Digimon World: Digimon World Maeson

This is a hack for Digimon World released for the original Playstation, a very interesting and ambitious mix of adventure, pet-raising simulator and some RPG elements.

As it is to be expected from this author, this modification touches a large number of aspects of the original game in an attempt to improve or tweak an equal large amount of elements to make a smoother, more polished and hopefully more varied and fun experience.

Here is a summarized list of the changes:

* Reworking Evolution. This entails a large enough number of changes by itself, from redoing the requirements for each species to avoid overlap that would cause unintentional evolutions, simplifying how the inner working of certain requirements, providing equal number of evolutions to each species, remove the Priority system that could change the resulting evolution even if the player did things right, etc.

* Tweaks to Techs, trying to make all of them have a niche to fill to feel useful, toning down the ones that were absurdly powerful, making weak Finisher Techs more in line with the standard power of each tier of evolution, improving the chances and fairness about learning Techs, changing the moveset of a few species, etc.

* Tweaks to Items, to provide more variety in their effects, make more of them more useful to the player, specially related to food. Items lying around the world have also been extensively changed so there are more than Digishrooms out there. Evolution Items now provide Stat Gains and Lifespan boost when necessary.

* Changes to enemy Digimon. From minor stat tweaks to either fortify or tone down specific ones, to improving the Item drop chances and variety, increasing the amount of Bits obtained by battle to amounts that actually help the player, Boss battles providing guaranteed Item drops where possible, some Tech changes to provide more ways to learn Techs that were a single-time-only chance, etc.

* A big number of changes for other mechanics, such as extending Lifespan, File City's Restaurant, the sleep and eating habits of Digimon to fix things like Gabumon's absurd feeding needs, improving Drimogemon's Item search shop, changes to the Arena to be more fair, expanding Factorial Town's Evolution system, raising the chances for random Boss Digimon to appear to a more sane amounts, and quite a few more.

* Extensive text cleanup where possible. This is not to change the weird feeling of the script which gives it its own weird charm, but to fix the many, many typos, incomplete lines, glitched text, game-breaking textboxes that would hang up the player and others. No way Maeson would touch gems of writing such as "He ruined my research with Evil"!

* Inserting three* unused Digimon species as playable and fully functional, that can be obtained through normal evolution, and have different Techs to differentiate them from the original versions they're copying.

* Several optional patches that can restore or alter a few of the elements changed in this hack, disable the Tech Bonus requirement that could negatively affect evolution, and a collection of extra patches that will change the Starting Digimon when beginning a new game, providing much needed early-game variety.

* A new mechanic has been added as an optional patch, in which a small system is created that gives your Partner Digimon a power boost to an specific Tech based on its current species (for example, as a Palmon your partner will do more damage using Poison Powder) and on the Tech Menu, red numbers will point out to the player which Tech each species empowers.

* An extra patch adds some of the unused areas for Back Dimension, with some Items and enemies to fight too.

Beyond this, for this project Maeson was joined by Vice04 with the goal of squashing a large amount of glitches that were present in the game, for which this game is very infamous. The vast majority of the fixes were made by Vice04 by reworking the code itself, doing a magnificent job, while others required less serious changes.

Provided alongside Maeson's hack, a version of Vice04's fixes plus a few other changes was also added, plus a for-fun patch that makes random opponents appear during the Curling mini game.

A very detailed readme was also added, that not only goes through the changes, but also informs the reader about mechanics of the original game so they don't need other source of information for such elements, some of them rather obscure and not well known. A smaller readme containing basic information for quick checking in the form of lists is also included.

You can also check all the work made by Vice04 regarding the glitches on github:


The hack should be applied to an NTSC-US .BIN copy of the game, using PPF-o-Matic.

Note: Hack updated to Version 1.09a. These are all the changes since the initial release:

* All patches were remade with correct ECC and ECD sectors to prevent issues when playing it on specific places.

* Several mistakes fixed, such as incorrect evolution requirements, wrong things on the extra patches, certain items having issues, correcting regressions, etc.

* Fixed a few issues more that the original game had, like the Vending Machines not working correctly under certain situations. Also corrected some evolutionary requirements like those for Ninjamon.

* Added a new optional patch with the new mechanic mentioned above related to each playable species providing a power boost to a Tech.

* Vice04 has expanded the Digimon Chart to show the previously inaccessible Ultimate Digimon Panjyamon, Gigadramon, Metal Etemon and Machinedramon. None of them are necessary to receive the Medal for completing the Chart, that works like usually does.

* The previously unused Royal Tournament in the Arena has been restored, providing the highest difficulty battles, and has its own reward. This tournament is held every 15th of each year.

* The Tournament Schedule has been fixed by Vice04, and now works and looks as it should.

* Added an extra patch in case someone wants to combine this hack with the two "QoL" patches from Digimon World Randomizer, "Fair Bonus Try" and "Unlock Areas".

* Added an extra patch that retools the Hawk Radish into the Reset Radish, providing players a way to make their Partner Digimon reborn without having to wait for its Lifespan to end naturally, or making it die intentionally with the added cost of losing Techs and Tamer Level. This has several uses, like a faster way to fill the Chart, or giving more control to plan ahead for Tournaments in the Arena.

* Vice04 has tweaked part of the sound code, and now the music/background tracks won't restart each time you go to another screen if they play the same one.

