[[FE8] Difficulty Hack (Name TBD)]

15 minutes ago, eclipse said:

My last sentence suggested doing the opposite of what you did.  I'm not interested in playing Stat Inflation Emblem.

When I said "overhaul enemy placement" I don't mean swapping inventories.  I mean physically moving enemies, and possibly varying their classes. 

How do you know I didn't do this? I never said all I did was swap their inventories. All those examples I just gave to you above, I said I changed their trigger events, I changed where the units are placed, I added new enemies and removed some of the old ones. And yes, enemies DO MOVE, that thief opening door example I just mentioned to you in the previous post, isn't that one example of physically moving enemies? I don't know why you're just hard set on believing that all I did was simple inventory swapping and buff up some numbers when I've already given you examples that show more than just these. The maps are dynamic, enemies are always moving (well, most of the time anyways). That's my take when designing maps, there should always be something happening/changing on the map, this causes the player to be weary and ready to move because what might seem like an advantageous position might turn into a death trap the very next turn. 

In the end, what I see is still a numbers game, albeit one that doesn't look fun due to large numbers for no reason.  Take Fates - its hardest difficulty ups the enemies and skills, instead of stats. 

Well, it's hard to avoid the numbers game due to the lack of features in the GBA games.

FE12 was good, in terms of difficulty, because the enemies wouldn't OHKO you unless you seriously screwed up, and by the time they got properly scary, you had the tools necessary to deal with them.  For example, you got Parthia (and its user) for the wyverns, dragon-killing weapons before the dragon spam in midgame, support bonuses/Rainbow Tonic to cut down on the early ice dragon crits/hit other stat benchmarks, shards everywhere, and the various spheres could be passed around until near endgame. 

Again, it sounds like you believe that I didn't give you any of these equipments to deal with the challenges you'll be facing. Your units won't die to a OHKO unless they're mages/healers or unless you've been screwed.

Units and stats were highly customizable, which is why having both enemies and players in 3HKO range worked.  FE8 doesn't have that kind of flexibility, which means that it'll take a lot of coding, thought, and effort to create a true difficulty patch.  One day, I'll be arsed enough to examine every last detail of FE8, and completely redo some of the maps.

Yes, FE8 not having that flexibility is an issue. So for now, I've given you extra stat boosters, more powerful weapons that you can easily use in the early game in order to compensate, hopefully.

 

Anyways, maybe I should make a recording of the prologue and the 1st chapter. It should be easier to see how the game plays out and what I am aiming for instead of just some screen shots which mostly shows nothing but stats. 

 

[[FE8] Difficulty Hack (Name TBD)]

35 minutes ago, eclipse said:

1. Don't post twice in a row, unless you're announcing a new patch or something.  Use the little plus sign next to the Quote button to enable Multiquote.
Oops, just did it again, didn't see your comment until I've made the above post.
2. The DS games worked because numbers were overall lower.  If you want to go that route, you'll need to overhaul everyone's bases.  The other challenge of the DS games was enemy positioning.  Some enemies didn't exist on the lower difficulties, and FE12 changed some item drops (most notable being the lack of Warp).  Even then, Marth's games were a lot more flexible, thanks to reclassing and orbs/shards.  I suggest dialing back bases before adding to them - the numbers won't be as big and shiny, but it still works.

Yes, I've upped everyone's bases as well as their growths. I'm not sure if you've seen the pictures with all the characters and their join stats.

Again, regarding the enemy position, they are not the same as the original game. If you look at the screen shot, there is an armour slayer in chapter 1 (on Normal mode that guy only has a slim sword), one of the archers in chapter 3 has a long bow, etc. Enemy AI and placements have been reworked, there are now groups of enemies that you can't bait out one by one, they wait until you get inside the range of the guy at the back before they attack. There are early promoted enemies, i.e. Snipers in Chapter 6 and Chapter 8, Wyvern Lords in Chapter 7 and Bishops in Chapter 5x and 8.

Also new event changes have been added. For example, the lone thief in Chapter 3 now has a door key, he starts moving towards the door by the end of second turn, when he opens the door, the enemies inside will rush towards you. This is to prevent the player from dilly-dallying outside and taking sweet time killing the brigands from the other side of the wall.

