Final Fantasy Hacktics

I went back and cleaned up the back sprites, it's not near as cluttered anymore!

EDIT 1: Re-uploaded sprite due to a last minute fix. Some shapes were intruding on the face when walking in 1h water. these shapes were altered

Quote from: Angel on January 22, 2017, 11:24:30 pm
Just got home from work, and I needed to say that as far as color is concerned, you're spot-on. If I have any criticism at all, it's that Ramza's back is really busy; that amount of detail in so small of a space doesn't lend itself very well in practice. Scale back the detail a bit, and it improves tenfold, worthy of submission. Honestly brilliant for a first-timer.

Thanks so much for the kind words, Angel, Glad to see I got the thumbs up! I agree there's a lot going on back there. I think I'll revisit it and see if I can't simplify it a tiny bit. I started touching it up a little, but I'm having some trouble getting shapes and angles right, particularly in his death sprites.

I've been in the IRC a lot lately chatting about the progress I've made on this new sprite. Angel was interested in seeing how close I could match colors despite being colorblind, so I said I'd post it here when I was done

This isn't my first time editing a sprite, however this is the first time that I've created a palette and completely repainted everything by hand as apposed to messing with a few sliders. Instead of a quick one hour job, it ended up taking me two days of late nights to finish This sprite is heavily influenced by Agrias' color palette and I used a slightly modified version of the Portrait that Nyzer patched up for me in my help thread

When Astos created the original sprite His inspiration came from the WoTL Dark Knight sprite and he threw a lot of complex shapes in there! Aside from making the shoulder pads more predominant the only real design changes I made was in his rear facing sprite, I did away with the hard and heavy cloak look and replaced them with Coat Tails, I managed to give Ramza his feet back in the process

I'm still not confident enough in my vision to say it's right so chances are you'll still find some discrepancies in the color, I know the legs need a bit of work (I also think I accidentally matched a few colors in my Sprite and Portrait Palettes) But I'm pretty happy with it!

Quote from: fupaflap on January 20, 2017, 01:20:01 pm
I love you...

I was able to edit the battle, add in my hero class, and have him recruited to my team end of battle.

First snag, When Im looking at my new guy in the hero line up formation, the character sprite looks like ramza but when I go into a battle it goes back to the sprite that I chose for him, also when I go into his job abilities "Divine Knight" in the formation view all the abilities are named the same as the samurai class BUT when I go into a battle all the Divine Knight abilities show as they should. How do I get my formation menu to show the correct sprite and be able to show the correct job abilities for the hero class so I can learn the rest of them?

You can fix that too! But it can be a little complicated for first timers. The Formation Sprites are handled separately from spritesheets in two different files. The Formation sprite is located in UNIT.BIN and the Formation portrait is in WLDFACE.BIN. Luckily FFHacktics has a really in-depth tutorial on how to do it.

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=6702.0

Doing it for the first time can be a little tricky, but once you get passed your first success, it's almost second nature.

Quote from: Xifanie on January 19, 2017, 11:50:50 am
I'll just be posting this here as I spent a very long time writing that post and the topic creator couldn't be fucked to log back in, much less reply/thank me... hopefully this will be useful to at least one person who can appreciate the work I put into it:
http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=11456.msg217203#msg217203

Extending on that, if you to

"Rare" Encounters is a misnomer.
Each set of encounters is unlocked at a specific point in the game, usually more or less the same, based on Shop Progression. Let's take Fort Zeakden -> Fovoham Plains for example.
Looking at the image in the spoiler: before Ch2, the only encounter you can trigger is ENTD 011. After you do, you can trigger:
- 011 (25%)
- 012 (12.5%)
- 082 (12.5%)
- 013 (25%)
- 014 (25%)

Note that each enabled random battle has an equal chance of being triggered. For example, Igros Castle -> Mandalia Plains before Ch4 has 66.67% to trigger battle 09D (33.33% + 33.33%) and 33.33% chance to trigger battle 09E. Basically, the lowest chance a specific battle can be triggered is 12.5%.

People usually think that there is only one "rare" encounter per location, and that is, frankly, a load of crap.

