Shining Force 2 Graphical Quirks

[ladyabaxa]

In interesting SF2 news (if you're interested in the game's guts like I am) here's a quirk of the way the game mirrors sprite positions. First up, Slade gets attacked by a muddled ally forcing his dodge reaction to take place on the left side of the screen.

What's happening here is that the developers apparently didn't finish plugging in coordinates for weapon sprites when the characters are dodging on the left side of the screen. All of the default poses are fine and some dodging sprites are set up correctly but most are not. Since this only happens when attacked by a confused ally it was probably low priority to begin with and dropped entirely once the release crunch set in.

Next is something even rarer.

What's happening here is Sarah has been hit by Muddle level 2, is confused, and has cast Blast level 2 on an adjacent ally. Because she was caught in the blast radius AND is the first unit damage is resolved for a bug in resetting her position after the 'take damage screen shake' has moved her weapon to where it is very obviously not supposed to be. This is something most players might never see. Enemies with Muddle 2 are rare and they need one specific AI switch to cast the spell. The spell then has to take hold on a Force member with offensive magic the AI can cast, the Force member targets someone with that magic that puts them in the effect radius instead of attacking (they can't target themselves directly to begin with) and they have to be first in damage resolution. Talk about a perfect set of circumstances.

Or to put it in list form:

1. A monster has to have the Muddle 2 spell.
2. They must also have the correct AI flag to allow them to cast it.
3. They must actually cast the spell in battle.
4. The spell must take effect.
5. The affected Force member must then choose to cast a direct damage spell.
6. That spell must have an area of effect on it.
7. Targeting that spell includes the caster in the area of effect.
8. The cast must be FIRST in damage resolution. (resolution is linear down the roster)
9. The caster must have a weapon equipped with an assigned weapon sprite.
    

Lastly, something that's not a bug but an example of how I can be nitpicky with the graphics. See if you can spot the difference.

Comments

[omnimirror.livejournal.com]

I'm going to feel soooo dumb afterwards, but I was unable to find it. I did some pixel hunting and even zoomed in a bit, but still no dice. I bet it's something totally obvious and I just skipped over it.

By the way, good job knocking out Kraken 2.0. I had a hard enough time with him in the vanilla game, but the sense of urgency brought on by regenerating limbs makes it even harder.

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

I added shadow borders to the left and right sides of the cracked bowl tile. It looked strange in the tunnel to not have those.

Thanks on the Kraken. I was worried about graphical glitching with the regenerating limbs When the game has large sprites in memory it puts those parts at the end of the sprite table and any new enemies that spawn are amended to the end of the table. This is why the game usually throws up visual garbage in that situation - it's trying to write sprites outside the table. If there's some empty, unused space in VRAM (which is the case here) then nothing visually happens on a spawn and the table is reset on coming out of a battle scene.

Contrast that with my Taros fight setup. It literally cannot hold any more sprites before the game starts freaking out, loads some stuff that it otherwise never uses and suddenly the Caravan has been replaced by part of Taros's sprite with a messed up palette.

[omnimirror.livejournal.com]

Ahhh! I can see it clearly now. Thanks. :)

I always wondered why games went crazy with their sprites on occasion, and now I understand.

This is a really cool project you've taken on, and I continue to wish you the best of luck with it.