[GC] Altimira

[Aleron Ives]

I have enabled GC support on Altimira, and since Altimira is where I've put all of my projects for PSO Ver.2, it is also where you'll find my projects for PSO GC. Here are the features you can find on Altimira so far:

• Maximum Attack 3 (see the MA3 thread for more details on that)
• The Mop-up Operation quests give extra time on Ultimate, and the extra time banners have been converted to scrolling text messages, so they look nicer and no longer require interaction to dismiss them.
• The Endless Nightmare quests now have a "camera button" next to the warp that leads to the final room. If you step on the camera button before you use the warp, you will automatically disable the special camera angle in the final room without needing to use a Telepipe. You'll hear a chime to indicate that you've disabled the special camera angle when you step on the button. If you want to use the special camera angle, simply take the warp without stepping on the button. Now that the special camera angle is optional, Telepipes will no longer reset the camera to normal.
• You can solo Mop-up Operation #2 and Endless Nightmare #4 without having to use glitches to bypass multiplayer doors.
• Ultimate Baranz missle damage has been "fixed" in Mop-up Operation #3, Endless Nightmare #3, Lost SOUL BLADE, Maximum Attack 1 Ver.2, and Maximum Attack 2 Ver.2. Missles now do 50 damage instead of 250 in Episode I and 40 damage instead of 232 in Episode II, so you no longer get "punished" for getting more HP, and weak classes no longer get instantly killed by missles. Hopefully this will encourage people to play Mine quests on classes without Freeze Trap or Frozen Shooter, as a single Baranz no longer means instant death.

I've ported most of the Episode I quests to GC from my updated Ver.2 editions, so they have a multitude of small fixes and changes, including:

• Mop-up Operation and Endless Nightmare quests now give separate Meseta values on each difficulty, rather than sharing the same reward on Very Hard and Ultimate.
• You can move on Pioneer 2 after you fail a Mop-up Operation quest, which allows you to use the bank and shop or discuss the run with your teammates before you return to the lobby.
• The enemies will freeze if you fail a Mop-up Operation quest, so they can't kill you anymore while you're stuck looking at the "TIME UP!" message.
• The quest completion music actually works when you beat Mop-up Operation and Endless Nightmare quests now.
• The "battle" music will play constantly in all of the Mop-up Operation quests, rather than just #4.
• Quest success is no longer global on the Mop-up Operation, Endless Nightmare, and Hopkins quests, which matches the way every other quest works. Every player must talk to the soldier/Hopkins to complete the quest. On the Hopkins quests, this means you have to actually go to the boss arena to get his weapon; it won't magically appear in your Quest Board if you were standing on Pioneer 2 when somebody else beat the boss.
• I'm not sure if the GC quest had these bugs, but the perpetual darkness in Mine 1 on Endless Nightmare #3 is now constant and doesn't turn on and off when you move between rooms, and the doors are all locked, as well.
• The timer in TTF is no longer blank for a second after you enter each area.
• The bright green doors in Cave 3 in TTF are fixed.
• The green gem player is no longer within range of Irene at the start of TTF and thus cannot talk to her without moving first.

In addition, I have also created "events" for most of the multiplayer Episode II quests. Pioneer 2 now has event decorations in Episode II, just as it does in Episode I. (Yes, I am going to create more Episode II quests in the future, but I can only do so much at once.) I will also post about other quest updates in this thread as I make them.

If you want the "vanilla" Sega quests as they have always been, they're still available on Iselia.

[al281442]

How much time and effort have you actually put into this?

That's a respectable list of fixes.

[John Rplca]

Nice work. I shall give these a try

Hey Al.

[Aleron Ives]

How much time and effort have you actually put into this?

That's a good question. This is only about 1/4 of the updates I've actually done, because I only wanted to post the most important things here. If you want the more complete list of updates I did for Ver.2, read this thread. It only took about a week to port this stuff to GC, since I did all the heavy lifting when I made the changes originally. It took about 5 months to get everything done back in May. (I started in January.) Porting MA3 to GC took about a month. (I started in October.)