Item drops have also been changed, like I've said above. You get a lot more stat boosters in the first 8 chapters (you now get 2 Energy Rings, 2 Angelic Robes, Speedwing, DracoShield, Skill Book, Goddess Icon and even Boots). All the promotion items have been changed to Master Seals so you can promote who ever you see fit. Natasha joins with a 5 use Rescue as well. Stronger weapons have been made available to you a lot earlier. Though I realize a lot of flexibility is gone without reclassing, shards and forging, I try to give you more options via the above items as well as letting player early access to Steel+ weapons, which are essentially silvers with more weight and a D rank requirement.

Really, I didn't just go and buff up the enemy bases and called it a day. I changed their weapons, placement, AI, events as well as obtainable items and shop items.

I've gone through the first 8 chapters on Hard, and I didn't have too many issues myself but that's because I knew what I was doing, which is why I wanted to get some feedback from others.

[[FE8] Difficulty Hack (Name TBD)]

3 hours ago, Dandragon said:

 

Ok.

 

What good reason does the prologue have to have a boss with those kinds of stats? I understand perhaps if you do that in a few chapters from now, when you have a number of different units to take them down, but why the prologue? And I hardly see how this 'improves the gameplay' of FE8 at all. Like really, how are you supposed to beat that? And can it be beaten in any other way that isn't reliant on supreme luck manipulation? Because even from a glance, this looks like Seth's funhouse yet again. Cause I know for a fact Erika's base speed is lower than that of your new starting boss. So unless there's been a buff to characters as well, Eirika only has just enough speed to not get doubled, which means her advantage as a speedy character is non existant and thus Eirika has to hit him 3 times in order to kill, while the boss has to hit only twice, and with 93 hit, its pretty likely that Eirika is dead. Which, once again, sounds like Seth has to clean up and do most of the work.

Yes, all the characters have been buffed (except Seth), both their bases and their growths (Seth still got a growth buff). I've uploaded screen shots of the new bases for all the characters that join in the first 8 chapters, you can check them out.

Seth can't do all the work. For example, in the prologue, the boss does 9 dmg to Seth while the other fighters do between 7 and 8, and considering Seth starts out with 13HP in the prologue, he can't just keep tanking, especially when one of the guys have a horseslayer. 

Regarding the Prologue boss, as mentioned in the above post, in a 1v1 fight, Erika can beat him without relying on any crit or dodges. Both deal 14 dmg to each other and boss dies in 3 hits to Erika. Let the boss attack Erika first, she drops to 5 HP and retaliates. On Player Phase, use a vulnerary which brings her back up to 15 HP. Enemy Phase boss attacks again which drops Erika down to 1 HP and Erika retaliates, so that's two hits on the boss already. On Player Phase, Erika attacks and deals the final blow. There, nothing complicated. No RNG involved.

Sure Erika barely survives with 1 HP, but it doesn't matter, as long as you have at least 1 HP, you're golden. A lot of time you will be barely surviving with < 5HP, and that's what the difficulty hack should be like. With proper planning, you can mitigate most of the RNG, hence why I buffed the weapon hit rates, so the player won't miss.

Also don't expect to dodge, it's not happening unless you've got enough avoid + WTA + terrain bonus on your side.

Also this. I criticized Sun God's Wrath of being the very same; a game in which you have only one option, and that is to succumb to the will of the hacker and use a very specific set of units with a specific set of weapons and movements, thus limiting variations on how someone could play, and thus a loss to replay value. If every time I play a chapter I have to send units to specific spots no matter what or I will end up in an unwinnable situation, I'm not going to want to play your game. I understand the idea of making a once easy game difficult, and I understand the idea of not every idea the player comes up with is good or will succeed, but if there is only one way to do things, then I am playing a puzzle game with needless luck involved, not a strategy game.

