Final Fantasy Hacktics

So far it's just the one.

It's a change-up of Glain's "Gear-Level Bugfix/More Selective Equipment" Very small change to his code, but one that makes it do the exact opposite of his hack.

The idea is that I want to have more tightly balanced weapons, and as a result, the weapons you have access to at level 1 should still be viable (though not optimal) even at level 99. As such, I want the NPCs to make use of it. Each job will also have access to a wider variety of weapon types that still make sense for the job.



Basically, Glain's hack fixes an error in the existing gear selection function, which was making the game think all items after the first category were whole new categories, rather than choosing from the best level-appropriate item out of each category.

My change to the main check in his hack should make it consider each allowable item individually, such that a level 40 character has the same odds of having an ice-brand as he does of having a broadsword, for projects such as Mine where the old items don't become worthless as you level up.

If you're looking to test it yourself, I also attached a .fftpatch that should let you see it in action quickly and easily.

Most of the time it works perfectly, but once in a while I'm getting items in invalid slots, like you can see in the attachments. Anybody have any idea what's causing this behavior?

So, I'm sure many of you guys have seen me around the IRC asking random questions lately. Since I've been asked a couple times what I'm working on, I figured I'd start this post. I'll update it as I make progress.

Background
A few years back I started on a patch based on the idea of "no special characters". All the abilities named characters had would be from generic jobs. Special Jobs would be slotted into the job tree. Then the idea expanded a bit. Wanted more meaningful choices of ability in each skillset, rather than some skillsets having very few.
Then I dropped it for a long while; due to a combination of focusing on my other interests (tabletop RPGs) and life stuff.
Anyways. A few months back I decided to pick it back up. Pulled up my old notes, parsed through them, and took things in a new direction, while keeping the main idea from the old one.

Main Premise

• Generics can accomplish any skillset a special character can.


• All skills/items are potentially viable at all levels.


• All actual skillsets should have 4-6 well varied options to choose from.


• Much Tighter Job Balance - this will likely take some trial and error and testing.


• Lift some design & balance ideas from D&D4e, for class roles determining stat loadouts and themed skillsets, and an explicit stat each job relies on (PA, MA, or MIN(PA/MA)).

Why?
I like FFT, but felt it lacked some things, and I want to play it without the things that annoy me. If, when it's done, someone else enjoys it too, all the better. This is obviously a much simpler project than Jot5, but it's a more complicated project than Rebirth, or 1.3.

So here's where the project plan currently is.

Planning/Design.
085% Done - Jobs - Heavily redesigned Job tree & skill lists.
085% Done - Stats - Core stat balance around drastically reduced stat growth, to maintain the relevance of the Items and Skills.
100% Done - Weapons and Armor - Items may be a bit less or more useful, but all items should be usable at all levels.
010% Done - Skills - Skills may be a bit less or more useful, but all skills should be usable at all levels. Additionally, each skillset should have 4-6 meaningfully different skills to choose from - so far I've done broad-strokes "what skills should be in what jobs" but have not redesigned or rebalanced any of those skills yet.
000% Done - Monsters - Haven't even looked at them yet.
000% Done - Battle Redesign - Haven't Started Yet

Implementation
000% Done - ASM - I have some preliminary notes on what I'll need, and some research stuff for R3000 I've been reading. Once I finish the rest of my planning, I should have a better idea of what I'll absolutely need vs stuff that would just be nice to have, so I can prioritize the tasks. Then I need to familiarize myself with MIPS R3000 ASM a bit more, and figure out how to do the parts unique to game hacking as my coding experience is all with from-scratch projects, and most of that is with things like C#/Java/PHP/SQL. I've done some ASM, but not since like, 2009, and not for MIPS R3000. This is going to be the most difficult task, and I'll break it down into subtasks once I have a better Idea of what I'm going to need to do.
000% Done - Patcher - No point in doing most of this yet, lots of small details may change. Hence the reason I'm designing stuff in autocalculating spreadsheets right now.
000% Done - TacText - Haven't even looked at this part yet.
000% Done - Battles - Haven't looked at this part yet either, but it should be fun, once I get to it.

Going to balance it as best I can during planning and using excel, but inevitably I'm going to run into stuff that isn't going to work out as intended; and I intend to tweak the balance after it's otherwise done.

Has anyone done up a spreadsheet that will allow you to punch in the variables of a class, and it spits out the stats you an expect to have at leach level, or possibly charts them in a graph?
How about one that allows you to see what various formulas will spit out, damage wise, based on stats per level for a class?

Or is that something I would have to come up with myself if I am wanting to have some numbers crunched for class balancing?

