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March 28, 2024, 09:48:39 am

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Topics - Philogosten

1
What is this project, and why should I care? you may be asking yourselves, well I will answer this.

First this is a complete overhaul of fft that tries to match a new less magical lore without monsters being common (with the exception of Chocobos and Dragons) with gameplay so if you are a stickler for every battle being challenging and like having access to hiring squires. Then sorry this is not for you. Not every fight is hard. Some will be a pain and others will be a breeze. Most equipment besides one of a kind ones will not have a drastic change in stats from the worst to best. That part I have already like 80% done. Just got to rename a few items and and change the descriptions.
So the plot will be different. I am cutting characters that were in the original. No more Rafa, Malak, Mustadio, Ramza, Reis, Beowulf, Steel Giant. New characters are everywhere in this game. Some you will get to know and others you wont since that's life for you.

Magic is less abundant however it is not absent. The main character is a mage type however it is more of a rare thing. No generics will be on your team. Only special units so you wont get to do much to alter the characters growth paths as it lore wise so it is closer to a regular rpg in that way. However you wont end up with all melee types, mage types or archer type it will be a little more of a balanced team. No random battles either since there are no monsters and bandits are not likely to attack a group of heavily armed people  every couple of days. Deep dungeon will be available for power leveling for you later on for those who really want to grind or just fight a lot of enemies on a map at once. Will make those battles sometimes have the max number of sprites I can fit without issue.

There is one thing I am considering but not sure of yet which is if I should make the level ups not change stats drastically so abilities would become the only advantage besides some rather minor stat variations to add a realistic cap to for instance how much damage a knight can inflict as you can only get so strong so magic is really what will give you an advantage. (inspired by DAO lore) The other option is to leave the level up stats as they were mostly besides the special classes being altered.
The holy stones will still be in it but will not steal the plot, no more resurrecting Ajora subplot.

And more! 

Sound like your thing? Awesome, I hope you'll love it. Not your thing? Well thats cool too as there are great completed projects on this site and at least one of them I bet will appeal to your tastes.

Q:So when can you expect me to post a patch?

A:Well I am being lazy with event editing for now as I suck at using easyvent still even though it is an amazing tool. But that is the biggest thing left to do really and so just to get an alpha ready faster I am not going to make them perfect right now. I am going to fit the story around my limited event editing abilities because
if I exceed my abilities i'd have to hope someone would want to do the events for my story and that would be a lot of work and well
I want to get a playable version done and then I can tinker constantly as needed to make it perfected. Soooooo I would guess by the end of the year knowing how I obsessively work on projects that generally end with me cutting down to like 4 hours of sleep a night to get more done. I know I could be using that time for irl stuff and should I? Probably but this is more fun for me. However it is football season so if the Vikings are playing then I wont be doing any work that day.


2
How does Scorpio = Giant fat grey blob with a stomach mouth
How does gemini equal whatever Zalera is?

The other ones we see are based on the animal for that sign so why the 2 completely out of place ones? Well I guess 3 as Ultima is from the virgo stone but you could argue she is supposed to look like a...virgin? Ok actually that doesnt make a lot of sense either.

Seriously does anyone have any idea? Are there like different Japanese zodiacs and one it a giant fat blobs with a tummy mouth?
I know its a game and I should chill but I just cant come up with a single reason for this inconsistency and I would love if someone could help me understand it.
3
1. The story started off amazing with all this backstabbing and politics. It was great, however they jumped the shark with changing the reason behind everything to be resurrecting a demon. I wanted it to just continue to be about the war and intrigue.

2. You never get an option to kill Delita. Oh my god do I hate Delita. He is a massive prick and I remember playing this game the first time when I was about 10 and just thinking "When do get to kill that jerk already?" then the end of the game came and sure Delita got injured but that's it. Disappointing.

3. Bamalfula (probably spelled wrong but her name is a pain to remember how to spell) was
not recruitable. She was cool but playing without gameshark, you were unable to get her.

4. Generics were not able to attain special classes. Now when you got like lets say Gafgarian in your party as a guest, why can't he start training one of your knights as a Dark Knight? Or train Rad as one. I thought Rad was like his apprentice. It would have been cool for classes to be able to be learned or at least the skills from the person with the job.

