[Mod] Asches LF2 Mod v1.13 (Last update: 12/09/2016)

[AscheLeee]

Thanks everyone for the comments!

Its fine for Richie to be reliant on weapons, the shrafe attack wasn't needed, just put an itr on D>A. If you really want to enforce Richie's punch being weak, then lower his damage (look at Sorcerer's damage, he always deals 15 per punch and at most 45 for Super/>>A/J+A/>>JA). What does need to be improved are the weapons themselves, how they are being summoned and Richie's ability to throw weapons.

Wouldn't an itr end up destroying your own balls though?

You see, the thing about Richie's weapons is that all of them have the same melee attack properties. There's only 2 variants in their normal weapon attack: either it knocks down in one or two hits, and their range. What you can do to make all the weapons more unique is to give the melee weapons some unique melee properties, not merely new moves or special effect from being thrown. For example,
* Devil Scythe is a fire weapon, meant to hit many opponents. So you could make its melee attacks burn & knock down (fall 70, otherwise you'll get a firefreeze 'bug'), at the cost of being rather low damage and easy to block.
* Spirit Sword seems like a weapon you'd usually use in general. Maybe make it fall25, so that you can actually send someone into DOP in two hits and use that to grab. Similarly, you could make the knife have fall20, so you can hit 3 times into DOP for a grab and in addition be able to hit jumping enemies without immediately knocking them down. Or maybe the earth bat can have a very overpowered fall60 attack to immediately stun someone.
* This fall thing is also one of the main reasons why people punch more than they use weapons. A weapon in LF2 is used only because it can A) be thrown B) potentially be used for massive damage combos ala baseball/milk/beer with LouisEX D>A C) it has long reach and can h it multiple opponents; but otherwise punching is preferred because punching damage is actually a LOT higher overall.
See, that makes the weapons feel a lot more different without even considering their special moves. Don't just use my examples directly though; I didn't really give much thought into how exactly the weapons should be. While we're at it change the throws too; they're all just the weapon itself being thrown with different properties, you could change that into a projectile like your 'bat' bat.

For throwing, compare throwing weapons with LouisEX, Mark, Knight to someone like Louis, Bandit, Jan. Notice that LouisEX & Mark have a VERY fast throwing animation in addition to thrown weapons moving very fast & far, while Jan's throw is completely pathetic. I think the current throwing animation speed & throw strength can be a bit different for Richie to make him really utilize his weapons.

Detonate takes way too long trigger. As soon as his hand touches the floor it should activate, maybe make the animation a bit faster too.

Tried giving the scythe burn to melee attacks, and ended up burning myself whenever I'm too close while attacking, so I decided against that :x
I set the spirit sword's fall to 25, as well as giving it a negative dvx, causing it to pull enemies closer to yourself.
As for the knife, I made it create weak wind blades when attacking or running with it. The blades won't deal much damage, but can hit from a distance, to interrupt enemy attacks or projectiles.
I made the earth bat fall 70 and BDefend 32, increased its damage, and made it slam enemies to the ground. It probably can't be comboed with, but punishes enemies who try to defend against it.
I also gave fall 50 to holy water so that you could grab someone immediately after 1 hit, but set it to single target.

As for throwing... so far I've made the knife travel further and faster, and am still thinking of what to do with the rest.

Come to think of it, I probably need to rethink the whole weapon throwing thing after all. I never made magical weapons activate instantly when thrown because I didn't want them to be able to be activated at short range and give the opponent no chance to react, but now that you mentioned it, characters with pathetic throws would actually have an advantage in activating them...

I also made detonate a little faster again...

Last but not least, there's how to summon the weapons:
* Its precisely because people use A to select, which makes it seem really weird for you to use D's "cancel" to select a weapon.
* J is also used to cancel attacks in many cases. And you can't exactly implement direction keys in the game.
* LF2 players don't remember moves by how many buttons they need to press, they remember moves by which combination they need to press.
* Richie's weapon summon animation is REALLY slow. Most of the time I just press DvJD and be done with it.

There's also a little design in button controls: notice in LF2 that in almost every case:
D> attacks are ranged.
D^ attacks are outward or upwards.
Dv attacks are inward or downwards.
A attacks are usually simple while J attacks are usually more powerful & special.

So what you could do is make Detonate DvJ instead while Summon Weapon is DJA. While in the DJA frame, pressing the various DxA/DxJ will give you different weapons. So you could have something like this:
* DJA D>A: Maybe the spirit sword? Because its D>A is a shotgun blast for keeping people AWAY, and frankly I think its the simplest & msot versatile weapon to use. Also has the LONGEST weapon reach.
* DJA D>J: ???
* DJA DvA: Maybe the earth bat? Since its good for PHYSICALLY knocking people DOWN. Can be DvJ too.
* DJA DvJ: Maybe the ice milk? It seems defensive & resembles ice sword. Can be DvA too due to milk's tiny size.
* DJA D^A: Maybe the wind knife? Since its a puny weapon and wind RISES.
* DJA D^J: Maybe the fire scythe? Since it is the opposite of ice afterall and fire appears stronger than wind.
* DJA DJA: cancel, or an ultimate weapon?
While you're at it you can give each weapon their own unique summon animation to help people remember. Change up the summon animation; don't use the smoke effect for all of them and don't make weapons come out of the ground out of nowhere, it gets really messy.
(also you should edit out the 'ice sword' from Richie's sprite).

Last but not least, have you considered making non-summoned weapons have their own special abilities? This way Richie isn't forced to summon all the time, he can pick up new weapons on the go, especially if the player is feeling braindead at the moment.