So, I was chipping away at this (see attached file) a while back trying to make the more boring skillsets into equippable support abilities, such that I might give them more interesting base skillsets.

I don't recall what I started with, but I know I didn't come up with it from scratch looking for offsets or anything like that.

Jump works great as a support ability by the way.

I have not had luck with doing the same for Item, Throw, and Charge, however.

Has anyone else toyed with this idea? Is it a quick fix to make the proper menus pop up and to have them show up in your actions menu in combat?

So I'm looking for some assistance.

Earlier today I was pointed in the direction of this thread:
http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=10132.0

Here's the most relevant bit:

Quote from: Pride on December 08, 2013, 04:12:00 am
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Patches> 
<Patch name="Support Equip Jump">
    <Description>Support skill below Non-Charge gives access to skillset x34</Description>
   <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="F762C">
      E8FFBD27
     1000BFAF
     92004392
     00000000
     02006330
     03006010
     21302002
     7E69060C
     34000534
     12004392
     1000BF8F
     1800BD27
     0800E003
     00000000
     92006590
     00000000
     0200A230
     04004010
     00000000
     34000234
     000002A2
     01001026
     FF000234
     000002A2
     0800E003
     00000000
   </Location>
   <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="11A4F0">
     9979050C
     00000000
   </Location>
   <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="13347C">
     8B79050C
   </Location>
  </Patch>
</Patches>

x92 is the support set, x02 is the specific support skill in the set, and x34 is the skillset.

I'm trying to determine if this is doable for other skillsets, and in other locations.

Ideally, I would like to do this 3 more times. Once for Charge, once for Throw, and once for Item; then I can focus on giving those jobs more interesting skill lists.

changing the x34 to x39(throw), x9c(charge), and xa1(item) is straightforward.

I'm not clear on how I come up with the appropriate numbers to replace the x92 and the x02. Can someone give me a hand figuring that out? I was thinking I would use x01e5, x01e1, and if possible x01bb (which I no longer need since I have removed all of the item break skills). Can someone help me figure out how to get the "support set" and "support skill" within the set?

This is something I thought of that would be kindof neat, and as far as ASM hacks go, seems simple enough.

Increase the damage on rear and flank attacks, to something more similar to what's found in FFTA, and perhaps also an option to half way between the two.

In FFTA If I recall correctly, it's much more worthwhile to attack the enemy from the rear than it is in FFT. I think it would be neat if you could get more benefit out of better positioning.

Anyone up for it?

If you don't mindexplaining, I'd also be interested in seeing how you would accomplish such a thing. Figuring out what to change and where is something I don't quite understand.

I've heard people mentioning the limited amount of space available in the files, and people are trying to make use of that space conservatively so as to not run out.

I have to ask: Why does the file size limit still matter?

If you're not going to run it on an actual playstation, shouldn't you be able to expand the file without too much trouble? Is this an issue of the emulator emulating the hardware, and not being able to read/handle a larger file?

I'm just curious.

~DH

I'm curious...

If I want to make a few adjustments myself, can I make them on top of a completed mod, or would I probably have to just make my changes to a clean ISO?

If I try to open up a PPFed rom (Say, fft 1.3, fft 1.3 easytype complete, or fft rebirth) with FFTPatcher, and make some changes to some Jobs, or Abilities, or the like, will it work?

What about if I add an ASM they weren't using, via FFTorgASM? (such as the one that changes enemy equipment selection to match story progression, or counts all swords for swordskill restrictions?)

Will it break the game? If so, how would I go about making it work?

I'm looking for examples of replaced or heavily reworked jobs.

Mostly looking for some ideas of things people have used in the past.

I'd like to hear how people implemented a few staples, as well.

"New" Classes
Blue Mage,
Red Mage
Gadgeteer
Sage

Reworked Classes
I'm interested in hearing how people have managed to revamp the following classes that I never really liked the implementation of in FFT:
Archer
Geomancer
Ninja
Samurai

I'm quite interested in hearing what other have come up with.

As it says in the title.

I know you can't change the abilities of the individual "item" abilities.

Do any problems arise from assigning Ninja, Samurai, and Chemist new skillsets? There are some empty ones, as well as duplicates. Is there any reason two duplicates couldn't be combined, and one of the duplicates slots, (Like 9B, 9D, and 9E) be used to define new skillsets that are used by those classes?

I'm thinking of giving the Samurai some variety of Swordskill perhaps or maybe give them Limit (or something similar to it - as Limit seems quite similar to Cyan Garamonde's skillset). Possibly a skill that combines these things.

