CONFIGURING NEW POWERS

FFX-Squared supports more than 30 new attack types (as alternatives for crushing, heat, freeze etc), which can be configured per character using the Control Centre. Unfortunately, these attack types only work for melee, projectile and beam attacks, although with the right FX its easy to simulate a direct attack pretty well.

 

Selecting Attack Types

Each character can have up to six custom swaps for character states, as displayed in the editor panel below:

 

This basically lays down rules along the lines of: "when my character hits someone (with a melee or ranged attack) and they get blinded, remove the blinded state instantly and replace it with transmute". Since no one character will have all available attack types from either the original game or FFX, this allows you to lose some irrelevant attack types for that particular character and replace them with ones of your choosing.

For custom characters only

For convenience, when a character is selected, a brief description of their powers appears in the display window. This currently only works for customs, since builtin character powers can be examined from the desktop using FFEdit.

For built-in characters only

Built-in characters (like eve in the example shot below) you also have to choose which power each state swap applies to.

Example

Scrolling down the attribute panel will reveal the character state customisations. A starting character will have four pairs of empty list boxes. Opening the first box will reveal a list of character states from the game. When you select one of these, the second list will fill with available states that this can be swapped with.



Select 'frozen' from the top left list box. The one next to it will now display a list of other offensive states when opened (vertigo, transmute, gravity increase, pull and lifedrain). Select transmute (and notice that this opens up the Transmute Types combo above). This now means that any Freeze type attacks you buys FOR THIS CHARACTER as a melee, beam or projectile will work as transmute attacks instead.

 

Determining the attack type to replace

There area variety of factors to choose from when choosing what attack types to swap.

Resistance type:

Most of the swappable states attack vs. Mental or Mystical, the exceptions being Freeze (vs cold) and Density max (vs Energy). Choose the one that makes the most sense for your character.

Intensity:

If the attack succeeds, it will be applied with an intensity dependent on the original attack type to reflect the varying costs of the original states. The relative costs are: So a Gravity Increase attack bought as hypnosis will be more expensive than one bought as Rage (for the same success chance), but also more powerful when it does hit. Vertigo caused as hypnosis will last longer etc.

Residual Effects:

The target of a successful swapped attack will temporarily be under the effects of the original state, with any effects that go with it.
Frozen and Stasis both cause the character to fall over (and fall to earth if flying), Density max will make flying characters fall, the others just cause a temporary interruption of AI.
So, for example, stasis to taunt will look a bit odd as the target gets so angry they fall over (and grow a very shortlived ice shell in the case of frozen!), but rage to taunt will look a lot better, as will stasis to pull, since the target falls over anyway.

Existing states:

If the target is already in the state used by your attack (eg they're already hypnotised) then the attack will have no effect. So don't override hypnosis if you have the PHEREMONES attribute, or power null if you have the JINX attribute, as you'll be making enemies nearby immune to your special attack. Also note that some primary effects block others - a frozen character cannot be hypnotised, and so on. All in all, hex comes highly recommended all else being equal.

 

Overriding Stun for Carrier Attacks

If you really want to have an attack that does two differnt types of damage (say acid burn and blank), you can do so by sacrificing the ability to stun your opponent with any attacks. You can for example, set up a stun to mental blank swap for your character, and assign (high) stun only to your acid projectile to give an attack that burns and blanks at the same time.

 

Choosing between beams and projectiles for a ranged power

Projectiles can be dodged, beams cant. So if your attack should act more like a direct, then choose a beam. Ive provided a few 'invisible' beam attack FX that look almost identical to directs in game, with a start and end effect from a direct attack copied with an invisible core beam FX.
Explosive projectiles don't work very well with this system yet - the central target will get the state swap but those around them wont yet.
Projectiles can still be useful for Homing, Flight Spawn and Chained attacks, whereas Penetrating beams can be useful, particularly for simulating a direct attack.