AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Topics about modding PSU. The home of the offline project.

Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Agrajag » Sat Mar 05, 2016 7:49 pm

Rare monsters in PSU are actually using a system that's not focused on them. If you look at missions, they tend to fall into 3 categories:
1. Missions that never have rare monsters, missions that always have rare monsters (these are fairly equivalent, really).
2. Missions with multiple sets with random rare monsters (ex: Citadel of Sand).
3. Missions with a single set with random rare monsters (ex: Fantastic Voyage).

Note that I said "set" there. I can't remember if I've really discussed mission organization here before, but...
In the spawn chart for Citadel of Sand, you'll notice there are 3 map layouts, A ("Stairs straight ahead"), B ("Stairs to the right"), and C ("Stairs to the left"). These are actually separate missions entirely, when you enter the counter, the game randomly chooses which one to display (usually it's just a "generate a random number between 0 and 2, if it's 0, give the first layout, if it's 1, give the second, if it's 2, give the third"), but each one has the same name/description/rewards so they can keep it secret.
Within each map layout, there are 3 enemy lists. Each one of these is a "set" (a set contains listings for all the objects, enemies, etc that appear in a given mission); missions can have between 1 and (unknown; you tend to not see above 4, but there's no guarantee that this is the actual limit) sets, chosen randomly, weighted however Sega saw fit. A rare monster layout is merely any set that has rare monsters placed in it (they're treated like normal monsters).

Online v1 free missions and offline AotI free missions all fell into category 2, with a 33/33/33/1 distribution on set choices. Online AotI free missions tended to be category 2 with a 32/32/31/5 distribution, while a few post-third-update ones were category 3 with 90/10. Events were a mixed bag--Ark to the Future had guaranteed rare monsters and instead used sets to determine where the chips were hidden, while Maximum Attack G had two different sets with rare monsters (the final block could have Gaozorans, Delnadians, or Rappies; nothing else in the mission changes).

(I've considered trying to add a PSO/PSO2-esque "any monster in a certain species can generate as its rare equivalent", but that seems... a bit unlikely. Suppose I should map out what I've thought about doing, categorized in terms of plausibility, at some point.)
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby ninjadejedi » Sat Mar 12, 2016 6:38 pm

Hi there, i've just installed and patched the game as instructed. So i have a bit of question, when i started the game i only have ep2 chapter 1 in guardian post, i suppose it is because i am using a new character. But just incase, is it suppose to be like that or i did something wrong during patching ?
Thank you
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby KanameChidori » Sun Mar 13, 2016 9:57 am

ninjadejedi wrote:Hi there, i've just installed and patched the game as instructed. So i have a bit of question, when i started the game i only have ep2 chapter 1 in guardian post, i suppose it is because i am using a new character. But just incase, is it suppose to be like that or i did something wrong during patching ?
Thank you


ep3 is not available yet, only a few mission packs and some other random missions. Any new character will start with ep2 chapter 1 only.
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby ninjadejedi » Sun Mar 13, 2016 10:14 am

KanameChidori wrote:
ninjadejedi wrote:Hi there, i've just installed and patched the game as instructed. So i have a bit of question, when i started the game i only have ep2 chapter 1 in guardian post, i suppose it is because i am using a new character. But just incase, is it suppose to be like that or i did something wrong during patching ?
Thank you


ep3 is not available yet, only a few mission packs and some other random missions. Any new character will start with ep2 chapter 1 only.



Aww too bad, tks for telling me, I guess this is still better than PSO2 and that is something
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Agrajag » Tue Mar 22, 2016 3:59 am

Alright, so, going to level for a bit.

Clementine's been making good progress, and surprisingly quickly at that.

I have not.

Every day that passes, the niche for this project shrinks a bit.

On one hand, this is a bit disheartening. At some point, there'll be no point in continuing--why would you play a silly offline thing when you can get all the same content and play with your friends?

On the other, Clementine tends to be fairly conservative with deviations from the original mechanics. Absolute worst case, this finally gets finished, I release it, everyone hates everything (I'd be lying if I said this possibility never crossed my mind), there's your vanilla game, still available.

With that in mind, tried an experiment:
Image
As you may be able to tell, results are... mixed. And by "mixed", I mean "you can see one bug in the screenshot, but everything you can't see is also broken".
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby KanameChidori » Wed Mar 23, 2016 9:26 am

The bug you can see as in the opposite colors for stat gains?
Last edited by KanameChidori on Mon May 23, 2016 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby shade » Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:21 pm

It's the one I also see. But more important : the 6th inventory tab, and the fact the game is in English. That means Agra' is using an edited ver. of the 14.30 exe that allow him to play in English. And 14.30 explains why there are so many things broken...

Agrajag wrote:why would you play a silly offline thing when you can get all the same content and play with your friends?
Because I'd rather play offline for several reasons (offline save, possibility to mod/hack/customise the game, to don't be dependent of servers/internet, to be able to play truly alone, etc...). And I also prefer see a maximum of things, like mission files, accessible to everyone (which wouldn't be the case if the sup' up' content would stay exclusive for the online).

