Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe

JustJeff88 posted:

I don't want to sound too harsh on this mod; I apologise if that came across. There is definitely a lot to like here, such as the class system, which is why perhaps the lacklustre equipment is so glaring. The amount of end-game gear that you are throwing out because it's only for one class (of 12, mind, which is a ton) that you don't have seems a really dodgy design decision right now. Nevertheless, this mod does have a lot going for it.

:same:

there's a tremendous amount of effort, thought, and care that went into this and it's pretty cool but the equipment list goes all in on some design decisions that I'm not a big fan of in general, let alone a game with 80 item slots for 12 unique classes. the spell list uses a lot of creative overlapping to create very distinct styles of spellcaster using relatively small spell lists, so dedicating a third of the weapon list and several whole dungeons to giving every character a unique ultimate weapon feels like a step down by comparison. it's a minor blemish on an otherwise excellent looking hack, and they do make up for it elsewhere (I am loving the treatment of spell items), but it's still a little bit of a letdown for me.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

5-Headed Snake God
Jun 12, 2008

Do you see how he's a cat?


JustJeff88 posted:

I don't want to sound too harsh on this mod; I apologise if that came across. There is definitely a lot to like here, such as the class system, which is why perhaps the lacklustre equipment is so glaring. The amount of end-game gear that you are throwing out because it's only for one class (of 12, mind, which is a ton) that you don't have seems a really dodgy design decision right now. Nevertheless, this mod does have a lot going for it.

No, not at all. As I said, it's largely a matter of taste. For me, it's fine, if underwhelming, but I can 100% understand it being a letdown for others. I'm doing this because I really like the mod, but I definitely expected that it wouldn't be for everyone, or that there might be criticism.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


There's only so much you can do given how FF1 is programmed. I'd never play any of the mods I've seen but I like seeing what people can do within the constraints the game imposes on them.

Shmtur
Jul 23, 2005

5-Headed Snake God posted:

No, not at all. As I said, it's largely a matter of taste. For me, it's fine, if underwhelming, but I can 100% understand it being a letdown for others. I'm doing this because I really like the mod, but I definitely expected that it wouldn't be for everyone, or that there might be criticism.

Thanks for showing it off!

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

ultrafilter posted:

There's only so much you can do given how FF1 is programmed. I'd never play any of the mods I've seen but I like seeing what people can do within the constraints the game imposes on them.
Yeah same, it's perfect for an LP because I want to see how it goes but I don't want to be the one going. So this thread's great!

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
Clearly there should be a goonmade FF1 hack.

FeyerbrandX
Oct 9, 2012

Honestly while I too would prefer a deeper equip pool assuming its possible within the limits of the game, it sort of reminds me of FF3, where midgame everyone gets the [INSERT CLASS HERE] Armor and [ONE OF A DOZEN KATANAS] and [NASIR IS NOT PROGRAMING MORE EQUIPMENT FOR GEO OR BARD, JUST GONNA DO SHURIKENS AND KNIGHT SWORDS]

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

ultrafilter posted:

There's only so much you can do given how FF1 is programmed. I'd never play any of the mods I've seen but I like seeing what people can do within the constraints the game imposes on them.

Now that the pixel remasters exist, it’ll be really good to see what sorts of mods and hacks come out for them over time.

Modoh
Jul 23, 2007

FeyerbrandX posted:

Honestly while I too would prefer a deeper equip pool assuming its possible within the limits of the game, it sort of reminds me of FF3, where midgame everyone gets the [INSERT CLASS HERE] Armor and [ONE OF A DOZEN KATANAS] and [NASIR IS NOT PROGRAMING MORE EQUIPMENT FOR GEO OR BARD, JUST GONNA DO SHURIKENS AND KNIGHT SWORDS]

As someone who just made a FF3 mod to improve equipment availability for fiesta runs, this hits close to home. I'm not sure what FF1's limits are but in FF3's case I had to remove some redundant weapons to make space for some more endgame stuff.

The FF1 mod here looks fun and I might try it at some point, and I'm definitely enjoying the LP.

Sum Gai
Mar 23, 2013

ultrafilter posted:

There's only so much you can do given how FF1 is programmed. I'd never play any of the mods I've seen but I like seeing what people can do within the constraints the game imposes on them.

I don't think this is really a big deal, but I am curious what the constraints are, in practice- in vanilla the Masamune can be equipped by everybody, so equipment that breaks the rules is certainly possible, and most weapon types can be equipped by multiple classes, so in theory it's possible to make multiple unique swords that can be equipped by all sword users, but each one works best for one class, say.

