[FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v2.0.999992)

[ckx]

Thank you Sega Chief for your work on creating this mod. I think you have done an incredible job in making one of my favorite story-based games have engaging gameplay as well. It boosts FF7 up from a nostalgia fueled soft recommend to easily one of my favorite games of all time. It's hard for me to overstate how much I love this.

I do have one question, though. I must admit that the translation is not my cup of tea. This isn't due to NT's script changes (I think most of those were handled pretty well), I am simply not a huge fan of some of the character depictions and line TLs in the original FF7 localization. I am aware that you were not going for a re-translation in your work, so I am not appealing to you to do anything about this. However, I am wondering if you would be open to someone else (me) re-translating the script based on the original Japanese text?

I would do a literal, but readable translation focused on accuracy to the original Japanese script. I would base this off of NT 2.0, because I really love NT and I'd prefer to work on this over the original. It would take me some time to complete, as I have a lot going on and I'm a slow translator, but I would like to take a crack at it. I think it would be appealing to people who prefer scripts that lean less towards localization, as well as perhaps to the handful of people out there that do FF7 character analysis in the western world, as they'd have a source to reference which is closer to the original writing (I'd probably release the whole script in some plain text file too). But again I must stress, this would be mainly for people who prefer less localized TLs when actually playing.
In the process, if no one else is working on it, I'd probably also "translate" NT to Japanese, aka stick all the original FF7 lines into NT and then translate the NT-specific stuff into Japanese.

In my experience, literal translations of Japanese media are a really touchy subject to some, so I want to make a couple things extra clear: I love your work on the game, and the script, and I am not trying in any way to detract from that. The NT additions to the dialogue are fitting and appropriate given their context and I think you executed it well. Secondly, this is not my first rodeo, I come from the old fansubbing world and I've done significant work on some other game hack TLs in the past.

Anyways, I've already taken a look at some of the other translation projects for NT to different languages and I think they are cool, I would basically be mimic'ing their workflow.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention, my work would focus on New Threat Type A clearly, as it is the one with the Japanese source text to look at.

there a very few games i ever played that i wish didnt end yet after finishing it, this was 1 of them, thats why i asked about the extra content
...valkyrie profile 2 and re2 remake being the others

(hell yes, vp2 is the best game ever, man)

 

[Sega Chief]

Hey Sega, just checkin in to see if you looked into doing a 2.0 vanilla combat?  Just curious if you confirmed it was easy enough and doable to be a thing eventually.

Can put one together, will try to do soon.

After playing previous versions on and off for what is somehow years now, I picked up 2.0 and am really enjoying it, but I've run into an issue where the

Spoiler

Weapons Blacksmith won't recognize that I have all the items listed to make the Masamune.

I have all the items, confirmed looking at my inventory, but he just repeats the recipe. Do I need to be approaching with a specific party leader or anything? I'm pre-North Crater/on Disc 3.

I checked the field script and it should just be a case of talking to him while having 1x Murasame in the inventory, 1x Moonstone (from Cosmo Canyon, red xiii's room), 1x Zenogias Plate (from Costa Del Sol house), and 7x 7778 Needles from Cactuers. When the recipe is displayed, does it show you have the required number of items in the recipe's text box or are any not matching what you have in your inventory (for instance do they display 0 instead of 1)?

i'd like to give a little suggestion, the battle square "champion belt" should have a buff, its expensive but its worst than the cheap power wrist, that u can buy with regular gil. Just my 2 cents.

I'll take a look at it.

So this is my first B-type playthrough. I took a look at the SP upgrade screen when I hit Reactor 5. Am I in for some surprises or is there a bug in the names and number of ranks?

The Rank up option is supposed to be hidden until I think Costa Del Sol after clearing the Cargo Ship; I guess the Save Point in Reactor 5's underpass on the Type B playthrough doesn't have that script or something. Character names start off as Cloud/Sephiroth for Cait Sith and Vincent respectively for the flashback then get overwritten later on.

Thank you Sega Chief for your work on creating this mod. I think you have done an incredible job in making one of my favorite story-based games have engaging gameplay as well. It boosts FF7 up from a nostalgia fueled soft recommend to easily one of my favorite games of all time. It's hard for me to overstate how much I love this.