That's a respectable list of fixes.

Thank you. Hopefully I'll be able to bring some more of the features from the Ver.2 list to GC in the future. (I've disabled Insanity Mode, for instance, since it would be completely impossible on GC with the Ver.2 stats.)

[EvilMag]

Now figure out how to get GC and v2 to play together without crashes/FSOD (pipedream I know )

[Aleron Ives]

You can fix the map crashes easily by playing quests that are cross-platform compatible, but that doesn't fix all of the other problems. On the Ver.2 side, you have problems with it trying to drop Hit Material, State/Maintenance, and Varistas left and right, even though those things are supposed to be "rare" or don't exist at all on GC, while on the GC side, it tries to drop weapons with 70% and other things that will cause you to fail the legit check on Ver.2.

In order for V2-V3 games to work right, we would need both a mandatory server-side drop table specifically designed to not violate the item rules of either version and the ability to prevent you from drop trading items between versions. It's possible that such a situation may come about once sdrops is fixed on GC and inventory tracking exists, but it can't be done right now.

[Aleron Ives]

I have now patched Garon's Shop to remove the pointless guessing game on Paganini. If you have enough Photon Drops for a particular item tier, you will now simply get a list of the items you can afford instead of wearing out your A button trying to get Paganini to randomly offer you the item you want to buy.

Since the price of each tier is also slightly randomised in the default GC quest, I have chosen the lowest price that the original quest would have allowed for each tier (if you had gotten lucky): 1, 16, 46, and 95 Photon Drops. (The only discount that PSO-World doesn't seem to know about is the last one, as the odds of getting a Photon Sphere for 95 PDs are so terrible that probably nobody on PSO-W noticed the discount was available. One of our players, however, did discover it, which I then confirmed by examining the quest.) When you select an item from the menu, Paganini will still ask if you want to trade all the Photon Drops you have, which gives you a chance to back out if you select the wrong item by mistake. For the sake of A buttons everywhere, enjoy not having to button mash anymore.

The only "penalty" for this is that you can no longer trade for Monomate or Monofluid, due to the way the trading system is structured. Boo hoo.

[Aleron Ives]

I've patched Respective Tomorrow with a few fixes:

• The timer is no longer blank for a second after you enter each area.
• The bright green door in Seabed next to the Control Tower teleporter is fixed.
• You no longer get immediately sent to the Lab after you defeat Olga Flow. As on BB, you are now sent to the Lab after a delay of 30 seconds.
• Ultimate Gal Gryphon is fixed: you no longer instantly die if you cast Jellen on him.

In addition, Phantasmal World 1-4 now have camera buttons, and as with Endless Nightmare 1-4, using a Telepipe will no longer reset the camera to normal.

[al281442]

I just played Endless Nightmare #4 with a friend and somehow it got messed up.


From the room with the final warp we took a telepipe back to Pioneer 2 to restock. I went back first. The moment I arrived in Ruins 2 we got the message about the quest being finished and the correspondening music started to play. We could do the last fight anyway.

The camera view was set to normal although we had not touched the button.

I suppose this was caused by us using a telepipe in the second to last room.

[Aleron Ives]

Thanks for the report. I am able to reproduce it, and it seems that GC for some reason doesn't like the way DC handles these quests, so I'll have to change them all.

*edit*

Endless Nightmare #1 - #4 are now fixed.

[CodingGenesis]

Thank you for looking into and fixing it.

[Aleron Ives]

I am pleased to announce that I have completed the true reward for "Super Hard" mode: upon beating it, you will now be awarded Photon Crystals, rather than Meseta (mainly because PCs are the only remaining stackable item in the game, and not because the PCs themselves are important). Of course, Photon Crystals are useless on their own, so I have created a way for you to spend them, too.

In order to spend your Photon Crystals, load the quest Garon's Shop and talk to the receptionist who would normally transport you to Garon. If you talk to her while you are carrying Photon Crystals in your inventory, you will discover that a new option appears in the menu: ???? Shop. Select this option to transport to the new shop. This shop allows you to buy a variety of items for Photon Crystals, and rather than force you to guess what you can get, I will explain the entire shop up front. Here are the prices in PCs and the services you can purchase:

Spoiler!

