Bug Fixes

[Raww Le Klueze]

Question: Is there anything that suggests that Rulodia and Chuchara not being SoDs is a glitch? Like a wrong byte that doesn't trigger their star properly or something. Or is there simply no code at all for them to be assigned their stars?

I'd guess not since they don't appear to have any ending blurbs.

[Pyriel]

Well, if Konami unintentionally omitted their being stars from the script, it'd be hard to tell. That said, there's specific logic in the Stone Tablet overlay that swaps Abizboah and Sigfried, Kasumi and Valeria, and Ridley and Boris, but nothing for any combination of Feather, Ayda and the squids. There's not even an attempt with mistakes in it.

[KFCrispy]

it's unreasonable if they weren't intended stars because the game gave you the same number of characters. they probably added it late in development and simply forgot about the Star business.

[BadPotato]

First, if there were any missing star for those guys, what would be the "name" of these star?
I tried the latest patch (1.5.38) and tested few bug here what I got so far :

Code: Select all

Checklist :

[ no ] mercenary fort war theme (I heard a short "burp" then it go silent)

[ no ] battle at north windows against solon jhee (same)

[ no ] refugee at matilda border battle (same)



[ ok ] war theme at muse with Gilbert 

[ ok ] Knife-thrower

[ ok ] Save Game at Inn Bug

[ ok ] Matilda Gate

[ ok ] Chaco level 1 

[ ok ] Kindness rune 

About the kindness rune, I've also tried if there any other underflow possible glitch with ATK penality. So I got Tuta level 3 died a couple of time and yeah, at 0 ATK the penality doesn't seem to apply anymore.

Good stuff!!

[Pyriel]

Stupid music. I tried with a few emulators, and it works for me. What are you playing on, actual hardware?

I would assume that Rulodia would take Feather's place, and Chuchara would take Ayda's. KFCrispy could be right, but I don't see any traces that would add support for his suspicion.

[BadPotato]

Stupid music. I tried with a few emulators, and it works for me. What are you playing on, actual hardware?

I use pcsx-rr, it's pretty much an another build of pcsx, but with lua script support and other tool for TASing. I can't get the music either with eternal SPU and the P.O.Op.S plugin. Althought, I've just tried with PSX and indeed it seem to work with it.

I would assume that Rulodia would take Feather's place, and Chuchara would take Ayda's. KFCrispy could be right, but I don't see any traces that would add support for his suspicion.

If we assume those are star, what would be the credit text for them? At this point, maybe there some unused text in the japanese version about it.

[Pyriel]

OK. I've been meaning to break out my chipped PS2 to test the patch on, but I've been wary of trying to use it since it was affected by a basement flood recently. If it works on that, that's as close to a definitive case as I can get. I don't have a chipped PSX, and swapping hasn't worked in the past. For now, I'm just going to assume the issue is an incompatibility with your special build of emulator. The debugging version of PSX that I use sometimes can't even play the STR files properly when I run it with the official disc, so it wouldn't be the first time an emulator acted funky.

Well, I can't read Japanese, but I can probably dump the ending blurbs from the discs. If they had such text, and it was in the files given to the US localization team, they're probably still there in the Japanese encoding. However, Raww knows how to comb through the data, so when he says there are no ending texts for them, he might have already supplied the answer.

[Raww Le Klueze]

I haven't actually checked, but we have a ending blurb guide on the site made by Celes and it doesn't mention any extra lines which is why I said there didn't appear to be any.

Edit: Now I've checked and I can't fine any line dedicated for Chuchara or Rulodia. I haven't been able to make a working table for the Japanese version but considering that they've translated all lines as they come across them, even unused ones (admittedly missing a few) it seems weird that they'd miss those exact two.

While it makes sense that they'd be meant to be stars for whatever reason they never finished it so it can't be proven one way or the other except that it's not a glitch as such. But even if you have Rulodia and Chuchara as stars you could still screw yourself out of 108 stars by getting Abizboah and Siegfried since there's no third character there so it's possible they just decided it was too much work to get all variables in place. There hasn't been another game in the series that has as many variables again either.

[Celes]

Taken from your analyses about the recipe bug, there is a bug when it comes to drop percentage:

Every enemy in the game has space for three "drops", items that they may drop after being killed. These drops all have a probability from 1/255 to 254/255—it should be 255/255, but that's another bug.

It comes to my mind that I had to list every boss only 100% drop to the missable list, like the spark rune, if this is true.

And another thing that always bothers me, is the flower enemy type, Monwer and Eye Flower (Bestiary), that doesn't do anything at all in battle. Neither it always defends, taken by tests and from its DEF, nor does it counter attacks. The offical strategy guide says so ("Only counterattacks"). I guess there is some failure within its attack pattern.

A tiny bug occurs within the Forever Sign spell. It heals up to 2000 HP / divided among all allies. Therefor it sums up all characters (Max HP - current HP). This sum is substracted from 2000 and the remaining amount is done as damage to 1 enemy. However, if the initial (Max HP - current HP) of all party members exceeds 2000, the spell screws up due to an overflow in the subsequent calculation.

Speaking of runes... I noticed some odd behavior of the Shining Wind and Blue Drop Runes, which virtually (if not) all players will never notice. I wonder whether this was intended or not.

The Chimera Rune is odd enough to take a look as well. While its use beeing questionable from the start (transferring negative status to allies), it can be used to simply cure all status used on the wielder. Hence the actual effect is quite useless. Why transferring status to others when it can be cured completely every time as well?

The "Identify Items Yourself" (Secrets) trick is a bug in my opinion as well, when it comes to the visisbleness at Rauras shop. May be hard to fix, though.