The 04/0C/10/19 numbers you see are the shop progression, but in this case the max value, so basically, it means before the next shop progression, or in other words:
- 03 is Before you kill Miluda
- 04 is Before Ch2
- 0C is Before Ch4
- 0E is Before you kill Elmdor
- 10 is End-game
- 19 is End-game
...and so on.

spoiler: Huge Random Battle Image

Thanks for the info, Xif! I knew random battles could be edited, but I didn't know how the game handled them. I'm just gonna add a quick bookmark for later.

I'm not sure if this is an option for you, but if you Emulate Tactics using a program such as ePSXe and an ISO on your computer, you can actually use FFTPatcher to change Ramza's default squire job and Delita's default squire job so that they perfectly resemble those classes. I'll attach a few screenshots of how I have my Holy Knight Ramza set up. It's pretty easy to do!

Here's the job Configuration.
http://gamegrit.com/upload/203418f364e7c56cb76b.png

Editing the skillset that goes with that Job
http://gamegrit.com/upload/01688869758ff494e1eb.png

Then using FFTactext, I quickly renamed Ramza's Squire jobs (Chap1, 2/3 and 4) to Holy Knight
http://gamegrit.com/upload/6a9c66f74bee56238584.png

Finally, using FFTactext again, I changed the skillset name from Guts to Holy Sword.
http://gamegrit.com/upload/c68a500aec8defc68552.png

And the final result
Character Summary
http://gamegrit.com/upload/75063de83cf18c9058ef.png

Equipment
http://gamegrit.com/upload/7009824196a20feec6b2.png

And skill progression
http://gamegrit.com/upload/6c233dcfa7f79f59a122.png

It's a little more work, but I find that it's less prone to error than a Gameshark.

This is going to take a lot of guess work out of the equation. Thanks Nyzer!

Right away I see that your portrait has no background. When you're making a sprite, your Palette will be split into two rows. The first row is your Sprite palette, your ninth row is your Portrait palette. The first color in your portrait palette has to be your portrait background, or you'll see a lot of problems in-game.

I've attached a Portrait with the background just to give you an idea. It's RGB Values has to be set to 168, 160, 136

Quote from: Angel on January 13, 2017, 12:56:58 am
At least you can still see color! A friend of mine and my great-uncle are 100% monochromatic colorblind. The former actually managed to guess (much as you do, I imagine) how full color images should appear. No mountain high enough.

Quick edit: Have you given any thought to EnChroma? I've no idea how accurate it is, but I've seen some joyfully tearful results from its usage.

I have a close friend who's Monochromatic! It's true he can't see color, but his attention to detail defies what's possible. He analyses  things so fully and completely, it's almost like he sees better without color.

I've seen the EnChroma shades and I seriously want to check them out! I've just never had the disposable income to buy them! I can only imagine what seeing the world as it actually appears would be like, but I imagine I'd have another learning curve ahead of me, actually being able to identify colors as they're meant to be seen, not as I see them.

As for guess work, I do a lot of it! But it's never kept me from trying to make Sprites. Hacktics has been an awesome way to both show the work I've tried to do, but also have it corrected when it goes awry. (Which happens a lot! )

I have a lot of flaws in my process that I need to correct, I always seem to mix the Sprite palette and the Portrait palette together.

Quote from: nyzer on January 12, 2017, 10:28:08 pm
There's a few things off with your portrait.

Your picture is fine when it uses the first palette - and so it looks fine just glancing at the base image in the file - but FFT uses the ninth palette for portraits. The portrait is also one pixel too far to the right. And there's no white to the eye, and the beard mixes dedicated skin colors with hair colors, making it look ... off. The trim on the armor and the edges of the beard also aren't consistent.

Finally, a little bit of advice - I'm not at all a pro spriter, but your Ramza portrait has multiple unused colors and a lot of area on the armor where it's just one completely separate color with no shading. Just adding in a bit of shading can go a long way when it comes to that.

spoiler: Here's a comparison to demonstrate what I mean.

I'm sure it's nowhere near perfect, but it definitely looks a lot better like this, I think. I just wanted to quickly put something out there to give you an idea of what improvements can be made.

