The Last Promise

[Crimson Red]

the original creators of all these characters and whatnot... and I guess me for not caring enough to thoroughly fix their flaws, but the latter would be impossible for anyone to understand until they actually put themselves in my position -_-

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

well you could also explain what were the "meetings" like when you discussed with people how they wanted to be made.

i mean did they mention joining times or "i'll be a sword user when we already have a shit ton of them". i'm very curious as in my discontinued hack this is basically what i was doing with them and it might've worked out if i had talent with hacking outside of changing items and numbers.

[Foyboy]

What exactly does the Blazer's Drop item do?

[Smiley Jim]

What exactly does the Blazer's Drop item do?

Blazer's Drops work exactly like the Afa's Drops do in Blazing Sword(as well as the Metis' Tome in Sacred Derp), which is to say it gives a +5 boost to all a unit's growths.

[Crimson Red]

that's a very sensitive area that I don't like discussing (I'm like an old man who tries to stay away from his past and shit) but tl;dr people made shit profiles that were just individual characters that didn't fit into the game in the slightest and often have very little to no personality, unique traits, etc., and usually didn't even have a decent portrait or reasonable stats or anything.

Part of the problem was that I didn't enforce specific rules on character creation (like I would have) and the other was that most of the creators were either little kids or simply didn't grasp the idea of how to submit a character that would successfully be embedded into a game full of other original characters as to not have idea clashes etc. and oh man this is turning into something too long and detailed and I don't want to think about it *cringes*

the thing is those characters were ACTUALLY ACCEPTED and then I had to ACTUALLY WORK WITH THEM. Eventually I had the rights to revamp them but you see I'm not a spriter nor do I not have a life so I didn't have the resources to create a shitload of original characters and then sprite them etc.

If it were just like 10 characters, I could probably make each one a quality one with a slightly memorable personality etc. (I mean, even if you hate the guts out of Kelik, it'd be hard to disagree with the idea that he's pretty damn memorable, even if for the "wrong reasons"), but when the game had already progressed as much as it did, investing resources I didn't have into trying to fix fundamentally flawed characters, plot points, etc., was just too hard--I did a LOT of work to do so, like a LOT, but those come out to "patches", it's like the difference between doing major repairs on a house versus rebuilding the house from scratch, I simply didn't have enough resources to do the latter, so I did the former, and for a lot of people that's not enough but for me it is because I still enjoyed the crap out of my game when I played it and ultimately that is my main goal, just as when a normal person makes a sheet of cookies using their preferred recipe they better damn enjoy their cookies themselves, and everyone else liking them too is like a bonus :D

[/nonsensicalrant]

[Parrhesia]

people made shit profiles that were just individual characters that didn't fit into the game in the slightest and often have very little to no personality, unique traits, etc., and usually didn't even have a decent portrait or reasonable stats or anything.

pssssssst

that's what the 'reject' button is for

Failing that, just hijack every character. Technically they're in your hands, so...

[Crimson Red]

I tried but I couldn't adequately distribute quality over quantity

so as said I'm partly to blame for not being perfect enough to save it, I lack the creativity, time, and spriting ability to hijack 40 characters and save'm lol which is why I trashed several characters and ended up creating a couple dozen new ones in the time between it's creation and its completion

[LunaticScreamer]

Well now, having finished my videos for this awesome hack (still in the process of encoding them and whatnot, will be a day or two before everything's up), I felt it was time to post the stats of my main crew to see how they fared. Took these shots from the start of finale part 1.

[

Sheesh he's good. Incredibly dodgy, capped resistance so he can tank magic, and a nice magic score meant I could toss him into any sticky situation, even to heal others, and he'd be just fine.

Ok he might be even better. Once he hits promoted status he just starts exploding into a god unit that can handle almost everything he runs into. Probably my #2 favorite unit to use in the game. He could even tank the final boss well with the Iron Rune in his inventory.

Ok, when he gets Silvans, he doesn't have many chances to be put to use. Silvans though is an awesome enough weapon that he can help weaken or kill an important enemy unit if such an emergency comes up.

Lirin always gets results when I use her extensively. Her awesome bases make up for her sometimes dodgy growths. Giving her the Ether Sphere just made her into that much more of a killing machine. One of the few who I could trust to sit up close with the final boss and be relatively ok.