5. Rad, Lavian and Alicia were immediately shoved in the background and none of them had unique sprites or jobs. The game was like "Hey look at these people! So important they are mentioned by name in a cutscene and will join you later...however after that they might as well not even exist". Maybe have Rad be a Dark Knight apprentice to Gafgarion (he was supposed to be like his apprentice anyway) and maybe he gets conflicted everytime you have to battle Gafgarion because of their former
relationship and all. Maybe he also has a thing for Alicia and that is why he stayed with your party instead of betraying you when his master did.

6. Rafa and Malak are recruitable but not Izlude. Their jobs are useless and other than adding in some more battles because of their personal issues, they contributed nothing to the game. When Malak died and was brought back I remember yelling "F****** cop out!" but then immediately thought when Ramza saw the dead Izlude with the stone nearby "Oh sweet he can bring back Izlude" but then he didn't. Jerk.

7.Not enough slots in your party menu for characters.

8. Cloud's limit breaks took charge time, No inclusion of like an otherworld Sephiroth for Cloud to fight, as well as him starting at level 1.

9. Lancers made battles too easy. A team of lancers can easily beat any battle in this game (first time through I always made everyone I used in battle either a Knight or Lancer since its not like you actually need to ever heal in this game as it is just too easy)

10. The main character is the least interesting and cool of the three brothers. Now if Zalbag was the mc then I would have actually used the mc outside of story battles where it makes you.

11. Alma. Everything about Alma annoys me.

12. You are forced to kill Miluda, why didn't Ramza just let her go like after the first fight with her? Or since she was just trying to escape, why not just let her? Don't even confront her. just back off.

13. Cid is massively OP and the part that bugs me most about that is there is no reason to like him. He doesn't get any real
character development or anything. It is just like "here is this uber powerful old dude, yeah you saw him in a few cutscenes and now we will act like he met you as a kid and now he is in your party"  meh. Agrias got more character development so you could actually form an opinion of her. Cid felt like a bad oc you would see in a fanfic, he is connected to the main character though that is never mentioned until one scene and then he never does anything after except be the fastest and strongest and have the best skills and...yeah you can see where I am going with this.

14. Not enough character interactions. Now I am not asking for like a romance system or anything here, just chances to learn more about the characters. Maybe that is what the bar could be used for. You bring some members of your party with you to a bar and depending on who is there different dialogues and all will be said. Like Reis and Beowulf would probably be all mushy and obnoxious. Cloud would probably sit alone and drink while getting admired by one of the chicks you brought (you know how people love themselves some cold loner types) Since Agrias is not a very warm person herself, she might even sit with Cloud because people tend to like to be with those that remind them of themselves.

15. Celia and Lede are apparently ultima demons who just take the form of dancer looking chicks with way better powers
than ultima demons have. I am pretty sure they were not originally supposed to be but because of whatever reason they just decided to do that to wrap up their characters and go "see now don't ever wonder about them again because they were just Ultima demons" which felt rather lame. Would have liked them to be fleshed out more. Same with the Marquis. 

16. Most of the jobs were either basically useless or there was already a better version of that class. Like Geomancer was basically a crummy version of Black mage. Mediator was pointless as was mime and calculator. Dancer was not a uesless class but it did feel like a silly class. She can dance and it can cause abnormal effects? WHAT? is it like a spell??? chemist did not need to even exist. Making you learn the "skill" for using a potion just felt like a middle finger from the game developers. "You want to use a potion? Hahaha better train as a chemist then, jerk."

17. Equipment restrictions. For instance why does a archer need a special ability to equip a sword? Is there some magical
force fields that prevents it? Or why cant a dude wear perfume?  I can understand the armor restriction for dancers since they probably could not dance in full plate armor but most of the time the restrictions are pointless.

18. You never get to use the zodiac stones though everyone else and their mom gets to.

19. After Algus and Delita seeming like friends Algus decides to randomly hate him and starts acting like a totally generic villain out of nowhere.

