Shining Force II Hacking: The Hack Library

[Dark Claw]

I am happy that some people appreciated the homage.

[SirHedge]

I just noticed that the the list in the first post is missing all of Earl's work. That should be fixed.

Act Scripts:
http://forums.shiningforcecentral.com/v ... =5&t=20308" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Event Commands:
http://forums.shiningforcecentral.com/v ... =5&t=20274" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Map setups and how events work:
http://forums.shiningforcecentral.com/v ... =5&t=19921" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Remove Peter and Jaro's AI:
http://forums.shiningforcecentral.com/v ... =5&t=20219" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Stordarth]

OP Updated.

[Drakonis]

Thanks Hedge for posting and Stor for editing.

Your Mod-Status is quite handy sometimes

[Stordarth]

Sure is.

[Aldur]

Hey gang, I'm looking another hack to review and seeing as how Poor Stor's review didn't get that much interest I'm throwing it out here. Shout if you want to be next.

[ronnen]

I read your review (excellent btw), I just didn't comment as I haven't played his hack yet ^_^

Too busy ripping apart the game to see how it works hehe... Though I must say trying to figuring out how the AI picks which spell to cast has me /boggled!

[nightshade00123]

Too busy ripping apart the game to see how it works hehe... Though I must say trying to figuring out how the AI picks which spell to cast has me /boggled!

I'll give you a hint if you don't already know, part of it is tied to what spell 'type' each spell has, which can be viewed in SFedit. It seems there is a chance given per spell type and of course AI setting that influences when they choose to use it and under what circumstance.

Also certain AI's have more of a tendency to choose a spell more often than not, AI 14 which is boss AI will almost always take a kill shot with a spell or a well placed one at that, and some are used for heal/attack/debuff combos as well.

As for the specific details of how each AI works and how/when they cast, I wish I knew more.

There is also a table of values that influences the different AI types and their actions thereof, ie choose spell, wait if muddled 1, attack, heal, approach, follow ally/enemy, use heal rain etc. I'm not entirely sure how it works because I can't read code, but they can cause some rather bizarre behavior when altered.

The table is listed in BNC's notes by the way. It might be under another name though.

I also read and enjoyed the review as well aldur, nice job!

[Earl]

A neat idea for a hack:
Go the opposite route of Milestone, and have no battles.

Essentially, this would turn it into a puzzle game, not too far removed from the old school point-and-click adventures. You could even gather a force, in the sense that you could set it up so you would need to have recruited certain people to do certain things in order to unlock new areas...

I don't think those sorts of games are that popular these days, and people love the tactical aspect of Shining Force... but still, I'm just throwing that out there before I go to sleep and forget.

[nightshade00123]

LOL, the puzzle force.

Heck I'd play it.

That actually be kinda fun, unlocking kiwi gives you fire breath to burn obstacles and move past otherwise restricted areas. And maybe the ability to be impervious to attacks to allow others to pass, sort of like a wall of protection for your other members who are in the line fire.

Getting chester let's you run fast and outpace your enemies, or to solve puzzles more quickly.

Mages could have a slew of puzzle solving usefulness such as casting ice to freeze objects to allow more time to figure it out, or save your life. Using bolt to start machinery or other mechanical equipment.

Archers could trigger levers and other far away devices that hinder advancement.

Reminds me of the NES days when I played games like shadow gate, the uninvited, or any of the other notoriously difficult games riddled with vague instruction or misleading hints. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh puzzle games.

And on and on it goes.

[Drakonis]

I read your review (excellent btw), I just didn't comment as I haven't played his hack yet ^_^

This. Also, A Shining Force Adventure game? Hell yeah. So many ideas, so little ways to hack the game...

[Earl]

Actually, the game gives you an example of the most basic puzzle solving - using the wooden plank on the tree in Ribble.

For things that would require other characters to solve, that's pretty easy too. When characters join, that sets a flag. All you'd have to do is make make certain events inaccessible unless the right flag is set. Actually, that's really interesting in that if you set up a Creed's choice, that would potentially branch the path the story can take...

