The Revisions Topic

So... I've been delaying working on a new version of the Enhancement Pack, because I wanted to be able to add some things that I couldn't add originally. I just learned how to make those changes today, so I guess this marks the official beginning of the Enhancement Pack 2.0 project. This topic is therefore to discuss what should make it into the new version, not that anybody really plays anymore, let alone cares about my patches.

Anyway, I found out how to alter Mag bonuses today, which means I now have the ability to change which Mags give which bonuses and how likely the bonuses are to occur. I now could, in theory, change some of the new Ver.2 Mags to give invincibility in all three situations, for instance. I'll have to do some testing to see if there's any way to make Mag Shifta and Deband stronger, but I'm not terribly hopeful for that.

I also found out how to alter range and angle values on weapons, which means I can finally fix Ver.2 Slicers to be able to hit flying enemies the way they can in GC, and I can also fix Yasminkov 7000V to have Rifle range. While it's also possible to fix the angle on regular Slicers, I have to avoid that, because I make sure that all the EP changes don't influence Challenge mode, and the basic Slicer is obtainable in the later stages.

In terms of revisions, I wanted to make various changes like making Madam's Umbrella stronger, making Madam's Parasol usable by FOnewearl, and probably gimping some of the specials on weapons like Tsumikiri J-Sword and Soul Banish (Aww!). Now that I have the ability to see the actual drop rates generated by the rare table, I will also revise some of the rates to make certain items drop less frequently.

I can't guarantee that any particular change will be in the final product at this point, but I'm open to suggestions if anyone still cares about this and wants to see something altered. As usual, thanks go out to Lee for tinkering with PSO's files and telling us how they work.

I have nothing to add for this idea but I must say I really appreciate your work man, you, Lee, Bluecrab, Schthack are really amazing! Finding new ways of changing the game into a better thing, I really wish I could play PSO again, no matter the version, but even not playing, I do enjoy reading news like this.

Awesome Ives!
When you do the DC version, Could you make it autoconnect? Really don't like the switching of VMUs to access via codebreaker. I love this game, so please continue to develop it.

1.How about making the monsters even stronger ie. a super ludicrous mode.
2.Make leveling up to level 300? This way, you can set the maximums higher for the characteristics
3.Any possibilities of more maps? (this one not so important, but the other 2 would be super)

Some of my ideas. I'm sorry that you feel that the game is dying. Most of us here do not think so, for sure. I hope this game keeps improving forever.

I assume you can't "add" new weapons? (You know, replace unused items with "new" weapons.)

mahkbooks wrote:1.How about making the monsters even stronger ie. a super ludicrous mode.

As much as I'd like to do that, there's no way to add a fifth difficulty setting, so I had to design Ludicrous mode to be semi-doable at level 80, otherwise everyone would have to quit after finishing Very Hard. I could make the monsters ridiculously difficult so that you couldn't even hurt them unless you had a four-player PB combo, but that wouldn't be very fun...

mahkbooks wrote:2.Make leveling up to level 300? This way, you can set the maximums higher for the characteristics

The max stat patch should be usable on DC now, but the leveling table is predefined to have slots for levels 1 - 200. Even Ver.1 is programmed that way; Sega just disables your ability to level up after you reach 100, although your EXP continues to grow.

mahkbooks wrote:3.Any possibilities of more maps? (this one not so important, but the other 2 would be super)

Yes, although the prospects are better on PC than DC. The main problem with this is that if you design a quest that uses a new map, anyone who doesn't have the patch is going to experience the same thing as someone who tries to load Famitsu -Maximum Attack- in Ultimate without the fix for that: the map will be bugged and unplayable. The difference is that with entirely new maps, the problem will happen in every difficulty setting, instead of just in Ultimate mode.

EvilMag wrote:I assume you can't "add" new weapons? (You know, replace unused items with "new" weapons.)

I don't know if Ver.2 has any extra slots, but if it does, the best we could do would be what Lee did with Empress on BB, i.e. create a "new" weapon by adding another basic Twin and giving it the Ver.2 Stag Cutlery pink Photon. Since all the NJX models on Xbox/BB are incompatible with the old NJ format, it isn't possible to import any of the new weapon models. The only things you can import from BB are those that still use the NJ format, like players' hair models.

