Final Fantasy IX: David Bowie Edition Version 2.0, now with Moguri support

[Zentrius]

are there any plans for support for memoria? been loving the hack, but the ridiculously slow battle start up makes this insanely frustrating to play.

 

[Clem Fandango]

are there any plans for support for memoria? been loving the hack, but the ridiculously slow battle start up makes this insanely frustrating to play.

That's what I'm hoping to do following the next update, specifically I'm really hoping to get it working with Moguri. It's a little slow going unfortunately, my work process with the mod seems to be brief bursts of ideas and productivity followed by weeks of distractions.

Also make sure you've got the Skip Battle Camera set to ON in the in game menu, it'll get rid of the lengthy camera sweeping at the start of most random battles.

Next update is made of up various tweaks with a few huge things (I've just up and got rid of Virus since it's not all that compelling), hoping to get some work done on it today. It's mostly just testing at this point.

edit: I wound up working on it for a while today, largely just fixing stuff that's been broken for a while. New download link is here, non-comprehensive changelog is inside:

https://mega.nz/file/osJCDTKJ#r58TKMOgv7_JZX6T12yuUD-fCQvtDFFXXiDiCshnVA4

There's still a couple small things I want to add from here, but I need to look into the feasibility of what I want to do.

 

[FakerMaker]

Hey! Little late to this. Was wondering if there was a way to apply this patch to the original PS1 isos. I'm unsure how difficult it would be to do so. Thanks!

 

[Clem Fandango]

It might well be possible, to be perfectly honest I never really intended a PSX version and haven't really played around with the Hades tool's features to know exactly how it works, though I imagine it's a question of exporting the mod as a PPF. My guess is that it's probably possible, but it might be broken in new and unique ways. If I can get a good chunk of time to screw around with it I might give it a shot at some point, unfortunately I haven't really had the time to work on the mod much in general lately.

Having said all that, I do recommend checking out the Steam version if you've got a chance, it had a fairly nice UI update last year which makes it look dramatically better than it did before. I wasn't completely sold on it when I initially played it, but it feels pretty decent these days and it's not dramatically different than the PS1 version. It DOES feature a speed up toggle and a config option to remove the slow camera rotation the opens most random battles. It's pretty nice.

 

[Clem Fandango]

1.16 is now available: https://mega.nz/file/MppgzaiL#SGGMgoCDJgUx54PMVh9pZcjiUv6zL-3LArwGyiRndn0

It's not a massive change up, I wanted to come back and touch things up after not having really looked into the mod for a while. The download should have a list of changes, identical to the one in the updated OP. I want to keep working on some of the rougher edges as I see them, as I'm back to doing a playthrough after a long time away from it.

Couple things I should mention: using Memoria with this mod does appear to work as far as I can tell, though I should note I never did play through the entire game with it. It's been months since I've last messed around with it, I hesitate to say it's fully supported and you may run into trouble if you run it, though it seemed fine for me. Ozma definitely won't work with turn-based battles. I really enjoyed how turn-based battles feels with the mod, at least from the bits of it I played.

Regarding Moguri support, I don't think that it's particularly likely to happen at this point. From what I can gather, getting it working isn't a particularly simple process and involves the Moguri devs implementing support for DBE within their own project, so it's not just a question of installing Moguri and plugging DBE in. Quite frankly I don't think that there's anywhere near enough demand for this project to really justify that time and effort, especially considering the lack of sophistication in what I've done compared to a number of other mods. At the end of the day this was really just a thing I worked on for a couple years on and off for fun and I wasn't ever entirely sure I was ever going to release it to the public.

There's been some rumors lately about another FF9 release for PC based on an Nvidia leak, I'm not sure if it's a real thing that going to happen or what it's even going to look like, but if it happens and it is possible and not a major pain in the ass to work with, I might try to get compatibility for it. We'll have to wait and see at any rate.

