Ideas for a PSII Hack

Does anyone know where this line is in the game? It's not in the script I printed off, nor can I find it in the game: “the Biosystems lab is where creatures suitable to live on Mota are created through breeding improvements. All DNA data of Algo are stored there."

There's a couple more too. Maybe this isn't in the game anywhere?

Nevermind, the Librarian says it. Guess I'm going to have to check other areas of the script to make sure anything else isn't omitted....

EDIT: Absurd gameplay tip of the day!!! DF's attack is just like all other special attacks, which means it does the same damage no matter what your defense rating is! Wearing no armor against DF makes no difference on the 95-100 damage its' attack does. Of course, as everyone knows, Deban works on it, halving the damage, just as it does on all specials. Strip off those Emels and Shields, equip all your weapons and go after the cheeky critter!

Seriously?? Armor is no use at all?! Man, how insane is that?

Although... I wonder if that works for Mother Brain, too.

Thoul wrote:

Seriously?? Armor is no use at all?! Man, how insane is that?

Although... I wonder if that works for Mother Brain, too.

Armor doesn't matter against MB's Nova that hits the whole party, and Neifirst's Claw attack either. But MB's single character attack checks for armor, as does Neifirst's sword.

I'll have to post my spreadsheet that shows all the enemies armor doesn't matter on. Off the top of my head, I know the Mechoman, Sonomech and Attmech only use a special attack that hits everyone and doesn't check for armor. Same for Mosquitos, Waspy, and Stingers. Blasters never care about defense either!

All special attacks do the same amount of damage, regardless of armor, it's just that other monsters don't use them every turn. I went ahead and posted my gigantic spreadsheet on my site; the monster info is on the third sheet, with the abilities listed after MOMBRAIN: http://www.geocities.com/thedollaraveng ... dsheet.xls

I've been cataloguing the rest of the text that wasn't in the script I downloaded, and here's a few I didn't know existed, all from the librarian at different points of the game:

After Biosystems

Have you figured out the
cause of the accident in
which the energy leaked
into Biosystems lab

from Climatrol?
I am very worried about
what is going on with
Climatrol.

After Climatrol

Is it true that Mota
is going to be flooded?
I hope those four dams
will somehow open.

After Green Dam

Thanks to you all,
Mota was saved from
being flooded.
How come you are wanted

As criminals for making
Mother Brain go wrong?
What! Someone who has a
key to Mother Brain is

in Dezo?

That’s right… now
That Palm is gone, those

of us who are in Mota
have to sustain Algo.
ROLF, please do your
best!

I finished the monsters last night. I also did a quick retooling of the monster group encounters too, so now I'm ready to rework the sprites. There are 259 encounters in the game, of which 23 will be new. The majority of the new ones either stick an extra monster in of weak defense to boost the Meseta per encounter or add one of the 7 new monsters in (I repaired the three that crash!)

I had a ridiculously intriguing idea about the future hard mode... wouldn't it be fantastic if Neifirst pulled a Dr. Mad and showed up on Noah as an enemy? I think that would be a hoot!

I did a little work on the dialogue last night, but making the Hell and Purgatory mode updates ate up a bunch of time. I'm going to mess around with the sprites some, because my early experimentation looks terrible, and I need to find a new approach. There's so many body parts on each monster that it is difficult to know what part of the monster I'm changing, despite my catalogue. I'll see if I can get anything that looks halfway decent tonight.

EDIT: Here are some new examples. These aren't final, simply some tests, but I think a few of these look releasable:

http://www.geocities.com/thedollaraveng ... eTest1.gif

http://www.geocities.com/thedollaraveng ... eTest2.gif

http://www.geocities.com/thedollaraveng ... eTest3.gif

http://www.geocities.com/thedollaraveng ... eTest4.gif

http://www.geocities.com/thedollaraveng ... eTest5.gif

Looking nice. I hate how the monsters and character sprites in games like this are split up into smaller tiles. I don't know why they did that or if it could have been done in another way, but I just don't like it.

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I had a ridiculously intriguing idea about the future hard mode... wouldn't it be fantastic if Neifirst pulled a Dr. Mad and showed up on Noah as an enemy? I think that would be a hoot!

Sounds good to me. If Nei can return, Neifirst should as well! Hey, maybe you could even have a series of Nei-types in different palettes, like the other monsters are?