02: Monogrinder
03: Digrinder
04: Trigrinder
05: Scape Doll
10: Photon Drop
15: HP Material
20: TP Material
25: 90000 Meseta
40: Weapon Upgrade
50: Discount
99: Bulk Discount

The first eight options are pretty self explanatory: if you pay enough PCs, you may buy one of the listed items.

The Discount option allows you to buy 15 Trigrinders or 12 Scape Dolls all at once (which is more than you could buy for 50 PCs if you purchased them one by one).

The Bulk Discount option allows you to buy 12 Photon Drops, 8 HP Materials, 6 TP Materials, 450000 Meseta, or a Weapon Upgrade. Remember to have enough space in your inventory before you try to use one of the discount options, as you can't complete the transaction unless you have enough space to hold all of the items you're buying.

Note that unlike Paganini, buying an item from this shop does not consume all of the PCs you are holding: you will only lose the number of PCs that each item costs. If you want to buy multiple items at once, simply bring enough PCs to buy multiple items, and you may perform multiple transactions in a single visit to the shop. The list of available services automatically scales after each purchase you make based on the number of PCs you have left, so if an option is still in the list, then that means you still have enough PCs to buy that service.

The Weapon Upgrade service is based on the upgrade system that Sega added in BB: if you select this service, you may add Hit percent to a limited set of weapons. On BB, you are only allowed to upgrade enemy part weapons. In this shop, your options are slightly more generous, in that you may add Hit to weapons in three main categories: enemy part weapons, Offline S-Rank/Maximum Attack 3 weapons, and Easter Egg weapons. If you buy the standard upgrade for 40 PCs, you may add 5% Hit to your weapon, and if you select the Bulk Discount upgrade for 99 PCs, you may add 15% Hit to your weapon. Regardless of which option you choose, you cannot upgrade any weapon beyond 50% Hit.

In order to avoid confusion, here is the complete list of weapons that you can upgrade:

Spoiler!

Enemy Part weapons:

Booma's Claw
Gobooma's Claw
Gigobooma's Claw
Rappy Fan
Hildebear Cane
Hildeblue Cane
G-Assassin's Sabers
P-Arms's Blade
S-Beat's Blade
S-Red's Blade
Baranz Launcher
Delsaber's Buster
Sorcerer's Cane
Bringer's Rifle
Belra Cannon
Dragon's Claw
S-Berill's Hands #0
S-Berill's Hands #1
Gi Gue Bazooka
Gal Wind

Offline S-Rank/Maximum Attack 3 weapons:

Toy Hammer
Samba Maracas
Chameleon Scythe
Harisen Battle Fan
Crazy Tune
Flower Cane
Akiko's Wok
Broom

Easter Egg weapons:

Wok of Akiko's Shop
Huge Battle Fan
Panther's Claw
Drill Launcher
Rocket Punch
Rabbit Wand
Amore Rose
Marina's Bag
Sonic Knuckle

As an added bonus, you may also add Hit to these quest reward weapons:

Nei's Claw
Soul Eater
Akiko's Frying Pan
Game Magazine
Flower Bouquet

If a weapon isn't on this list, then you can't upgrade it. I have no intention of devaluing enemy drops by letting you add Hit to weapons that can already drop with it.

In order to fund this shop, I have also expanded "Super Hard" into additional Episode II quests. You will now receive the following number of Photon Crystals for playing the bonus mode in the following quests:

Spoiler!

04: The East Tower
06: The West Tower
08: The Twisted Towers

08: Phantasmal World #1
08: Phantasmal World #2
10: Phantasmal World #3
12: Phantasmal World #4

The rules governing how to activate the bonus mode are the same as those in The Twisted Towers, and the same enemies have the same stats across all quests in which they appear.