Here's what the file looks like with the portrait palette separated properly (and it's got my edited version of the portrait in case you want to use that as a base going forward). Open it in GraphicsGale and you'll see that there's just two rows of palettes - the one in the ninth slot is what the portrait uses for the colors, which is why it looks so weird in the default palette.

Thanks for giving it a bit of an Overhaul! I face some unique challenges when tackling a sprite. I'm Tritanopic so a lot of it gets lost an translation. You'll see discrepancies in the beard and hair because it's a lot of educated guesses in getting them to match up and then it's a task of double checking and triple checking the numbers. Practice, practice, practice!

That's strange, because I have my palettes saved so that's the case. Looks fine in gale but shows up in Palette Editor. I've been comparing palettes because I can't tell the difference between a lot of them.

I'll move some stuff around

EVTCHR, you clever bugger! I forgot the game wasn't completely reliant on the spritesheet and custom animations were needed for some cutscenes.

If it can, I haven't quite found it yet. But I'm still re-familiarizing myself with the tools, thanks for coming to the rescue

Howdy Hacktics,

Phew, it's been a crippling journey out of retirement, I like to think I was good at this once upon a time. But alas, I've forgotten all of my tricks, this first sprite back, based off of the Merc Ramza sprite (And also Eerily similar to when I started years ago) was meant to be a test for a new hobby project. Unfortunately It's been giving me trouble!

This sprite currently uses 27 colors and the Portrait background is set to 168, 160, 136 and as far as I can tell, it's being saved as an 8bit BMP.

When loading into the Orbonne Monastery for the first time, all looks prim and proper... that is of course, until he crouches. 

What happened to you, poor Ramza?

But wait, there's more! When he stands up all is well once again, that is until he opens his mouth.


I'm almost certain I'm overlooking something, but I just can't figure out what it is. I've attached the sheet to this post

Send help! I have fallen and can't get up.

Schedule cleared, excitement readied.

Quote from: Toshiko on January 31, 2014, 09:03:11 am
Random, but you just made me miss Reboot so very much.

I'm glad I could bring up some old memories Thanks for coming by to take a look.

Quote from: CONMAN on January 30, 2014, 11:46:20 pm
- I did touch this a little, it's kind of funky looking on the original delita sheet as well.  I'll take a couple more looks at this sheet.

I can vouch for this, it looks strange regardless! We never get to see any of those frames in Vanilla though, so it makes sense.

Greetings Hacktics Fans,

I've been working on this project for a little under a month now. The Core squire Jobs for Ramza and Ch2 Delita have been edited for the new Story. The Ch2 Delita Sprite and his respective squire job has been changed has been replaced with Viggs, a character that I introduced in the patch. Thus far no formulas or skill requirements have been changed. The focus has mainly been put on the plot.

I'm looking for some fresh eyes to look at this project, I'm having some major writers block, so ideas, suggestions, opinions and the like would be awesome! This project has been a massive learning experience and continues to teach me more day after day but in the end, I feel that doing such a team oriented project by myself is not only going to wear me out, but hinder the overall quality of the end product, and we can't be having that!





Stay frosty,
Cody

Quote from: CONMAN on January 27, 2014, 08:29:01 pm
This isn't exactly what you are looking for..... but I thought it was cool.  I found this forever ago on deviant art or something.... My google fu could not locate it's creator or where I found it   The arms on the top of the sheet are all wrong   That shouldn't be too hard to fix up.... still I really like this as an evil lord Ramza 

edit: nevermind... make that pretty much all the arms.  hmm would you prefer red, or black arms for this sucker?

Hey CONMAN, that sprite is super menacing, I love it! Red would seem fitting I think! I released a (Far less evil) King Sprite shortly after I made the request, it was the first sprite I ever put together, you can give it a look here. http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=10199.0

Many thanks Elric! The constructive criticism you've provided gives me both the time and initiative to fix my events up a bit, make them a little more crisp and fine tuned! Which is perfect because I can't very well see myself going much further into my project until I find out how to work the World Map.

Quote from: Elric on January 21, 2014, 09:12:11 am
Your third video is set to private so we can't see it lol

Woops! Should be good to go now, thanks Elric!