[FF8PC-Steam] Ragnarok Rebalancing Mod (v1.2.3 & v1.1b)

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Pretty much got the 2013 version of the game on Steam to play this mod. Great work, yo. Between this and New Threat over on the FF7 side of things I'm finding myself binging a lot of Final Fantasy here lately. Perhaps... unhealthy! I am finding in real life there is no Limit Breaking, however. Saddening.

So I'm not sure if this is just me and my lack of nuance with these things, but I've had some problems crop up throughout my time here. Nothing game-ending outright, and could be I've gone and goofed something up myself, but I certainly wouldn't know what so. I'm just going to list them.

There are some straaange texture issues. Just reached the section where the party is headed to Esthar. I can see polygons with blank textures on the other side of dead dino canyon, on the world map. The sky when I enter is flickering... best I can describe it is almost a TV static -- very minor. Before this, in the Cetra ruins, I noticed the King Tonberry fight had some wonky textures displaying specifically on the effects... I wish I could remember the specific attack. I'm fairly certain it was only present on one of them. All I know is I was getting perfect squares around his hands filled with pixelated hoo-ha. The only other graphical issue I've caught is with the Creeper enemies. They like to spaz out when they use Heartbreak.

But then there are some gameplay oddities. On the first boss in aforementioned dino canyon (I'm sorry I don't know any names yet, I've never even gotten this far in FF8 before -- the undead guy that jumps the party) I tried to Doink™ him with sir Tonberry and it actually froze Selphie in place?? The game almost seemed to treat her like she was KO'd, and I got a gameover despite the fact that her animation, ATB gauge, and health value were all stuck in place.

And then there is assuredly the bane of my existence. Sometimes, I'm about 99% certain only on specific enemies, Squall's regular attack will crash the game. So far I think it's Ifrit and the Catacher... Catapha... the caterpillars, specifically the encounter where Balamb Garden is being attacked by Galbadia's. There has to be one more but it was random and far out of the way. These crashes come with the "unknown exception has occurred" window, like Tyler's. Could be the corruption extends into some other files? The complications certainly seem sporadic, so.

If I catch anything else I'll let you know. I've gotta say again, though, great work. I've never felt the milliseconds in between the safety of the magic menu and the absolute panic that is the command selection on such an intimate level before. Good stuff!
 
Oh, and apologies for that word soup if you've already remedied the problem here. Installing the update for when I'm less sleep deprived as we speak...
 
No problem. I read about the issues you reported only after uploading the new version.

The weird texture glitch on the worldmap where Esthar appears later is normal in the PC versions of the game, unfortunately. The same goes for the minor graphical glitches that can occur when fighting the Tonberry King. I'm not sure about the Creeps, I fought them right now and let them cast Heartbreak - no issues. Summoning Tonberry against Abadon worked as expected too. Tested on both 2013 and 2019 versions.

As for the game crashing when attacking with Squall, I have experienced that issue as well. Only very rarely though, so it's difficult to tell whether it's caused by the mod or by the game itself. Which version are you playing (normal or hard)? It might help tracking the cause down.
 
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Wow. Kudos on the turnaround time for fixing the Elnoyles. That's very impressive. I downloaded the patch, and the Elnoyle fights are now working fine for me.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this mod so far. It is definitely one of the more difficult mods I've played, and I've been playing final fantasy mods from this community for about 10 years. There were a number of fights that kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire battle. My favorite so far is probably the Edea fight at the end of disc 2. I found myself constantly having to pivot my strategy due to the multiple devastating AOE attacks she has. I am glad I had a healthy stock of mega potions + med data for that fight, since they absolutely saved me at various points.

The most difficult boss for me so far has been, surprisingly, the 2 elite soldiers and blue robots you fight at the top of the G-Prison on the bridge. My main issue was simply how FAST they were. I received dozens of game overs here due to being completely wiped out almost immediately after the fight started. In the end, I was able to barely pull through by first managing to get poison on the elite soldiers so I didn't have to focus on directly attacking them, and then basically spamming protect + heal until poison killed the elites off. At that point, the robots weren't too bad to dispatch of. I experimented with trying to esuna the vit 0 from meltdown / ray bomb, but this quickly proved to take way too much time given how frequently they inflicted it, so I opted instead to just make sure I kept protect up to mitigate it. One thing I realized later on is I had my battle speed set to max, so I suspect this added significantly to the frustration.

I'm only just approaching the end of disc 3, so there are quite a few remaining bosses I've yet to fight (including the extra optional ones added for this mod). I'm extremely curious as to what Ultimate and Omega weapon will be like. Now that Elnoyles are fixed, at least I have a relatively easy way to stock up on Ultimas now to boost my stats.
 
I had the inkling, based on the reputation the 2013 release seems to have, that a lot of these issues could have just been vanilla. Thanks for clearing that up.

I am playing on the normal version. I've gone ahead and updated, and when I have time I'll give it another go. That Tonberry freeze only happened on my first pass at Abadon, so some more science may be required. Now the Squall crashes are definitely tied to encounters. I had to run to Ifrit like 6 or 7 times before I finally learned to git gud and just beat him without a normal attack. I can only imagine if that was a problem with your mod it would have been sniffed out by now, but that is specifically where I would look to test that. I've been swinging it around plenty otherwise, though with some careful saving.