For the Ninja, I'm thinking a sort of assassin-ey skillset, maybe with a couple things from Snipe, and some stuff from Use Hand, or something. I would like to have ninja be an option I actually consider sticking with, rather than "the stepping stone to get to the two swords skill." Perhaps make this some variety of swordskill as well as the Samurai. I'm really not sure, I just want to make it something interesting enough I might actually use it.

As for Item, I was thinking about using the "everyone gets item and throw item innate" ASMs. Ideally, it would start out mastered, and the enemy wouldn't have it. I think they said ALMA would be the tool to do this one.

As for what to replace Chemist with, I'm not sure. I suppose it would leave me with an open slot that could be used for anything. I'll probably peruse what other people here have made and swap something in for it. Suggestions could be nice. Maybe a blue mage (Monster Spells)?

Before I spend a bunch of time designing skillsets that turn out not to be possible, I'd like to verify that it's possible first.

I have read that things go wonky if you reassign stock jobs new skillsets. Is there a way to make their stock skillset a normal skillset that you can assign regular abilities to?

I remember reading something about weirdness when you try to alter things associated with those skillsets.

Thanks.

So. I'm not a big fan of the PSX/CD Cases.

I want to put Tactics back on my shelf, as opposed to keeping it in a box or a CD book.

I know many of you guys only use emulators, but not all of you do, IIRC.

Anyways.

Here's something I'm working on in photoshop. I'm basically done the front, but still working on the back.



This way it won't look out of place with my xbox360 & ps2 games.

I plan to do up a couple versions, it's easier to make tweaks than make it from scratch. Perhaps burn a couple of the modded versions as well, and give them their own tweaked cases. Maybe with different cover art too. Who knows.

Hi.

I've lurked here a while, posted a few times, made a couple portraits, and I'm now back due to wanting to replay FFT.

There seem to be a few new mods of gameplay since the last time I was here. I was hoping for suggestions for which mod might be a good one for me and why.

Basically I'm looking for something that:
- Includes the new content from FFT Complete, and hopefully the new translation.
- Includes some of the bugfix patches for ASM, particularly the one that fixes the equipment selection algorithm.
- Includes one of the two revised equipment selection methods that I was giving ideas for a while back. Either with "equipment levels" which are set throughout the story, or with equipment based on what's available in the stores, as opposed to the default of "Match NPC Level."
- Some manner of enhanced gameplay, but not a complete story rewrite. Perhaps just a gameplay rebalance, with number tweaks, adjusted movespeeds, and rebalanced monster stats. Perhaps something which changes the dynamics of existing fights, and maybe adds a couple new ones. Perhaps adds some more humanoid characters to random battles.

I'm not so much looking for a new game, just looking for some new twists on the old one. The plan is to burn it to CD and play it on my (modded) PSX, hooked up to a projector for maximum fun.

If there's no mod that contains the ASM changes I'm looking for, how hard is it to apply ASM changes to an already modded ISO using fftorgASM? Would that cause alot of problems? Could I just include the bugfixes I want afterwards if they're not already there?

Thanks guys.

I always find it interesting to read the discussions on these boards, even though I often have nothing to say.

Hey; I'm new to the community, only been here a couple days, and I've never done ASM hacking before (Though I've written ASM and compiled it before - and had those apps work) - Is there an intro tutorial floating around somewhere for a bit of a hand getting started?

I've been hearing that everyone writes their ASM additions overriding the existing contents of the files (commonly the kanji tables). I'm wondering: Why can't you just append your ASM to the end of the file?
Replace the previous final line with a goto instruction that pushes them to wherever you extended the file to for your new functions, and put your new functions in the section between those? Is there a reason the file needs to stay the same size?

I've been playing FFT since it came out;
I was checking the ffhacktics site for a year; and was confused by all the links to a nonexistant forum, and just recently found the working forum.

I've done alot of spriting and texture making; for the games GraalOnline, Neverwinter Nights, and Warcraft III. I'm a university undergrad in his fourth year of computer science (mostly software design) with a minor in psych. I started in english so I'll be picking up a few credits in a fifth year.

I think the best FF Games are FF6 and FFT; and I haven't liked any of the FF games much after FFT that I've played.

Nowadays I only really play FFT on my modded PSP 2000; usually on the bus, or between classes, and I wouldn't want to haul out my PSX or a laptop. Though before I got the PSP I had collected all the supplies to mount a  sony camera battery on my psx and make a hardware mod to run it off the battery - for Tactics & LoM between classes. lol. FFT & the ability to run PSX games were the reasons I got my PSP.

Though I'm confused as to why everyone mods the PSX version instead of the WotL version; the WotL version has multiplayer; and seems to be easier to mod than the psx version, as it doesn't involve burning CDs; or the tedious process of wrapping a psx iso so it runs on psp.