If you're afraid that it's gonna end up being just throw Seth at everything to solve it, I can tell you this, it won't be (probably, I hope?). It's very hard to tank in this game, it's also very hard to dodge in this game. Once you get to around Chapter 6 or 7, you'll see that Seth can't solo and he can't tank. He can maybe take 2 hits and barely survive and that's about it. So you'll HAVE TO rely on using other characters as well because you absolutely need to spread out the damage amongst different units. That is what you want, I presume? Obviously some units will be better than others, but I don't think you're automatically screwed if you decide to use less optimal units, but it will definitely be a lot harder.

In the game, I have supplied you with extra stat boosters (you get an extra angelic robe in Chapter 4, and Joshua comes with another Energy Ring in Chapter 5, Chapter 6 boss also has a stealable speedwing). On top of this, the game gives you access to slim weapons starting from Chapter 2, steel/steel+ weapons (which are basically silver weapons with higher WT but low weapon rank requirement) starting from the end of Chapter 5, and even Elfire and Divine tomes are available after Chapter 6. All of these act as a buffer if you messed up and didn't use the right characters, or your characters got screwed and can't deal enough damage, etc. Say for example, you didn't use Neimi, and when you get to Chapter 7, you see there is a bunch of Wyvern Lords. That's ok, just go back to the world map, go to the Chapter 5 armoury, and buy her a Steel Bow+ which has 13 MT and only a D rank requirement, so even base Neimi can do massive damage with the right weapons. Hopefully these extra early game weapons and resources provide you with more leniency towards how you choose to play.

Obviously this doesn't mean that every play style, every choice, no matter how poorly made, will end up allowing the player to beat the chapters. At some point, there is gonna be a cut off. If the player really really messed up, then there is not much I can do.

Hopefully that clears up some things :)

 

[[FE8] Difficulty Hack (Name TBD)]

2 hours ago, eclipse said:

I see much higher numbers everywhere, both on enemies and weapons.  I don't like stat inflation as a way to make things harder.  For a true difficulty hack, I think a smaller bump to numbers, slight adjustments to bases/growths/enemy inventories, and massive adjustments to enemy placement would be better.

As mentioned in the above reply, the aim of the design here is to beef up enemy's offensive stats. Enemy defences largely remains the same as in the original game. As a matter of fact, I reduced their defences in the early game (I'll put up more screen shots of the actual enemy stats because right now a lot of the pictures are emphasizing the enemies' attack prowess). It's not a mindless stat inflation, I only buff certain stats to make them better at doing the job that they're supposed to do (which is to deal consistent damage to the player), I didn't make them into infallible tanks. 

Since you played the DS games, I take it you're familiar with their H5/Lunatic design philosophies. The aim here is pretty similar, it's hard for you to tank, it's hard for you to dodge. But on the other hand, killing enemies are not very difficult due to them having no defence and the weapons having better MT and HIT. Honestly, what's the point of massive adjustment to the enemy placement when you can simply send Seth into their midst and he takes like 1 dmg from every enemy whilst ORKOing them in return? I need to buff up their attack power so that they can actually be a threat. Also, only the first 2/3 chapters have similar placements to the original game, the rest have been changed (though most of the actual maps themselves still remain unchanged).

Another thing not shown in the screen shots is that you get access to better weapons lot faster. Slim weapons are available starting from chapter 2, steel/steel+ are available starting from the end of chapter 5 and you can even buy Elfire/Divine tomes at the end of chapter 6. Also, I've added in more stat boosters in the early game, i.e. chapter 4 thief drops an Angelic Robe, Joshua comes with an Energy Ring (you still get the Energy Ring in Chapter 7 as well as the Angelic Robe in Chapter 8, so that's an extra robe and an extra ring), Chapter 8 also has Boots in one of the chests. I think that's should be more than enough to beat the first 8 chapters.

Anyways, give it a shot and if you still have concerns, I welcome your feedback :)

 

[[FE8] Difficulty Hack (Name TBD)]

3 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

I'm concerned from the screenshot that the design philosophy may have boiled down to just reducing the player's options. Take the Prologue, in which I'm assuming you basically have to send Seth to destroy everything in the east - Eirika can't stand up to O'Neill, Seth can't stand up to the Horseslayer guy. If Seth has been nerfed to the point where some random thief a few chapters in can one-round him, then Vanessa must be close to mandatory with her overpowered spear. Anti-turtling measures are all well and good, but I'm concerned that combining them with enemies who are overwhelmingly strong will essentially lead to there being A Correct Way to clear every map, with A Correct Set Of Units to do so.

