Galura beats the tar out of us right now. Granted, we're running a group of half-naked level 6 unskilled brain-dead Monks, but it's still a pretty sad fight.
I wanted to see whether something better than starting equipment would tip the scales, so I worked out the code for shop interactions and bought four Training Gis. We can now buy and sell with impunity, but unfortunately it's fairly game specific code for both FF4 and FF5, and I haven't come up with a nice way to generalize it. Some of it could be moved off into configuration, but there's a point at which that stops making sense. For example, in FF4 you choose the quantity of items you want to buy/sell before you choose the item. In FF5, you choose the item first and then the quantity. There's a half-dozen other little differences surrounding this. This sort of procedural difference doesn't convert very nicely into configuration. I will probably end up building a framework for attaching game-specific code to games on startup so the code is cleaned up a bit.
Anyway, the better armor did help - dropped Galura's hits from 130s to 90s - but it's not enough. He just goes nuts in the second half of the fight every time you hit him, and that's all we're ever doing. Even if I wanted to try the Phoenix Down binge strategy, at 1000 GP a pop Phoenix Downs are prohibitively expensive. I could only buy 3 of them now without level grinding. I could also just level grind a bunch until we can stomp him, but it's not worth it; this is a sufficiently compelling problem to solve more intelligently.
Looks like it's time to start implementing Job and Ability support. Galura exclusively uses physical attacks, so it would be a great place to test a Knight Cover/Guard strategy. We'll see if we need it; to start with, I'll probably give everybody Mantra and have them use that when they're low on HP.
It's going to take a while to get this stuff up and running. From a top-level perspective, I want to have the following:
I wanted to see whether something better than starting equipment would tip the scales, so I worked out the code for shop interactions and bought four Training Gis. We can now buy and sell with impunity, but unfortunately it's fairly game specific code for both FF4 and FF5, and I haven't come up with a nice way to generalize it. Some of it could be moved off into configuration, but there's a point at which that stops making sense. For example, in FF4 you choose the quantity of items you want to buy/sell before you choose the item. In FF5, you choose the item first and then the quantity. There's a half-dozen other little differences surrounding this. This sort of procedural difference doesn't convert very nicely into configuration. I will probably end up building a framework for attaching game-specific code to games on startup so the code is cleaned up a bit.
Anyway, the better armor did help - dropped Galura's hits from 130s to 90s - but it's not enough. He just goes nuts in the second half of the fight every time you hit him, and that's all we're ever doing. Even if I wanted to try the Phoenix Down binge strategy, at 1000 GP a pop Phoenix Downs are prohibitively expensive. I could only buy 3 of them now without level grinding. I could also just level grind a bunch until we can stomp him, but it's not worth it; this is a sufficiently compelling problem to solve more intelligently.
Looks like it's time to start implementing Job and Ability support. Galura exclusively uses physical attacks, so it would be a great place to test a Knight Cover/Guard strategy. We'll see if we need it; to start with, I'll probably give everybody Mantra and have them use that when they're low on HP.
It's going to take a while to get this stuff up and running. From a top-level perspective, I want to have the following:
- A SetJob:[CharacterName]:[JobName]:[ExtraAbilityName]:[etc] command. Examples: "SetJob:Bartz:Knight:Counter" or "SetJob:Lenna:Freelancer:X-Fight:MagicSword".
- A SetAbility:[CharacterName]:[AbilityName] command.
- An UntilCharacterReachesJobLevel:[Number] level grind exit condition. Might choose to add UntilCharacterMastersJob later on.
- An UntilCharacterLearnsAbility:[AbilityName] level grind exit condition.
In addition to all the other internals the borg needs to support this, I also need to be able to read what a character's current battle commands are; a static config file isn't going to cut it anymore. I might as well see if I can sort that out for FF4 while I'm at it.
Later on I may need to add some more sophisticated code to automatically manage job and ability switching. At the very least, I want to avoid situations where three of the characters are spinning their wheels in a level grind while we wait for one to learn a specific skill.
Later on I may need to add some more sophisticated code to automatically manage job and ability switching. At the very least, I want to avoid situations where three of the characters are spinning their wheels in a level grind while we wait for one to learn a specific skill.