LiefKatano
Aug 31, 2018

I swear, by my sword and capote, that I will once again prove victorious!!
There aren't really constraints, mostly because weapon types aren't really a thing, mechanically (beyond at best "this is what sprite this weapon uses").

You could make a single axe be usable only by white mages while every other axe is usable by fighters, for example, and that won't require any extra work - you'd just mark that one axe as "usable by White Mage/White Wizard" and the other axes as "usable by fighters/knights".

Making each weapon preferred by a class is another thing entirely, unless you mean by things like "this weapon has lower attack power but it can cast MTEO for free (as an example), so Warlocks would want to use it" or "you might as well give this high-attack weapon to a Viking" or whatever. If you want "this weapon gives 10 more attack to a viking" or similar I'm pretty sure you're out of luck without really digging in.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


I don't know exactly how FF1 represents weapon data but odds are good that there's a limit on how much space you have to describe all of the weapons in the game. That's the sort of constraint I was thinking of.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

ultrafilter posted:

I don't know exactly how FF1 represents weapon data but odds are good that there's a limit on how much space you have to describe all of the weapons in the game. That's the sort of constraint I was thinking of.

Off the top of my head, the main constraints in FF1 are

- Critical hit rate is tied to the weapon's ID number in a weird way.
- Damage bonuses (e.g. extra effective vs. robots) don't work.
- Number of attacks is directly tied to the item's accuracy and the wielder's stats.
- There's no "cast on hit" effect. Indeed, the first FF to have cast-on-hit is FF5!
- Every class can "wave" an item to invoke its spell (if present), even if they can't equip the item. So anyone could use a hypothetical axe that casts MTEO, not just warlocks.
- Relatedly, spells have the same effectiveness regardless of how they are cast (ICE2 has the same damage range when cast by a level-50 black mage, a level-7 red mage, or a fighter waving the Black Shirt)
- Plus more basic stuff like "you can only carry 4 weapons per character".

The practical upshot of this is that you have really very few levers to work with when it comes to making interesting weapons in FF1. You can make flavorful weapons, and it's cool to see e.g. the Flame sword or Coral sword...but the only things that matter on those swords are their damage and hit rate; mechanically they're the same as all the other swords in the game.

There's probably also a limit on the number of item types in the game, probably 256, but I don't know that for sure.

MechaCrash
Jan 1, 2013

I'm pretty sure the crit rate thing and the damage bonus thing are because of the way specific variables are coded, not an engine limitation. Like there's a romhack of FF1 that's basically "vanilla, but we fixed all the bugs."

LiefKatano
Aug 31, 2018

I swear, by my sword and capote, that I will once again prove victorious!!

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

- Damage bonuses (e.g. extra effective vs. robots) don't work.
- Relatedly, spells have the same effectiveness regardless of how they are cast (ICE2 has the same damage range when cast by a level-50 black mage, a level-7 red mage, or a fighter waving the Black Shirt)

afaik these are fixed in this hack

The damage bonuses definitely seem fixed at least. I'm not sure about the intelligence thing but the author seems to think that was fixed, at least, judging by the description on RHC :v:

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Off the top of my head, the main constraints in FF1 are

- Critical hit rate is tied to the weapon's ID number in a weird way.
- Damage bonuses (e.g. extra effective vs. robots) don't work.
- Number of attacks is directly tied to the item's accuracy and the wielder's stats.
- There's no "cast on hit" effect. Indeed, the first FF to have cast-on-hit is FF5!
- Every class can "wave" an item to invoke its spell (if present), even if they can't equip the item. So anyone could use a hypothetical axe that casts MTEO, not just warlocks.
- Relatedly, spells have the same effectiveness regardless of how they are cast (ICE2 has the same damage range when cast by a level-50 black mage, a level-7 red mage, or a fighter waving the Black Shirt)
- Plus more basic stuff like "you can only carry 4 weapons per character".

The practical upshot of this is that you have really very few levers to work with when it comes to making interesting weapons in FF1. You can make flavorful weapons, and it's cool to see e.g. the Flame sword or Coral sword...but the only things that matter on those swords are their damage and hit rate; mechanically they're the same as all the other swords in the game.

There's probably also a limit on the number of item types in the game, probably 256, but I don't know that for sure.