I remember there was a guy working on the NJ format some years ago, but he never finished his work on it. I believe what he accomplished was what allowed tools like the model viewer to be written. Nobody understands the ninja model stuff beyond what he discovered, AFAIK.

If you were to make "new" weapons but reuse the models. Could just get a list of all the PSO items on PSU/PSP2 that had twins versions. (There are Elysions, Twin Red Sabers, and Twin Lavis Cannons.) Could make those into daggers but idk if it would be possible as of yet. :/

Aleron Ives wrote:

mahkbooks wrote:1.How about making the monsters even stronger ie. a super ludicrous mode.

As much as I'd like to do that, there's no way to add a fifth difficulty setting, so I had to design Ludicrous mode to be semi-doable at level 80, otherwise everyone would have to quit after finishing Very Hard. I could make the monsters ridiculously difficult so that you couldn't even hurt them unless you had a four-player PB combo, but that wouldn't be very fun...

How about setting ludicrous mode as a natural progression after ultimate? Everyone already has the "normal" PSO anyway. I would envision your new ep as an evolution: something to progress to once normal PSO is no longer a challenge. I would even be happy if your new ep did not even include normal to very hard modes.

Aleron Ives wrote:

mahkbooks wrote:2.Make leveling up to level 300? This way, you can set the maximums higher for the characteristics

The max stat patch should be usable on DC now, but the leveling table is predefined to have slots for levels 1 - 200. Even Ver.1 is programmed that way; Sega just disables your ability to level up after you reach 100, although your EXP continues to grow.

Is there any way to expand these slots?

EvilMag wrote:There are Elysions, Twin Red Sabers, and Twin Lavis Cannons.

Twin Yamigarasu get!

mahkbooks wrote:How about setting ludicrous mode as a natural progression after ultimate? Everyone already has the "normal" PSO anyway. I would envision your new ep as an evolution: something to progress to once normal PSO is no longer a challenge. I would even be happy if your new ep did not even include normal to very hard modes.

That's an interesting idea, although it works much better on DC than PC. You can easily alter your game on DC by merely switching discs, but on PC you'd have to patch the game over and over. If I made four new difficulty settings, you'd have to re-patch your game files every time you changed characters, or your level 23 character would get destroyed. Normal, Hard, and Very Hard also aren't that suitable for replacement, since people expect to be fighting the Ultimate monsters beyond level 80. The good news is that unlike BB, Ver.2 lets us alter enemy stats in quests, so it is possible to change the enemies in various quests to be as strong as we want.

The thing to remember is that since we don't have the game's source code, we can't add anything to it. We can only alter the parameters of what already exists. It isn't technically possible to add Heavenly/Battle to Ver.2, since we can't add new units, but I got the same effect by doubling the speed of the units that already exist.

Aleron Ives wrote:
That's an interesting idea, although it works much better on DC than PC. You can easily alter your game on DC by merely switching discs, but on PC you'd have to patch the game over and over. If I made four new difficulty settings, you'd have to re-patch your game files every time you changed characters, or your level 23 character would get destroyed. Normal, Hard, and Very Hard also aren't that suitable for replacement, since people expect to be fighting the Ultimate monsters beyond level 80. The good news is that unlike BB, Ver.2 lets us alter enemy stats in quests, so it is possible to change the enemies in various quests to be as strong as we want.

The thing to remember is that since we don't have the game's source code, we can't add anything to it. We can only alter the parameters of what already exists. It isn't technically possible to add Heavenly/Battle to Ver.2, since we can't add new units, but I got the same effect by doubling the speed of the units that already exist.

I don't mean that I want 4 entirely new difficulty levels for the ep. I would simply need one new one, the super ludicrous, just like the first ep, where you would just replace a few files. I suppose with all the changes, the number of files could be considerable, but I would simply just swap these files back and forth, as I am doing now to switch between ep and non-ep. It doesn't seem that big of a deal.
Obviously, for the DC, I simply boot up the version that I want, whether the GD, or the ep.

