Final Fantasy Hacktics

No. WotL's equipment extension was done in a way that would have been extremely crude and tedious to replicate, and AFAIK, no one has ever cared to take a stab at it.

One of the most limiting features of it is that the base game uses almost every value in an entire byte for equipment and item slots, and the data for unit stats was planned accordingly. Basically, it's like every value from 00-99 has already been used, and going any higher would require changing that to 0000-9999. There'd have to be some way to double the number of digits (or fake it) for every single equipment slot on every single unit stat data section, as well as make every single line of code in the game that looks at the equipment also look at the upper half of the ID number. Or there'd have to be some way to have different IDs mean different things depending on which equipment slot it was in, making it so that, say, the ID for Excalibur in the hand slots meant the Crystal Helmet in the head slot. Aaaaand then every line of code that looks at the equipment slots would need to be adjusted for that.

You are incorrect.

Units are generated with a lot of randomness involved, and there's nothing stopping the units in the Monastery battle from rolling Item equipped as their secondary with Potion learned.

The starting generics also don't generate with any jobs unlocked beyond Squire or Chemist in vanilla. Ever. They're hard set to only have Chemist Level 1, and standard unit generation would also give them Squire Level 1. You're probably used to seeing them have some of the physical and/or magical jobs unlocked when you can first get to the Formation screen because it happens after the Gariland battle, but in TLW, you can see them before. Because of the random nature of their starting JP, they can be at just about anywhere between 100-200 (IIRC) in either their Squire or Chemist jobs, meaning that one battle with six ally units on the field is quite likely to unlock jobs for most of them.

The ones in blue are the changes included in TLWotL. The ones in red are the ones that aren't. The green lines are for changes that aren't exactly the same. Purple is just for anything I wasn't sure about.

Not this comprehensive, but I'll take a stab at it. The core The Lion War patch itself has fewer of these, but off the top of my head, here's what you'll get in its sister patch, The Lion War of the Lions:

