Final Fantasy Hacktics

@Zeke_Aileron it's the problem discussed in these posts earlier in the thread:

• https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=12523.msg228766#msg228766
• https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=12523.msg228772#msg228772

tl;dr the skill set shows up as mastered but there are no skills assigned to it. I assigned skills to the skill set in the everything editor, I set AP values for them, and assigned skills to equipment where they properly appear. It appears to only affect the Bishop and the Cannoneer. I'm not sure what's going on.

@Zeke_Aileron thanks very much for your help! New version (0.14) is up. I tested a Cursed Blade and an Idol ability and they both appear to be working now.

@Kiosade if you've unlocked any of the Idol abilities, curious to see whether they still soft lock your game.

Still to do:

1. Change Templar A-Ability requirements (pending a fix to #2)
2. Make Bishop and Cannoneer usable

Quote from: Zeke_Aileron on August 17, 2020, 03:49:34 pmYou have to change more than just the 2 Hexes, the Offset is for the Default skill animation, and after it is the Unit animation, if you just change the Skill animation and not the Unit animation, it won't sync up well.

@Zeke_Aileron Thank you! How do I do that? Where is the unit animation data? Do I have to change every single hex listed in the skill animations tab (I think there are 17, including subtype, start, first, until, second, etc. flinch/glee and then a bunch of untitled ones) at the animation offset?

@Zeke_Aileron here's a specific example of an animation change that isn't working.

Quote from: chocolatemoose on August 12, 2020, 01:53:13 amOn the game-breaking Idol bugs: I tested Toxic and Crazy on an Idol on a mostly complete save file that I have, and they didn't lock up the game. However, the animations aren't working like they should.

For example, Crazy uses the Sweeping Spin ability index (01B9). According to the data file the animation offset for Sweeping Spin is 053E8CE4. So I went to that offset and changed the animation from 25 00 to 0E 01 to give it the War Dance animation. However, when I tested it was still using the animation for Sweeping Spin (Gria spins around) and not showing the damage numbers properly. @Zeke_Aileron or anyone, any idea why this is happening? Is that the wrong offset? (if anyone is reading this, could also use help with the issues I'm having with the Bishop and Cannoneer a couple posts up).

Quote from: Zeke_Aileron on August 17, 2020, 12:02:36 pmi do know how to Hex edit the animations

Am I doing anything wrong with how I edited the animation hexes? I followed the same process throughout and it looks like it only worked for some of the changes.

Quote from: Zeke_Aileron on August 17, 2020, 09:37:10 amTwo block hex code, uh what???

Sorry, poor word choice - not totally clear on the best vocab to use. I mean in the hex editor each hex is a two-digit hex code, and the animations are defined by two of those two digit hexes (e.g. 01 E0, 00 74, etc.).

Update: uploaded v0.13. Changes include:

• Fixed defects with Moogle Shield (I forgot to check the box for can target self and increased the height difference from 0 to 1)
• Reduced MP cost for Rush from 12 to 8
• Geomancers no longer start with Nature's Embrace already mastered by default
• Reduced price on War Hammer to 2700 gil

Sorry for being a pest, but would love to get some help on how to fix the issues below. Relatedly, does anyone know how to change the A-Ability requirements for job unlocks? I could at least spare the Templar.

Thanks!

Quote from: chocolatemoose on August 13, 2020, 10:50:32 pmI've been play-testing some and I notice that not an insignificant number of the animation changes I made don't seem to have registered. I'm wondering whether this has something to do with the Idol abilities soft-locking the game.

To make the animation changes, I found the ability index of the ability that I changed, looked up its animation offset in the data sheets, then went to that offset and changed the two block hex code to the animation style I wanted to use. Yet, this didn't seem to work in all cases. It worked in some, but not all. I haven't tested extensively but it seems to be more of an issue farther down the ability index, like for Moogles but not for Humes. Does anyone know why or how to fix it? Could taking abilities originally assigned higher or lower in the index and moving them to jobs higher/lower in the index affect the offsets?