What would be trickier is combination locks (like the Nordic glyph puzzles in Skyrim). But I think that would be doable through a series of flag checks/clears and block copies (so the correct image sets the flag while any other clears it), and the door requires the whole set of three (or whatever number) correct flag checks to pass to open.

The other thing about a no-battles hack... is that it would free up all the sprite slots from the enemies. So you could do things like, when the Blaze mage uses fire to solve a puzzle, have a sprite for fire show up on the map and burn that door or rope or whatever... and the possibilities for ice, or arcing electricity... Or just have more variety among townspeople.

...

Er, not that I'm looking to do that kind of hack. It's just fun to think about.
Also, having played Syberia and seen Hugo... both having incredibly depressing themes of "Here's all this great stuff that no one cares about anymore"... and adventure games in general falling into that same category... it feels good to at least entertain the idea.

[MCRT]

does anyone still have the patch for the 3 digits shown? the link posted here is down

[Drakonis]

It gives me a google page where I can download it.

[MCRT]

It gives me a google page where I can download it.

hmm, you're right... seems like i have been temporarely muddle'd

[Aiamicko]

guys, these hacks are good, I have played through some of them but still I haven't found my dream SF2 hack. I wonder where I can post requests for hacks....

[RastaOddeye]

This would definitely be the place Aiamicko!

[thegemar14]

Drakonis, what do you mean when you say to apply one of these hacks using an IPS-patch, I should have an unmodified ROM. What is an unmodified ROM?

[Drakonis]

Unmodified ROM as in a vanilla Shining Force II ROM.

[Boswen]

Hello, all! Long time fan of the site (since back before it even had its own dedicated domain name), but I just registered on the forums today.

Anyway, I am studying to become a game programmer and I would like to make an IPS patch to complete the Auto-Battle code in SF2 and fix it so it doesn't crash. It seemed like a fun project to help me learn more about my craft, plus I'm the weird guy that actually enjoys all the other non-battle stuff (especially good storylines) more than the actual battles. (That no-battles SF 'puzzle' game actually sounded really neat!) That said, fixing the auto-battle code seemed to me like a good project. Plus, maybe when I'm done with SF2, I can figure out how to add the code somewhere in SF1. SitD would be a different story, but perhaps it could be possible also as its own project -- complete with psuedo-GPS style navigation through the labrynth! For now, I'll just stick with SF2...

So I watched the auto-battle code go for a while on my PS3 (in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection) and Bowie successfully cast Bolt 2 on 3 enemies (in one cast) without a crash. Some of the other force members also attacked the enemy without problems. But then sometime later in between an enemy move (with Control Opponent off) and switching to my team (literally, as the cursor was in between characters), it crashed. I'm on the Nazca battle and it seemed to do pretty well so far, casting spells at opportune times and even curing me with the right level of cure for the amount of healing that needed to be done. I think it even moved Janet successfully at least once. It moves my characters very cautiously -- sometimes only two or three squares at the beginning of the battle -- but then gets more brave after the first few encounters... And then eventually it crashes. In the two times I tried it crashed at different places, but seemed to do nearly exactly the same moves each time for both my team and the enemies. (Exampe, it would always start by moving my team up and to the left, and then the 3 specific enemies would always form a small "L", and then Bowie would always cast Bolt 2 on them, etc...)

So, a few questions:
1. Has anyone already made an auto-battle repair patch?
2. Those of you that have updated the game's enemy AI (I saw a few hacks that listed this) -- how have you done it?
3. I surmise that this undertaking won't be as simple as copy-pasting AI from somewhere else in the game and putting in the auto-battle sub-routine -- right?
4. It would be really cool if I could actually write some new code from scratch in whatever language SF2 was originally made in, find some way to compile that for a Genesis platform target (as was originally done), and then insert in the new code. It would also help if I could find any of the original source code. Are either of these things possible? (There was a *new* [yes, really!] Genesis game released last year called Pier Solar and then re-released this year -- complete with a cartridge and everything! Maybe those guys had an SDK or something?)


Thanks so much! My sincerest gratitude to everyone that helped make the patches here. They all look really neat and I can't wait to try them! Also, a special thanks to Lady Moogie and all the mods here for maintaining such a great site!