Just registered here.
Hey there, machomuu.
Maybe you remember me, I was that guy that kept nagging you like two years ago or so about your PokemonXHarvest Moon romhack that you had in the works that I still haven't given up hope on.
Neither have I, actually. I haven't forgotten about it and still think it has potential, but I also have a lot of hacking ideas in mind. Time'll tell what'll happen, but I do hope I can get around to it.
I remember something that always bugged me, when playing through AW.
Before you entered the Forest of Magic, there was Rinnosuke's shop, I believe, which sold various goods (I believe computers, TV's and cell-phones was it, among other things).
Because the items in the FoM always respawned whenever you re-entered this area, I could farm money to afform me one of these suckers - or so I thought.
Because, some of these items were too expensive, meaning that it exceeded the maximum amount of money you could accumulate.
I had like 99.999$ and couldn't get more, but all the items Rinnosuke sold exceeded this amount of money, rendering the shop pretty much useless (I don't remember if he also sold other items that were affordable though).
Not sure if this was just a gimmick or actually intended to be usuable items, but if it was just the former, I think it was kinda lame... what's the point to insert items into a Pokemart that serves no purpose?
Could it be possible to make these items available?
And if it is, what purpose serve them?
And if they don't serve any purpose, can they be turned/replaced into/with something useful?
The store does have a purpose. It sells the VS. Seeker in vanilla AW, and I imagine in Gensokyo Scenario it was intended to sell the Bicycle and other useful items at some point. So what am I going to do? Ah...well, I did like that it sold what was in the store and, by extension, what he would be selling. It's mostly novelty and doesn't really have any negative effect on the game...but now that you mention it, I could do something with him. Currently, he sells a PC, a Television, and a Cellphone. What I could do is keep their names (since Rinnosuke doesn't know too much about them, himself), drop their prices, and make them functional items that share a similar characteristic. Specifically, the Television would be the Teachy TV, the Cellphone would be the Fame Checker (possibly, this might require too much micromanagement to be worth the effort), and the PC...possibly a portable PC...maybe. I dunno these are just ideas. I'll give him a once over and see what I can do with his inventory.
Another point I'd like to address is the cut-off with certain text boxes.
For example, I remember that ''Scarlet Devil Mansion'' didn't fit into the boy properly, so it overlapped the borders of the text box.
This happened with some other instances as well.
Is it possible to extend message boxes?
I've seen someone else accomplishing something similar.
Yeah, same with the Road of Reconsideration. I've been thinking about seeing what I could do, especially since, mostly in the case of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, I can't shorten the name since it just won't work. Enlarging the box is my best bet...and really, my only one. It's about all I can do.
Something minor, but is it possible to change the icons for types so that the words are actually written out?
Like ''Electro'' or ''Illusion''?
I know next to nothing about romhacking, hence my question if changing the icons is a viable option.
Eh? Another World is based on 1.5, so it will use vanilla Pokemon types. As it stands, I don't really see a need to change those.
As for the sound bug, I MIGHT have an idea what could cause this.
Something similar happened to me when playing through Touhoumon Insane.
There was a custom trainer on various places, with custom music too, iirc.
Whenever the song would play a certain note while me selecting anything that caused a sound effect to happen (which in the battle menu is pretty much anything and everything you CAN do in that moment), the whole game would freeze.
This didn't just happen with this specific trainer, but also with all members of the Elite Four.
It seemed like just certain songs were affected by this bug, I never had any problems with the song that played during wild Touhoumon battles.
Maybe, it is something similar in regards to AW?
That's just a theory though.
I never noticed that AW crashed/froze in my case, but maybe, I was just darn lucky.
Well, the problem here isn't so much that the game freezes, it's that the music stops altogether. This should be a problem with the originally inserted ASM. I've been playing around with Jambo's Music Hack but haven't managed to insert it and also make it play nice with AW, yet, but we'll see.
Something that might be also need to be revised are certain events.
I liked the idea of collecting these ''magic tomes'' that are scattered all through-out Gensokyo, but it felt kinda pointless as well.
Like, the player never really knew WHY to collect them.
Granted, I stopped playing it at a point, but I atleast made it to Kanto, so I must've been around the middle part of the game.
Following Agastya's guide from back then, I definitely remember that I did NOT reach Dream World nor anything related to the Shinki event.
The story's gonna get some revision. The core's the same, but it'll give some reason as to why the MC would go back and forth between Gensokyo and the Human World at all (since, originally, the player gets to Gensokyo by accident and is both unable to return home and also has amnesia. However, after the Gensokyo Scenario part of the game, you can just go back. Granted, you do come back to Gensokyo a few times later, but it's never really clear why you are or when you should. Basically, I'm going to be integrating the Gensokyo Scenario plot into Kanto so that it doesn't feel like you're going from a Touhou game to Vanilla Fire Red with Touhou characters and back again. I don't want either one to feel like a detour, essentially..
Rebalancing Marisa in the FoM (yes, it's FoM again) would also be kinda nice; I chose Reimu, and had a hard time beating her, had to grind her like crazy).
Yeah, these two are early game killers (especially Reimu) ZReimu's gone, replaced with Reimu (I believe some party edits, too), and Marisa sees some lower levels and de-evolutions
I also like Z forms being replaced with LW forms, but will DLW puppets be available then, too?
Possibly. It all depends on whether the story demands it, so currently I can't answer this. Well, that, and it also depends on how much space I have.
But, will Z tickets from World Link still be usable?
I think that the Z forms do serve a purpose, but highly limited to post-game content and competetive play.
I imagine it to be pretty fun to ''duke it out with your friends with uber puppets''.
No, for the simple reason that Z forms don't really serve a purpose here. They're still available in Vanilla Another World, World Link, and Marisa's Magic World, and since MMW supports EV training and is compatible with both of those, I feel as if those that want that type of battle can go there. This is largely because, all things considered, Zs fighting each other is generally only really viable when it's just Zs fighting one another, and because of that, it seems as if it serves less value to the game (unless it's specifically engineered for competitive play) than, say, new Boneka. So it's basically a matter of variety over novelty.
Would it make sense to replace ''Boneka'' with ''Puppet'', or would it be better to leave it as is?
Not that I want to disrespect Aichi for that or anything, I just thought that ''puppets'' would work better in conjunction with other Touhoumon hacks for the sake of consistency.
Also, most people would probably wonder what a ''Boneka'' exactly is.
*Sigh*...the problem with this, is that it'll require a bit of repointing. Not so much "Puppet", but "Puppets". Though...I believe Puppets only needs to replace one instance of Boneka, and the rest can be replaced by Puppet...I think. It's really a risk/reward thing. I'll keep an eye out for said risk to see if it can work out without using too much data.
Also, I believe Aichi was in the process of working on ''Yukari's Island'' (I believe this was an island either south or north of the Hakurei Shrine), but later mentioned in an update that he won't finish this, and that fans can finish it, if they want to.
However, it has been years since I've played AW, so it might be best to ask Aichi himself, unless he addresses this point by himself.
That's covered. After finishing the hack, Aichiya released very helpful Technical Documentation that covered the information. For now, the most I'll give away is that we'll see.