Another potential hypothesis is I wonder if the unexpected behavior has something to do with the unused abilities in the middle of the index (for example, I didn't edit Prominence (0070), I removed the race index from it and no skill sets have the ability assigned). Could this throw off the animation offsets for the remaining abilities? Could this also have something to do with why the Bishop and Cannoneer don't work properly?

Quote from: Kiosade on August 15, 2020, 12:24:10 amHoly Lance locked up the game same as that one Gria's idol moves did. I only saw it that one time so far but I'll let you know if another enemy moogle Knight ever shows up again. I'm using an R4 card that works for 3DS to play if that matters

Hmm, the soft-lock might have something to do with the hardware/software you're using. Maybe that's why it didn't lock up for me.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 15, 2020, 12:24:10 amAhh dang I guess the blocks off the whole magic side of Bangaa's for now. That's too bad!

The Oracle (fka Master Monk) and Psychic (fka Trickster) are still available and are magick-based. Still hope someone more knowledgeable than me can offer a solution to fix those classes. Even if they can't, if they can tell me how to change job requirements, I could at least unblock the Templar.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 15, 2020, 12:24:10 amOkay as I'm around level 21 now, I have to say, monsters are starting to feel SUPER unbalanced! Many of them seem to have AOE skills that blind or charm or silence from far away, and cost the monster no MP whatsoever (or sometimes only like 12). Seeing as every monster has at least 75+ MP and usually more like 100+, they can basically cast these crazy attacks whenever they want. I can usually deal with it if there's like 4-6 monsters, but all these battles where I have to kill like 10 random monsters are starting to be super difficult. I'm doing one right now, the Pit Beast used sandstorm to blind several units over time, and then cast subsidence which dealt like 70-80 damage to 2 units at once. Marlboros are downright bastards turning people to frogs, Lamias keep using Night to put everyone to sleep, and chocobo are giving their whole team Regen while meteoring me for 95 damage. I used a Eureka Crystal to fully heal and I'm already being partly destroyed again

Lamias seem like they could get annoying spamming Night. Have you unlocked a weapon with Astra yet (the Bishop and Templar are two of the 5 classes that get access to it - oops - the others are the Seer, Sage and Alchemist gets it via Remedies) or an accessory that makes you immune to sleep? Also, too, the Glass Bell and Luabreaker weapons have sleep immunity. I think you probably have access to the Glass Bell. Could be a game-changer. Otherwise are you bringing along a White Mage with Esuna, or Hurdy with Soul Etude if you've unlocked him? Hurdy + Glass Bell should make this a lot easier. Lastly, you could try running jobs that have higher resilience (it's a hidden stat), which will make them less susceptible to status ailments. For the most part magick jobs have higher resilience than physical jobs. Standouts in the mod include the Blue Mage (75%), Space Mage (70%), Oracle (70%), Scholar (70%) and Chocobo Knight (70%). Edit: there's also the Immunity P-ability too.

I tried to make Astra more prevalent because I had a feeling this would happen. Wish I knew how to get the Bishop working.

If I recall correctly Sandstorm has a typical an AoE of 2. Maybe try spacing your units in a way that enemies can't hit more than one at a time? I believe adding Toad to Bad Breath is the only monster ability change I made, and I hope it ups the difficulty. It's one of the changes from FFTA and FFTA2 that I never liked. On the flip side, if you have a Blue Mage and learn Bad Breath you will have a chance to inflict Toad.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 15, 2020, 12:24:10 amDid the game always have this much variance in damage by the way? I'm getting pretty frustrated because more often than not, a move will do 10 or even 20 damage less than it says it will. I'm all for a little randomness, but when it's like 25% less, it starts really being a bother. It's happening like every battle now, and driving me up a wall

Yes, and the accuracy numbers the game gives you are flat out wrong. It's a well-documented complaint about vanilla. I didn't touch anything related to variance (don't know how).

Quote from: Kiosade on August 15, 2020, 12:24:10 amOh and one more thing for tonight: I noticed dragoon's Jump ability seems to make them invincible for a bit afterwards... but makes them completely susceptible to status effects. Was that your intention, or a glitch?