20. Zalbag gave the order to kill Teta just to also kill one Death Corps knight. It seems very uncharacteristic for him. Heck Ramza managed to handle every battle so far and even rescued the marquis and was about to go save Teta but nope, cant let that happen. Better just order Algus to shoot her then take out the one enemy there. Especially for someone like Zalbag who had faith in Ramza (evidenced when he basically tells you to go to Dorter to find the missing spy) to all of a sudden decide to kill his brothers best friends sister like that makes no sense. It was some lazy writing.

21. Random battles were with monsters. With monsters being that common, how do these people have time to declare wars? In fact why even need a war for enough bloodshed to summon Ultima back? just walk around a bit and kill monsters or just manipulate one side into dedicating part of their army to the erradication of monsters to make the world safe? Seems like a much smarter move as then you are avoiding suspicion since it seems everyone in the game knew there was something else causing the war.

22. Dycedarg can just take out Zalbag with one attack but can't do the same against Ramza. That makes no sense. Especially since Zalbag is a lot stronger than Ramza because of his unique job and all.

23. Vormav and the church are trying to kill Ramza before he knows whats going on. He paid those thieves in the early chapter 2 to kill Ramza and his companions with no actual good reason behind it. It is just to make sure the player knows they are the villains.

24. The ending. It did not explain ANYTHING. What happened to Cloud? Why didn't Cid let Olan know he was alive and protect his son later from being burned at the stake? Where did everyone go? Why did Ramza leave with his sister on Chocobos? Did Beowulf and Reis ever get married and start a family? What did Mustadio do after? Where did Agrias go? In fact why didn't they all just take down the church after taking down Ultima? They could have easily done so and that
would have helped out Ivalice quite a lot. How did they even escape?

25. Ramza orders milk at a bar.
4
The Bad

1. The renaming. They seriously tried to Americanize the names more which annoys me beyond belief when that is done. Many of the names now sound way less cool. Like "Vormav" that is badass name. That gets turned to "Folmarv" which sounds more like a name that would be given to the D&D character of a kid named Marvin. They also took "Izlude" which was another pretty awesome name and made it "Isilud". were they trying to take all the cool out of the names or something? Not to mention what they did to the Lucavi names.

2. Changing things to make the game fit together with some of other Final Fantasy games.  Now I would not mind if they did that to make it fit with one of the GOOD Final Fantasy games like anything before FFX. Seems stupid to connect it to
some of the most hated games in the series.

3. Adding in Luso. No! Someone from a game made purely for young children does not belong in a game full of backstabbing, politics, and assassinations.

4. Algus coming back as a DeathKnight. It made no sense. There was no stone by him to use
to call for one to make a deal. And if everyone can just make a deal with Lucavi without one of the
holy stones to come back to life then why are we not seeing an insane amount of super powered
undead knights? I highly doubt Algus is the only one without a stone who was willing to make a deal
with a lucavi. This was not thought out at all. It was a cheap tacked on battle in an attempt to add
more battles without them thinking of a reason why that battle is actually taking place.

5. The cell shaded cutscenes with bad voice acting.

6. Bad audio

7. Slowdowns that make it feel as though I am playing it on a bad emulator when I am playing it on psp.

8. The addition to the Beowulf plot line. It turned rather sexist and cliche. (Oh look the woman is kidnapped so the man has to go save her.) Seriously when playing that part I was just thinking "My arms are not long enough for the jerk off motion in my soul."  Seriously that whole part just seemed like a bad fanfic.

9. The holy stones now being turned into Auracite. It took a lot of the importance away from them considering
that there are more than 13 pieces of auracite and others use them for just summoning magic. Kind of killed
the mystique and the kind of ominous feel that the stones used to have back when they weren't just 13 of god knows
how many stones used for esper summoning.

The Good

1. Balthier is unlockable

2. The Dark Knight class.

3. Party roster increased so you can have all your unique characters and still have room for generic ones.

4. It is FFtactics game that is not one of those more kid oriented than Pokemon games.
5
Help! / ENTD specific scene questions.
October 05, 2013, 06:54:19 pm
1. So which is the scene where Ramza sees dead izlude and takes the stone near him? The reason is I plan to make Izlude recruitable in that scene (I will use easyvent later to edit the dialogue to justify how he is alive)

2. what is the last ENTD with Zalbag so I can make him recruitable too? (I don't mind if its zombie Zalbag)

I thought it would be scene 135 since that is the start of chapter 4 and in the start of that chapter is the scene however that does not have Izlude listed....unless he is just a decoration of the map built into it but that seems unlikely since every other dead person is a character listed and changable with FFTpatcher including the dead knights.
6
(Now I did put a warning for spoilers however I doubt that is needed for games made in the 90s however I have gotten in trouble on gamefaqs for not putting spoiler warnings for games on the sega genesis so I figure I should put it just to be safe.)