Some of the early game maps are a little "tight" in space giving you little movement which means that you'll have to be more a little more careful with your position. Seth won't be able to destroy everything by himself due to all the enemies having high attack. Also keep in mind that in the prologue Seth starts off with only 13 HP, so you'll have to be extra careful. Yes, Seth can't stand up to the Horseplayer guy (actually, he could if he used his silver lance), but that doesn't mean Erika can't. 

As for Erika vs. O'Neill, she can totally take on O'Neill if it is a 1v1 fight. Both O'Neill and Erika deal 14 dmg to each other and the boss gets 3HKOd by Erika. Boss hits Erika and Erika goes down to 5HP and retaliates. On Player Phase, just have Erika use a vulnerary to go back up to 15HP. Enemy Phase boss attacks again and Erika drops down to 1HP, but that's fine because on Player Phase Erika attacks and finishes off the boss.

You see, the enemy aren't as tough as they seem defensively, they have a lot of HP, but their true bulk is disguised by the fact that they only having paper tissues for armors. Take O'Neill for example, even though he has 36 HP, he only has a pitiful 2 DEF, this allows Erika to deal massive damage to him and KO him in 3 hits (Seth kills him in 2 Hits with an iron sword). As a matter of fact, majority of the early game enemies gets killed off in about 2 hits, that's it. Some of them gets straight up ORKOd or even OHKOd. Take the sword Cavaliers in Chapter 1, they have 28 HP and 5 DEF, a little calculation shows that base Erika exactly one shots these guys; Erika also two shots all the early game fighters (they have 30 HP and 1 DEF, so at base, Erika does exactly 15 dmg per hit to these guys).

As for Seth getting ORKOd by the thief, that image was a little misleading, I should probably put up a better one. The thief was wielding a light brand and as you can see above, Seth has no resistance and I also didn't give him any pure water. I believe that thief also happened to proc an extra point of SPD, he should have 13/14 SPD if I remember correctly. But here's the thing, light brand gets the 1/2 STR dmg at range, so if you need to do some chip damage first, just attack him from the distance, base Arthur can do the chip job even without pure water. Vanessa can totally take him at close range and Erika should be able to do it as well. Chip damage + somebody like Seth, Gilliam or even Garcia should be able to finish the guy. 

One last thing I would like to say is that I think that people are too focused on enemies having high attack, speed and HP, but don't realize just how quickly these enemies fall. Just because Seth can't kill an enemy by himself doesn't mean that it's game over. The rest of the cast are not useless by any means, this hack is designed so that enemies have high attack but low defence, which means everyone of your characters can deal massive damage to the enemies. Take Erika vs. the fighter example from above, Erika KOs the 30 HP fighters in 2 hits, guess what, so does Seth. Do you see the implications here? It means that Seth isn't killing enemies that much better than the rest of the cast (though he's got more bulk and a horse). Or conversely, I should say that the rest of your cast can almost kill enemies just as well as Seth now.

Try out the first few chapters and you'll see, it's really easy to kill enemies, but in return, enemies are also very good at killing you :)

[[FE8] Difficulty Hack (Name TBD)]

4 minutes ago, Dandragon said:

all im gonna say is that this does not look balanced.

Thanks for the reply. 

Though mind giving me a little more information? Which part does not look balanced?

Also, I should mention that my goal is not to balance classes/characters. Some characters will be inherently better than others.

[[FE8] Difficulty Hack (Name TBD)]

 

Here's the first hack which I'm currently working on. For simplicity, I decided to start with a difficulty hack to improve the gameplay of FE8.

 

The aim of the hack is to ramp up Sacred Stone's difficulty via map design changes and enemy weapon/stat upgrades.