Also, beacause of this :
Agrajag wrote:On the other, Clementine tends to be fairly conservative with deviations from the original mechanics.
I can understand why they're doing this, but I don't think it's a good idea at all. TBH, I don't really like changes that seem to be planned for PSUC. Which doesn't prevent me to wish them to bring back the game online, in any form, it'd be wonderful. But your suggestions were more appealing to me.
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Agrajag » Thu Mar 24, 2016 3:17 am

KanameChidori wrote:The bug you can see as in the opposite colors for stats gains?

Very close. Of note, though, +0 on a stat doesn't display as blue normally, that's reserved for actual stat reductions.

shade wrote:It's the one I also see. But more important : the 6th inventory tab, and the fact the game is in English. That means Agra' is using an edited ver. of the 14.30 exe that allow him to play in English.

Have been for a while, actually. Porting the new weapons and PAs/techs to the old client caused bugs that I don't think I'm qualified to fix.

(Yes, this means there is a completed translation of that particular client for whenever it'd be needed.)

shade wrote:And 14.30 explains why there are so many things broken...

It actually seems moderately stable; there are a few blank boxes (the GAS status screen is present-but-empty, for instance), vision phones are broken, and when you first enter the game you can't equip anything (entering a mission fixes this), but the rest seems largely okay... aside from the bit where I horribly broke large parts of episode 3 again. Of course, I did have to do a few weird things to get it into that state, and I don't remember them too well...

That said! All units have two rank values that are always identical (probably a remnant from an old idea of having unit rank and armor rank not be tied so closely, if I had to guess). When third update added fleshy SUVs, they changed extra units (and only extra units) to use one of them for an "allowed races" value (versus the old versions, where any unit with a SUV weapon attached would be automatically cast-only). Because I haven't updated the unit stats yet, extra units have racial restrictions based on their rarity (so my human can't use B-rank extra units at all). Easy fix, just... very low in the priority list.

Alright, so, in the screenshot. There's a value stored in your inventory for units (and armor, I think) that determines which slot it gets equipped to. As you can see, I have a Stella / Power S (+24 Att. / -8 Acc.) equipped in the head slot and a Stella / Hit S (-12 Att. / +24 Acc.) in the arm slot. A Sta / Force (+20 Tech. / +0 Ment.) is showing as a decrease in Tech. and an increase in Ment. In other words, it's treating the Stella / Power S as providing TP and MST rather than ATP and ATA. This is, however, just a display bug.

It gets worse from there. Go into a mission, equip an arm unit in either slot. Your actual stats will be adjusted as expected (as in, a Lumirus / Kaos Knight equipped in the head slot will still provide its full ATP). Now equip an arm unit into another slot. Your stats will reset to whatever the second unit would provide (if you have 500 ATP, then equip a Lumirus / Kaos Knight, then equip a Stella / Hit S in another slot, your total ATP will be 488). Unequip either unit and your stats will return to your base stats, and the other unit will be stuck (it'll display as equipped and selecting it will display "unequip", but choosing to unequip it will do nothing). Whoops!

Fortunately, I have some idea why this happens!

Essentially, there are:
One list of equipped items (keyed by equipment slot--it also includes weapons, armor, and clothes/parts)
One list of display stats (where the stats are calculated based on unit slot) <--This one is causing the display bug!
(fun fact: armors with bonus stats have their stuff there, too, so they all have 15 from my Rabol Bistat, plus whatever the units themselves provide)
Another list of equipped units (keyed by unit type--an arm unit equipped in a head slot still takes the arm unit slot here) <--This one causes the whole "can't unequip the second unit" bug! The second arm unit overwrites the first one, then when you try to unequip the second time, it sees there's no arm unit equipped, and denies it.
One list of actual stats (where upon equipping a unit, it recalculates it based on the assumption that there was only one of each unit) <--This one causes the stat issues!

Basically, in theory, I have some idea how to make it so units can go in any slot. Realistically... it needs more thought, particularly as applies to non-stat things. You obviously should only have one SUV, but what should happen if you put on a Har / Quick (+tech speed, -150 TP), a Har / Smart (+tech speed, -tech range), and a Hizeri / Concentrate (-tech speed, +tech range, +420 TP) all at the same time?
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby thorof » Sat Mar 26, 2016 8:32 pm

i am wondering if you are gonna do the gc shop lottery?
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Agrajag » Mon Mar 28, 2016 3:59 am

May have a small-scale photon drop lottery similar to what PSP2 did (in The Offertory Box or Wandering Peddler), but I don't expect to really replicate the GC lottery.

Not sure what'll happen to the outfits from it. I'm not hugely invested in the dress-up side of the game (heresy, I know), so somewhere closer to release I'll decide on an option somewhere between "put them all in the clothes shop" and "do something truly obnoxious with them" (I'd kinda like to make the empty lot on Clyez 3F into a place where you can gather NPCs, and having a tailor move in would be great; this is... one of those "likely to be terribly impractical" ideas, alas).
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