* The Drill Tunnel event in which you have to take out dirt has been changed based on feedback. Originally, you had to do it ten times for the tunnel to be open, now it's only five. The Bits and stat gains that the player gains have been doubled now that it only need half the cycles, so nothing is lost. Thanks to Vice04 for finding where the counter exactly was. An optional patch to restore the ten trips is included.

* On previous versions there were added a few patches to make this hack compatible with two features of the Digimon World Randomizer. Since then, Vice04 has made code of his own for these two features. Possibility to still use the "Unlock Areas" is still included as it is different from the one included in this hack, but the Bonus Try one present in this hack is better overall, so the Randomizer version for this one feature is not longer supported.

* Fixed softlocks that could occur on the original game, and a couple of minor tweaks like Machinedramon's animations. Fixed a softlock added by the hack in version 1.08b on the most recent version.

As of 1.08e, alternate xdelta patches haven been added, in case someone has issues applying PPF patches.

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S000 - Installation
-------------------

This is pretty simple. Just grab PPF-o-Matic, the correct Bin/Cue of the game,
and my patches. This hack has been made for a Bin file with this hash data:

CRC32: E6FDD00E
SHA1: 5611645da66183e30d11fb6c11a2784ff47e1fdb

Open PP-O-Matic, choose the Bin file, and my Main Patch file.
Apply it, and you're done... Unless you want to add some Alternate Patches!

-----------------
Optional Patches:
-----------------

I included several optional patches you can apply after the main one. They alter a number
of things that you might want to revert, or to have to create a different experience.

1: Starter Patches:

They change the initial Digimon you can start the game with, so it's not always the same
Agumon and Gabumon choices that we always had.

Have in mind that you might have a bit of a harder time early on depending on which starter
you choose, depending on the types of Digimon and the Techs they can learn. Agumon and Biyomon
have long ranged Techs to start with, but they take more damage from Water Techs, so the
Modokibetamon might prove to be dangerous. On the other hand, Digimon such as Gabumon and
Patamon might have a harder time to learn a Tech that's better than Sonic Blow.

Yet this opens a lot of new possibilities for early game variety. Who wouldn't want to start
with Penguinmon and conquer File Island in the name of the Curling Empire? What about starting
with a Betamon or Kunemon and explore the Graylord's Mansion early?

Anyway, you have Agumon and Gabumon with the main patch, and other 4 optional ones that alter
both of the Starters. "Digi 1" means the Digimon that substitutes Agumon, and "Digi 2" the
that does the same with Gabumon.

File name: Digi 1 Digi 2
Main Patch Agumon Gabumon
Extra Patch - Beta Biyo.pff Betamon Biyomon
Extra Patch - Pal Pata.ppf Palmon Patamon
Extra Patch - Penguin Elec.ppf Penguinmon Elecmon
Extra Patch - Kune Penguin.ppf Kunemon Penguinmon

Starting Techs:
Agumon & Biyomon: Spit Fire
Gabumon & Patamon: Sonic Jab
Betamon & Elecmon: Static Elec.
Penguinmon, Palmon & Kunemon: Poison Claw.

* Biyomon and Penguinmon start with other moves in the original
game, being Electric Cloud and Winter Blast in particular.
They are too strong to start with and offer unfair advantage,
so I gave them basic moves shared with other starting Techs.

You can apply only one! It's not going to corrupt your BIN file, but you're not doing
anything but replacing the previous optional patch.

2: Remove Tech Bonus Requirement:

In the original game, after your Digimon knows a certain amount of Techs, the Bonus point for
Evolution will always be given towards EVERY possible evolution your current Digimon can have,
meaning that you lose some control over your choices as you can no longer use any other Bonus
requirement.

This patch makes it so the Tech Bonus is removed, and you always can use Happiness, Discipline
or Battles.

3: Restore Greymon's Strength:

In the original game, the Greymon that comes to File City is very infamous and very much despised
for two main reasons, those being it appears without any warning to newbie players, and that it is
absurdly strong for appearing so early into the game if you talk to Jijimon once prosperity is
at 15 or higher.

It has been a constant source of frustration and jokes, as it was very common to appear when you're
not ready at all, basically making you lose a Life with no way to avoid it unless you happened to
have an Autopilot ready, and even then that just saved you for that one time...

In the main hack, Greymon has been weakened out to a more reasonable level, but if you want him to
become as srong as he was, just apply this patch.

4: Vice04's Curling Extravaganza of Fun

...Well, no, he didn't really call it that. This patch makes it so every time you play Curling, a random
Digimon will be your opponent, instead of always Penguinmon. All of it was made by Vice04, and because
he needed to try and repurpose animations, it took quite a lot of tedious trial and error but the result
is pretty fun!

It is a rather cute addition I think, but I leave it optional as... Well, I have a soft spot for that
trolling penguin, what I can say. I love it, I hate it, and I love to hate it.

Just have in mind that if you patch this one on your ISO, when you recruit Penguinmon chances are
you will play against any other Digimon. Everything will work normally, but it won't make any
sense story-wise. After that everything is fine.


Digimon World [SLUS-01032]
CRC32: E6FDD00E
SHA1: 5611645da66183e30d11fb6c11a2784ff47e1fdb