Stuff like damage bonuses and stats not affecting spells has been fixed in various fan patches, romhacks, and randomizers iirc.

mandatory lesbian
Dec 18, 2012

JustJeff88 posted:

That part does interest me. The bore-the-bollox off me equipment system, though, is a huge turn-off.

What does bore the bollox mean

Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔

mandatory lesbian posted:

What does bore the bollox mean
Their balls are put to sleep

Anyway, considering the point that every class can use any item to cast spells, that can also be an upside. What about an ultimate axe that only a Viking can equip, but it casts Fire 3 on use which is only really strong (now, fixed) if casted by a high Int class? Then it's always useful, even if you don't have a Viking.

Iceblocks
Jan 5, 2013
Taco Defender
Romhacks like this are always interesting to read about. Brings some new life into a game I have bought for several handheld systems over the years.

5-Headed Snake God
Jun 12, 2008

Do you see how he's a cat?


TooMuchAbstraction posted:

- Damage bonuses (e.g. extra effective vs. robots) don't work.
- Relatedly, spells have the same effectiveness regardless of how they are cast (ICE2 has the same damage range when cast by a level-50 black mage, a level-7 red mage, or a fighter waving the Black Shirt)

As others have said, the first of these issues is definitely fixed in UCE, and the latter (derived from Intelligence being broken in vanilla) also seems to have been fixed, though it's harder to tell.

Simply Simon posted:

Anyway, considering the point that every class can use any item to cast spells, that can also be an upside. What about an ultimate axe that only a Viking can equip, but it casts Fire 3 on use which is only really strong (now, fixed) if casted by a high Int class? Then it's always useful, even if you don't have a Viking.

I'm gonna take a stab and say that the author wouldn't care for that. Magic, and the limiting thereof, was clearly a focus of this hack, and he very specifically avoided putting any spell over level 2 on a spellcasting item. A low-level spell could replace FIR3 in your example, but there aren't enough spells to give every ultimate weapon an effect like that, at least without duplicates. (Also, AFAIK, spellcasting items can't use spells that let you choose a target - they need to target either all enemies, all heroes, or the user. So FIR3 is not an option anyway.)

JustJeff88
Jan 15, 2008

I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE


THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

:dogout:
of SA-Mart forever

MechaCrash posted:

I'm pretty sure the crit rate thing and the damage bonus thing are because of the way specific variables are coded, not an engine limitation. Like there's a romhack of FF1 that's basically "vanilla, but we fixed all the bugs."

Might be 'Final Fantasy Restored' that you are thinking of. No content differences, bugs fixed and a font change (I can't stand all caps). There is a new version of that with new content called 'Restored and Remastered' that is in late beta and publically available. Best FF1 rom hack I have ever seen.

5-Headed Snake God
Jun 12, 2008

Do you see how he's a cat?


Dark Cave was a bit short. How about something with a bit more substance?



Our destination today is this tower, located between Elfland and Crescent Lake. It's surrounded by desert and swamp, so we can't land next to it, but we have a couple of options for our approach.



First, we could land here, east of Elfland, and hike the rest of the way. (Incidentally, the swamp here has the same encounter sets as the tower itself, making it another high-level grinding area that can be accessed near the game's start.)



What we're actually doing is taking the ship. By parking it here, we can take a much shorter walk to the tower, limiting how many encounters we get.



And that's important, because some of the monster groups near the tower are nasty. I didn't even know this encounter existed until now.



Fortunately, SOFT is still amazing.



And with that, we have reached the dungeon: the Time Tower.



The first floor of the Time Tower is a ruin. The entrance is a teleporter. Notice that it points down, indicating that it would take us to a lower floor - or out of the dungeon, since this is floor 1.



While exploring this floor, we run into some T. rexes. In vanilla, these are among the rarest enemies in the game, tied with WarMech. They don't seem to be as rare in UCE, though they're still uncommon. They're basically just stronger tyros; they hit hard but otherwise aren't terribly noteworthy.



Anyway, there are a bunch of other teleporters on this floor. Though they all point up (indicating that they'll send us to the next floor)...



...Most of them are actually exits. But we were warned about this.



This guy in Onrac mentioned the Time Tower and the trickery of its first floor. He unfortunately did not bother to tell us how to figure out which transporter to use. It has been pointed out that he actually does hint at the correct teleporter. Notice that he ends his statement with a question mark rather than a period.



Accordingly, the correct teleporter actually has a big "?" next to it. The easiest way to reach it is to head southwest from the entrance.



Welcome to floor 2.