That's intended. In the older FF games like 4, 5, 6, Jump ends up being a defensive ability because it takes the unit out of battle while they're jumping, so they can't get hit by enemy attacks. I tried to simulate that here by giving the unit bulwark (no damage) and delaying its turn.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 13, 2020, 10:42:53 pmWith the latest patch, I was successfully able to beat those two Bowen quests I had! She just used Cyclone instead and it was fine. I did actually notice one more glitched skill an enemy moogle knight used: Holy Lance. I haven't been able to afford that weapon yet to see if it locks up if I use it, but just thought you should know about it.

Did Holy Lance lock up the game, or was the animation missing? I played through a battle where I saw an enemy unit use it with no animation, which is partly what prompted my previous post, but it didn't lock up the game. For reference I'm using Drastic on an Android for a full playthrough and DeSmuMe on PC for spot checks.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 13, 2020, 10:42:53 pmI think I used to just put air render on damn near every physical fighter so I could hit good damage from far away. That being said, I think you've done a fantastic job with magic, because I feel like they are actually strong now and can DO something. Like, my red mage and Nu Mou BLM/GEO are tearing things up that don't have high resistance. I think I shied away from magic a bit in the vanilla game because of the what, 6 MP per turn refresh mechanic? You could only cast a mid level spell every 3 turns... really dumb.

That's great to hear, this is what I'm going for. The one thing to be wary of is if I've accidentally made mages *too* powerful. Might need to nerf them a little to make sure they don't run away with everything.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 13, 2020, 10:42:53 pmSince it's more of a farming ability, do you think it would be balanced for Steal Loot to be 4 MP?

I think I'll leave it where it is for now because all of the loots are on that one skill. It has loot lv. 1, 2, 3 and 4, so you can get up to 4 loots from it. That's a lot more powerful than one per skill on vanilla. Being able to unlock lv. 4 loot early can make a huge difference in equipment.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 13, 2020, 10:42:53 pm- Bishop class seems to be totally bugged. It says mastered before even unlocking it. I just recruited a Bishop by chance and it won't let him learn any Bishop skills.

Same goes for the Cannoneer. I have some posts on this earlier in the thread - I don't know what's going on or how to fix it and need some help from someone more familiar with hacking than I am. 

Quote from: Kiosade on August 13, 2020, 10:42:53 pm-The game is getting brutal! These random clanner fights feel like actual like i'm actually getting mugged, they're so difficult! This one clan had a Nu Mou that had Firaga already (this was when I was level 13-15) and did like 130-150 damage! Holy crap! I'm getting through regular quests, but man it feels like every weapon i have lately has some element the enemy is immune to or... or absorbs. The Yowie sand lion boss fight was a bastard, he did 100% to DRAIN like 120ish damage from far away! Somehow beat it first try but only through some quick thinking and items...

Like you said, magick is more powerful, which means that enemies can use it against you. Something to consider might be seeing what abilities enemy mages have, and if they're elemental, using units that have resistances to those elements.

While I buffed most monster stats growths, I actually didn't touch the Yowie at all; its stat growths are unchanged from vanilla. I've always found that fight to be one of the harder ones in the game.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 13, 2020, 10:42:53 pm-I noticed a quest that was kind of at odds with this mod. There was a clan trial where you have to fight tonberries, and you aren't allowed to use MP at all. I was able to beat it somehow with basic attacks, but it did feel like it wasn't supposed to be that tough? It wasn't even the hardest one either, so i'm not sure how i'll fare on the later ones...

That's awesome! I usually ignore most of the clan trials in vanilla so I didn't even know this was a thing.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 13, 2020, 10:42:53 pm-Was starting to do okay with gil after getting the discount from the AH, but am hitting more and more of a wall in terms of those "mid game" weapons. They're starting to be 5k... 6k... 12k... and i'm just hoping i'll be making enough to cover that soon!

Maybe use mug gil more or be more picky about purchases? I haven't played through a ton, but I notice that the amount of gil I steal with it is increasing as levels go up.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 13, 2020, 10:42:53 pm-Not sure if you noticed, but there's an inconsistency between job names for learnable skills on equipment and the actual job names you made. For example, it'll still say "Green Mage can learn Root" on a weapon, even if it's supposed to say Space Mage. This is usually fine, but I'm starting to get confused because there's a vest that gives a skill for Beastmaster... which doesn't work for the Hunter (now Beastmaster) job, but I assume it's supposed to be for the Nu Mou Geomancer class (which used to be Beastmaster)? I assume this is hard to change because you'd have to make new graphics, right? They're not just text boxes that are easily editable?