In particular:

-Enemy weapons scale very quickly

-Enemies have high offensive stats

-Weapon hit rates in general have been greatly improved (Hard mode enemies also get bonus +15 Hit)

-Enemy AI/placement changes to prevent bait and kill tactics in some maps

-Anti-turtling added to some maps in the form of thieves w/ chests/villages and reinforcement spawning (no ambush)

-Player units also have their bases and growth rates buffed (except for Seth, who got a nerf to his bases but a buff to his growths nonetheless)

-Better weapons are made available to the players a lot earlier via shop updates

-All promotion item drops have been replaced with Master Seals

-More stat boosters are dropped, obtained in the early game

 

Hard mode is recommended. Though there do exist some differences between Normal and Hard (i.e. reinforcement timings and additional enemies on Hard), Normal is not properly balanced right now since some chapters are the same as Hard while others, especially the first few chapters, are a lot easier (also Normal was not tested).

 

Dropbox Download Link:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/djolyst8u86t2gr/AACpWjp2tcQzKswGBg542ttMa

Apply the patch to an English FE8 ROM. 

Change log is provided for download in the link above.

 

Sample Gameplay (Prologue ~ Chapter 1):

 

Some small features added to the hack:

-Addition of weapon rank bonus (thanks to Vennobennu's patch)

-Hard mode enemy Hit bonus (Vennobennu's patch)

-DS style supports - bonuses are added once at the beginning of the chapter - see change log for the chapters required to build support rank (thanks again to Vennobennu)

-Fixed enemy stationary range display (credit to circleseverywhere)

-Danger zone toggle, use select key by default (credit to circleseverywhere)

 

Current progress: Prologue ~ Chapter 8 has been done

 

Have a try and please leave a feedback :)

Also, feel free to suggest a name for this hack! I'm very uncreative :(

 

Screenshots: 

 

Prologue:

 

Chpt1:

 

Chpt2:

 

Chpt3:

 

Chpt4:

 

Chpt5:

 

Player Characters:

 

[Custom Hand-Axe Type Weapons]

There's a bunch of hard coded shenanigans surrounding hand axes that makes adding more of them challenging.

If you want to add more, you have to setup a custom animation pointer for each axe wielding class and add the new hand axe to the list (this gets tedious fast, especially if you want to add additional weapons later).

Other than that, or some solid assembly programming, you're limited to the 3 vanilla hand axes.

Great, thanks! I repointed the animation pointer for the axe wielders to a separate table/list that included the new hand-axes and that worked :)

[Custom Hand-Axe Type Weapons]

Not another hand-axe question :p

Anyways, I was creating a new 1-2 range axe weapon and I've gone through the custom animation module and assigned it the hand axe animation. However, when I turn on the animation with the weapon, the wielder is still holding a regular axe and the battle could not continue. It seems like whatever routine that is checking the use of the proper hand axe animation is tied to the item id? I've previously tried something similar with some of the staves; I created a separate sleep staff with the only difference being the durability, but I was unable to use the staff at all.

If this is the case, does anyone know where this routine is? Otherwise, how do I go about creating a new "hand axe" weapon? (This is for FE8 btw)

Thanks!

[Inserted Map Have Correct Tileset But Wrong Tiles]

I was modifying an FE8 map using the PNG converter with Mappy.

After exporting the map, I inserted it using the MAR inserter and updated the pointer on the event data table (I didn't forget to add 0x08000000). Now when I start up the game, all the map tiles seem to be mapped incorrectly...

So when I exported with Mappy, I asked it to give me a screenshot, and this is what I have (and what I expected):

So the PNG shows the correct tiles.

But when I open up the map in game, this is what I get:

All the floor and wall tiles got mapped to the "blank" tiles, the unopened chests are now opened and all the water tiles turned into some green/white grass tiles (the grass tiles are actually from the same tileset, so the tileset should still be the correct one).

It seems like the pointer is pointing to the correct map, but the tiles in the tileset are messed up.

Since I was modifying an existing map, I am still using the exact same tileset. So I am thinking that maybe something got messed up when Mappy was exporting the map as MAR.

Does someone have an idea what I might be doing wrong?

P.S. This seems to be a similar issue to this other post here

[Modifying Existing Maps]

So I just tried it out yesterday. The converter worked perfectly :)

However I got some new issues with the map I modified, I'll make another post about it.