I do have one question, though. I must admit that the translation is not my cup of tea. This isn't due to NT's script changes (I think most of those were handled pretty well), I am simply not a huge fan of some of the character depictions and line TLs in the original FF7 localization. I am aware that you were not going for a re-translation in your work, so I am not appealing to you to do anything about this. However, I am wondering if you would be open to someone else (me) re-translating the script based on the original Japanese text?

I would do a literal, but readable translation focused on accuracy to the original Japanese script. I would base this off of NT 2.0, because I really love NT and I'd prefer to work on this over the original. It would take me some time to complete, as I have a lot going on and I'm a slow translator, but I would like to take a crack at it. I think it would be appealing to people who prefer scripts that lean less towards localization, as well as perhaps to the handful of people out there that do FF7 character analysis in the western world, as they'd have a source to reference which is closer to the original writing (I'd probably release the whole script in some plain text file too). But again I must stress, this would be mainly for people who prefer less localized TLs when actually playing.
In the process, if no one else is working on it, I'd probably also "translate" NT to Japanese, aka stick all the original FF7 lines into NT and then translate the NT-specific stuff into Japanese.

In my experience, literal translations of Japanese media are a really touchy subject to some, so I want to make a couple things extra clear: I love your work on the game, and the script, and I am not trying in any way to detract from that. The NT additions to the dialogue are fitting and appropriate given their context and I think you executed it well. Secondly, this is not my first rodeo, I come from the old fansubbing world and I've done significant work on some other game hack TLs in the past.

Anyways, I've already taken a look at some of the other translation projects for NT to different languages and I think they are cool, I would basically be mimic'ing their workflow.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention, my work would focus on New Threat Type A clearly, as it is the one with the Japanese source text to look at.

(hell yes, vp2 is the best game ever, man)

I think I'm supposed to be making a version of NT with The Reunion's translation work transplanted into it, but I'd personally find a literal translation from the Japanese quite interesting so if you're wanting to do that then I can offer assistance with tools or questions if needed. A Japanese version of NT would be really interesting as well, but I feel I should warn you that either project would likely be a lot of work. The game contains a lot of text and it'd be a big time commitment to see even one project like that through let alone two.

I'm not sure how things would work with getting a japanese character set into the game though, mind. There are Japanese releases for FF7 on PC (Japanese Steam has one for instance) but I've never gotten the opportunity to have a look at the files for them.

 

[ckx]

I think I'm supposed to be making a version of NT with The Reunion's translation work transplanted into it, but I'd personally find a literal translation from the Japanese quite interesting so if you're wanting to do that then I can offer assistance with tools or questions if needed. A Japanese version of NT would be really interesting as well, but I feel I should warn you that either project would likely be a lot of work. The game contains a lot of text and it'd be a big time commitment to see even one project like that through let alone two.

I'm not sure how things would work with getting a japanese character set into the game though, mind. There are Japanese releases for FF7 on PC (Japanese Steam has one for instance) but I've never gotten the opportunity to have a look at the files for them.

Ah, yeah, we'd probably run into encoding issues. Wonder how tough that'd be. Well, in any case, we can focus on the English TL for now.

Yeah, I realize this would be a lot of work, I can't 100% say whether or not I'd truly see it through until I get a feel for the workflow and get started, but I'm not a stranger to translating RPGs with massive amounts of text. It'd probably take me quite awhile, but FF7 is timeless, so even if it takes a couple years and perhaps I have to deal with NT version ups, I'd still be willing to sit down and try it.

I'd love it if you could point me to a place to get me started on text insertion, in terms of tools and perhaps any tips/recommended workflows you've developed. Getting off the ground is usually the hardest part so any assistance there would be highly appreciated; then I'd probably be in contact about stuff while I'm working on it...

Like right off the bat I'd have to ask if you can think of any novel/interesting/easy ways to implement translation notes without them being obnoxiously inserted in the middle of a dialogue box. There are a few initial thoughts I have, such as putting an indicator at the end of the line that signals "this line has a TL note"... then either pressing a special button to open new dialogue boxes, or just having an external reference PDF or whatever. Anyways I completely lack any FF7 modding experience so yeah, there's a lot to learn, but that's OK.

 

[ckx]

I had a couple minutes to actually do some research, let me know if this sounds about right:

• I use Makou Reactor for most of the heavy lifting. The most absolute braindead implementation of TL notes would be to put {CHOICE} dialogue boxes asking users if they'd like to see a TL note or not, but I'm not a fan of it long-term.
• I point Makou Reactor at flevel.lgp on a NT 2.0 patched PC installation of the game.
• To test how stuff is working in-game I can use a Trainer of some kind, I saw Ochu 3.4 which allows saving anywhere. I haven't actually tested if this works with NT, but I'll get around to testing that tomorrow. Otherwise, do you have a recommendation for being able to save/load anywhere for testing convenience? I'm sure you've gone through it a ton... emulator save-state style functionality would be amazing.
• I can use toughScript to dump to plain text files which I can then clean up a little for my own plain text releases / versioning.
• For distribution, a 7th Heaven iro file is probably best.

I'm testing out Makou Reactor now with some basic naive edits and it seems to work like a charm. I'll mess with stuff a little more tomorrow.

 

[jamineal]

Okay you beautiful, sadistic cowboy. You've made random encounters so much more deadly than boss fights and I love it. Also, will I KNOW the consequences of major decisions before making them? I don't wanna... yanno... leave the gil in that kid's dresser in Midgar and suddenly I have to 360 no-scope Sephiroth with solo one materia Yuffie. (For those of you that can't discern when someone is not being serious, and there are a lot of you, that was not a serious situation that I expect.)

Secondary question, is there a good way to raise money once getting to Costa Del Sol? That Osmosis is expensive.

Thirdarary question, did the ultimate weapon passives change? Is there somewhere I can view them?

 

[Cavist]

I don't own the windows store version, but I heard from someone that the files were obfuscated in some way similar to the FF8 Remaster. I'll ask around and see what the story with that version is format-wise.

Any progress on this? I would really want to buy this particular version instead of steam all the hassle having another game client/launcher just for one game :-/

 

[wdx]

consequences of major decisions before making them? ..... gil in that kid's dresser in Midgar

can save in different slots to test each out, the kids gil if don't take

Spoiler

results in being given an smine 2400dmg item more or less

Secondary question, is there a good way to raise money once getting to Costa Del Sol? That Osmosis is expensive.

2nd question

Spoiler

 morph jenova directly beforehand for stardust which sells for 25k. alternatively can morph beach plugs into mirror's which sell for 1k gil just would take a little longer.

Thirdarary question, did the ultimate weapon passives change? Is there somewhere I can view them?

u can view equipment changes within the equipment menu's.

 

[jbsljvcc]

Hey guys I'm new here. I've played about an hour or two of New Threat. I just realized I'm not getting any gil for any encounters...

Is this because I chose hard mode or something?

 

[jamineal]

u can view equipment changes within the equipment menu's.

I don't have them yet, that's why I'm asking

 

[wdx]

not getting any gil for any encounters...

Is this because I chose hard mode or something?

ye you can earn gil via selling items from drops/morphs/steals most area's have a decent gil farm option available to you via at least one of those methods. gl hf

 

[wdx]

I don't have them yet, that's why I'm asking

info contained below within spoiler tag.

Spoiler

Any/All Char Masmune 100% crit rate Attack75 attack% 255 (appears to have some unknown dmg boost)

cloud: ultimate weapon 8 paired slots no growth. attack 0: Attack% 110% StatsBoost +25 for mag/spr/vit/luck empowered by hp.

barret:  missingscore 8 paired slots no growth: attack 50 attack% 117 statsboost 15Mag SPR40 LCK55 AP Attk.strength.

Tifa: PremiumHeart attck0 attack%125 statsboost Vit/SPR+40 Dex+37 Crit10 empowered by MP

Areith: PrincessGaurd attcak50 attack%255 Stat boost mag25 vit40 spr35 RestoresHP AllyKO =Attk+
Areith: VenusGospel Vit/LCK50 Dex37 Empowered by MP attack/attack%127

Nanaki: LimitedMoon Attack0 Attack%110 Mag35 DEx37  lck30 empowered by limit.

Yuffie: Conformer Mag30 SPR25 LCK40 Atk+ vs highlevel enemies attack0/attack%110 still has morph advantage.

Vincent: mag15 dex30 lck75 allyko = Attk+

Cid:  VenusGospel Vit/LCK50 Dex37 Empowered by MP attack/attack%127 attack50 attack%125

 

[BerikXardas]

So after having lotsa fun with NT 1.5 2 years ago, I was in the mood to try 2.0 - thanks for still working on it Sega Chief!

Anyway, I have a question regarding the scene in the Shinra Mansion basement (post-Mideel):

Spoiler

So Cloud has to fight some battles at the end - wasted one try finding out that there is nothing to either steal or morph.
Next try, I was prepared and made it to the 6x SOLDIER 1st battle.
Anyway, before I try over and over (which is extra tedious due to the unskippable scene) I wanted to ask:
Is there some kind of "reward" for winning the battles?
Or is it just the Limit Breaks, no matter how far I survive?

 

[jamineal]

info contained below within spoiler tag.

Spoiler

Any/All Char Masmune 100% crit rate Attack75 attack% 255 (appears to have some unknown dmg boost)

cloud: ultimate weapon 8 paired slots no growth. attack 0: Attack% 110% StatsBoost +25 for mag/spr/vit/luck empowered by hp.

barret:  missingscore 8 paired slots no growth: attack 50 attack% 117 statsboost 15Mag SPR40 LCK55 AP Attk.strength.

Tifa: PremiumHeart attck0 attack%125 statsboost Vit/SPR+40 Dex+37 Crit10 empowered by MP

Areith: PrincessGaurd attcak50 attack%255 Stat boost mag25 vit40 spr35 RestoresHP AllyKO =Attk+
Areith: VenusGospel Vit/LCK50 Dex37 Empowered by MP attack/attack%127

Nanaki: LimitedMoon Attack0 Attack%110 Mag35 DEx37  lck30 empowered by limit.

Yuffie: Conformer Mag30 SPR25 LCK40 Atk+ vs highlevel enemies attack0/attack%110 still has morph advantage.

Vincent: mag15 dex30 lck75 allyko = Attk+

Cid:  VenusGospel Vit/LCK50 Dex37 Empowered by MP attack/attack%127 attack50 attack%125

Thanks friend. Looks like my build decisions for each character matches up to their end weapon. I assume HP Shout for Cait Sith still does basically the same thing, then.

Didn't want to make a new post for this. Holy cow, the Knights of the Round fight was a challenge. Imagine having to bludgeon Omega to death with a level 50 mage Aeris. That took a while.

 

[wdx]

So after having lotsa fun with NT 1.5 2 years ago, I was in the mood to try 2.0 - thanks for still working on it Sega Chief!

Anyway, I have a question regarding the scene in the Shinra Mansion basement (post-Mideel):

Spoiler

Is there some kind of "reward" for winning the battles?

no. but hopefully that may change

 

[dogs_go_to_space]

Enjyoing 2.0 greatly

Does the

Spoiler

mini X-ATM

do anything or is it just a reward for completing the side content?

Also any tips for the

Spoiler

KOTR battle?

?

The counters are destroying me. I tried using stop but it only hits very rarely.

I set up barrier/m-barrier and regen and using strong attacks (e.g. omnislash and mimi)

 

[Sega Chief]

Ah, yeah, we'd probably run into encoding issues. Wonder how tough that'd be. Well, in any case, we can focus on the English TL for now.

Yeah, I realize this would be a lot of work, I can't 100% say whether or not I'd truly see it through until I get a feel for the workflow and get started, but I'm not a stranger to translating RPGs with massive amounts of text. It'd probably take me quite awhile, but FF7 is timeless, so even if it takes a couple years and perhaps I have to deal with NT version ups, I'd still be willing to sit down and try it.

I'd love it if you could point me to a place to get me started on text insertion, in terms of tools and perhaps any tips/recommended workflows you've developed. Getting off the ground is usually the hardest part so any assistance there would be highly appreciated; then I'd probably be in contact about stuff while I'm working on it...