Holy crap did Emma come out great this playthrough. Her defenses are amazing for a Valkyrie and she could get into the fray and kill things with those offensive stats of hers. Ended up being my dedicated Fortify user for the final battle.

Whereas Kelik was my #2 favorite unit to use, Rex holds the #1 favorite unit to use award in the entire game by far. Nobody could really come close to how much I love to use him, heh. I really wish I knew what his growths were because most of the time he turns out freaking amazing for me. Skill & Resistance tend to be the shaky stats, but both be can fixed with stat boosters. Naturally, I think he capped Speed on his own with Luck & Defense coming very very close. A few stat boosters made those and two more which were fairly close as well hit cap. Also the only character who could get into the low 80s for hit rates against the final boss using Sylmeria. I can only imagine what supports would do to boost him even more. An all around awesome man and I'm probably never NOT going to use him in future playthroughs, that's for damn sure.

Karina was basically Lirin if she didn't get the Ether Sphere. Relatively tanky and with respectable offensive stats as well. With a few stat boosters used on her in finale part 1, she was someone that could stand up close with the final boss with ease.

Cia was another surprise unit in this run. Her magic was a little lower than I'd like (That's with TWO Energy Rings mind you), but holy crap Skill is usually one of her worst stats and it ended up at a very nice level by the end.

While her stats would likely indicate she got RNG owned something fierce, don't let that fool you. For me, Tamiko's only goal was to heal anyone on the brink of death and light up any Fog of War maps, both jobs she did a very fine job in. I still kinda wish I had that one Tamiko who had 13 defense at lv20 Cleric in my first playthrough though. That was hilarious to see.

Yue usually ends up being my Druid, but because he got shafted in speed, I ended up using Rana here. While he too got owned in speed (2 points of speed I think in like 12 levels, haha), his magic was so high that if he hit with dark magic, it HURT. Also a lifesaver during the first half of chapter 27 by baiting the boss while having Munio equipped.

Holy wow does Asch get awesome if you put some time into him. Awesome HP & Luck growths while the rest of his growths save for Resistance are pretty nice as well. Certainly played a big part in making chapter 27 go smoothly by weakening or killing multiple units.

Gary just start facerolling almost everything from the word go. He could get nothing but empty levels when he joins and he'd still be awesome. Give him something like the Super Rifle and he will be simply amazing at picking off annoying enemies.

Levion might not be the speediest unit of them all, but he's incredibly tanky and can take hits when he needs to. Definitely saved my hide when he joined on more than a few occasions, that's for sure.

Howard was basically a more offensive based version of Levion. Much more speed, very high strength, decent defenses. All good. Shame about his Skill though. He got to wield Obsidian for awhile though, yay.

Shuuda, AKA a glass cannon. Heavy on the offensive stats, weak on the defensive ones. He eventually got phased out in favor of Asch late game, but he still pulled his weight before that moment. Just kinda wished his strength was a bit better there.

Alice's usefulness was relegated to shuttling my units across rivers and whatnot to speed things up and getting into only a small handful of battles. She did what I wanted her to do well though and I can be happy with that.

Overall, a very fun hack that kept my attention for a very long time. Can't wait to see what stuff like the bonus dungeon or supports will bring to the plate in the future!

[Crimson Red]

Version 1.3 is out. You can find it in the same place as usual. Blog includes a pointless rant about it. There's also been an update to the walkthrough by Dieuwtjin but said walkthrough still only goes up to Chapter 10, so eh.

That is all.

[zahlman]

From the new release notes:

- Apparently the Heroslayer is effective against walls. I don't know how. I checked the effective list and nothing suggests that it would be. D=

I'll check if it's still true in the new patch, but I had the same thing happen with Zanbato before.

- HP doesn’t stay over 80 unless you savestate or do suspend/resume. If you restart a chapter where a unit has over 63 HP, it’ll reset to that much HP - 0x40 or -64, AFAIK. D= I have no fix for this so for now, savestate abuse. I actually know what's causing it, but there's no easy fix, sadly, as it's a limitation of how the game saves the HP bits (it doesn't save 8 bits, AKA 1 byte, and thus we're limited in the range of values we can use... -_- stupid space conservation methods).

I think Hex might have worked out something for this... sounds familiar, anyway.