 

[Tirlititi]

I'll check what is the problem with compatibility with the Moguri mod but I would find it very strange if it were compatible with Memoria and not Moguri. I don't know what this DBE is about. (EDIT: Ow... DBE is the mod's name ^^')

By the way, the opening post has a huge "Final Fantasy XI: David Bowie Edition" typo

 

[Clem Fandango]

I'll check what is the problem with compatibility with the Moguri mod but I would find it very strange if it were compatible with Memoria and not Moguri. I don't know what this DBE is about. (EDIT: Ow... DBE is the mod's name ^^')

I can't recall exactly what I had to do to get it working with Memoria and I'm not 100% sure I didn't break Memoria functionality in the process, as I didn't wind up playing through the entire game with it, just a few small chunks just to see how it was. It's been a long time since I was messing around with it but I think it was a question installing the mod as I normally would after installing Memoria, but I'll need to fiddle with it again to see. Whatever it was I did, I do recall trying to do largely the same thing with Moguri and didn't have a whole lot of luck.

I'm going to try to get back into it, it would be entirely on-brand for me to have made a mistake at some point during the process. I'd love to have Moguri support in particular, pretty much any time I read a post on other sites about people playing the Steam port it's usually about how fantastic Moguri looks.

By the way, the opening post has a huge "Final Fantasy XI: David Bowie Edition" typo

Gah. Oh god, I don't know how long that's been like that, it's giant and bold and I didn't even realize it. Dyslexia again strikes.

 

[Robgatti]

Gonna be jumping in tonight, is there anyway to confirm everything is working correctly?

Really excited been searching for a reason to go back to IX.

 

[Clem Fandango]

A really quick thing to check is whether Zidane has a Mage Masher already equipped, that's an early way to know how things are going. Generally speaking starting a brand new save file is probably a good bet, otherwise your inventory might have some things in it that it really ought not to.

However since my last post there's actually been a number of big changes and it's actually pretty easy to set up the mod with Moguri now, if you want to give that a shot. Just have to do the following:

1. Install the latest version of Moguri, the download link is as follows: https://www.moddb.com/downloads/mirror/216757/127/bfacb6ef7e75fa89cd9b57b3d09a2a23

2. Download and run the latest version of the Memoria patcher from this page: https://github.com/Albeoris/Memoria/releases. Note that when you run the patcher, Windows may pop up a dialog saying the file is unsafe; this appears to be a false positive and is probably not unexpected given how the patcher works.

3. Launch FF9. You should now see a different looking screen from what you would normally get with Moguri, what you'll want to click is the "Install Mods" button in the upper right-hand corner. From there, click the Browse Catalog tab and you should see the mod listed. Not everything listed is current available for direct download through the manager, but from what I can tell that will change soon.

4. Install David Bowie Edition and go back to the Installed Mods tab. From here you may need to alter the load order; so long as David Bowie Edition is listed above the Moguri files it should work just fine.

MASSIVE thanks to Tirlititi for getting this all figured out, none of this would be possible otherwise.

Even if you don't want to run Moguri for whatever reason, I'd still recommend doing everything here after the first step. Memoria is generally superior to the original engine at this point and it makes installing supported mods like this one way, waaaay easier.

I should note that there might be bugs, I've been testing it myself and had some other folks do the same and there have been some oddities here and there, most prominent one at the moment is that the area around Dali seems to occasionally lock up during random battles, but it's fairly easy to get to Dali with minimal battles and it's not guaranteed to happen to you. Once I've had an opportunity to test the fix for that I'll update this thread and the file within Memoria; from there it'll just be a simple matter of uninstalling and reinstalling the mod.

Last thing I'll say is that there will probably be a number of balance tweaks forthcoming (I'm not super into how the start of the game plays in retrospect), but otherwise everything should be playable and stable.

 

[Robgatti]

Im not particularly worried about the Backgrounds, but is this compatible with the HQ Backgrounds?

Thanks again! (Have no issue setting up Mogiri / DBE with the steps listed!)

EDIT: Is this mod designed to be played in "Turn Based Mode" or can I leave the ATB as it is.

 

[Clem Fandango]

The mod should be compatible with all parts of Moguri as far as I can tell.

As for turn-based battles, it was actually not designed with them in mind, but you can absolutely play with them if you'd like. Like vanilla FF9 though, make sure to turn off turn-based battles when fighting Ozma, to my understanding the setting does not work there due to Ozma's unique quirks.

 

[Robgatti]

The mod should be compatible with all parts of Moguri as far as I can tell.

As for turn-based battles, it was actually not designed with them in mind, but you can absolutely play with them if you'd like. Like vanilla FF9 though, make sure to turn off turn-based battles when fighting Ozma, to my understanding the setting does not work there due to Ozma's unique quirks.