Virtually all dialogues, locations, characters/monsters, items, abilities and jobs are retranslated (e.g. Priest is now called White Mage; Cidolfas Orlandu is now called Cidolfus Orlandeau); English versions now have text in Early Modern English.
Some status icons are changed in the English versions to reflect their new names.
The English versions have a larger font, more like the one seen in the Japanese releases. Menus and text boxes are unchanged.
A 16:9 aspect ratio is used.
This allows the party roster screen to display more characters per row.
Audio quality is reduced somewhat.
Versions outside of Japan now use X to confirm and Circle to cancel, rather than the opposite.
The Lion War and Job Demonstration attract mode videos no longer play when waiting at the title screen.
Fully animated movies with voices and subtitles now replace some specific key story cut-scenes (the Japanese version does not contain voice acting); this includes the intro and ending sequences (which were CG movies in the original game).
When choosing Ramza's birthdate, the corresponding zodiac sign is now displayed.
A new calendar now displays dates in the zodiac format (e.g. Aries 12) rather than using the Gregorian Calendar (January to December).
Additional story battles, side-quests, and events are added.
Two new jobs are added: Onion Knight and Dark Knight. Unlike in WotL, the Dark Knight is unlocked by reaching Level 8 in Black Mage and Knight.
The unlock requirements for some jobs are upped:
To unlock Arithmetician a character needs White Mage, Black Mage, Mystic, and Time Mage to be on Level 5 instead of Level 4 like before.
To unlock Bard the male character needs to have Summoner and Orator at Level 5 rather than at Level 4 like before.
To unlock Dancer, the female character needs to have Geomancer and Dragoon at Level 5 rather than at Level 4 like before.
To unlock Dragoon, the character now needs to be a Level 4 Thief, up from the Level 3 it was before.
To unlock Geomancer, the character now needs to be a Level 4 Monk, up from the Level 3 it was before.
To unlock Mime, the character now needs to attain Level 5 on Geomancer, Dragoon, Orator, and Summoner, up from the Level 4 it was before. The Level 8 requirement for Squire and Chemist remained unchanged.
To unlock Monk, the character now needs to be Level 3 Knight, up from the Level 2 it was before.
To unlock Mystic, the character now needs to be Level 3 White Mage, up from the Level 2 it was before.
To unlock Ninja, the character now needs to be Level 4 Archer and Level 5 Thief, up from Levels 3 and 4 respectively. The Level 2 Geomancer requirement remained unchanged.
To unlock Orator, the character now needs to be Level 3 Mystic, up from Level 2 Oracle from before.
To unlock Samurai, the character needs to be Level 4 Knight and Level 5 Monk, up from Levels 4 and 5 respectively. The requirement for Level 2 Dragoon remains unchanged.
To unlock Thief, the character now needs to be Level 3 Archer, up from Level 2 Archer from before.
To unlock Time Mage, the character now needs to be a Level 3 Black Mage, up from Level 2 Wizard from before.
Many abilities now take more JP to master.
Two new characters are added: Luso from Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (replaced with Ashley Riot from Vagrant Story) and Balthier from Final Fantasy XII.
Cloud can be recruited earlier in Chapter IV after completing Fort Besselat, rather than after defeating Adrammelech.
Delita is briefly playable in two battles.
Roster size is increased from 16 to 24 20, at the cost of Guest slots.
The special lines when using abilities during battle (such as White Magic and Swordplay) are removed from the English versions.
The attack name of a summon spell or Iaido ability is now displayed in the English versions, rather than the name of the summon or katana. (Not sure about this one.)
Generic character lines are now unique in the English versions.
Changes to JP costs, ability charge times, character and enemy stats, and Safeguard in the localized versions are adjusted to match the original Japanese version.
Unyielding Blade skills from Meliadoul, Folmarv and Orlandeau have been upgraded to damage enemies even if they're not using the specific piece of equipment (although they will still fail if said enemy has the Safeguard ability); this means monsters can also be damaged by these skills.
Rapha and Marach's seer abilities result in 1~10 random strikes instead of 1~6, and are more accurate (though not in the same way as in the PSP version). Reis's Holy Breath ability also has 1~10 strikes instead of 1~6.
All of Rapha's abilities are now learnable as soon as she joins the party in Chapter III, instead of most being unavailable until Chapter IV.
Wiegraf's stats when fought in Chapter III are reduced.
The Fort Besselat sluice battle in Chapter IV now ends when all enemies are defeated, instead of after throwing a pair of switches. (Unsure about this one.)
The sound novels are only available in the Japanese version. The three Sound Novels that were translated are available.
A Multiplayer system with two game modes is added via Ad-Hoc.
New items are available, mostly obtained through Multiplayer.
All game-breaking glitches are fixed, including the JP scroll glitch, Weapon duplication bug, Poach bug, Ghost Chocobo riding glitch, Quickening glitch, and Jump glitches.
The Oil status now properly doubles damage received from fire attacks rather than having no effect.
Every time a spell is cast or a certain action is performed, the game slows down.

Looks like the incremental jump range has some issues with the AI. I had seven +1 Horizontal Range Jumps and Izlude could never figure out that he had could Jump more than one panel away when using the normal Dragoon skillset. I tried giving him an 8/8 Jump in the final Vertical Jump slot, but he was still confused.

Turns out the AI only seems to read the highest Horizontal range number from the abilities that are considered Horizontal jumps. When I turned all my Jumps into +1, +2, etc., Izlude's visible range was the whole map, but he capped out at 6 or so because he ran out of Horizontal Jumps. Fixing it for him required reserving Level Jump 8 as his own custom skill and, of course, setting it to +8. Plus giving him the final vertical Jump as another +8. Didn't get too in-depth with Vertical testing, though.

Edit: Got home, did some breakpoint testing. Found where the AI runs the routine to check for the maximum Jump range. Setting it to be a flat max range of 8 seems to fix it, since the AI just ignores invalid tiles anyway.

Cancel Movement 1.14c Unofficial broke Fly because I added two lines to something I incorrectly thought was free space. Thankfully, Xif's code included two nops at the very end of it (which, in hindsight, really should have made it obvious it wasn't free space), so it was an easy fix.

I made this post intending to delete the previous one. I, uh. Can't delete it.

The .xml for Cross Skip 1.14 is just super broken. Events lock up on the first text box, with O no longer advancing text. Pressing X advances it once and then crashes the game. Xifanie, I don't know if you have a different set of xml files, since from what Akashachi says, the ppf runs great with no issues, but the xmls...

I vaguely remember there being discussions about the latest version of QoL but the specifics are long gone for me, so I don't know if it's come up before.

Also, I updated Refund Abilities.

The ARH Generator Mini spreadsheet is bugged.

A very late reply to you, Retro, but I don't remember/know if anyone ever figured it out.