You're correct - anything that says Beastmaster on the weapon now goes to the Geomancer (on the Nu Mou). I think this one is graphics-based. Someone may have a solve for it somewhere on this board but I'm not familiar with it. Beastmaster, Geomancer and Green Mage are all reused jobs, so it can get confusing. The names just seemed kind of apt for what I wanted to do and I couldn't come up with anything better. I almost called the Green Mage a Nature Mage, but that didn't seem specific enough to earth/wind/water (why not the remaining elements?).

I've been play-testing some and I notice that not an insignificant number of the animation changes I made don't seem to have registered. I'm wondering whether this has something to do with the Idol abilities soft-locking the game.

To make the animation changes, I found the ability index of the ability that I changed, looked up its animation offset in the data sheets, then went to that offset and changed the two block hex code to the animation style I wanted to use. Yet, this didn't seem to work in all cases. It worked in some, but not all. I haven't tested extensively but it seems to be more of an issue farther down the ability index, like for Moogles but not for Humes. Does anyone know why or how to fix it? Could taking abilities originally assigned higher or lower in the index and moving them to jobs higher/lower in the index affect the offsets?

Another potential hypothesis is I wonder if the unexpected behavior has something to do with the unused abilities in the middle of the index (for example, I didn't edit Prominence (0070), I removed the race index from it and no skill sets have the ability assigned). Could this throw off the animation offsets for the remaining abilities? Could this also have something to do with why the Bishop and Cannoneer don't work properly?

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

@Kiosade:

I posted a new patch (0.12)where I made the following changes: 1) I reverted the skill animations back to the original ones, 2) I went through the formation editor and removed all the Idol skills with the exception of Encore and Love Me Two Times on some of them. Those skills are Doublecast and Magick Frenzy, so they shouldn't freeze up because they're just activating other skills. This will make the Idol a pretty boring enemy, but better than the game soft-locking. Let me know if you continue to run into any problems.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 12, 2020, 06:35:57 pmMost of the gear is like 1 to 3 thousand gil, but that one hammer with Geomancer's solar flare and Red Mage's Fire on it was 8100 gil which makes me feel like I either got it unlocked super early, or it's an unintended price. Actually I forgot I also unlocked the Chameleon Robe, and that a whopping 15150 gil! I know it has the Regenerate skill for white mage/bishop on it, but its barely a step up from Silken Robe, defense-wise (which is 2750).

The hammer I subjectively decided was a mid-game item (despite having Fire on it, whoops), which bumped the price up that high. If I set it at early game it goes down to 2700. This didn't make the patch I just posted but will make future ones. The Chameleon Robe is stupid expensive, even with its mediocre stats, because of its absorb holy. The fire/ice/lightning robes also have the same price because of the elemental absorption.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 12, 2020, 10:40:33 pm1) I like that the rend moves damage now, but they feel... not always worth it. They take a whopping 8 MP when most melee units have like 20-30 MP, do about half damage as their normal attack, and the status Debuffs don't even always work. I'm not sure if making them always lower stats 100% of the time would be OP, but right now it feels like a gamble to do an effect that probably doesn't even help THAT much? Many times I opt for just doing full damage instead.

I set skills' MP costs relative to each other and generally used 8 MP as the baseline. So if an ability deals damage and does a thing (whatever that thing is), that's typically the 8 MP starting point. As the skill's power, or effects increase in number or severity, I typically scaled up the MP cost accordingly. The rends' debuffs have a 1x Normal accuracy on them (probably should be 1x debuff on hit, but whatevs), which isn't too dicey.

The fact that you'd choose to deal full damage most, but not all, of the time is what I'm aiming for. I'm trying to introduce more constraints and tradeoffs into the game, like whether you have a good need to spend MP now or whether you should save it for later. I think things get kind of boring when there are clear optimal paths (e.g. geomancy-boosted parivir and master monk pummel in vanilla) or when it's equally easy to stomp the game no matter what choices you make.