One of us could/should write a map ripper though...

That would be really nice :)

[Modifying Existing Maps]

A long, long time ago, BwdYeti had a png to map converter. I do not know what came of it, but you can try to find it somewhere

Ok, I'll give it a try :)

[Modifying Existing Maps]

How do you guys go about tweaking an already existing map in the ROM? Say if I want to make a few small changes to a map in the original FE8, like moving a chest a bit to the left, adding a few extra blocks of forest tiles, etc. Hopefully I won't have to recreate the whole map.

[FE8 Terrain Modules + Staff Exp Constant]

I'm surprised you found a version of the Nightmare pack without the Terrain Editor! I don't have a copy on hand but it's one of the newest modules so maybe just search for "new nightmare module FE8" or something like that.

The Staff EXP Constant is located at 2C676, however.

Grr...Why do I always have the outdated stuff....

The constant is just one byte, correct?

And wow, that was a fast reply :D

[FE8 Terrain Modules + Staff Exp Constant]

Hello!

Does anyone have .nmm file for the terrain bonuses in FE8 that they don't mind sharing?

Also, regarding the staff exp gains, if I remember correctly, FE8 uses a formula that is based on a constant + (staff gold value / 20). Where do I go to change the value of the constant?

Many thanks in advance!

[FEditor Weird Issues]

The forst time you save, feditor applies a bunch of patches. One of them alloes it to insert text without crashing the game. Another one changes how unit stats are saved, to allow character stats higher than 31. However, this patch means existing characters get their stats messed up. If you start a new save, the stats will be normal.

That's good to know, just want to make sure nothing else gets messed up if I wish to continue working with the same ROM.

Thanks!

[FEditor Weird Issues]

Ok, so the issue is: I opened my hacked ROM (FE8) with FEditor, did exactly nothing in the FEditor, then I immediately save. When I go back and loaded my ROM in an emulator, all of my units all of a sudden gained a bunch of stats (I didn't see any pattern to the amount of stats gained). Is this because FEditor is writing the wrong data to the wrong offsets?

The units' base stats didn't change, I checked with Nightmare. Maybe FEditor did something with the save files? But when I loaded my backup ROM from before I saved with FEditor, all my units' stats are fine.

Has anyone had this kind of issues before with FEditor or am I not using it correctly?

Also, I've had other issues with FEditor: if I tried to edit text in the Text Editor, even something simple like adding a letter to a name, the game would crash when it tries to load the unit with the modified name. So far, I've only managed to be able to modify text in FEditor by first opening up the ROM, then immediately save, then open up the same ROM again and then I can edit and save. But as mentioned above, this causes other problems as well (so far the only issue I've noticed is with the unit stats)...

[FE8 Enemy Stats Generation [Hard]]

What you're referring to as "turning on/off enemy growths" is toggling whether or not they're auto-leveled.

I've got a strong hunch that the game rolls level ups for each enemy that has auto-level enabled.

Current level - base level = the number of level ups rolled per enemy. Each chapter also has a hard mode bonus you can change via the Chapter Data Editor. This gives all enemies an additional X level ups.

The reason you're seeing the variation is that enemies, like player units, don't always get the same stat procs per level (The RNG giveth and taketh away).

Hunting down any formulas would require using a debugger to do some tracing. I would ask around on FEU to see if anyone has notes.

This is interesting, I was not aware the bonuses are different for each chapter. So I did a search and I found a post that talks about hard mode bonuses on FEU http://feuniverse.us/t/fe7-fe8-difficulty-stat-changes/1295

Once I edited out the Hard Mode bonus by making it 0, the enemy stats are a lot more consistent:

- enemies with auto-level disabled no longer proc an extra point of stats sometimes (i.e. boss stats are now 100% consistent, at least based on my few resets, previously a boss would sometimes proc extra +1 stat)

- enemies with auto-level enabled now have their stats differ by no more than 1 point as far as I can tell

Based on what I've seen, it seems that enemies can potentially proc an extra point of stat (as long as they have a growth in that stat) with auto-level enabled. With hard-mode bonuses enabled, they can further proc another point. This led to enemies with same level, class and base stats potentially having stats that differ by 2 points.