Thoul wrote:

Looking nice. I hate how the monsters and character sprites in games like this are split up into smaller tiles. I don't know why they did that or if it could have been done in another way, but I just don't like it.

Thanks! I don't like the bright greenish one, but I really like the White and Purplish ones. I really how the sprite data is stored too! It makes it much more difficult to try and edit, that's for sure. It'd be nice if they showed up in a tile editor so I could see the form I'm editing rather than A0's and 28's!

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Sounds good to me. If Nei can return, Neifirst should as well! Hey, maybe you could even have a series of Nei-types in different palettes, like the other monsters are?

!! That's an awesome idea! A bad Numan class! I'll be implementing that for sure. Thanks for the suggestion!

I'm planning on butchering the game for the hard version to put more of my stamp on it, by editing a great deal more of the monster encounters and now I'll eliminate some class of monsters entirely to make a Neifirst group. I'll probably give a bunch of the monsters nastier special abilities too.

Since I was watching football yesterday, I took a subconscious focus on the hack and implemented some of my changes. I still need to change equipment names to the new ones I made, but I've got the shops restocked, repriced, and I only have a little testing left to make sure the edited items have the right attack and defense values, along with testing if the right characters can use them. I'll finish checking those tonight.

All the equipment, shops, equipment names, and character name changes have been implemented and all work correctly. I'm calling it V.3. It looks very odd to see the characters NOT in all caps. I left the equipment and Tech names in capital letters, though. Would anyone like to see the Techs and Equips in lower case too? I skipped it since it will take a couple of days to implement, and I'm honestly indifferent to either mode. If I did change those too, I probably should try and change the BUY and SELL buttons among the others. I'm just not sure it's worth the time, considering the delays I've already experienced.

I decoded several pages of the game text too, and I found the first official PSII "deleted scene", it must be an alternate description after defeating Neifirst... but it's listed with the Central Tower text. Here it is:

"Something is rotten in the state of Mota! Neifirst is dead and the Biohazards have been destroyed... but why was a creature like Neifirst created in the first place? Who is behind all of this?"

Nothing special or very revealing if you ask me. I see why it wasn't in there.

I'd forgotten that at the house, it says on Anna's description that she uses "SLICERS" not Slashers. Strange!

For a giant space-saver in the dialogue, I've decided to abbreviate Mother Brain down to MB after the Commander of Mota, (he's also called the governor; I'll change that for consistency.) says it the first time. It'll save a bunch throughout the game, and I'll be able to use all that extra space! I'm also thinking of reducing Biosystems lab to Bio Lab. I think BL would be too short and too confusing.

I was thinking of changing the planet names to the PSIV ones, but Palm, Mota, and Dezo are used in so many lines in which I can't make room for them, that the only thing I can think of to do is to leave them the same. I really wanted to clear up the naming inconsistencies, too! I could do it, but I'd have to butcher the lines they're on, and space is already a problem. Any suggestions?

You might change just the first instance of the planet names. I think the short versions would be fine if they felt like some kind of abbreviation. Since you're using MB, I think that would work.

I never noticed that "slicers" was used in PSII. I thought that came in with PSIII... interesting to know.

Bio Lab sounds good, but you might also consider Bio Plant. It's a little longer, but that was the name used in PSIV for Seed's complex.

Thoul wrote:

You might change just the first instance of the planet names. I think the short versions would be fine if they felt like some kind of abbreviation. Since you're using MB, I think that would work.

Yeah, going for the full name once would be a good way to go about it. At least that way the inconsistency would be cleared up!

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I never noticed that "slicers" was used in PSII. I thought that came in with PSIII... interesting to know.

It's only used in that one spot. Strange.

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Bio Lab sounds good, but you might also consider Bio Plant. It's a little longer, but that was the name used in PSIV for Seed's complex.

Yeah, you're right. I hadn't thought of that. It's only two characters longer, so I can probably fit that in pretty easily.

I devoted all my time yesterday to decoding the 52 page text bank, and did about 10 complete pages of it. That is mind-numbing work! I'm not sure what my grand total is, since the previous days that I worked on it I jumped around, skipping shop dialogue when I found it, as I'm leaving that all the same. I've decoded the title screen intro, the six character introductions, all the text at Central Tower, the scene at the beginning between Rolf and Nei, and I stopped when I found the scene at the beginning in Rolf's bedroom. There's about 29 pages left for me to go over, but if I don't find every line I'm looking to change there, I'll go back to the pages that I only partially covered.