FM Hard Mode 1.1.3 README

All this mod does is make the AI more difficult. Your starter deck, the AI's
deck pools, the drop pools, and everything else are unmodified. The AI does not
cheat any more than it already does in vanilla FM, except for the fact I gave
one more duelist the ability to see face-downs. Hint: it makes sense in-game.

Big thanks to TOTOzigemm for testing numerous iterations to find bugs, and
thanks also to Thatonenewtagerplayer for giving me some ideas.

This is a ppf patch, which can be applied to a fresh iso with PPF-O-Matic. You
can download it from

https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/356/

Make a copy of your iso before using this, because PPF-O-Matic won't. The iso
should be a .bin/.cue pair of the NTSC-U version. For people who know what
hashes and checksums are, here are the SHA-1 hashes of the original and
resulting .bin files:

Original SHA-1  D5785A41900A10968D4A28A390666C4B9879B796
Resulting SHA-1 3083DED8846CA94D31DACA59492F082FA137480A

Note that if you want to combine Hard Mode with 5 card, you will need to first
patch a vanilla iso as above and then use Ghost's tool on the result.

~~~~~

Changes for v1.1.3:

The AI will no longer use Raigeki if only the player has monsters if they can
play something better from their hand. Fun is no longer allowed, this exploit
is fixed.

The AI will not consider monsters of theirs that have already attacked when
calculating whether to use Stop Defense for lethal. Thanks to
Thatonenewtagerplayer for finding this bug.

Changes for v1.1.2:

The AI will now suicide into attack position targets sometimes instead of
defense targets (this was a bug). Thanks to Finalaharl for finding this bug.

The game will now not softlock if it wants to attack a face-down and its
highest attack card is a defender.

The AI will now not skip over cards with a relevant stat of 9999 when looking
for the weakest card in a range.

The AI will now properly take into account face-up GSes before face-down GSes.

Changes for v1.1.1:

This is just changing which spare memory I use a little so this is now
compatible with the 5 card mod.

Changes for v1.1.0:

High mages and Seto 2 are now far less likely to be faked out.

The AI will now activate Crush Card, Dark Hole, or Raigeki straight from hand
even if it has no monsters in certain situations.

The AI will not activate Swords from hand on an empty field if they have a card
stronger than anything you have.

Opponents with a max hand fusion count of 1 can now do 2 card fusions (this
affects Jono 2, Simon, Teana 1, and Villager 3).

The AI will not attack directly with 0 attack monsters.

The AI will not activate Stop Defense if the player has no cards in defense.

The AI will now be able to fuse even if it already has a strong card on the
field.

AI opponents that can see face-downs will look for Goblin Fan or Simochi (as
appropriate) when considering whether to use a burn or heal spell instead of
making a general judgement based on if the player has any spells.

The AI will now select GS more intelligently than simple 50/50.

The AI will now Raigeki in certain situations for lethal.

AI opponents that can see face-downs will only use HFD if you have a trap.

The AI will now suicide their cards into yours if they have equal attack
(taking GS into account) if you only have one monster.

Some defenders have been added.

The AI will now wait until the end of their turn to put defenders in defense.
This is because defenders can now be used to attack directly for lethal, or
for a lethal battle.

How likely various opponents are to keep fusing, improving their monsters, or
set magics has been tweaked.

The AI will now play weak decoy monsters to trigger Widespread if you have no
monsters and they can see you have one.

When the AI is defending monsters, it will now do them from left to right.

Fixed a bug introduced in v1.0.1 where the AI would set spells incorrectly when
they were out of monsters.

Thanks to TOTOzigemm for helping find bugs as always.

Changes for v1.0.2:

Fixed a bug where the AI would try to use a face-down Dragon Capture Jar even
if the player did not have a dragon. Thanks to someone325 for pointing this
out.

Changes for v1.0.1:

Fixed two bugs, one which meant the AI would set magics rarely and would crash
the game if the AI had no monsters in hand, and one which meant the AI would
not play 0/0 monsters (possible due to e.g. Yami and the AI only having low
attack Fairy monsters). Shoutouts to TOTOzigemm for creating a crash I could
then reproduce.