As with all the game's major dungeons, there's a new type of elemental here, the time. Times hit multiple times and can cause sleep, but they don't hit very hard unless they crit, so they're not especially dangerous. This particular fight brought our party to level 23.



This, on the other hand, is very dangerous. MagiTeks have moderately strong attacks, but their real danger is their special attacks - they can use BOLTBEAM, FIREBEAM, and ICEBEAM, all of which deal hefty elemental damage to one character. After those, they'll use TEKLASER, which does just as much damage but is non-elemental, so SHEL won't block it. They also have a ton of HP and regenerate 10% of it at the end of each round. And they're immune to instant death. And they can't be run from.



They are not, however, immune to petrification. :v:



Heading south from the teleporter brings us to this odd-looking room. That grid pattern is a clue - the darkened spaces are spiked tiles.



The actual encounters aren't too tough, fortunately, and we only need to deal with two of them. Sentries are stronger versions of guards, complete with the weakness to lightning - though gray nagas can mitigate that with SHEL.



Our reward for facing down these battles is a chest containing Hereward, named for an Anglo-Saxon nobleman who led a resistance movement against the Normans. It's an axe, and the ultimate weapon for Viking. And we didn't even have to kill a boss for it!



In the northwest corner of the floor is this room, containing a chest which is, surprisingly, unguarded.



Inside is the Merlin Robe, the best robe in the game. Not that we can use it, of course.



This random encounter is mean. Sages cast a suite of white magic spells, while time mages open with BLT2 and only get worse from there. They're not immune to MUTE, but they are pretty resistant to it, so facing them is a risky proposition.

These guys clearly have it in for our heroes - I ran into this battle four loving times!



This fight shows up as a rare joke encounter in the Time Tower. I'm glad I got to show it off.



In the northeast corner of the floor is the dungeon's ring, the WILL Ring. We'll give it to Rogue, since he's lost a lot of ground as our #1 fighter.



South of that room, we see this big, obviously important room.



But we can't get into it.



Instead we arrive at this room.



It contains some treasure chests, but the door is actually coded as something else entirely.



Yes, it's an inn. In a dungeon.



It's expensive as poo poo too.




Unfortunately, like any inn, if you use it and reset, you start outside. It can get you out of the tower if you're lacking EXIT, but otherwise it's really only worth it if you need the heal.



So instead, let's leave it and walk north. Although the room isn't revealed, we can still enter it and get the chests.



Most of them are just consumables, but at least this one has some money.




From the floor 2 entrance, we head south, then east, which puts us on a twisting path that takes us to the final room.



The dialogue here foreshadows the endgame reveal and suggests that the bosses of these dungeons are working for Chaos in some capacity.



Our boss today is Ogopogo. Like his twin, Kraken, he's dangerous primarily for his physical attacks.




He hits numerous times and can inflict silence with his strikes. His damage isn't too bad... initially.



See, Ogopogo likes to buff himself, and the first step in that is HSTE, doubling his attacks and making him horrendously dangerous.




WILL (via our new ring in this case) helps deal with his sleep effect, while SLOW is by far the best way to mitigate his attacks. Even with HSTE, two shots of SLOW will reduce him to just one hit per attack.




Naturally, putting HSTE on our own group (especially Viking) is the best way for us to deal damage in return.



This happened between Ogopogo's HSTE and my second SLOW. An unfortunate turn of events.




Defensive spells definitely help reduce his damage, particularly when combined with SLOW.



Unfortunately, he can counter that by raising his own power. At this point, if not SLOWed, the boss can generally one-shot anyone not protected by defensive buffs.




After TPR2, Ogopogo will use XZON, which has the potential to flat-out end any party. We lucked out - only Ranger succumbed to it on this run. Still, being two characters down isn't good.



Luckily, by this point the boss was weak enough that we were able to take him out.



10,003 GP and EXP, enough to bring our party to level 24 and finally get Ranger access to 6th-level spells. You'll never guess what the last bonus boss gives.




The prizes here are fantastic for our party: Anduril and Mjollnir, which reference the legendary weapons of Aragorn and, of course, Thor. They're the ultimate weapons for Ranger and Cleric, meaning that our party is now fully-equipped.



Only one more bonus dungeon to go - but oh boy is it dickish.

5-Headed Snake God fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jan 18, 2022

Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔

5-Headed Snake God
Jun 12, 2008

Do you see how he's a cat?



