Ideas for a PSII Hack

The Komrade wrote:

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

To be honest, I've never used Hugh.

Those alternate items for Shir sound great.

I don't recall ever using Shinb. From what I've read, it has a very low rate of success. I don't think it's a very good tech... making an enemy run away means you don't get meseta or exp for that enemy. Better to kill them and get the rewards.

Yeah, it stinks if it actually does work. I tried using a level 43 Hugh, and he couldn't get it to work even once in nearly 100 attempts. After seeing how useless it is, I'm leaving the Green Sleeves as one of the items Shir can steal; I'll just lower the defense of it a bit.

I did a lot of work on the equipment last night, and I think you all will be shocked to see all the changes! Almost half of the equipment is going to be changed in some way, and I've created quite a few new items that I think will spice things up a bit! Many of the characters will have some new options for attack and defense throughout the game. I've made some new melee weapons and ranged weapons for every character but Rolf.

I also figured out how to tweak the monsters a bit more to change the sprites and abilities, so I can create some new monsters to shake things up even more!

Oh! Will Nei learn more techs since you get to keep her?

Tsunami wrote:

Oh! Will Nei learn more techs since you get to keep her?

Absolutely, several, I'd imagine. I think Rika would be a decent comparison for my progression of Nei, but I haven't decided if she'll get the Sar Techs or not. I don't want to make Amy completely obsolete! I want every character to still have a use, just like in the current game.

In more good news, the guy at rpgdl that posted that attack formula pointed out where the gun power was stored, so I now have everything I wanted to find to begin implementing the hack.

During football the last two days, I also made a great deal of progress creating some spreadsheets of data catalogs for nearly every table I'll be changing. I only have two left: the character level up data, and the monsters, the latter will probably take a bit longer as I'm not sure what all the bytes in that area do in regard to changing the sprites. There's still a lot of work to do, but the planning stage is nearly complete!

Well, you could always replace Sak with Regen and have Amy able to learn it. Nei could also learn something more useful then Sak instead.

Shinuzzo wrote:

Well, you could always replace Sak with Regen and have Amy able to learn it. Nei could also learn something more useful then Sak instead.

Regen both revived and healed a character to max in PSIV, didn't it? I think I remember in making my Tech spreadsheet that Rever doesn't have a power to it, so I don't know that I can create a Regen Tech out of the base revival Tech, but I'll look into it.

I didn't get any work done on the hack yesterday, but I'm coming closer to a working title. Also, I'd like to hear all your opinions on changing the Tech names of the more confusing ones, which even I can't remember what they do, despite playing the game a dozen times. I had this idea suggested to me, and I think it's a wonderful idea.

So: would you like to see name changes for Techs like Ryuka, Hinas, Shinb, Forsa, Eijia, and most of Hugh and Kain's monster or machine specific Techs? If so, feel free to suggest new five letter names for them, ex: Ryuka-Retrn or Hinas to Exit.

I always liked Hinas and Ryuka as they were -- was a reminder of how PSII's techs remained in PSIV, creating a sense of familiarity. (even if Ryuka was made more useful in PSIV)

The other techs, please do change them. I could never tell what did what when it came to Hugh and Kain's techs.

Yeah, it restored the target to life with HP. Plus it would actually be worth paying 36 TP for, unlike the 30 TP for Rever which the cost should be lowered.

Here's some new name suggestions as well.

Doran-Daze
Shinb- Repel
Shiza-Mute
Rimit-Stun
Vol-Bisec
Savol-Disec
Gen-Age
Sagen-Aging

Brose-Crash
Conte-Quiet
Gaj-Bash
Gagaj-Break
Nagaj-Bust
Sag-Smash
Gisag-Split
Nasag-Scrap
Forsa-Error
Rimet- Short

Ryuka-Tele
Hinas-Escpe

Yeah, some of the techs could definitely use more friendly names. A lot of times I avoid using them unless I have a little "cheat sheet" listing what each one does. I appreciate the Phantasy Star feeling of having unique names instead of the constantly reused names in every RPG (Heal, Cure, etc), but it makes the game harder to play without some kind of clue as to what each tech does.

I do like Ryuka and Hinas as they are (same reason as Tsunami, plus I've grown use to those from repeated use). If you do change them, though, I would suggest "Fly" or "Warp" for Ryuka. On Hinas, I'd go with Exit.