One thing that I kept in mind when setting MP costs was how much MP units would have not only early game, but also mid game (level 30) and late game (like level 60 or so). If you were to level your units solely in pure play physical jobs (like the Soldier or Fighter) you'd end up with ~75 MP by the time you get to level 60. This isn't overwhelming, but it's enough to let you use most of the abilities more freely than you can now.

If you're feeling MP-constrained you could try switching those physical units over to magick ones for a few levels. Physical jobs get like 1 MP per level while the mage jobs are generally between 3-5 MP per level, depending on how pure play mage they are vs. utility (for Humes, white mage gets 5, black mage, 4, warlock, 5, blue mage, 3, seer, 6). The tradeoff for the extra MP is that you won't get as much ATK/DEF growth with a magick unit, but that's why I think it's at least an interesting choice. The upside physical units have is that even if you run out of MP you can still whack things with a physical weapon, whereas magickal units can hardly deal damage without MP (one reason rend MP is a much more useful skill in this mod).

Quote from: Kiosade on August 12, 2020, 10:40:33 pmFirst Aid is pretty useless feeling. I swear it used to be useable on other units? Right now it heals like 12 HP and I guess it's supposed to be used to heal stat effects, but haven't gotten much opportunity to use it for that yet.

First Aid is still there as filler for being the first ability you get (also why it costs 4 MP). In vanilla I think it only targeted self too. I actually removed the remove debuff effect, so all it does is heal a tiny amount of HP. It should probably get replaced, but since it's the first ability on the first job, I think whatever replaces it should still probably be not super useful.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 12, 2020, 10:40:33 pmArcher: Feels kind of weak? For their range advantage I guess I can't expect top-tier damage, but even their elemental damage attacks don't do THAT much damage on something that's weak to the element. Also 8 MP runs out quick for melee units (at least where I'm at in the game). Maybe 4-6 MP would be better for this?

Archer is one of the jobs that I'm not super confident about. I think I'm okay with the 8 MP balance for now. The pros are that you can hit every element (playable units and first-tier monsters have elemental weaknesses), with range, and the costs are still manageable. I haven't tested this yet, but I think geomancy will probably work with the elemental arrows, which should be not half-bad once you pick it up. The other multi-elemental physical job is the Spellblade, which gets a chance for status debuffs, but require a bladed weapon so they don't get range.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 12, 2020, 10:40:33 pmThief: I like that mug Gil does full damage and gets you money. Solid balance right there. Steal Status is fun to use, but mostly feels like a "once per battle" type of skill with its 16 MP cost. I'm gonna say it's probably okay where it is if that's what you intended. Steal Loot is... I don't get it, it's a way to get their item without having to kill them? I'd say add some sort of damage to this if possible, I don't tend to use it much as is but maybe I just don't understand its full potential.

Steal status ended up at 16 because 8 MP for the debuff and 8 MP for the buff. It might still be too expensive? For Steal Loot, I combined the lv. 1-4 loots from vanilla onto one ability. Steal Loot's benefit is getting more loot earlier to trade in at the bazaar for equipment. If you want a leg up on abilities and equipment, give it a shot.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 12, 2020, 10:40:33 pmMages: I really like the range they have for casting, and the damage is good. I don't tend to use white magic that much, because I'd rather do like 40-70 damage lol. I saw in a FFT mod that they opted to have all the Cure-line spells give Regen, do you think that'd be OP in this game?

I think healing magick is good enough as-is and I don't think they also need regen. Bringing along a unit who has some sort of healing, even as a secondary skill set, is never a terrible idea.

Quote from: Kiosade on August 12, 2020, 10:40:33 pmI don't have many (Good) skills in other classes to give an opinion on them yet. Oh but I have "Rush" on multiple units now and... it's kinda underwhelming for 12 MP. Like it's nice to not get countered sometimes, but I think it's too expensive for not even doing extra damage or anything.

Rush ended up at 12 MP because of the added chance to inflict immobilize compared to vanilla. I agree that the knockback is pretty useless, so I probably shouldn't have factored it into the base 8 MP cost. I'll lower its MP cost to 8 MP in future releases.