OK thank you!

Really appreciate the patience with all the questions, modding is a fairly new thing to me.


And last question, DBE should be at the top of the mod load correct? Only plan on using the better Backgrounds.

EDIT: After finishing the installation of Moguri when I open FF9 there is no longer an options to install mods.

https://gyazo.com/9936084eb2a73d95810072febd3a4b08 SS

 

[Clem Fandango]

OK thank you!

Really appreciate the patience with all the questions, modding is a fairly new thing to me.


And last question, DBE should be at the top of the mod load correct? Only plan on using the better Backgrounds.

EDIT: After finishing the installation of Moguri when I open FF9 there is no longer an options to install mods.

https://gyazo.com/9936084eb2a73d95810072febd3a4b08 SS

Definitely have DBE at the top of the load order, things will get WEIRD if it's not.

As for the other installation, all you need to do after installing Moguri is re-run the Memoria patcher. Once you do that the Install Mods section should still be there and the Moguri components should show up.

 

[Robgatti]

Ahh OK, I accidentally mixed up the order of what to do.

Got it running so far so good.

Is there anyway to rebind the my movement keys on Controller?

IE its using the Joystick by default, if not no worries Ill warm up to it.

 

[Clem Fandango]

It's been a while since I used a controller with this (at this point I mostly just use a keyboard out of convenience) but I think you can set it up to use a d-pad depending on what kind of controller you use. Typically when I use a keyboard I use a DualShock 4 and I believe I had to use DS4Windows https://ds4-windows.com/to get it to work. Not entirely sure what you would need to do with other controller types though.

I can see why you would want to do that though, the stage fight at the start of the game is way more difficult on a keyboard from my experience.

 

[Necro]

A really quick thing to check is whether Zidane has a Mage Masher already equipped, that's an early way to know how things are going. Generally speaking starting a brand new save file is probably a good bet, otherwise your inventory might have some things in it that it really ought not to.

However since my last post there's actually been a number of big changes and it's actually pretty easy to set up the mod with Moguri now, if you want to give that a shot. Just have to do the following:

1. Install the latest version of Moguri, the download link is as follows: https://www.moddb.com/downloads/mirror/216757/127/bfacb6ef7e75fa89cd9b57b3d09a2a23

2. Download and run the latest version of the Memoria patcher from this page: https://github.com/Albeoris/Memoria/releases. Note that when you run the patcher, Windows may pop up a dialog saying the file is unsafe; this appears to be a false positive and is probably not unexpected given how the patcher works.

3. Launch FF9. You should now see a different looking screen from what you would normally get with Moguri, what you'll want to click is the "Install Mods" button in the upper right-hand corner. From there, click the Browse Catalog tab and you should see the mod listed. Not everything listed is current available for direct download through the manager, but from what I can tell that will change soon.

4. Install David Bowie Edition and go back to the Installed Mods tab. From here you may need to alter the load order; so long as David Bowie Edition is listed above the Moguri files it should work just fine.

Hey is this still the way to get this working with moguri? I tried to follow these steps exactly and I didn't get a mod load order when opening FF9 (it didn't even look different) and it broke the game when I tried to run it.
I had to get moguri from the moguri website though which I'm assuming is the problem by being updated to make this incompatible?

I've never used moguri or anything like this before so sorry if this is a dumb problem to have. I've been trying to get this working for hours searching all over.

 

[Clem Fandango]

Hey is this still the way to get this working with moguri? I tried to follow these steps exactly and I didn't get a mod load order when opening FF9 (it didn't even look different) and it broke the game when I tried to run it.
I had to get moguri from the moguri website though which I'm assuming is the problem by being updated to make this incompatible?

I've never used moguri or anything like this before so sorry if this is a dumb problem to have. I've been trying to get this working for hours searching all over.

I just ran through the steps I listed just to make sure I didn't mess something up and it still seems to work for me. Just to clarify, what do you mean when you say it didn't look different after you opened FF9? Do you mean that the launcher for FF9 looked the same as it always did, no extra options just purely vanilla? If that's the case that probably means that Moguri or Memoria hasn't been installed correctly.

Also this isn't related to your question and is more of a general announcement: for the last couple of month and a half I have been working on a pretty significant update, specifically going over all of the battles in the game to make them more challenging. The early game in particular isn't really in a state that I like in 1.16 and my hope is that it'll change pretty drastically. The mod isn't turning into a hard mode mod or anything like that, but I don't think I went far enough when I originally made most of the changes to battles.

