AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

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

Postby Agrajag » Fri Oct 07, 2016 8:10 pm

shade wrote:I agree with everyone else : I also don't think it would bother someone to start over, especially if we consider this mode will provide a brand new experience. It'd be bad/sad to start with an imported high lvl char.

And to break save compatibility with the vanilla game may render things easier for you, and maybe let you implement other changes.

It would move a number of things from "impossible" to "possible" (extra NPCs, removing the PA cap, possibly common storage) and a few things from "obnoxious" to "less obnoxious" (if there are no pre-new-grinding weapons, I don't need to worry about fixing their stats; if I don't have to worry about characters from that "allow advanced types" .exe, I can use that data for other things). No promises, of course, I'll have to do some research on this.

(On the silly side, it'd also mean that rare missions can be part of mission packs. If you can't bring your character in, I don't care if you powerlevel to 200 before you start...)


shade wrote:I don't have a proper list of music file (for exemple, I can't say for sure which file corresponds to "xa_bgm008.adx"), but I do know there are some duplicates (for example, 5ca355ff67a177563c0be89256f82a9d & 84165eab3e9f115722b1f4881d5cd9f5 ; and the game uses the 1st one), some extracts (like you mentionned, the 10 seconds loop of "Comedy", 8607b4c0e0078d329fb38280caea8da2, is taken from 3df90dc2a25de0e6085839c3d2bc6cab), the two empty slots, etc...

I have an almost full list. It's here. The unidentified ADX files are almost certainly v1 boss intros/death sounds, but tracking down their actual names is... somewhat obnoxious.


shade wrote:If you want to keep the 10 seconds loop of Comedy, instead of using 8607b... Would it be possible to use 3df90... And to tell to the game to start at 1:13, to end at 1:27 and to restart at 1:14 ?
And then to use the 8607b... for something else ?
Do you know how many slots could be "emptied" ?

No. As far as I'm aware, the only real control I have once the game gets to that point is "play music" or "ruin everything"; loop data is baked into the adx files themselves. Accordingly, the answer to the next question is "also no", and the next one's "probably none of them". The problem's generally more However...

shade wrote:And do you think it'd be a good idea to save one slot or two for Clementine, as temporary music slots for event ?

If they're using 2.0014.30, they have dozens of empty music slots, as I do. You see, Sega added entries for all of the PSP2i music (including missions, bosses, cutscenes...) but only added a few actual tracks (generally just the bosses and areas); by a quick count, it looks like about 26 of them are unused (out of 57 total added tracks).

shade wrote:Oh ! And for an upcoming mission pack, I don't have a request. In fact, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think we will have to wait too long to see your mod - or at least the part that contains missions - available ; and I don't want to get to much content released before the final version is available (that would remains me how SEGA spoiled us by revealing 4 of the 5/6 new environments in PSP2 before the game was released...). I understand it may be frustrating for people who have never played to PSU JP online (or PSP2/2i), but I think it'd be better to preserve some surprises. Maybe, you can only release missions available in the PSP2/2i trial version (but that would exclude Othori Castle).

TBH, till you don't release The Eternal Cycle, I'd be ok with any choice (and if you release it, I'll just have to don't download it, but it'll be hard for me to resist...).

Eternal Cycle, like other GAMs, may be... a bit delayed. Kind of a shame, the "World of Illusion" missions were easily my favorite event missions.

For that matter, Ohtori Encampment may misbehave badly on US clients, fair warning.

KanameChidori wrote:
Macman wrote:Starting over won't bother me much, I've done everything in the vanilla game and all I'd really be missing is a Holy Ray I had to cheat into my inventory because it dropped on the wrong character. :v


Yeah I don't think anyone really cares about having to start over. I mean leveling PAs, Bullets, and Techs should be easier anyway (that's the only reason I can see for not wanting to start over, and even then only the Techs on vanilla take forever to level)

Hoping to get a good balance between "not tedious" and "fulfilling" for leveling PAs; if they level too fast, it feels pointless, while if it takes too long, it's frustrating. Of course, there's also a difference between "PAs/techs/bullets you learn at the start of the game" and "PAs/techs/bullets you learn once you're a ways in"...
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Mycrosun » Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:20 am

Hey, this may or may not be a good question to ask, but roughly how far away do you see the release being?