Thanks for the feedback and continuing to play!

@Kiosade thanks for playing and for the feedback!

On the game-breaking Idol bugs: I tested Toxic and Crazy on an Idol on a mostly complete save file that I have, and they didn't lock up the game. However, the animations aren't working like they should.

For example, Crazy uses the Sweeping Spin ability index (01B9). According to the data file the animation offset for Sweeping Spin is 053E8CE4. So I went to that offset and changed the animation from 25 00 to 0E 01 to give it the War Dance animation. However, when I tested it was still using the animation for Sweeping Spin (Gria spins around) and not showing the damage numbers properly. @Zeke_Aileron or anyone, any idea why this is happening? Is that the wrong offset? (if anyone is reading this, could also use help with the issues I'm having with the Bishop and Cannoneer a couple posts up).

If it's not the animation issue then I'm not sure what could be going wrong. Worst comes to worst I could change Loa's skillset, but I hope it doesn't come to that. Have you been in any other battles with Ravagers/Idols that lock up when they use their skills?

I posted a v0.11 in the first post in this thread where I tried unchecking one of the flags in the ability editor (second set on the left, 5th checkbox), which is ticked off in the vanilla black mage abilities, but not on all magick abilities (the Idol's are magick). I also removed Crazy from Loa on all the battles that I saw that included House Bowen, but I left on Toxic (I started and finished the changes before I read your second edit). I also fixed the Geomancer's Shining Flare default mastery bug (thanks for that catch!). Can you see if that fixes anything? If not I guess we're on hold with enemy Idols until someone more experienced than me can weigh in. I haven't had enough time to play the mod from scratch to get up to those battles.

On your other feedback:

Animist/Merchant - I'm trying to go for usable and useful but not overpowered. I never really use gil/weapon toss in vanilla, but thematically it makes sense on the job. There's more utility than before and quicken is always nice.

I'm curious about how frequently you typically buy equipment. Do you always try to pick up everything as soon as you unlock it, or do you buy on an as-needed basis?

I think gil is way too easy to come by in vanilla, so it isn't a limiting factor at all. I like the idea of forcing the player to make tradeoffs about what you're prioritizing. That said, I appreciate the feedback on whether I might have gone too far in the other direction. What do you think would improve this balance?

As an aside, the formula for calculating equipment prices is really wonky: I factor in stats (some stats like speed/evasion are more valuable than others), whether it's early/mid/late game and whether it has a special effect (elements/statuses) and how useful that effect is. If the formula prices it <2x the vanilla price, I gross it up to 2x.

Would you say the monsters are beatable with some effort, or are they too insanely hard? I haven't had a chance to test too many battles yet. According to my calculations, with equipment player stats should still be ~5-10% higher than monsters (down from ~+30% in vanilla), but without equipment players stats are probably lower by 10%. That's by design, but I'm going for a mild difficulty increase, not an insane one.

the screenshot above has the max AP value for cura set (14), and learning it works fine on my white mages, just not on the bishop. Is there somewhere else I need to make a change?

I double checked cura's bangaa race index hex against vanilla, and it looks like it's working fine (should be 44 in both).

Edit: attached is a screenshot of vanilla cura in the ability editor. I double checked the race index of all the bangaa abilities in the ability editor to make sure that I didn't use 44 anywhere else just to be safe.

I also looked up the skill sets in hex to check on them and make sure the AP was assigned there to the specific race skill. For cura at least, it checks out. One thing I noticed is that in my mod the first/last ability hexes for each skill set are different from vanilla. For example, in vanilla intercession's first/last are E9/F0, but in my mod they're A2/A9. Not sure if this makes a difference. I looked up the offset for the ability at A2 (cura) and the correct AP hex is listed a few hexes down (14).

As another potential mitigation if this is unsolvable, how can I change the A-ability requirements for jobs? Templar seems to be okay (it doesn't have the "mastered" text next to it when you change jobs) but is locked behind Bishop. At least I could make that job available.

I was playing/testing and I came across a bug that I'm not sure how to fix.