Even now, the version of ARH Generator Mini included in TLW does not automatically copy the contents of the ARH Restrictions set over to the XML tab. The first line under "<Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="ED1A0">" should have a formula of =MAIN!E2&MAIN!F2&MAIN!G2&MAIN!H2, with the next line replacing 2 with 3, and so on, but it's all just text in that section.

I downloaded the 1.14 xml pack a ways back and found that a lot of what was in it seems to conflict heavily with the free space used by TLW and TLWotL, in ways that 1.13b doesn't. For the most part I just opted to use 1.13b instead. However, 1.13b's Cancel Movement lets you spam Cancel to constantly regain HP and MP, so I moved things around in 1.14 and it worked fine. (Much appreciate the liberal use of labels rather than fixed locations. Super easy to accomplish.)

But traps and Move-Find Item didn't prevent me from canceling. Did some digging today and figured a few things out. They attempt to use the same check that teleportation failures do: set byte to 0xFF so that, later on, it gets set to 0x00 (which locks cancel), while any other value is set to 0x01. However, they run after that lock, so they end up staying at 0xFF, which doesn't lock cancel.

On top of that, that teleportation failure? Turns out the teleportation failure calculation runs before committing to the teleport. It happens when you first select the tile, before even seeing the option to confirm the teleport attempt. There were no commands that affected that byte on the success calculation - meaning that if someone went to teleport, the game calculated it as a failure, but the player changed their mind before confirming the teleport, they could make another attempt, succeed, and have their movement locked anyway.

So I went and fixed that up.

I also did another thing recently, and since I'd say it's a QoL feature, and I'm posting in this topic anyway, I might as well show it here, too:


It comes with a partial fix to the JP Scroll Glitch by preventing underflow. I have no idea how xml files can be set up to provide dropdown menus/value entries, and the idea of making it something that can be toggled during the game came up in a conversation, so I included options depending on whether Variables xD5, xD6, and xD7 are flagged.
Variable xD5 fully fixes the JP Scroll Glitch.
Variable xD6 prevents refunds (even glitched ones, whether or not xD5 was flagged).
Variable xD7 causes refunds to only give half the JP back.

I've also now included a v1.2, which blocks the player from refunding equipped RSM skills. Makes the book hit sound when you try; seemed like a good sort of bounce-off sound to indicate an issue.

Feel free to include Refund Abilities in the QoL pack if you want, and hopefully the fixes to Cancel Movement also come in handy?

A while ago, I prepared a quick fix for anyone dealing with the Balthier softlock that comes from having 4 or fewer characters in Ramza's name, but I wasn't able to upload it here.

I don't have a save file that can test this myself, but it should work fine. But just to be safe, make sure to apply the patch to a different copy of your TLW/TLWotL ISO - the save file will still work with this other copy afterwards. Do not apply the patch to a vanilla ISO - it's just a quick fix patch, not a new version of TLW.

https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=12951.0

No, not at all.

Come on, Elric, tell us how you really feel about this translation.

But, yeah, the name isn't changing. There're already more than enough people confusing TLW with WotL, and naming a PSX mod after the PSP game's subtitle would only make it so, so much worse.

We all vouched for a silly name because, as silly as it is, it does perfectly sum up what this project is. TLW with the script of WotL.

Also, it genuinely makes me chuckle.

No. Don't mix mods, ever, unless they explicitly say they're compatible.

Yeah, it's either that or you've done extra things with your ISO.

I'm pretty sure there's an ASM hack that allows you to rename your human units at the Soldier Office anyway.

Quote from: Ramza108 on October 18, 2022, 09:19:38 amDamn. 4 letters huh?  After realizing this bug 30 hours into my current playthrough, I'm thinking of another 4 letter word right now. Lol.

Too bad.  Such an obscure thing.  I'll just skip balthier for now.  Still lots of awesome stuff o check out

If your save file is in .gme format, it seems FFTastic can edit it. Otherwise, you can feel free to send it to me and I'll add some half-spaces that will allow you to unlock him (even if characters saying Ramza's name will sometimes look a bit weird from then on).

This bug was recently posted in the Lion War Bug Report topic.

I've tested this event at all speeds and with a completely blanked out name. Seems to work fine now. I just set the message wait to pretend that Ramza has no name at all, so it will mute slightly too early rather than risk softlocking. Given that it tends to line up with the timing of the music change and the action scene, I don't think anyone will even notice.