Since this is a rather large rollout, it's possible that I may have introduced some bugs in the process, so please report them here if anything is broken. Otherwise, go kill stuff and get rich?

P.S.

Ultimate Mericarol experience is fixed in ET, WT, PW1, and PW4, too.

[Kayak]

Looking forward to trying this, who wants to get in for a PW3 run later?

[Rob19]

Me!!

[Otto Baus]

If you buy the standard upgrade for 40 PCs, you may add 5% Hit to your weapon, and if you select the Bulk Discount upgrade for 99 PCs, you may add 15% Hit to your weapon. Regardless of which option you choose, you cannot upgrade any weapon beyond 50% Hit.

I have the weirdest boner right now...

[Aleron Ives]

A small bug with the officer in PW4 has been fixed.

[Aleron Ives]

It occurred to me the other day that it would be nice to have a way to gain some value from all of the unwanted or just plain junk rares that constantly drop when playing the game. On BB, you have a "Team Points" system that allows you to sell rare weapons for the sake of earning points for your in-game clan, but since GC doesn't have BB's clan system, that obviously won't work here.

As such, I have devised my own system whereby you can sell unwanted rares for Photon Crystals. Simply load Garon's Shop, and then talk to the military officer in the side room of the Hunter's Guild. If you show him a rare item, he will offer to pay you Photon Crystals for it. As with BB's point system, this system is based on the number of stars an item has. Here is the breakdown:

• 9* item = 1 PC
• 10* item = 5 PCs
• 11* item = 10 PCs
• 12* item = 50 PCs

The 12* option exists largely as a formality, as GC has very few 12* items, and all of them are extremely rare and valuable; as such, you would never want to sell them for such a low price, and realistically you would probably never want to sell or trade them at all. You probably won't want to sell most 11* weapons, either, as most of them are created by combining a 10* weapon with an expensive item bought from Paganini or found as a separate rare drop.

Unlike the BB system, you may sell more than just weapons, though: frames, barriers, and units are also allowed. Even so, there are restrictions on what you can sell. The rules are:

1. You can only sell "rare" (red box) items. Certain regular weapons can reach 9* by having the best special attacks, e.g. Demon's Laser, but you still can't sell them.
2. You can sell multiple items, as long as you have enough space to hold the Photon Crystals you will earn from selling them.
3. You must appraise rare weapons with the Tekker before you can sell them.
4. Certain tools can come in red boxes, e.g. AddSlot, but you can't sell them, as they have no star value.
5. You can't sell Mags, as they have no star value.
6. You can't sell S-Rank weapons.

The main point of this update is to give you a reason to keep all of those Dragon Slayers, Cross Scars, and other technically rare items that would normally just get left on the ground or sold for 10 Meseta. Now finding "junk" rares actually has some utility.

Note that I used PSO-World rather extensively for determining the star value of each item, so it is possible that I may have either gotten faulty information or made mistakes when setting this up. If you find an item that doesn't sell for the proper number of Photon Crystals, please post about it here or send me a PM. Also note that Secure Feet sells as an 11* item, even if you have the US disc that incorrectly lists it as a 0* item.

Spoiler!

I would like to dedicate this update to Mr. God/TP, who when I found him last week gave me the idea to create a system whereby troll rare drops wouldn't be quite so trollish.

In a completely unrelated update, I have also changed the boy in Lucky Roulette to offer Monogrinder and Photon Crystal, rather than Sol and Star Atomizer. They are still relatively weak prizes, but at least they offer you some value for the loss of your Lucky Coin, unlike the Atomizers. Thanks go to K.B. and Doctor Oran for suggesting better prize options.

[tueidj]

Photon Crystals in non-BB PSO? What's the point of them?

[Aleron Ives]

Try reading 5 posts earlier.

[Aleron Ives]

Resurgent Darkness is finally available for GC. Thanks go to Dolphin developer stenzek for improving Dolphin's BBA emulation to the point where I was actually able to test the entire quest without disconnecting, as well as our own TulioAdriano for building my special copy of Dolphin so that I could take advantage of the improved BBA emulation.