Not trying to be rude of course, I'm really glad you've continued to work on these releases :)
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Ziloers » Mon Oct 17, 2016 10:03 am

Hey Agrajag! will there be psp2/psp2i costumes(replicas)?
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby KanameChidori » Fri Oct 21, 2016 6:44 am

Mycrosun wrote:Hey, this may or may not be a good question to ask, but roughly how far away do you see the release being?

Not trying to be rude of course, I'm really glad you've continued to work on these releases :)


As always there is no ETA. Pretty much impossible to really set one. Hopefully in the next 10 years xD
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Agrajag » Fri Oct 21, 2016 7:39 pm

I'd love to try to get something presentable this year, but that may or may not be feasible.

On a less useful (but more amusing to me) note:
Image

Got Bil De Golus' arena rendering properly in PSU.


Okay, so, weird thought. The way I'm generating stats, adding new manufacturer weapons is trivial. Unfortunately, adding new manufacturer weapon designs is not. If I were to add, say, a standard 1-12* series of Tenora rods, but they all looked like Rodoc, would this be a thing people would like to see?

I'm kinda torn on whether it's a good idea or not. It wouldn't affect required effort much at all, it wouldn't require cutting other features, but it'd look kinda tacky in that PSU 360 "unique content" sort of way.
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Necman » Fri Oct 21, 2016 8:50 pm

Agrajag wrote:I'd love to try to get something presentable this year, but that may or may not be feasible.

Okay, so, weird thought. The way I'm generating stats, adding new manufacturer weapons is trivial. Unfortunately, adding new manufacturer weapon designs is not. If I were to add, say, a standard 1-12* series of Tenora rods, but they all looked like Rodoc, would this be a thing people would like to see?

I'm kinda torn on whether it's a good idea or not. It wouldn't affect required effort much at all, it wouldn't require cutting other features, but it'd look kinda tacky in that PSU 360 "unique content" sort of way.


If it is necessary to hope and despair to add tenora rods go for it. If it's not too much work maybe use some other kubara rods in the mix for illusion of having different rods.

Nice job on Bil De Golus Arena
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby KanameChidori » Sat Oct 22, 2016 4:12 am

I'd vote no on that personally. I think it would give off a "why does my 10* Rod look just like my 3* rod" kind of thought. A huge no no in my opinion. I didn't like how similar a lot of Vanilla PSU weapons looked. Oh look I found a 6* GRM Rifle (whatever it was called) why does it look just like my 4* and 5* GRM Rifles but just Green instead of Blue or Red (or whatever color they were, been awhile).
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Macman » Sun Oct 23, 2016 3:53 pm

I mean, the argument makes sense for the less rare varieties. It's been that way since the start.
Why would you use tech weapons other than Yohmei, though?
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Agrajag » Thu Oct 27, 2016 12:02 pm

The big secret is, the only reason Yohmei teching weapons were the unambiguous best is because there were (effectively) no GRM or Tenora ones. GRM and Tenora still had higher TP; W'gacros (6* Tenora) had more TP than Crozier (6* GRM) had more TP than Crozara (6* Yohmei), and vice versa for PP. Of course, there's no way for a W'gacros (6* Tenora, 435 TP online) to compete with Majimra (9* Yohmei, 541 TP online), so they ended up more of a curiosity than anything else... people still liked Serdote (9* GRM), though, because it was stronger than Uransara (10* Yohmei) and significantly easier to grind.

Probably should've actually mentioned why I'd kinda like to see them, even if (at least for now), they'd look tacky.