Ives, even though I don't play or post as often or may not be able to contribute any productive ideas, I still appreciate the work you have done. I pretty much got everything you've ever done for PSO-PC. Without it I wouldn't be able to enjoy this lost gem through time, especially since my DC doesn't like to run the burnt copy. Even though I'm not as high as a level as some of the more dedicated players, I still love to pick this game up from time to time, and I have you and a myriad of people like Blue Crab and even Schthack to thank for it! Without you guys, I wouldn't be able to enjoy the full experience of this game. So please, don't ever sell yourself short like that. Being a retro gamer myself, I even have trouble finding people to play other old school titles, even extremely popular ones at the time with me so I know how you feel. However never give up and keep up the banging job you're doing!

Ultimate C-mode.

Make it happen.

[Dreamcast question]
Is it possible to add some NJ hair models to a disk and activate/ deactivate them with CB codes?

You can use things like the GC HUmar ponytail model, but it has to replace an existing hairstyle.

This project is pretty much on hold while Lee's cracking the rest of the game's files. Who knows... we might even be able to add new weapons this year. I already did a successful Mag test and found that changing the bonuses works properly, even if you play with people who don't use the patches, so that part of the project has a green light now.

Aleron Ives wrote:You can use things like the GC HUmar ponytail model, but it has to replace an existing hairstyle.

That's the point. Is it possible to keep those files in the disk, without replacing the original ones, and the use a BC code to *unlock* them?

Aleron Ives wrote:This project is pretty much on hold while Lee's cracking the rest of the game's files. Who knows... we might even be able to add new weapons this year. I already did a successful Mag test and found that changing the bonuses works properly, even if you play with people who don't use the patches, so that part of the project has a green light now.

That's awesome news, woot Let me see... lvl cap on v1 extended to 200 + new weapons...

Off-topic: can't wait to get to VH to check out the new drops, hehe.

It's actually potentially possible to extend the Ver.2 level cap as far as we want, up to level 999. Although leveling beyond 200 wouldn't result in extra stats (by design), it would at least give you something to do after level 200, even if it was only incrementing the EXP value. At least the character wouldn't be "dead" anymore at level 200.

Wow, that way there's always room for improvement! How exciting!

I wanted to ask something about the matrix and aqua weps/ mags. Could you implement them in the EP? I know they're no equipable by default, however since you now have the ability to edit the items flag, maybe you could do something about them? You could also modify its stats and "fighting sound" into something more useful right?

Black items are nothing more than invalid items that don't have entries or skins. By turning them into real items, they automatically stop being black when you give them skins and stat entries.

So far, the only way to add weapons to the game is to clone existing weapons with new Photon colours. For example, it's possible to make another Double Saber, turn it red, and give it unique stats and its own special attack and name. Adding weapons with new models won't work until Lee can find the missing table that ties models and skins to specific item numbers.

Would it be possible to reuse a model but with a different skin?

Not yet. If Lee figures out how the models and skins are assigned, it would even be possible to import some of the weapons from GC/BB. Currently, how the game knows which files go with which weapons is a mystery.

You said you can replace weapons with others right? (You said you wanted to replace the force weapons with the weapons you want.) Would it be possible to replace the unused items (like Mr Naka's Business Card) with a weapon?

It's already possible to add new weapons, but they can't have unique models or skins. Just like "Empress" is a pink Double Saber, I could add a red one, a yellow one, or one with a flashing Photon like DB's Saber. I don't want to actually do that unless Lee gives up on trying to figure out how to make more unique weapons, since only changing the Photons is kind of boring.

Why not give State/Maintenance unit some facelift? Since its an unique and rare item of its kind, GC/BB don't even have it, how about give the item an higher star rating in the description + make the name appear yellow!
Just a suggestion Btw, I already found this item on forest in VH using the EP, woot

it's star value is directly tied to it's to ability to drop in v2. Short answer yes. Long answer no with a long winded explanation of why because it would mean changing rt drop drops to include it to replace the fact it can no longer drop as a pt random item blah blah blah.

Oh and trust me i can still insert it in to bb easily.

Would it be possible to implement lobby actions in p2/ areas like BB? This would be a nice bonus in the next EP revision, as well as the before mentioned BB NPC skins
Simple things that can make older versions look and feel more updated!