By the way, I love to play an (almost) bug free version of this game, which is my favorite suikoden among all

[Pyriel]

The drop thing is definitely true. I explained it in more detail years ago in the Game Mechanics thread.

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RAM:8002E148                 andi    $v1, 0xFF

RAM:8002E14C                 sltu    $v0, $v1, $v0

RAM:8002E150                 bnez    $v0, loc_8002E180

RAM:8002E154                 addiu   $s0, $s1, 0x96

RAM:8002E158                 lbu     $v0, 0x40+var_2F($sp)

RAM:8002E15C                 nop

RAM:8002E160                 sltu    $v0, $v1, $v0

RAM:8002E164                 bnez    $v0, loc_8002E180

RAM:8002E168                 addiu   $s0, $s1, 0x98

RAM:8002E16C                 lbu     $v0, 0x40+var_2E($sp)

RAM:8002E170                 nop

RAM:8002E174                 sltu    $v0, $v1, $v0

RAM:8002E178                 beqz    $v0, loc_8002E21C

RAM:8002E17C                 addiu   $s0, $s1, 0x9A

In a nutshell, up at the top of this code, it ANDs the random number it arrives at by 0xFF, which leaves a number between 0 and 255. Then it checks each of the 3 adjusted drop chances, to see if the random number is less than it. 255 is not less than 255, so there is always one random number that can result in no drop being triggered. The easy fix is just to subtract 1 when the random number is 255. One item with a 255/255 setting will always drop, and 1 of 3 items where the settings total up to 255 will always drop.

Forgiver sign should be doable. I'm not familiar with the AI scripting, but I'll see what I can find out about the flowers.

I can't really tell from the Rune description what the issue with the Chimera Rune is. Is it just that it does something different than its description, or it removes statuses when you're alone, what?

The free identification is definitely a bug. I don't think it'll be difficult to fix.

[KFCrispy]

Celes what do you mean by the spell screws up? does it have the same overflow effective as doing too much damage, "healing" the enemy for 30,000+ hp?

Celes, have you tested getting counter-attacked by the Flower enemy? i'd imagine a low SKL & LUK character who's S or M range and uses Hunter Rune to cause a lot of misses...

i think Chimera Rune transfers negative statuses like Poison to another target. I don't remember if you can target yourself. But if you have a positive status like Berserk, it just gets lost and the character receiving the transfer doesn't get it. To top it off, it's a command rune so you've just spent one entire turn getting rid of positive statuses and giving negative statuses to a teammate. thanks...
Chimera Rune's behavior isn't necessarily a bug but maybe you will see evidence of incorrect formulas/values?

[Celes]

Celes what do you mean by the spell screws up? does it have the same overflow effective as doing too much damage, "healing" the enemy for 30,000+ hp?

Actually, while doing the runes database I did several tests with that spell, but all I remember now is that it does screws up... somehow. Every time the party has full HP, it does exactly (MGC + 2000 base) DMG. When your partys HP loss exceeds that value, either the enemy gets healed by a huge amount or the party gets healed by a different, lower amount and the enemy takes 0 DMG. I can't see a pattern here ...

Celes, have you tested getting counter-attacked by the Flower enemy? i'd imagine a low SKL & LUK character who's S or M range and uses Hunter Rune to cause a lot of misses...

Trying with the hunter rune results in a 100% hit rate. It looks like the flower enemies have something like a perma sleep status. Oddly enough: They cannot by set asleep by Wind of Sleep or the Sleep rune ever.

i think Chimera Rune transfers negative statuses like Poison to another target. I don't remember if you can target yourself. But if you have a positive status like Berserk, it just gets lost and the character receiving the transfer doesn't get it. To top it off, it's a command rune so you've just spent one entire turn getting rid of positive statuses and giving negative statuses to a teammate. thanks...
Chimera Rune's behavior isn't necessarily a bug but maybe you will see evidence of incorrect formulas/values?

Yeah... who knows what the intention with this rune was. This is more like an oversight than a bug perhaps. If the intention was to get rid of negative status by transfering it to an ally, you either should not be allowed to target yourself or this had to result in no change whatsoever.

[Pyriel]

OK, so with the Chimera Rune, you're saying that if you use it, and target the user, it just erases their status effects? I take it this include positive ones as well? That's an interesting oversight. To me, it implies that the negative statuses are transferred to the target, and then the source's entire status field is cleared. I'm inclined to just reverse the procedure, instead of making it impossible to target the user. Doing that, if you target the source character, it just wipes out all the positive status effects, and leaves the negatives behind. That sort of, "screw you for thinking you're clever", behavior just seems like how magic should act to me. Of course, it all depends on how they implemented status effects and the transfers. I'm just assuming that it's one contiguous field of bit flags, like in other games.

[Pyriel]

Just to clear up the drop issue: I misread a shift amount in my assessment. The way they generate the number is just implementing modulus 255 in six cycles as opposed to the 8 or 12 you'd need for a divide. I ran all the possibilities just to be 100% certain, and it's actually impossible for the game to roll a 255. Bottom line, there is no bug in the drop code, and the number generated is 0-254, which is appropriate for the way they implemented chances out of 255.

They had to do something right, I guess. One less bug for me to worry about.

[Celes]

Good to know! I think we can drop the chimera; blue drop/shining wind rune issues, because a fix would be based on speculations how it was intended only.

The flower enemy type is obviously a bug, as it doesnt make any sense when it sits there only waiting to be killed for potch and items.

The forever sign issue is rearely ssen. However, it can be pretty tedious while occuring during the beast rune fight. Imagine a full party in an sorry state, casting your ultimate trump which then results in a boss heal for thousands of HP