:aaaaa:

Left 4 Bread
Oct 4, 2021

i sleep

That's... that's pretty drat clever. :golfclap:

Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔
I've (badly) played La-Mulana all evening, this poo poo is child's play to notice

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe
That is actually extremely clever, but I'm not sure it really changes it from being a trial-and-error puzzle in practice, since if you see unmarked stairs before you see the ? stairs you have no reason not to try them, and if you see the ? stairs you would want to try them whether or not you got the clue. But I bet it delivers a really satisfying "a-ha!" for players that spot the ? and figure it out, which is a pretty key part of game design.

JustJeff88
Jan 15, 2008

I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE


THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

:dogout:
of SA-Mart forever
I noticed the quesiton mark in the NPC dialogue, but I didn't make the connection in-game. I kept thinking 'Why is there a question mark when it's a declaritive statement'? When Snake found the correct stairs and pointed out the '?' I just shrugged. I'm glad that Simon pointed it out, but I think that it's more of a slightly abstruse 'Ah ha!' then a clever hint.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


That's probably in the top 10% of puzzles in a version of FF1.

5-Headed Snake God
Jun 12, 2008

Do you see how he's a cat?


Today's update is a bit short: the dungeon takes some time to actually navigate (especially if you don't know what you're doing), but there isn't a huge amount to say about it.



Our final bonus dungeon is this castle, located in about the same spot as the vanilla Castle of Ordeals. Naturally, there's no convenient landing spot next to it.



Instead, we have to land at this patch of grass here...





As make our way around the mountains to get to the dungeon.



Welcome to the Holy Shrine. This place is filled with a host of new monsters. It also has a terrible gimmick.



Yes, much like that one floor in vanilla Ordeals, the Holy Shrine is a teleporter maze. There aren't as many teleports here, but they're spread across some very big areas, so a wrong turn can set you back quite a bit.



My very first encounter here is this ultra-rare fight; it occupies just one of the 64 random encounter slots for the dungeon. And I think my emulator's RNG might be a bit wonky because I ran into it twice. Gold golems are immensely tough, with sky-high defense, resistance to all elements, and immunity to status ailments. Buffing is basically required for fighting them.



If you need money, though, it's probably worth it. This fight dropped so much GP that it couldn't display properly. I mathed it out at 55,000. The fight is rare enough that grinding for gold golems isn't worth the time, but it's a nice bonus - or would be if our party needed the money.



Priests are a new spellcasting monster with surprisingly little focus on healing. They open with CHKR, then switch to HLY2 (which doesn't hurt our heroic party), then decide they've had enough of your poo poo and cast PERL. Paladins don't have any real tricks, but they're quite tough and, near as I can tell, totally immune to status ailments.



After taking the western teleporter from the entrance, we arrive here.



Heading south eventually brings us to this room and its guarded chest.



Holies are strong and tough, but not inordinately so. Spells that deal dark damage will wreck them, as well as most other monsters here.



The chest contains the last unique armor, the Karna Plate, named for a legendary hero from the Mahābhārata, a Hindu epic. As we have no paladin, it does us no good.




After grabbing the armor , we take the nearby teleporter and wind up in a hallway.




We take the left-hand path, much like at the entrance, and find ourselves at a mirror image of the section containing the Karna Plate.



There's a chest here too, and it contains the dungeon's ring, the HOLY Ring. It's... pretty worthless. HOLY's damage is so low by this point that, like the BOLT Ring, it probably won't get any use. Ranger gets it anyway because why not?




After grabbing the ring, we head back north and west, and teleport to this small room. Not much choice here.



That teleporter takes us to this hallway. All the rooms here contain chests, though only one (the fourth one on the left) contains actual treasure.



But what a treasure it is! the HEAL Staff is really goddamn good, which is probably why it's only available this late in the game. Cleric is the obvious choice to hold onto it.



Sacreds are, well, sacred cows. They're basically just stronger bulls.



We also run into some wizards around here. They open with FIRE and only get worse from there; they can wreak real havoc if not shut down quickly.



There's one last teleporter outside the boss room, which is a quick exit for parties that need it.



We're just gonna go fight the boss.



So rude.



Our last bonus boss is Seraph. Her big trick is that she has CUR4 in her spell routine, which means that parties facing her have two options: rush her down at top speed or turtle up until she heals, then rush her down before she can do it again. In practice, most parties shouldn't have much trouble with the former tactic.



Seraph's physical attacks hit fairly hard, but aren't too dangerous. We use SLD3 to further mitigate the damage.



Her first spell is IVS2, making her much harder to actually hurt.



We counter with the ring we got way back in the Earth Cave. It doesn't entirely mitigate the bonus, but it does enough to let our fighters land most of their attacks.