It falls into two things, basically.
1. A lot of focus was put into the whole 3 planets/3 engineered races/3 manufacturers/etc thing back in v1. Out of the weapons in the game, roughly 95% of them were manufacturer ones--there were maybe 20-30 unique kubara ones, out of several hundred total weapons. Every weapon category had at least one manufacturer that covered the entire range (note: this does not mean all of those weapons were released, given most 12*s weren't available until level 150+ monsters were added), but many only had secondary manufacturers that'd go up to 6* (e.g the only A-S rank sabers were GRM, but Yohmei and Tenora both had C-B). When AotI increased the upper range (12*->15*), it filled in a surprising number of lower-rank ones, and pretty cool ones, at that! This is where we got A-rank Tenora handguns (for all you wannabe gunslingers), A-rank Yohmei handguns (less cool), C-rank GRM longbows (tell me this isn't an interesting addition to the lineup), C-/B-rank Yohmei shotguns (useless!), A-/S-rank Yohmei rifles (useful!), etc. Unfortunately, because they were almost certainly planning on making a second expansion at some point, they cut it off early; there were a whopping 4 13* manufacturer weapons (Tiga Ragan, Tiga De Ragan, Germinus Gun, and Granahodora). The Portable games added a bit to this (e.g PSP1's GRM whips and Tenora sabers), but they pushed kubaras heavily, and this bled into online PSU. I feel like a hypothetical 3rd PSU version (you know, with offline episode 3, a new pack of areas and weapons, etc) would have followed PSU and AotI with their heavy focus on the manufacturers.
2. The way I envision drops working, manufacturer gear will drop from anything on the planet that matches them. In other words, Yohmei stuff will drop pretty frequently on Neudaiz, Tenora stuff will be common on Moatoob, and GRM stuff will be easy to get on Parum (note: Colony stuff will probably be a mix of the three). The problem that arises is, this means that several weapon categories will be effectively restricted to one planet--Moatoob has no rods at all (Parum only has 1-6*!), Moatoob has no T-mags at all, Moatoob has no 7*+ wands (you may detect a pattern here). Having a full manufacturer line on each weapon type would loosen this up a bit.
3. Several category/manufacturer combinations have just enough weapons to exist, but not enough to be useful. Even with the grind system rework, will anyone really put in the investment required to use GRM longbows? It'd almost certainly be easier to mold an already-A-rank weapon into something resembling a GRM weapon, rather than try to use the existing B-rank longbow.

Note: The drop comment doesn't affect "rare" items--Bal Soza will probably favor kubara rods for their rare drops, despite being Parum natives)
Also note: The obvious counter to #3 is my general goal of removing model-sharing weapons. Don't worry! I remember how insulting it was having "Crea Doubles", "Stag Cutralli" (amazing translation work there) and "Crea Doubles+", and then "Twin Brand Repca" in PSP2...

Necman wrote:If it is necessary to hope and despair to add tenora rods go for it. If it's not too much work maybe use some other kubara rods in the mix for illusion of having different rods.

Hope and Despair would be the Japanese version. Too esoteric...? (e3ch1 is "Hope and Despair" in Japan, but "Despair and Hope" in the western version)
When possible, I'm trying to fit kubara weapons into the manufacturers (for instance, Astral Blades is returning to GRM because GRM is printed on it), but that still leaves significant gaps. Conversely, a few weapons are getting removed from their original manufacturer, when they feel particularly out of place (looking at you, Crumhorne).

KanameChidori wrote:I'd vote no on that personally. I think it would give off a "why does my 10* Rod look just like my 3* rod" kind of thought. A huge no no in my opinion. I didn't like how similar a lot of Vanilla PSU weapons looked. Oh look I found a 6* GRM Rifle (whatever it was called) why does it look just like my 4* and 5* GRM Rifles but just Green instead of Blue or Red (or whatever color they were, been awhile).

To be fair, standard gear's going to largely look the same. It's more like consumer electronics than anything else, the differences are mostly internal, represented by a fancy badge or unique color scheme or whatever.

Also, it's always been that way. PSO had identical weapons with differently colored photon blades ("Brand" is "Saber", but with a blue blade instead of a green one), PSU had identical weapons with different color schemes ("Brand" is "Saber", but with a blue handle instead of a red one), PSO2 has almost identical weapons with slight design changes... and differently colored photon blades (compare Sword vs Alba Sword vs Vita Sword but note that there are 3 non-rare series per weapon, where it goes A-B-C-Alba A-Alba B-Alba C-Vita A-Vita B-Vita C in terms of stats).
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Re: AotI Offline (Unofficial) Expansion: Despair and Hope

Postby Necman » Sat Oct 29, 2016 3:49 am

Probably should've actually mentioned why I'd kinda like to see them, even if (at least for now), they'd look tacky.


It really sounds like it would help out if you put the 12 tenora rods in. I can't speak for everyone but I doubt anyone kept every weapon in the game. If we don't like them they could be pm food or sold for cash but that would make them useless anyway. I would never have more then one on a palate but would still use it.

The way I envision drops working, manufacturer gear will drop from anything on the planet that matches them. In other words, Yohmei stuff will drop pretty frequently on Neudaiz, Tenora stuff will be common on Moatoob, and GRM stuff will be easy to get on Parum (note: Colony stuff will probably be a mix of the three).


What does this mean for kubara items? and what is going to be for sale on the colony? Mostly in terms of weapons since kubara has no armor.



Not to side track but did you do anything with the RCSM's(R mags) or have any plans for them?
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