My bangaa appear to have no abilities assigned to the bishop and cannoneer. I checked in the job, ability and everything text editors and I'm not sure what's causing it. I reassigned a couple of the bishop abilities to and from different abilities, but none of the cannoneer abilities. The abilities are properly assigned to the desired equipment.

Has anyone come across this kind of issue?

Decided to post an initial version of the mod in the original post in the thread. I haven't extensively tested all abilities, but I also don't think many of the changes I made were particularly risky.

If you get a chance to play it, I'd love to get your feedback on the following:

• Is there anything that breaks/soft locks the mod? (I'll try to fix these as soon as I can)
• Are there any OP jobs/abilities? Likewise, are there any abilities or jobs that you would never touch with a 10-foot pole?
• How is the balance with the revamped stat growths and elemental changes? Is MP growth still too easy to come by? Are the glass cannon jobs not fragile enough? How difficult are monsters?
• Is there anything that could use additional polish, like skill animations?

One small thing: I balanced MP growth around not using the Halve MP clan privilege, which I'd like to remove but don't know how. If you really want to use it I can't stop you, but if possible I'd encourage you to not play with it.

Update: the changes are in and abilities appear to be assigned to equipment as intended - with one exception.

I planned to give my Alchemist mirror items, but tried to break out the individual items as abilities as opposed to burying them under mirror items (mostly because thematically it felt right, the Alchemist's vanilla skills are super meh, and I couldn't think of anything else to give the Alchemist that thematically fit).

I looked at the ability editor's second page and saw that there were two flags that I think only show up on items - the 2nd and 7th checkboxes on the third row of checkboxes. The 7th one is present on both items and mirror items, while the 2nd is only present on mirror items.

I tested unchecking the 2nd one, but when I tried to buy the equipment at the store it showed up as 0 AP. I tested unchecking both the 2nd and 7th ones, and the equipment had the desired AP at the store, but the skills weren't usable in battle.

Has anyone tried messing around with mirror items before and know of a way to accomplish this?

If it isn't possible to break out the skills while still tying them to items I'll probably keep everything under mirror items but make it the Alchemist's only skill and tie it to a high-level item. It'll be an odd job - nothing until late-game, and then it'll be fun, but I never liked vanilla's skill set and trying to give it some of the mirror items skills without tying them to items feels like an incomplete grab bag.

Outside of this, there are a couple small things I want to test and work on a changelog, and then I hope to have a v0.1 out.

Thanks for all your help so far.

Edit: looks like checking the checkboxes makes the ability set usable by the alchemist, since I added the Nu Mou's race index to the abilities in the ability editor and added the abilities to the job set in the everything editor. I think I'll run with this for now, even if the equipment doesn't contribute to you learning the abilities. I guess you could argue that the item stock functions as its own limiting factor.

I finished implementing the changes across the different editors.

I started doing some smoke testing to make sure everything is working properly and I think I ran into the issue described here - https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=12050.msg223926#msg223926 - where abilities reassigned across races to have 0 AP costs on equipment.

Quote from: Zeke_Aileron on August 09, 2018, 10:46:33 amHello there, in the Ability editor you'll also need to not only change the race for the ability, but you'll need to change the AP index in which the ability can be learned into for the race.

Each race has a set number of index hexes that correspond with abilities.

@Zeke_Aileron (or anyone else) can you help me understand what the AP index is, where I can find it and change it as needed? Adding/changing races via the ability editor seems straightforward, but I don't know what those hexes correspond to.

Edit: I made a point of changing the hex value in the max AP field in the everything editor in the command list editor tab, so it's not 0 there (e.g. I assigned Pummel to the Fighter and changed the max AP value there to 2D but it still appears as 0 in-game). I think it's the race issue in the ability editor.

Edit 2: It's also worth noting that I'm not using any new/empty ability slots in the editor, just repurposing existing abilities (like changing the vanilla beastmaster abilities into new ones).

Edit 3: It's the highlighted index in the attachment, right?



I'm just trying to figure out what hex to put in there, if the specific hex matters, etc. Should I just look at the order of the abilities in the command list editor (which is a function of the job order in the job editor), line up the abilities by race, then assign a set of ascending hex values to a race's ability sets (at the moment hume goes to 74 (in hex)), and then do I add those hex values to the corresponding abilities in the ability editor? For example, my Paladin's Sanctify ends up with a hex of 2F (it's 47th in the hume's list). Should I put 2F in the race/index hex in the ability editor?

