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asm help?

Started by yisawa, July 11, 2014, 09:35:08 pm

yisawa

Hello, first of all i'd like to say that I am new here and I have been playing fft for a long time. I have also been playing patches for some time and I am just getting into modding the game myself with fftpatcher and such. Lately, I have been watching some fft Arena AI battles on youtube and I think it is a very cool patch. The abilities and new mechanics make it very interesting and it looks very fun. Personally I would actually like to play something like 1.3 or war of the gods with Arena mechanics and skillsets. In fact, I have already tried to use patcher to take everything from arena and put it in an already done patch and save as a custom fftpatch, considering I have done something similar before.

I started up the "custom" patch and since war of the gods starts you out completely random I got ninjutsu as a secondary skillset. When i tried to use most of the skills they were pretty much broken, tsumazuku said "c-bag" when i tried to use it, and all the skills I used in that skillset brought up item names. I looked over the master guide page just to see if I could find a clue to as what was wrong and after looking at mechanic changes like fury, and unfury I thought about the possibility of asm hacking. So I found the topic "FFT Arena: List of ASM hacks used" and tried to apply those asm hacks i found on the page through fftorgASM. I applied everything I could find in the program that matched the list. When I restarted the game I felt like i had made a little progress because fury was working but ninjutsu and mechanics like unfury were still broken.

I looked in the patcher to see if something was wrong and some formula's were blank. So then and there it was clear to me that I didn't completely have all the asm hacks since some end up changing formulas or creating new ones. Since i couldn't find all of them i decided to apply the custom patch with war of the god changes onto an fft arena iso. I tried starting a new game but I got the black screen you always get when pressing new game on fft arena. When I loaded my actual progress i started a random battle and saw that mostly everything was working perfectly and all the arena changes were there. The major problem is that only random battles work, and the victory screen is broken (don't so much mind the game over screen is replaced by "player 2 wins").

Unless I can easily make the first battle accessible, make story battles possible, and fix the 2 screens I think patching war of the gods is the best method of going about this. All I would really need to know is what are ALL the asm hacks used in arena then apply it and I think I would be good. I'm open to other options as well such a version of arena with no ai battles or something. I'm even up for no options and it turns out this is hopeless really, I just want to know if this is possible or not lol. As I said i'm a newb when it comes to things such as this so if i got anything wrong please correct me :P.

Choto

Let me make sure I understand this, you want to play War of the Gods with ARENA's ASM hacks and mechanics? Are you using ARENA's abilities and jobs and all?

When you patch a ppf, you write to multiple files on the ISO. This includes the Skillsets, Items, Abilities text... which may be the ninjutsu issue. Or it could be a generic skillset fix issue (asm).

It's generally a bad idea to try to splice together two hacks like this (although I understand why you want to). If there are ASM hacks that write over ASM hacks already included in the first thing you patched, you can get a conflict and crash the game when those hacks are used. For example, if both patches use the Generic Skillset Fix patch, the one that's patched second will overwrite the first. Throw, Jump, Draw out, Item, Elemental, and Math Skill are notorious for not working correctly.

There could also be hacks missing from the ARENA list. Your best bet for importing Arena's stuff for a patch would be to play it over a Vanilla iso. If you edit or patch over any other patches, it's a gamble wether it'll work or not unless done carefully.

yisawa

Quote from: Choto on July 11, 2014, 10:09:35 pm
Let me make sure I understand this, you want to play War of the Gods with ARENA's ASM hacks and mechanics? Are you using ARENA's abilities and jobs and all?

yep

Quote from: Choto on July 11, 2014, 10:09:35 pm
If there are ASM hacks that write over ASM hacks already included in the first thing you patched, you can get a conflict and crash the game when those hacks are used. For example, if both patches use the Generic Skillset Fix patch, the one that's patched second will overwrite the first. Throw, Jump, Draw out, Item, Elemental, and Math Skill are notorious for not working correctly.