Her next spell is HEX, which can cause some real problems. Only Ranger was affected here, and he was able to restore himself with a CLNS potion the following round.



Third, Seraph breaks out PERL. With SHEL up, this isn't much of a threat.



I believe her 4th spell is CUR4, but Viking took her out before that.



The expected rewards.




Killing Seraph lets us grab the last two ultimate weapons, the Paladin's Judgment and the Priest's Benedict. Not much use for our group.



And with that, we've finished all four bonus dungeons. We're now prepared to do the Temple of Fiends!

Next time: We do not do the Temple of Fiends.

5-Headed Snake God fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Jan 20, 2022

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe
IIRC running into the rarest fight twice in close proximity is a feature of FF1's extremely lovely and not very random encounter table. The game has a big ole list of numbers corresponding to entries in a given area's encounter table and it goes through the list in sequence whenever the game boots up cold, and there's one point in the list that has the rare fight slot twice with only a couple fights in between.

(When I was little I used to abuse this to grind money for all the goodies at Elfland by doing a hard reset and immediately going out to sea to guarantee an easy and lucrative fight vs Kyzoku, then going back and saving and repeating.)

FoolyCharged
Oct 11, 2012

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Somebody call for an ant?

the holy poopacy posted:

IIRC running into the rarest fight twice in close proximity is a feature of FF1's extremely lovely and not very random encounter table. The game has a big ole list of numbers corresponding to entries in a given area's encounter table and it goes through the list in sequence whenever the game boots up cold, and there's one point in the list that has the rare fight slot twice with only a couple fights in between.

(When I was little I used to abuse this to grind money for all the goodies at Elfland by doing a hard reset and immediately going out to sea to guarantee an easy and lucrative fight vs Kyzoku, then going back and saving and repeating.)

Yeah, random number generators aren't actually random, they're the output of a computing function that always returns the same list for a given seed number. Most of the time it's covered up by choosing randomish seed values from, say for instance the system time, but the NES didn't have a clock so every time you boot the game you get the same RNs in the same order, every time because the seed is constant.

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe

FoolyCharged posted:

Yeah, random number generators aren't actually random, they're the output of a computing function that always returns the same list for a given seed number. Most of the time it's covered up by choosing randomish seed values from, say for instance the system time, but the NES didn't have a clock so every time you boot the game you get the same RNs in the same order, every time because the seed is constant.

Most NES games (including FF1, mostly) have the good sense to at least advance the RNG based on frames or button presses so that you can't reliably reproduce results. The encounter table doesn't even use the same bad RNG that the battle engine does, it literally loops through the exact same sequence of fights no matter what.

Procrastine
Mar 30, 2011


There are four bonus dungeons containing eight class-exclusive ultimate weapons for twelve classes, so four classes just get hosed over? Did I get that right or did I forget some other source of ultimate weapons?

5-Headed Snake God
Jun 12, 2008

Do you see how he's a cat?


Procrastine posted:

There are four bonus dungeons containing eight class-exclusive ultimate weapons for twelve classes, so four classes just get hosed over? Did I get that right or did I forget some other source of ultimate weapons?

The Rogue and Viking find their weapons elsewhere in the dungeons, the Monk doesn't need one, and the Fool gets hosed, but what else is new?

Randalor
Sep 4, 2011



I'm a little sad that the Fool didn't get a Marotte as their ultimate weapon.

Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔
Would be awesome if the Fool got an ultimate weapon that would make them super OP as the reward for carrying their useless rear end all the way through the bonus dungeon, imho

Blaze Dragon
Aug 28, 2013
LOWTAX'S SPINE FUND

Simply Simon posted:

Would be awesome if the Fool got an ultimate weapon that would make them super OP as the reward for carrying their useless rear end all the way through the bonus dungeon, imho

Yeah, I feel this would be fair. The joke class should get the player something for managing to somehow make it work.

5-Headed Snake God
Jun 12, 2008

Do you see how he's a cat?


I knew that opinion was going to crop up at some point (and hell, I don't entirely disagree with it), but the author made the Fool, functionally, for players who want to try to beat the game with only three characters. Something that makes the class not useless, even for only a small part of the game, would defeat the purpose.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Randalor
Sep 4, 2011



I'm fine with the joke character being an actual joke for the entire game. The earliest "intentional joke" character I can think of, only had the "reward" of bring able to class change into the best class without needing an item, but you still had to actually level them up.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply