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

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Hi Sega Chief,

I had an alternate idea for how players could get new spells without having as many materia equipped as possible all the time.  The idea of finding materia with ap already on them would work, but requires players to replace their existing materia.  So I thought of a way that would allow the player to level up his or her own materia without equipping it when they don't want to use it.  You could set up either  forced optional events when you think a player should gain a new spell.  I'll give an imaginary example because that's easier to communicate:

You decide that before fighting bottomswell is when players should gain bolt 2, and level 2 cover.  You put an NPC in Junon that tells you he can upgrade your magic, but you have to do what he says.  He tells you to equip your lightning materia and cover materia but remove all the others.  Once you do that, you enter a battle with him in which you just cast bolt on him or something and then the battle is over.  He gives you the exact amount of AP to level up those 2 materia.  Done.

To make it a little more interesting the NPC could be like a Magic Pot enemy and demand that you give him an item.  This item could be something that you have to win from a tricky or difficult normal enemy.  Maybe buff the Zemzelet a bit and make his drop the item you need to give the NPC.  That would make it kind of like a mini-quest to upgrade your materia.

The weakness to this solution would be that it relies on trusting the player to actually remove his or her other materia (a reward of 1500 ap would be hard to pass up).  But if players wanted to cheat and make it easy for themselves, I kind of feel that that's up to them.  They can choose whether or not to follow the rules and really play NT like it's supposed to be.

Anyways, I think that either solution could work.  I hope this latest idea is helpful, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with your mod.
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The problem right there is trust; I don't trust anybody  :-D

I like the idea, though. Materia is basically a grind, and it's always been a hard grind in FF7. I've tried to set up basic Materia to level up at certain points in the game, but unlike level there's too much variation to do it reliably; encounters fought, AP growth of equipment, whether or not player has Materia equipped, etc.

In Karifean's Super Boss Rush mod, he tried to set up a field-script check that would look for banned Materia in the player's inventory and remove them but I don't think it worked (the commands seemed to be there, but it was non-functioning or had been interpreted wrong by the tool). So I think the only way to make instanced fights for AP work is to 'trust' the player, but if they make a mistake or keep their other Materia on then it's going to fall apart.

So I think dropping the actual leveled Materia might be the way to go, maybe combine it with the current system if these drops were limited (so for instance, only one Bolt2 Materia would drop from an event; for a second or third, you'd need to be building one with AP; keeps 2x & 3x growth equipment and high AP monsters relevant). That way I could ensure every player has at least the bare minimum needed to effectively tackle enemies/bosses as they progress, with the option there to better equip yourself if you decide to keep some Materia on for AP. It also gives people some extra gil if they decide to sell their older/newer Materia instead.

Or would combining the two be a bad idea? They'd undermine each other to an extent. One thing I really liked in the Nightmare mod was that Materia was quite rare and expensive, so when you found one of the new Materia drops it was a big deal. What I could do is set up variables, etc. so that Materia becomes much rarer and hard to obtain when playing on Arrange (disabling Materia shops, shifting around placements, etc).

I could get some decent mileage out of it for small side events too. The more critical pieces would probably be dropped after certain boss fights or mandatory story events, but I could tuck some optional pieces away here and there.

Gold Saucer's Event Square

The theater for movie and music is good idea!
(can be an issue for original 1998 version since the movie are played on different Disc. but not a real problem I think).
Make a Boss at Disc 2 on this Event Square, like after Junon's Escape before the team know where Cloud is.
Then after defeating this new boss the player unlock the theater and 100 GP or maybe a cool armor/items.
Make movie free to watch but they 're unlocked after seeing them in game. Music could cost GP to unlock but are free to listen.
Also, you can add some PNJ like the one for Boss Rush in the Highwind. Plus why not a save point?

The auction ala FFIX why not :D

Another suggestion about Event Square:
Would be fun if the player can re-play the date scene but with a "new threat scenario" at Disc 3 before entering North Cavern.
The participation would cost GP (or Gils?), and give a reward depending of the player's choice.
The Dragon could be a new threat enemy too :D


About Save Point :
A mini-quest that consist to find all the Save Point in the game (except from North Cavern).
It's mostly for the fun of the completion, a reward is not necessary, maybe an useless key-item :P
In the mythril cave the PNJ give you information and say how many Save Point the player is missing.
Then hide some Save Point in the game and/or make one that attack the player on contact.
Not a hard battle ofc and the fake Save Point become a real one after the fight.
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There's a lot of possibilities; a theater mode might be the easier thing to do, but it'd be nice to make lots of different things available in Event Square. But what's a PNJ?

Yay palmer boss fight works now! Neat attack Btw! Thank you   :D
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Glad to hear it; sorry for the trouble.
 
lol ultros?

what battle map is he on, the same one as bottomswell would probably work well for him.


on the materia thing I think you should just remove AP and chuck it out the window, I'm not sure what the point is in going half way like you are saying about giving people a base amount of materia, and the people that keep materia equipped 24/7 will have more than someone that does not.

I would just make it like other final fantasy's, you can decide 'oh okay now everyone is on level 2 magic' and you can give it out at boss fights, or shops can sell level 2 everything, because otherwise the issue is a party member may only have level 1 magic, the other 2 party members will have level 3 magic, the level 1 magic party member is just wasting his time casting magic and so can only attack.

so ideally at the end of the game I could walk into cosmo canyon and buy cure3 to use with a new threat boss, not like cure1 where id be like 'wft this is useless unless I grind AP for 2 hours'

I would say to rebalance the fact that you wont be hoarding materia like you would in the original game I would double the weighting of materia, for example magic materia will now reduce twice the HP amount, and give double the magic count, alternatively you could just put more weighting on the negative effects, and keep the positive traits the same.
 
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In Karifean's Super Boss Rush mod, he tried to set up a field-script check that would look for banned Materia in the player's inventory and remove them but I don't think it worked (the commands seemed to be there, but it was non-functioning or had been interpreted wrong by the tool). So I think the only way to make instanced fights for AP work is to 'trust' the player, but if they make a mistake or keep their other Materia on then it's going to fall apart.
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If it's possible for the game to check for materia that aren't supposed to be equipped, perhaps the NPC that you fight could eject you from battle like the Zolom does if you equipped materia you aren't supposed to.  If he sees you've equipped fire in addition to bolt, he ejects you (or even kills you!).  Or possibly, he could have an attack like Emerald Weapons big move that deals damage based on how many materia you have equipped.  If you're supposed to equip a bolt and cover on each person, that's a max of 2 materia per person.  Maybe his attack could kill anyone equipped with 3 or more materia.

Not sure if these ideas are possible but if they are, it could be cool.
 
hey sega chief

how is the ultros boss fight coming along on your mod?
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It's on the backburner until the mod's fundamentals are fixed.

lol ultros?

what battle map is he on, the same one as bottomswell would probably work well for him.
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There isn't one; Zara suggested adding Ultros into NT and I had a look into it, but it's complicated because any enemy I make needs to use a pre-existing one as a base. I can change the look, but not the animations (animations can be changed, but it's very time-consuming so I generally try to avoid it outside of small tweaks to unused ones that look a bit jittery).

on the materia thing I think you should just remove AP and chuck it out the window, I'm not sure what the point is in going half way like you are saying about giving people a base amount of materia, and the people that keep materia equipped 24/7 will have more than someone that does not.
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I'm considering setting up both alongside each other because it's a drastic step to remove AP altogether and it'd force players to use what the game gives them, rather than letting them choose which Materia to develop.

If it's possible for the game to check for materia that aren't supposed to be equipped, perhaps the NPC that you fight could eject you from battle like the Zolom does if you equipped materia you aren't supposed to.  If he sees you've equipped fire in addition to bolt, he ejects you (or even kills you!).  Or possibly, he could have an attack like Emerald Weapons big move that deals damage based on how many materia you have equipped.  If you're supposed to equip a bolt and cover on each person, that's a max of 2 materia per person.  Maybe his attack could kill anyone equipped with 3 or more materia.

Not sure if these ideas are possible but if they are, it could be cool.
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The battle AI can't check for Materia (I think) and it doesn't seem like the field script can either, though Makou lists some functions that make it seem like it can. Doing it with a battle = ejecting the player, etc. seems a tad too fiddly and there's that room for mistakes/abuse where they don't get the AP they need or they get it onto other Materia.

What I might do is separate the Materia systems into Original and Arrange. Original would use traditional AP & stores, while Arrange would use the proposed system of dropping Materia 'upgrades' instead. It could all be handled through field variables fairly easily, and I can add script to the Materia stores where perhaps one-off purchases can be made.
 
\\Progress Update//

So I started my playthrough last night, and one thing that's quickly become painfully clear is that the mod is in dire need of a renovation for enemy stats & attacks; the changes made since 1.1 have taken a serious cumulative toll and as things currently stand, enemies aren't keeping up anymore, at least early on in the game. Aps in particular was a bit of an eye-opener; he was landing attacks for 30-40 damage compared to his original 150 or so. We'll see how it pans out later, but I'll be fine-tuning every single enemy as I go through each area.

Edit: Found a small issue; a deactivated battle is still used in Floor 1 of Shinra HQ when choosing to enter the building through the front door. Fortunately, it seems harmless enough; just two Grenade Combatants called 'Blank' who can't attack. I've changed the battle to it's identical but working counterpart. That'll be present in the next update.
 
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PNJ is the french acronyme for NPC. My mistake, sorry, i'm more familiar with PNJ then NPC.
It means Personnage Non Jouable as NPC means No Playable Character :-D
 
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I see! I'll remember that; speaking of, I'd better get that Fort Condor PNJ up and working finally.
 
other people would disagree but lets stick to new threat mod content instead of making statements like that.
 
I wouldn't say FF7's Materia system is perfect, but it is quite solid. I'll work something out.
 
Sega Chief,

I've restarted the game under what I think is the most recent update. It's going very well so far and I'm attempting it a little differently than the first time I played, I'm grinding a tiny bit rather than rushing from place to place so it's been fairly smooth, albeit a little more time consuming.

Couple bugs I've found:

- Some NPCs seem to be missing dialogue or have it displayed improperly. For instance, in the building with the big spiral staircase in Kalm, the NPC there doesn't say anything. No dialogue window comes up and she'll turn towards the PC as if she was speaking normally. I have also had instances where dialogue choices haven't displayed properly, usually in the form of spilling over to the next line. The only one I can recall off-hand was the fellow in the house who tells you about the keystone, the issue occurred when I tried to give him mytheril.

- The battle square doesn't appear to work at all. When I spoke to Dio I was able to go through his challenge no problem, but if I speak to a receptionist and attempt to fight, I'm instead sent to the same battlefield found around Midgar, fighting a sweeper and one of those red motorcycle guys who are encountered around there. I've tried the battle square four different times with four different characters and the same issue persists.

Other than that it's been pretty seamless, haven't had any crashes that I can recall, and nothing else seems to have gone wrong.

One last thing too: I personally don't think the materia system ought to be changed too much, if only to avoid overly messing with the spirit of the original game. I agree that it's not a perfect system and may potentially involve some grinding, but I like the fact that it gives the option of grinding if the player considers it necessary. I feel that altering it too much could also result in a lack of flexibility, which seems to go against how you've designed this mod in the first place.

I do think that redesigning and shuffling around abilities isn't a bad move though, like tossing osmose in with Heal and remove with Destruct. Exit seems awful lonely though!

edit: whoops, totally missed the suggestion of using the two materia systems based on what difficulty you play, seems like the best compromise.
 
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Yeah, I've just passed through Kalm in my playthrough and fixed that NPC; he had some left-over script from a scrapped event that was interfering with it. I've set it back to normal. I'm also re-working the dialogue boxes to catch any alignment issues.

As for battle square is this with the Main Installer + Flevel hotfix patch applied? If so, then it seems that something slipped through the gap for the correct battle mode flag. I can hopefully correct that easily enough. Glad to hear there were no other issues popping up.

As far as Materia goes, I won't be doing anything too drastic with Original; maybe a few side events here and there where the player can nab a pre-leveled Materia drop. I think I'll go with a 'rare' Materia system for Arrange though, could be quite interesting.
 
yeah as mentioned I would make life2 & 2x cut a rare materia you get after defeating a new threat boss, it should be the special materia needed for defeating the last story bosses.
 
I hadn't actually installed the hotfix, doing so has solved the Battle Square issue, thanks. Looking forward to seeing what else has changed.
 
Ah, I see; the hotfix patches are mostly for just repairing any issues that pop up. It should be mostly the same.
 
yeah as mentioned I would make life2 & 2x cut a rare materia you get after defeating a new threat boss, it should be the special materia needed for defeating the last story bosses.
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I'm pretty sure that already is the case with 2X cut?

I can see why some would perceive Life2 as overpowered though. It kind of is but it is just your bog standard full-heal/resurrect kind of spell.

I'm on the side of maintaining the materia system as is personally. My spellcasters were no more powerful than my melee characters with Dragon Force///Lucky girl and I think the balance is just right.

School holidays soon and no work for 2 months. Looking forward to getting stuck into an updated version! :)
 
School holidays soon and no work for 2 months. Looking forward to getting stuck into an updated version! :)
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It'll have Arrange mode in it, so that might be worth checking out for a different take on the mod.

\\McUpdate//

So according to feedback, a common headache caused in a FF7 playthrough is hunting through Junon's forests for Yuffie (this is where she has the lowest chance to turn up, unless it's based on level). While this isn't strictly an NT issue, it's still something worth tackling.

There's also a potential problem on the horizon with the Bizarro encounter in this mod, which forces a three-party fight; at present, if the player doesn't recruit at least one optional character before entering this fight then they'll become stuck, as they won't have enough people to form three parties (the game demands three characters for the first two teams). Not a likely scenario, but it has happened to at least one person which makes it something to be fixed.

So to remedy both problems, I've set up a new event at Kalm which immediately follows the flashback and which will add Yuffie to the party. There's a small amount of evidence that Yuffie was going to be recruitable before passing through the Mythril Mines anyway, if theories about the position of the unused TRAP field and the impossible Zolom/Mythril Mines dialogues are anything to go by.

Just going to fine-tune it then continue my balancing playthrough.
 
is this the forced yuffie feature you were thinking of adding, or is it more of a dirty hack for now.

would you not have to find someway to force vincent as well?
 
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