I don't know what is and isn't helpful here, but the crash dump for the Tonberry crash says 0xC0000005. The thread tried to read from a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access. Hm hm.

Sounds like I should maybe validate the files with steam or just reinstall. Perhaps ensure I'm running with administrator privileges, but I haven't had any real issues with anything like that since Windows Vista haha. I'll probably keep chuggin' till I'm hard stopped. Cheers!
 
Sorry, double double post, also worth noting not every attack on Ifrit caused the crash. Which is why I kept being tempted to use it anyway hehehhh. I was beginning to think something may be forcing Squall to actually miss, which if I understand correctly is not supposed to happen.
 
I love this mod, i playing the Lionheart dificulty, to hard xD, i like it, but the game is crashing in NORG battle, and is a bit slow i don't know why!
 
I registered almost exclusively to thank those involved in this mod for their wonderful work.

I played FF8 way back when it was released on the PS1, and it was a crushing experience.
I played blind, levelling normally and by the time I got to disc 4 everything was impossible to beat and I gave up. The game had left a bad taste in my mouth since, but it was a shame that such a technically impressive game couldn't be enjoyed properly.

I recently found out about the mod and I couldn't believe it addresses those I consider the biggest problems with the game (chiefly enemy scaling, but not only). I can't wait to delve deeper into the experience and given the list of changes, I feel it will be much more enjoyable. Thank you, and do keep up the good work.
 
I've been playing some more and I noticed what I assume is a bug. When I was fighting around Balamb after getting Ifrit (thanks for that early Double, I could get Ifrit in 5 minutes!) and when Squall leveled up from 8 to 9, Bite Bugs (is that the name of those blue mosquito things?) started appearing at Lv 14 instead of being fixed at their initial Lv 8. Other monsters seemed to be unaffected.

Closing the game and reloading my save seems to have fixed it, but I don't know if other monsters were affected.
 
I apologise for the constant posting but I don't know how to edit existing posts.
When Quistis left the party after completing the Fire Cavern, Bite Bugs were, again, stronger at Lv 12 (Squall was solo at 9). I fled the battle and scanned the next battle with them and they were back to 8, so I'm guessing the mod may be missing certain checks (party changes, level ups) when the next battle happens.
 
Updated the latest version with a fix to the Left Orb enemy that appears alongside NORG (the game softlocked whenever it was trying to cast Tornado). Many thanks to JohnnydarkPT for pointing it out.

@Exlo: In regards to the game crashing occasionally when attacking with Squall, I tried to replicate the issue with no success.

If you are playing the game at 1080p fullscreen, try reducing internal resolution and/or enabling windowed mode from the launcher settings and check if that fixes it. I did the same some time ago and have never ecountered this issue again ever since (could be just coincidence though, not sure, as it always happened in my case only very rarily). You could also try loading the game with non-modded files, to rule out a mod-related problem.

@Helm_Smasher: There is a small variation in enemy levels in the mod, even if they appear in the same area. It is encounter-based and definitely not dependent on your own levels. In the case of Bite Bugs that appear on the Balamb Isle, all Bite Bugs that appear in groups are at Lv 8, while the single one is set to Lv 12. I don't know why you encountered one that is at Lv 14 though. That's not intended for sure. Will investigate.
 
I see, so that's how it works, thanks for clarifying.
Again, thanks for making this game actually enjoyable to me by fine-tuning the parts I considered bad design.
 
When updating, is it enough to replace the content of the demaster_exp folder?
would it be necessary to repatch the .dll?
 
Replacing the demaster_exp folder is enough to update to the lastest version, since no changes were made to the .dll this time.

Also thank you for the kind words. I hope your playthrough will go well. If any more questions arise, feel free to ask.
 
Thank you for solving that! if there are more bugs/crashes or whatever i will let you know, btw nice job, this mod is awesome... finally a FFVIII hard mod, i love FFVIII so much but this way i love it more... nice job!
 
i found other bug, this is not important but yes xD, Fastitocalon-F card give a potion, but need 5 cards xD, it says 1 card for 1 potion but you need to use 5... Sorry for my english but hope you understand!!
 
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And Squall is a bit slow when walking/running, i don't know if is because of my PC, but its only when running/walking, in battles is fast (this happened only in Disc 2, when i reached balamb garden, to defend)
 
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My PC run almost all games, so i think is a bug from the mod
 
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Would it be possible to have a fixed SEED rank instead of it fluctuating?
It makes sense that some story events would alter the rank but being forced to fight half dead in hopes of raising it always struck me as annoying.

If that's not possible, would there be a way for the rank to not suffer alterations while one is in town areas?
 
Okay, I just finished the Dollet raid, and it has mostly gone very smoothly. Only thing I noticed is that G-Elites and Anacondaurs did quite an astounding amount of damage (I almost had a party wipe against two G-Elites inside the base of the elevator of the comms tower). Is that expected? Elvoret was easier than those guys actually haha.
I'm playing the normal difficulty version by the way, not Lionheart.
 
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