Thanks in advance!

Quote from: Chronovore on July 31, 2020, 03:13:06 amA main complaint in this game is that it can be slow to play

That's the first I've heard of this. I've never considered the game to be slow because of an extra move in battle. Can you point to some of these complaints, or is this just something that you don't like about it?

Quote from: Chronovore on July 31, 2020, 03:13:06 amThe "favor of physical against magick" you mentioned includes physical ranged attacks without cost like Air Render, Aura Blast, Sonic Boom, etc.

I added MP costs for all abilities, so this statement doesn't describe the mod I'm working on.

Quote from: Chronovore on July 31, 2020, 03:13:06 amThe point is, restricting movement restricts play and there needs to be a very good reason to do it. That reason needs to be explained comprehensively and in context with other features of combat.

To give a few examples of melee weapons, which can be dual-wielded for 2x damage, end-game blades have 64 ATK, katana, 58 (not including the Hyakushiki), Knightswords, 72. Ranged weapons, which cannot be dual-wielded, top out lower. The strongest greatbow is 55 ATK, card, 52, and gun, 35. On the defensive side, most late-game light armors have DEF in the mid 40s, while heavy armors are in the mid 50s, and that's before helms vs. hats.

In vanilla, unless you're building for ranged ultimas, the incentives are skewed towards walking up to enemies with a melee beatstick (e.g. dual-wielding Heritor, Geomancy-boosted Parivir, Master Monk with Pummel). Units that can equip heavy armor have the extra bonus of more durability through their armor. Therefore, to offset that advantage and not make a build like Paladin/Parivir an obvious choice, I think it's more interesting to give players a tradeoff between durability vs. speed and let them decide what makes the most sense given the battle they're in. This might just be me, but I don't consider it fun when one choice is always optimal or all choices are optimal enough that it doesn't matter what you choose.

At any rate, here are the jobs whose move I reduced from four to three:

• Soldier
• Paladin
• Warrior
• Moogle Knight
• Dark Knight (fka Lanista)
• Raptor

*Chocobo Knight and Engineer (fka Tinker) have had their move increased to four.

Of these, while I've tried to make the Soldier and Warrior more appealing, I think it's unlikely that they'll be used as primary jobs past early game (though they have better HP growth than other units). Of the remaining ones, the Paladin is the only one that doesn't have any ranged attacks. Of the vanilla three-move jobs that I left at three move, the Defender is the only one that doesn't have any ranged attacks. Paladin and Defender both have Cover, which, while not offensive, is ranged.

In vanilla I didn't use most of the three-move melee classes (e.g. Defender, Templar) because I found their abilities unappealing, not because they had three moves.

I agree with the way you're thinking about this, which is that FFTA and A2 have a ton of useless abilities that you would never use. I am a little sympathetic to abilities that you could at least use for part of the game before moving onto more advanced versions (e.g. fire->fira->firaga), but there's a ton of trash in there.

I think you only need to worry about certain jobs being overpowered if they're clearly always a better choice compared to another pick. You could solve that by either nerfing the OP job or making the underpowered ones more useful. If you can't come up with a worthwhile ability, cut it.

Reducing the number of abilities is not the only option you have available. Another option is to change the useless abilities to abilities that a player might have a use for. That's what I'm trying to do with the mod I'm working on anyhow (so long, Parley!).

Just one question so far: does anyone know the skill animation hex for Dragonheart? It isn't listed in data spreadsheets.

Otherwise I'm considering changing my Summoner's Bahamut skill animation to Silver Disc and renaming it CD Rom of Doom.

Since the previous post I've accomplished the following:

• Translated the ability proposals I had into a format aligned with the fields in Lennart's Ability Editor
• Tested an animation change

Next steps:

• Change jobs in job editor
• Change abilities in ability editor
• Change ability animations with goldfinger
• Retitle job/abilities in everything editor and make sure enemies have skills
• Edit equipment in Nightmare