Like right off the bat I'd have to ask if you can think of any novel/interesting/easy ways to implement translation notes without them being obnoxiously inserted in the middle of a dialogue box. There are a few initial thoughts I have, such as putting an indicator at the end of the line that signals "this line has a TL note"... then either pressing a special button to open new dialogue boxes, or just having an external reference PDF or whatever. Anyways I completely lack any FF7 modding experience so yeah, there's a lot to learn, but that's OK.

The big issue is that text is heavily linked to the game's event scripting. In FF8, text boxes size themselves dynamically but in FF7 they are manually sized so a change to the text itself may require the box to be bigger to accommodate it. The parameters for the text boxes live within the event scripting, so changes to text usually require editing of the text box (unsure if this has been changed as of the latest Makou builds, I remember reading something about that in recent release notes).

Translation notes in a separate window or on button command would require that every field carry some field script to support this. Also, there's a limit of 255 text lines per field, so they'd need to be added sparingly if in their own text entry. The script could be very lightweight, but it'd take time to cover all instances where it needs to be used and may not be practical during scenes where text auto-progresses (for instance, scenes where Movie Frame is used to progress scenes and pausing it isn't a practical option).

First thing to do is touch base with the tools:
Field Script - Makou Reactor: https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/6481/ (probably best to start here and leave enemy data/kernel data for now)
Enemy Data - Proud Clod: https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/5580/
Kernel Data - Wall Market: https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/5149/
(Requires Visual Basic Power Packs 3.0 and perhaps some .DLL registration through Admin CMD window).

There's this tool as well, which can pull out all the text into plain text then re-encode it. I'm unsure if it works with mods as I found it would break on a certain field during extraction: https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/7970/

I would recommend testing the insertion step of this tool before committing to translating its output. Do some edits to various fields around the game then test that the re-insertion was successful.

Any progress on this? I would really want to buy this particular version instead of steam all the hassle having another game client/launcher just for one game :-/

Not been able to get info about it, so I'll just buy it now and have a look at it myself.

no. but hopefully that may change  

It probably shouldn't be winnable at all, tbh.

Enjyoing 2.0 greatly

Does the

Spoiler

mini X-ATM

do anything or is it just a reward for completing the side content?

Also any tips for the

Spoiler

KOTR battle?

?

The counters are destroying me. I tried using stop but it only hits very rarely.

I set up barrier/m-barrier and regen and using strong attacks (e.g. omnislash and mimi)

It's just a collection item; there's a couple in there, some from Gold Saucer minigames.

For that battle:

Spoiler

So they both have 55k HP; Omega is weak to Bolt, Water, and Earth but will null Bio, Gravity, and halve Wind. He can be Stopped as you've seen, but it's tough to land due to his high level of 119. If you still have Aeris, then Seal Evil is a guaranteed Stop that can be useful here, or perhaps combining Stop with MP Turbo for a better chance (more stars = higher chance). Stop + Quadra Magic can also be a good one if you have it though it'll only be good for a couple of casts.

Shinryu is weak to Wind only, and absorbs Holy. He nulls Gravity & Earth, and halves Bio (he can be poisoned which should be handy as it'll deal 1/32 of his MaxHP per tick). He can also be Slowed which should be done early though this also slows down the rate that poison ticks at.

Both bosses are relatively slow at 76 and 87 speed so if you have a party with fairly high Dex then you can get a nice turn advantage. However, Omega will always counter-attack when struck by an ability and Shinryu will use certain one-off abilities when his HP falls below a certain mark so you'll still need to be careful not to get overwhelmed. Omega counters pretty much anything, so you can avoid taking some damage by avoiding him but Shinryu will also attack Omega which triggers those counters.

There's a lot of nasty attacks flying around so deciding what to guard against will be important. Fire is a good one as it covers two of Omega's attacks, or Holy as Shinryu's biggest attack, Almagest, carries this element. Shoot, Cut, and Hit elements are used frequently by Omega so Armour/Accessories that reduce these are also worth considering. For status ailments, Petrify is used by both bosses so that would be a good one; Confusion and Silence as well so you don't lose a character's input at a crucial time.