Even pre-jenova cell cloud was a total beast, he took down the great Sephiroth while Sephiroth had his sword through Cloud's torso. Yet in fft he is one of the weakest special characters. Why not have him as the uber character instead of Orlandu? It would make more sense to have a well known and loved character who has proven to be so insanely powerful it is not even funny in his own game also be strong in another game where he is a recruitable character.

No way could it be a balance issue since if balance was what they are after then Cid would not even be in this game and neither would Beowulf. (Seriously against anything but a boss Beowulf is basically the easy button because of his seal ability) Maybe they thought his limit breaks would be more useful than they are. However shouldn't the beta testing revealed that it is a total pain just to make Cloud any good?
7
So the total sprite limit of 9 is done because of the vram, I get that. Then things like the total slots for sprites, skills, jobs, maps in the game and all that were probably limited because the amount of data that could be held by a disc back then. Now the disc size getting a lot larger is not a problem as discs now have a lot more space than back then and if you are using an iso on your comp then space is REALLY not an issue. So the one limitation I am seeing is the emulator, if it was set to allow more than just the standard amount of vram that a ps1 had then limitations could be removed right?

So basically my question is. If epsxe used more total vram then could a hack be made that removes the sprite limits and increases the total available slots for jobs and all that fun stuff?
8
Well basically I am trying to figure out how to do that but I hit a dead end. I thought it sucked that monsters just came with their skills all learned and could not equip any items. Now I don't plan to try to allow chocobos to use swords or something silly like that. I would set their class in fftpatcher to not allow any equips. However the ones with more humanoid shapes I would like to make able to equip armor. However that is only secondary. Mainly I want all monsters to have to learn skills the same way as humans do. This way all variants of the same monster type can learn the skills of the other types with jp they earn.

So if anyone can tell me how to do that then I will do all the grunt work and release it for free use to the community. (Plus it will help me work more on my FFT overhaul which I also plan to release once it is done)
9
Well there are plenty of unused sprites, many are squires assigned to random jobs. So I plan to edit every ENTD to clean up all the job duplicates to give room for empty jobs that will be assigned to the unused sprites so that for all future projects there will be more than 2 slots available for custom characters. Now my issues is I can't seem to edit the sprites job association (for instance slot 58 (or 57 for shishi's editor) is a squire whose job is Samurai. So if someone can make an XML that can be used with FFTorgASM then I will do all the ENTD work. (Gafgarion for example has two Dark Knight jobs that are identical in nearly every form so one of those will become a blank slate job. Also Delita's unused Arc Knight job) I included below the xml I made that would assign sprites to unused jobs however it doesn't appear to work at all.
10
Help! / UWE Entries xml doesn't seem to work at all.
October 02, 2013, 01:50:34 pm
So I tried out the spread sheet to alter the entries for a few unused sprites to use some now unused jobs
however it does not seem to do anything. the number 58 sprite which is an unused squire that for some reason is registered to the job Samurai will not alter. I tried a few other ones as well and every time I load up a game to check the changes, there are none. I followed the directions given in the topic where it was uploaded but it doesn't work. Very frustrating.
11
Help! / Question about FFTorgASM
September 30, 2013, 03:46:31 pm
Ok so I hadn't done any modding for this game in years but I recently started again so I had to redownload the tools.
Now FFTorgASM has a lot more options than it used to. My problem is that many of the options don't explain what they do. The formula ones I get but there is a lot of stuff like "Sprite hack [Special units and generic humans]" and in the area where the description for formulas normally is it just says that exact thing again. It has me a bit frustrated since I googled around but cant seem to find any information on what these options mean. Is there a list of what the options actually do somewhere?