Thanks for this! Takes a bit of getting used to, but makes it so much easier and faster.
Decided to go with:
D>A: Spirit sword because why not?
Fire is indeed stronger than wind because wind is meant to be faster and trickier, so D^J for fire and D^A for wind seems good.
Moreover, the whole 5 elemental weapons thing was based on the 5 elements of Wicca, in which fire and air are the "positive/yang" elements while water and earth are "negative/yin", so it seems fitting that fire/air should be assigned to up while water/earth should be assigned to down.
As for water and earth... earth is stronger because water is more of utility/defence, so I set DvA to water and DvJ to earth.

An ultimate weapon seems like an interesting idea, but I wouldn't want a single weapon to be better than all the others... :x

Also I changed the smoke colours, and used burning smoke for fire....

As for non-summoned weapons having their own special abilities, I guess its a possibility for magical weapons (as an artificer, he might be able to appraise/identify properties that others might overlook, or figure out a different way of using the weapon's innate magic), but I don't think it would make sense if he suddenly gained a new skill from picking up an ordinary non-magical baseball bat.

So far I've added the ability to use magic orbs without consuming them with D>J, or detonate (D+v+J) them for double the effect.

Also added new skills for the bat bat and magic boomerang.

For the bat bat, D>A will be a laser (just like bat), D>J will be summon bats, and DvJ will summon even more bats.
For the magic boomerang, D>A will be an energy blast, D>J will be two energy blasts, and DvJ will be two energy disks.

Woah thats a lot of changes, I hope I haven't made Richie overpowered now :x

Yeah, the numbers seem a lot better now.

The shotgun blast can all hit the same target btw, but that's okay.

Actually the counter doesn't really do much since the character already has invincibility from getting up and its really easy to avoid the counter, the important thing is that the character needs to run away instead of desperately casting (i.e. the AI needs work). Currently he insists of simply using a skill. Also, the "counter" I was talking about is a countdown timer on the AI (for example, he changes what skills etc he uses every few seconds). That's why I enjoyed the first fight with Asche most; he does more than use simply spam 1 move even in the face of danger.

One key difference between the Touhou fighting boss fights with this mod is that in this mod you can knock them down before they could actually attack.

One way to solve this would be to add (perhaps unique) minions for each boss to distract the player.

Thanks for the suggestions!

I made the boss able to occasionally use the multishot skill from 1-3, and added a melee skill (basically his super punch), but he doesn't seem to use the melee skill much...

Also added some minions, as well as made permanent flames spawn on the ground after every phase.

Here's a random stage 1 video. Yes, I'm bad at this. On hindsight, I should probably make the bosses harder...

Video (Click to View)

Full changelog:

Wall of Text (Click to View)

Stage changes:

1-1:
Reduced number of enemies in multiplayer.
Jack will join you after you defeat him.

1-2:
Reduced number of enemies.
Moved healing geyser from phase 2 to phase 1.
Added bandit and hunter hostage at the start.

1-3:
Reduced number of enemies in multiplayer.

1-4:
Moved fire on ground from phase 2 to phase 1.
Added Jan and sorcerer hostage at the start.

1-5:
Added minions to boss fights.
Enabled the final boss to occasionally use his multi-shot skill.
Added a melee "super punch" move to the boss.
After clearing each phase of the final boss, fire appears on the ground permanently.
Increased HP of final boss.

Character Changes:

Janice: Recoloured clothes to a lighter shade of blue.

Bart: MP cost of "Dirge for the Deceased" reduced (30% -> 25%)

Richie:
Reduced cast time of detonate (again).
Recoloured smoke from items.
Switched input methods for Detonate and Item Creation.
Detonate is now D+v+J, Item Creation is now D+J+A
Reworked Item Creation:
After pressing D+J+A, press another of the keys to select your weapon, or press D+J+A again to cancel:
D+^+J: Hellfire Scythe
D+v+J: Gaia's Club
D+^+A: Wind God's Knife
D+v+A: Holy Water
D+>+A: Spirit Sword

Item Auxilliary Ability (D+>+J) can now activate magic orbs without consuming them.
Detonate! (D+v+J) will now double the effects of magic orbs.

Added additional moves for some magical items:

Bat of Bats:
Item Innate Blast "Bat's Laser" (D+>+A): Fires a laser, just like Bat.
Item Auxiliary Ability "Bat Swarm" (D+>+J): Summons a swarm bats.
Detonate! "Greater Bat Swarm" (D+v+J): Summons a larger swarm of bats.

Magic Boomerang:
Item Innate Blast "Energy Blast" (D+>+A): A blast of energy is fired straight ahead.
Item Auxiliary Ability "Double Energy Blast" (D+>+J): Not one, but two blasts of energy!
Detonate! "Twin Energy Disks" (D+v+J): A pair of energy disks are thrown at the enemies.

Artifact Changes:

Gaia's Club:
BDefend for normal, jumping, and running attacks increased. (16 -> 32)
Fall on normal attacks increased. (60 -> 70)
Smashes enemy to the ground.
Damage increased. (40 -> 45 for normal/jump, 50 -> 55 for run/dash)

Wind God's Knife:
When equipped, running or attacking shoots out two weak wind blades.
Travels faster and further when thrown.
If the knife itself connects, it will push enemies further back.

Holy Water:
Fall on normal attacks increased. (40 -> 50)
A single normal attack will send the target into DoP if it connects.
Normal attacks can now only hit a single target.

Spirit Sword:
Fall on normal attacks reduced. (40 -> 25)
All attacks will now pull enemies towards yourself.

AI Changes:
Asche: Increased the minimum range at which he will use "Burning Ash Blast".
Janice: Decreased the maximum range at which she will use "Overwhelming Disaster".
Richie: Changed because input methods changed, added ability to use strafe.