I have also experienced problems with draw out, and item along with throw (ninjutsu) of course. Is it possible for ASM hacks to carry over from a fftpatcher file? My process of bringing the two together is to:

-Patch vanilla copy of fft with the arena ppf
-Open the iso up in fftpatcher and create an arena fftpatcher, file do the same with fftactext. Then get rid of the patched rom.
-Patch vanilla copy of fft with war of the gods
-Change certain things (enemy levels for items, god units) in fft arena file to match war of the gods, same for fftactext
-Use fftpatcher and fftactext to patch war of the gods

When i patch I only leave out monster skills, poach probabilities, propositions, ENTD 1, 2, and 4  because those didn't change. ENTD3 is checked off usually but I usually uncheck that not sure if that contributes to the problem...

Choto

Well the bad thing is that I know nothing about Arena or War of the gods... Are the ninja abilities still thrown weapons? Or did they edit it so that they are like normal abilities?

ASM hacks aren't applied from FFTPatcher files. They require either the .ppf patching or FFTorgASM patching. So a problem with the process you outlined is that you never apply the Arena ASM hacks (unless you forgot to mention patching with FFTorgaASM based on the ASM list). If they changed the skillsets I mentioned in Arena to work like normal skillsets, then you definitely need the Generic Skillset Fix for Arena to use them correctly.

On the other hand, some of the text may not be right because item names are stored in multiple files (World.bin and Battle.bin). So in FFTacTEXT you need to go through meticulously and make sure that all versions of the ability or item are changed - that is if it's simply a text issue.

EDIT: I happen to have stumbled upon this post: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=10247.msg195495#msg195495

They mention that when used manually, some of the skillsets don't work right. You may just have an inherent bug in the ASM work that made Arena what it is. Since you mentioned it before and you seem meticulous enough to be interested, you may want to consider learning ASM so that you can make whatever edits you want and be able to understand and fix the bugs as needed. It's not a short term thing but it's gratifying if you're that kind of person.

Kurosabes

July 12, 2014, 05:05:46 pm #4 Last Edit: July 12, 2014, 05:22:09 pm by White Knight Wiegraf
This problem with Item and other 'special' generic skillsets not working can be solved by reverting the 'fixed' skillsets in question. This can be done with one of Raven's workbooks (the skillset fix can be manually chosen there to choose which ones you want to actually fix and which ones you want to keep as they are). You definitely don't want to change Item for instance, it really messes it up for no reason (And other skillsets that are not actually changed like Elemental). Also check in FFTPatcher if Arena has the skillsets in question set to <default> or not. Pretty sure you'll want Throw to be <default> if it already isn't. Anyway, this might require some experimenting to get it right.
  • Modding version: PSX
  • Discord username: Kurosabes#0312

yisawa

July 12, 2014, 11:33:38 pm #5 Last Edit: July 13, 2014, 07:13:33 pm by yisawa
Okay I have seemed to have fixed some issues. Thank you wiegraf for telling me about raven's workbook because from that I have applied the generic skillset patch and it fixed the item skillset. I also fixed the draw out by just changing the action menu back to katana inventory when it was using <default>. Ninjutsu (throw) is still broken, and yes it is set to <default> which i might have to change around to see if it works. If ninja does not work it's actually not so much a big of a deal because i won't be using it most likely. I was really going to make a rip off team of severe weather alert lol. As I said most of the mechanic changes I can actually make, the only thing I really need is help with Unfury, Unfaith and things I can't find in orgASM at this point. Still do need some asm hacks regarding arena's formulas because some are intentionally left blank in fftpatcher and they won't function unless I have them.

Quote from: Choto
Well the bad thing is that I know nothing about Arena or War of the gods... Are the ninja abilities still thrown weapons? Or did they edit it so that they are like normal abilities?


ninja techniques are normal abilites now. Also the person in the link you posted had the EXACT same problem with the skillsets as I did. Only the AI were able to use the technique and abilities were glitched for the player. 

Thank you both you have both been a big help to me so far.

EDIT: I found out i was using the skillset fix wrong everything was set back to default didn't know if I could edit it lol. So I edited it and set throw to mimic basic skill and now ninja's skillset works :D. All i need are formula changes and unfaith/fury and i'm good.

Choto

I forget who was the caretaker of Arena. I thought FFMaster was awhile ago and he is an ASM'er. Maybe send him a PM and see if he has them.

Still, withhold the expectation that the game may crash at any point. Hopefully not though, may work!

Otabo

Yeah it is FFMaster. But's he's been AWOL for the past year or so. Dunno what's going on with him.