So first thing to decide is whether to deal with Shinryu first or deal with Omega first and this may depend on what death counter you want to deal with; when Shinryu dies he'll use Almagest which is a heavy-hitting Holy element attack if Omega is still alive (but will also have used other nasty attacks while his HP falls, such as Lv?? Old which reduces a character's stats to 0 and Zombie Breath which prevents reviving except through the Phoenix summon). Omega, on the other hand, will use Encircle which renders one character inactive for the rest of the battle so you'd only have two characters to finish off Shinryu.

I think what people tend to do is keep Omega locked down with Stop as best they can, deal with Shinryu, and then mop up Omega but may be wrong about that.

To start, I'd try to Slow & Poison Shinryu, and land Stop on Omega with an MP Turbo Stop, Quadra Magic Stop, or Aeris' Seal Evil if that's available. While Omega is stopped, he can't counter-attack at all so that'd be the time to start hitting him with Bolt, Water, and Earth attacks. You can tie these to physical attacks with Elemental, or use weapons with those elements already aspected to them (Cid should have a bunch of these) or just stick with spells like Break.

I'd maybe be wary about committing all 3 characters to attack when dealing with Omega, as his Stop may wear off and you'll suddenly be facing 2-3 counter-attacks + any turns Shinryu or Omega get while that happens. Try attacking with one at a time so the other two can deal with any consequences that come back. You can probably be aggressive when Stop is freshly applied, but after some turns I'd maybe start to hold back a bit.

There's a few things to note with Shinryu as well. First of all, he'll counter limit breaks with Lv?? Flare so be careful about using those against him. At certain HP increments he'll use a special ability: At 4/5s, he'll use Big Guard (you'll want to dispel that ASAP). At 3/5s, he'll use Zombie Breath which renders any character that is KO'd from that point on unable to be revived except through the use of the Phoenix Summon. At 2/5s. he'll use Lv?? Old which reduces the Strength, Magic, Defence, and Magic Defence of one character to 0 (while this can be cleared by KOing and then reviving the character, remember that the Zombie Breath effect is in play by this point). And finally, at 1/5 he'll use Maelstrom which reduces a party member's HP to 1. When he dies, and if Omega is not dead, he'll use Almagest so make sure you're topped up and got MBarrier or Shield up before finishing him off (Sense should work on both of these guys if the .exe is patched so you can track when they're about to die).

Hope that helps.

 

[Sega Chief]

So I bought the Microsoft store version of the game and with some assistance from Khoral on Discord was able to gain access to the folder (which according to my reading is one of the most protected folders on a windows machine). Inside I was able to find all the files which seem to be the same as the ones used for 1998 and Steam, along with all their language variants including the Japanese ones (very handy find).

However, there seems to be more hurdles. Attempting to modify these files or even replace them with modified variants of the same name is shot down by permissions issues, and it seems there are size limits in there where attempting to add a file will give a warning that there's not enough space within the app's folder to add the file. This means new files would need to be smaller overall than the originals; NT's flevel, you may be surprised to know, is actually smaller than an original default flevel so if a swap can be made then this size limit shouldn't be an issue there; though it will be for the scene.bin and kernel.bin if the size limit is on a per folder basis rather than a general size limit.

So I think a NT version for the Windows store version is going to be depend on whether or not these files can be modified. I'm doing a bit of reading on it right now.

 

[AuthenticM]

How much demand is there for a Windows Store version of the mod? I can't imagine it being strong.

I don't mean to be insensitive, but is it really worth your time to be working on this?

 

[dogs_go_to_space]

It's just a collection item; there's a couple in there, some from Gold Saucer minigames.

For that battle:
[...]

Based on everything else you changed I was half expecting it to grow like an egg and become a summon or something 

Thanks for the fantastic detail to help, I'll be grinding away at it after reading a few more times!

You're an absolute legend

 

[jamineal]

Got one or two more questions. They're not super important.

(A) Where is Hydro on the Junon Docks? I don't think I saw that sucker during my escape. Hoping it isn't permanently missable.

(B) Are splinter materia necessary for Master Magic?