Ideas for a PSII Hack

This is taken from another message board.

Quote:

PS2 stats need burning.
As far as I can tell (so far), strength does nothing. At all. Ever.

Attack is the closest thing to an operative stat as far as damage is concerned and it's a complete misrepresentation anyway.

PHYSICAL DAMAGE

Damage, at least for knives and swords and not for guns, not having checked the rest of the weapons yet, derives from the following-

((((IA + V) x 512) / (100 + 5D)) x (WA + 2)) / 512

IA - Inherent attack. The Attack score a character has if you deequip all their attack+ equipment.
V - Variance. Random from 84 to 115.
D - enemy defence
WA - Weapon attack. Interesting to note that, for example, the 100 ATK Laser Sword counts as 50 ATK; it's listed as 100 because each hand adds on 50. Way to go, apparent attack stat.

The equation can be collapsed to

((IA + V) x (WA + 2)) / (100 + 5D)

but this removes some integer rounding. It is probably close enough however.

I expect the rest of the non-gun weapons run under the same equation.



In any case, getting an extra point of inherent attack raises damage by (WA + 2)/(100 + 5D) whereas swapping to a weapon with one extra WA raises damage by (~100 + IA)/(100 + 5D). Way to be worth something, inherent attack. Better than Strength I suppose >_>


PHYSICAL DEFENCE

Defence runs on basically the same equation as damage.

((((EA + V) x 512) / (5D + 100)) x EA) / 512

Where
EA = Enemy Attack Power
D = Character's Defence Power
V = Variance, which here is random from 68 to 131

Or there's the collapsed version which is

EA x (EA + V)/(5D + 100)

Every point of defence being worth five would be especially nice if it wasn't on the bottom half of a fraction.


GUNS

Singlefire Guns have a much simpler equation as one may expect.

Damage = (Gun Power x Variance)/100.

Variance - Random from 92 to 107.
Gun Power - Typically, Gun Power isn't the gun's WAttack score -_- And so I will recite a list.

Bow Gun - 5
Sonic Gun - 7
Poisonshot - 10
Acidshot - 20
Cannon - 28
Laser Shot - 35
Laser Cannon - 53
Pulse Cannon - 60
Neishot - 100

It's bad enough that the Attack stat is completely pointless already without having the guns adding on WAttack that doesn't even MEAN anything. Thh.

Spread guns use the same formula as above but fire multiple times. Specifically, the Shotgun fires twice, the Vulcan fires thrice, and the Pulse Vulcan fires four times. Each seperate shot has its own chance to miss, and they can stack up on the same enemy if there's less enemies in the group to the right of the initial target than there are shots left. I have no idea as to how they're distributed if say the Pulse Vulcan is used on a group of three enemies but I don't believe this situation likely to come up.

Anyway, powers for the spreaders. Will the Pulse Vulcan be anywhere near its supposed 76 power? No!

Shotgun - 10
Vulcan - 16
Pulse Vulcan - 18

Ah! Thanks for the assistance there, Shinuzzo, and welcome to the thank you section of the readme for this hack! I'm glad I didn't continue to collect data and try and figure that equation out... that's an insane amount of work!

For an update: all is going VERY well! I must be getting better at finding data, because I hit on almost everything I was hoping to yesterday . To sum up all the findings: I've got the equipment database, the shop inventory database, the initial character stats, the monster database, and thanks to some outside assistance, I have the database of monster attack groups (I never hoped to find that one, but that should make for some interesting variations on the traditional encounters!) and I also found the database of each character's techniques. I need to make some spreadsheets of these areas as I only found the beginning and end of each table, but I now know changes to all these areas are possible.

I'd still like to find the experience needed to level up for each character, the level-up functions for each character, the power level database, the Tech power, TP usage, what level characters learn their Techs on, and the text in the game. Right now I can compensate for all the missing parts in this paragraph or the missing data is inconsequential except for the power levels by manipulating other stats. So everything listed here would pretty much be a bonus.

For a preview : one of the weapons I'm going to create is a gun that doesn't have set damage, but increases as the character levels up like the PSIV guns, for Kain only since Rudo already is awesome. Also, right now all I can do in regard to Techs is replace one that a character learns, but I'd like to open Nei to some more useful Techs like Gires and Saner. I'm very excited at all the possibilities !