I have no idea on when it will release, I'm hoping on some point within the next few months, I just need a solid block of time where I can sit down and really mess around with it.

 

[Necro]

I just ran through the steps I listed just to make sure I didn't mess something up and it still seems to work for me. Just to clarify, what do you mean when you say it didn't look different after you opened FF9? Do you mean that the launcher for FF9 looked the same as it always did, no extra options just purely vanilla? If that's the case that probably means that Moguri or Memoria hasn't been installed correctly.

Also this isn't related to your question and is more of a general announcement: for the last couple of month and a half I have been working on a pretty significant update, specifically going over all of the battles in the game to make them more challenging. The early game in particular isn't really in a state that I like in 1.16 and my hope is that it'll change pretty drastically. The mod isn't turning into a hard mode mod or anything like that, but I don't think I went far enough when I originally made most of the changes to battles.

I have no idea on when it will release, I'm hoping on some point within the next few months, I just need a solid block of time where I can sit down and really mess around with it.

Moguri launcher looks the same, with no changes to add the install mods option.
When I followed the instructions as well as I could, and then manually changing the priority stuff myself in the txt file, it broke the game.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/346108668170993665/989755950812508230/unknown.png

And as an aside, I gave up trying to get this mod working and tested to see if Alternate Fantasy would work, and it worked fine on the first try.
I could only get DBE working if I did a manual installation without moguri mod which I'm not really interested in doing because I like the look of moguri so much lol.
I'd like to play DBE more than I'm interested in AF, but as it stands I just don't know why I'm not able to and after I spent almost an entire day trying to get it working, I don't know if I have the motivation to keep trying to troubleshoot it when I don't even know where to begin fixing it.

 

[Tirlititi]

Make sure to have the option "[Graphics] Enabled = 1, TileSize = 64" in your file Memoria.ini (it is "32" without Moguri and "64" with it). The bug you show on your screenshot is 100% related to that.

 

[Clem Fandango]

After a lot of testing, 2.0 is now released. This is the most substantial update to the mod since release, I have gone through nearly every battle in the game, fixing bugs and making things overall more challenging than before. Beyond the combat, there have been a great number of more minor changes and tweaks that range from squashing bugs to replacing abilities entirely from 1.6.

The mod now requires Memoria and the version for standard FF9 will no longer be updated. That said, installing through Memoria is arguably simpler than how the mod used to be installed and more importantly, Moguri is now fully supported.

Below are the steps for installing the mod, which I have shamelessly copied and pasted from the new OP:

Standard Installation

1. Download and run the latest version of the Memoria patcher from this page: https://github.com/Albeoris/Memoria/releases. Note that when you run the patcher, Windows may pop up a dialog saying the file is unsafe; this appears to be a false positive and is probably not unexpected given how the patcher works. If you've got an older version of Memoria, make sure to update to the newest version.

2. Launch FF9. You should now see a different looking screen from what you would normally see, what you'll want to click is the "Install Mods" button in the upper right-hand corner. From there, click the Browse Catalog tab and you should see the mod listed.

3. Select David Bowie Edition in the mod manager and install it. Should be good to go from there.

4. Note that this should not be used with existing save games, unless updating from a previous version.

Additionally, you can download mod data at the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/k5o64e3g8iyah63/FF9 DBE v1.16 Memoria.zip?dl=0

It says 1.6, but it is 2.0. I'd recommend installing the mod through Memoria instead.

Moguri Installation

This is largely the same as the standard install, but you've got an additional step before doing starting the process. First install the newest version of Moguri from here: https://www.moddb.com/downloads/mirror/216757/127/bfacb6ef7e75fa89cd9b57b3d09a2a23

Once you finish installing Moguri, proceed with the steps seen in the Standard Installation section. At the end you can enable whichever Moguri components you'd like to use in the Mod Manager. I don't think load order should matter, keeping David Bowie Edition loading before Moguri will work fine.

Updating

To update the mod, simply uninstall it in the Memoria Mod Manager's Installed Mods tab, then redownload it in the Browse Catalog tab. Also make sure to be running the latest version of Memoria, as DBE makes use of features from the most recent release.

As always, please let me know if anything seems broken.