- Oh no, "he"'s predictable. Well, when you learn how to make it work randomly, let me know. -_-

Honestly, I think "he"'s annoying enough as is ^_^

Edited October 24, 2012 by zahlman

[Crimson Red]

- I have a theory regarding that (which your new Zanbato remark supports) but it's another really obscure hacking thing and I'm kind of tired of those so ill have to tackle it later

- nope, I discussed it with him, he did something to change how the other stats are changed, but not HP.

- true enough, though he did get nerfed quite a bit in the last patch easy mode is going to be a joke

[Chocolate Kitty]

- nope, I discussed it with him, he did something to change how the other stats are changed, but not HP.

terribly incorrect

i got bored and did this for kicks(that's after the reset his HP is still at the ever comical 69)

it's just editing 3(I think) bytes lol

i have the notes if anyone is interested

Edited October 24, 2012 by Kitty of Time

[The Iron Rose]

terribly incorrect

i got bored and did this for kicks(that's after the reset his HP is still at the ever comical 69)

it's just editing 3(I think) bytes lol

i have the notes if anyone is interested

I remember actually hex editing (literally editing something in the hex) and fixing the issue. Can't remember the location, though, so I'd personally love the notes.

[Crimson Red]

If by that you mean editing the values at these offsets:

0x017c7c

0x029996

0x0299ac

Then I've done it and it doesn't completely work.

I don't remember the details and I'm on my phone as usual but the game only saves a certain amount of bits so once the HP goes over 0x3F (I think this is it) or in decimal hits 64, the HP goes back down to 0 (what it actually does is only store a certain amount of bits such that the HP goes down by like 63 or 64 or something--again, I don't remember all the details).

Try it yourself and then restart the chapter you started ad the HP should go down. A solution for this would be so that the game saves the change in HP as opposed to the HP value itself much like Hextator did with the other attributes but I'm not capable of making this fix myself as I'm not very good with ASM. :/

[Chocolate Kitty]

terribly incorrect

i got bored and did this for kicks(that's after the reset his HP is still at the ever comical 69)

it's just editing 3(I think) bytes lol

i have the notes if anyone is interested

interesting

it went back to 64

i've done this multiple times so this is a surprise

ah okay it makes sense with every other true stat cap

OH WELL

(if you're wondering why enemies don't reset it's because they're loaded each time the chapter starts and not saved into the memory like PCs)

Edited October 24, 2012 by Kitty of Time

[Crimson Red]

Yeah, it kind of ruined the game balance when I found out, so I had to spend several hours rebelancing the entire game again once I set the HP cap back down to 60 instead of 80

but the feature was waaaaaay too much fun and I personally don't mind abusing savestates to use it soooo :P

[Shugey]

So what exactly does Version 1.3 even do? Is it just minor bugfixes?

[Crimson Red]

As well as balancing and it renders all previous savestates incompatible with the game (you have to suspend and resume or restart the chapter for the issue to be fixed).

:\

[Shugey]

What do you mean by balancing? Is Logan usable now?

[charlie_]

What do you mean by balancing? Is Logan usable now?

I had a Logan who capped strength skill and speed, thanks. After promoting at level 10.

I'll probably use him again this time through.

[Crimson Red]

every character is and always has been (err, as in, in TLP, not before then >_>) usable

just because one may have better or worse experiences with them or one character has a greater tendency to do well than another character does not mean they aren't usable

all the balancing did was make the game a little easier and make those tendencies more favorable for the player (I don't like trying to perfect balance completely as I believe that part of the fun of the game is challenging oneself by using characters that are, well, harder to use, or by using characters for other reasons than stats, etc., but at the same time no balance makes the game favor using certain characters TOO much or else the game becomes too easy or hard with certain characters, and that's not a very enjoyable experience either, at least IMO)

[Crimson Red]

New info and screenshots on the blog. Feel free to check it out.

http://www.thelastpromise.net

inb4 warned for double-posting

[Swordsalmon]

Yay, more content! So you can fight your own army, it looks like. Sounds fun. ^_^

[Crimson Red]

Fighting the enemies with identical units (AKA "clones") is actually one of the bonus features of... the bonus dungeon. It's not one of the main features/things required to do to beat it, I mean. XD

[Swordsalmon]

Looks like Cia will be benched for that dungeon. ;)