Anyways, I added the Hard/Easy Mode Bonus to the "Chapter Data Editor.nmm" if anyone just want to copy and paste:

Hard/Easy Mode Bonus

20

1

NEHU

NULL

The numbers may not be exact here because I can't find the exact post, but to my knowledge Primefusion is mostly correct. I don't really understand what he means by "base level", because to my knowledge the game always calculates from level 1, at least for non-promotes. Promotes are a little bit weird. Basically, on easy and normal modes units in FE8 get a level penalty applied to their stats. I think (don't quote me here, numbers may vary) that on normal a level 10 unit has received roughly the same amount of levels as a level 5 in any other game, for example. On hard they get a bonus, as you would expect, of about 5 levels IIRC. Basically the discrepancy in stats comes from the fact that enemies are penalized below hard mode so a meager 5 level bonus seems huge in comparison to their neutered normal mode counterparts.

Only other thing I'd add is that in FE8 the bonuses are determined solely by mode, not chapter. The reason you might see wildly different stats between same level units of the same class in two different chapter is that most generic class IDs have built in bonuses, much like player units with their different bases. For example, the Fighter's in the prologue are programmed to be crap no matter how well they roll because of a built in base stat, not level, penalty that is assigned to that character ID. A few more examples are character ID 7F which can turn even a generic into a bonafide badass with it's very generous bonuses, as well as most Grado character classes receiving a modest 3 skill bonus.

Thanks! I found some link that talks about the bonus in more depth (see above). My issue with the Hard Mode enemy stats is that they are not very consistent, even bosses (who have auto-level turned off) can proc an extra point of stat somewhere. And enemies with the same class, ID and level in the same chapter can have their stats differ by 2 points.

These are caused by the Hard Mode bonuses. If you set the bonus to 0 in the Chapter Data Editor, then the stats are a lot more consistent (again, see above).

[FE8 Enemy Stats Generation [Hard]]

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, that I am aware of, however, do you know the specifics: i.e. how does a level X promoted/unpromoted enemy get its stat on Hard mode (assuming growth rate turned on)? It should be some variations of BASE + LEVEL x GROWTH% . And also where to change the formula?

Edit: Just to clarify, by "turning on/off enemy growths" I meant setting the enemy character's level parameter to use the one with no growth, the same way how bosses' stats are set.

[FE8 Enemy Stats Generation [Hard]]

Hiya,

Who knows how the enemy stats on SS Hard are generated? Even when I turn off the enemy growth, there's still a chance the enemy would proc an extra point of a stat. With growth turned on, this variation can be up to 2 points for two enemies of the same class and level.

Also, who knows how to tweak the formula for the stats? Ideally, I want enemies to have the exact same stats with growth turned off, and with growth turned on, the stat variation should not be more than 1 point.

Thanks! I feel like this must be documented somewhere, there are some for the other 2 GBA games, but I just can't seem to find this one :(

[Event Assembler Questions Thread]

No$GBA 2.8d, THIS devkitpro.

Awesome :)

Though it doesn't seem like the gba debugger supports Mac, I might need to install something like wine...

Also the second link has been removed.

[Event Assembler Questions Thread]

0xB is first triggered in the Opening Event. This means the turn event 0xB does nothing, because it thinks it already happened. After that, whenever anybody steps on the area, it checks if they're Eirika. If they're not Eirika, nothing happens. If it is Eirika, she untriggers 0xB and the turn event happens the next turn.

I see, it appears I misunderstood what "untriggering an event" meant. I thought it disables the event, but it actually makes it so you can run the event again.

Thanks dude!

Also, a general question for anyone doing ASM hacking: what kind of tools (disassembler/assembler) do you use?

[Event Assembler Questions Thread]

Ah, if I understand correctly, what you're saying is that stepping on the AREA event simply checks if the person is Erika and if not ENUF/disable another event 0xB and 0xB is the one that actually loads the reinforcements?