Very nice! It sounds like this is going to be a very impressive edit of the game!

Ok, a massive breakthrough thanks to outside assistance from a programmer! I now know where all the character level up data is, (it's stored in a database even though the levels are random), the power levels are there too, along with which levels characters learn Techs on. I can alter the EXP each character needs to level up, so Shinuzzo, that can be implemented, along with giving other characters more power levels. Along with this, my correspondent pointed me to the Tech names, which has allowed me to decode the entire text table, so I can change the character names into lower case, Fogeltje, and I can change the game text to fix those errors, Thoul and Tsunami!

I'll see if I can find the Tech power and TP usage, but at this point, any change I was thinking of implementing is possible. This may be the best hack yet!

Good, it sounds like Nei's level-up data can be altered to be more in-line with everyone else. Plus, Rolf won't be so overpowered compared to everyone else anymore.

I didn't figure out that code by the way, I just copied it.

Sounds like you've been making a lot of progress. Keep up the great work!

If the TP power, TP point usage and Gun damage shows up, then I'll move on to the implementation stage. I hope to have it all finished within a month. Since Nei will be available for the entire game now, and I can edit the text, I'm going to have a little fun with her two demise scenes and what the Clone Clown says afterward!

Shinuzzo, I see you got that info from RPGDL. Don't worry, everyone here that made a suggestion is getting included in the readme thank you section! In fact, I went over to RPGDL and pm'd that fellow that found all the stats, because that was all obviously found via rom hacking and has some of the data I'm still looking for.

I'm trying to come up with a title for the hack right now to bridge the step into implementation, because I really don't have a good guiding principle to carry me through that coming stage. Everything is basically going to be tweaked a little, with the biggest changes coming from keeping Nei and starting with all the characters. There isn't an obvious title like Hordes of Nei for the large monster groups or the new equips, or Hell Mode and Purgatory Mode for the increased difficulty. I've got a few title options, but none of them sound right to me yet.

I haven't decided if there will be new Nei weapons or not, since I've spent all my time in the rom, and not enough of looking over which weapons and armor are useless and can be replaced, (and I don't know where the treasure data is stored.) Right now I'm not planning on adding any new Nei weapons, though Nei will probably need a Nei Claw. It all depends upon how much equipment can be omitted, like nearly all the Kueri equips.

Ok, I've got the Tech power and TP usage now, thanks to outside assistance, (again!) If I can find the gun damage data, then I'll consider everything set for forward progress. I also figured out how to make Nei able to use the current Nei equipment. I was pretty pleased with that!

On second thought, I don't know that I will make a gun that does variable damage based off of character stats, because I realized I can't change one of the guns to variable damage, and I can't change the graphics of say, a knife, into that of a gun. The data is stored just like PSIV; it seems that graphics and sound or some other fundamental property exists that doesn't allow Foi to become a healing Tech or armor to become a weapon. Sigh. I'll work around it.

I went over just the equipment yesterday, and there is a ton of equips I could change because of redundancy or overall uselessness. If necessary, I can free up even more slots by forcing Nei to use the equipment the other females use. BTW, did anyone ever notice that the game has special text for Nei in regard to things she can't equip. It's not "XXXX can't take XXXXXXXX." It's: "Nei doesn't want to take XXXXXXXX." I think can't works a lot better, because want implies she could equip the Nei Shot if she WANTED to.

Since Shir is going to be available from the beginning, I'm going to edit what she can steal, since I deem it too excessive to start with Laser Knives. What do you all think is acceptable? I was thinking Ceramic Knives, since stealing is tedious, and the player should be rewarded in some fashion, and you can buy Ceramic Knives in Arima anyway. The others I'm considering changing: Poison Shots instead of Laser Shots, Headgear for Silver Crowns, Ceramic Emels for Jewel Crowns, Carbon Shields for Green Sleeves, and Dimate instead of Trimate. I'll leave the others the same. Opinions?

Uhhh... has anyone ever seen Hugh's Tech Shinb work? I think it's useless...