PM

Fox: I tempted to also suggest the Editors can go in the first category. Since the Editor is the reason this place exists in the first place. (I think.)

[Fox]

December 17, 2019, 04:53:19 PM

Fox: (combined = Not meant to be taken literally... but rather.... to generalize things more, since it apparently looks like we don't need the extra space no one is using.)

[Fox]

December 17, 2019, 04:48:49 PM

Fox: Worse still... we've only used those for Golden Sun content.... and there's not much there.

[Fox]

December 17, 2019, 04:45:53 PM

Fox: E.g. Maybe everything in "Assets & Discussion" could be combined with "Creative Works".... I don't feel like sound and art apply to general hacking anyway... that only comes into play when you have tools to insert them.

[Fox]

December 17, 2019, 04:40:26 PM

Fox: categories and/or forums

[Fox]

December 17, 2019, 04:36:48 PM

Fox: Everything else seems to be about right, though. Perhaps some categories could be combined(?), but doesn't really matter that much.

[Fox]

December 17, 2019, 04:33:03 PM

Fox: (I still think The Community section fits best at the bottom. =P)

[Salanewt]

December 15, 2019, 05:10:04 PM

Salanewt: Heya! I'm planning to get the demo up today, but if you can't wait then it's already available on the Discord.

[Fox]

December 15, 2019, 04:12:27 AM

Fox: (Then sell the badges on the Trade Center for a very high price... and give a lot of active people coins to buy them with, so they can basically transfer the coins to me if they want something... Gosh I could be a naughty hoarder. =P)

[Fox]

December 15, 2019, 04:06:19 AM

Fox: I'd buy up all the stock for each item too... but man... I think I'm too lazy for that. =P

[Fox]

December 15, 2019, 04:01:24 AM

Fox: There we go. That should be all of them.

[Fox]

December 15, 2019, 03:25:32 AM

Fox: Duplicates will still show up as separate entries on the profile as well. Interestingly enough.

[Fox]

December 15, 2019, 03:18:25 AM

Fox: (Well, one of each badge, at least.)

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