Anyways I checked in TurnBasedEvents for event ID 0xB:

ORG $9E868C

TurnBasedEvents:

TURN 0x0 label15 [1,1] 0x0

TURN 0x0 label16 [1,1] 0x8

TURN 0x0 label17 [2,2] 0x0

TURN 0xB label18 [1,255] 0x0

...

label18:

MUNO

SVAL 0x2 0x88B41B8

CALL label37

CUMO 0x83

STAL 60

CURE

TEXTSTART

TEXTSHOW 0x934

TEXTEND

REMA

MUSI

EVBIT_T 0x7

ENDA

...

label37:

EVBIT_MODIFY 0x4

CALL label27

EVBIT_T 0x9

LOAD_SLOT1 0x1

ENUN

EVBIT_F 0x9

EVBIT_MODIFY 0x0

ENDA

...

label27:

EVBIT_MODIFY 0x1

EVBIT_F 0x2

CHECK_EVBIT 0x8

BEQ 0x0 0xC 0x0

FADU 16

LABEL 0x0

EVBIT_MODIFY 0x0

ENDA

Ok so I see that "SVAL 0x2 0x88B41B8" is setting the offset to the reinforcement in slot2, which is eventually loaded by LOAD_SLOT1 after some EVBIT_MODIFYs in label27.

The event (0xB) itself tries to run every turn (from turn 1 to 255?) but it gets disabled by the AREA event unless Erika is the one that triggers it.

I've got a question here: doesn't AREA events trigger whenever someone moves into it? So if I have Seth move in first (or any other enemy for that matter), then he would untrigger 0xB, and if Erika then moves in after in the same turn, how does the event 0xB gets enabled again for the current turn?

[Event Assembler Questions Thread]

Hey guys, I need some help understanding how the reinforcements are loaded in FE8 Chapter 1 after disassembling it in the EA (V9.11).

The trigger condition for the reinforcements is that Erika crosses from the right side of the map to the left.

These should be the relevant disassembled EA code:

MiscBasedEvents:

AFEV 0x7 label23 0x2

AREA 0xA label24 [0,0] [7,9]

AFEV 0x0 label25 0x65

END_MAIN

...

label24:

SETVAL 0x2 0x1

CALL label36

ENUF 0xB

EVBIT_T 0x7

ENDA

...

label36:

CHECK_ACTIVE

IFNOTEQUAL 0x0 0xC 0x2

CALL label26

ENIF 0x0

ENDA

label26:

CHECK_EVENTID

SLOTS_ADD 0xC2

ENUF_SLOT2

EVBIT_T 0x7

ENDB

Once the AREA event triggers, it (should) check to see if the trigger character is Erika and then load reinforcements if yes.

But there are some puzzling things here, the Event's ID should be 0xA (AREA 0xA label24 [0,0] [7,9]), but it's corresponding ENUF uses 0xB under label24.

Similarly, the code

IFNOTEQUAL 0x0 0xC 0x2

CALL label26

ENIF 0x0

should check if the person who triggered the event is Erika (Char ID. 0x1). However why is IFNOTEQUAL checking against the value 0x2/Seth (IFNOTEQUAL 0x0 0xC 0x2)?

Also, how are the reinforcements actually loaded? The only LOAD1s (not included here) I see in the disassembled code were loading Erika/Seth, initial enemies and Franz/Gilliam.

PS. The UNIT data for the 3 enemy reinforcements never appeared in the disassembled file, I suppose it is because they were never referenced anywhere in the disassembled code.

[FE8 Extending Chapter Enemy List]

Interestingly enough, I went back and tried to disassemble the prologue to a fresh text file (the initial one I posted was from long ago), when lo and behold I encountered the same thing! But when I reverted to a previous revision of EA (the one you are using, ironically) it outputted the files correctly. I honestly haven't the slightest idea what may be causing this, all I can really recommend is that you try to re-download EA and try again. I'd be interested to know if anyone has insight to this issue, I have an entire folder of nearly every chapter's events and have never seen this before haha.

Awesome! Thanks dude! Finally got it working.

So apparently the version that I had was V10, the latest one, which also didn't work for you (even though on the disassembled file it says it was still V9.10). I went back and downloaded V9.12 and now it works :)

Seems like the latest version has some issues...