I saw a few posts that mentioned a patch that gave all characters access to item without it eating up one of their slots.

I'm wholly in favor of that Idea. Does anyone have a link?

The idea was inspired by my looking at sprites in the sprite section and seeing other final fantasy characters with sprites for FFT (So I drew Cyan's portrait fft style from ff6).

Basic Idea: You can't buy new recruits, and you don't get any generics at the beginning of the game. Invitation would also be removed.

Instead, you'd get many more named characters throughout the game (Enough to fill your party roster completely). Possibly, you can't crystal, like in other FFs - you only lose if your whole party is KO'ed. Those characters could be new unique characters, or more like Dissidia, drawing characters from other FF Games (Or one FF Game), and working them into the plot of FFT.

Each character would have a new sprite and and their own skillset. (Those skillsets could share some skills, but each character should have at least 2 unique ones).
The new characters would need to have positions they could be inserted in the game to gain them, and preferably a bit of dialogue.

I just thought I'd mention the idea I had, since it seemed like a cool idea in my head, and see what people thought.

Has anyone attempted anything like this before?

Okay: So first off, there are two reasons I can see someone wanting to play a patch.
1. Oooh! Patch x just got updatd, I like patch X and therefore want to replay it.
2. I'm thinking about replaying FFT anyways, what changes to the game would make it more enjoyable?

I'm firmly in camp 2.

There seem to be a handful of fully playable patches. I'm going to summarize what each one seems to be doing, ask questions about the ones I don't know enough about or am unclear about, and see if I can get some feedback. I'm missing alot of info?

My big question, I guess, is: "What does this patch offer over vanilla FFT?" "Does it have a WotL Version?"

Here are my first impressions, I'm interested in any advice or more information.

FFT 1.3
PSX/PSP: Yes/Yes.
- FFT Insane Hard type + Competitive Multiplayer.
- Thoughts: for some reason chocobos are terrifying and can lower your brave by 60. (Not sure I like that one.)

FFT 1.3 Easytype
PSX/PSP: Yes/Yes.
- FFT Hard type + Competive Multiplayer.
- Still kicks you in the ass for leveling up too much, but less so.

FFT 1.3 with fixed levels.
PSX/PSP: Yes/No.
- Don't make the game kick you in the ass for leveling up, but still makes the game harder than vanilla, and Keep 1.3's rebalanced abilities, gear, and classes.

FFT 1.3 With no Event Edits
PSX/PSP: Yes/No.
- More balanced classes. Same difficulty as the original.

FFT 1.4
PSX/PSP: Yes/No.
- Not sure what the goal is here. Seems like it's supposed to be like easytype, but slightly easier, with a bunch of unrelated changes, not trying to accomplish anything specific.

FFT Rebirth
- Rebalanced classes as the primary focus.
- Each story fight now has a "Boss Unit" who will have a different palette, and slightly better gear/other shit.
- More humans in random battles, and more hard randoms like the one in vanilla that you get swarmed by monks.
PSX/PSP: Yes/No.
- Since I play the PSP copy I dont get the shiny new menu or his script changes; I'd have to rewrite them.

Can I get some better ideas of what the advantages of a given functional patch is over the others? From what I understand about 1.3 hardtype; it wouldn't be so bad if the story battles still had the NPCs with fixed gear.

I like the idea of the boss units in rebirth.
I like what I've seen of the new story fights in 1.3.
As mentioned I play on my PSP; not an emulator, so If the ability text won't be updated in game that's a downside.

Has anyone played both 1.3 and rebirth? Possibly able to comment on the differences in class balancing?
Just looking to get a bit more information at the moment.

Not all FFT Classes are created equal.

What if they were? What if they were set up in such a way that you should be just as good as a squire as you are as a black mage or a knight or whatever? Additionally, some classes are one-trick ponies.

I believe I saw a few posts in other random threads, but they were really spread out.

This isn't a "Making a new patch" thread, so much as a "What in Vanilla FFT is considerably crappier than your other options?"
More of a thread to detail what needs to be changed about some of the classes. This could be combined with any other hack, like FFT1.3 or FFTRebirth or whatever - or you could make it into a patch. Personally, I'll be taking what we have here, and weighing it against Rebirth, since that's my FFT Hack of choice.

We can do named characters as well, but the regular jobs are what I'm going to start with.

Here's basically what I'm looking for (I'll compile what we come up with in this post):

Job: Archer
Problem: One trick pony, and most charge skills suck (so slow they're almost never worth using).
It would be nice if they had some other archery abilities, Not related to Charge.

2011/03/22 - New Portrait; Cyan Garamonde.

2011/03/31 - New Portrait: Mog.

2014/05/10 - New Portraits: Me.

Is it possible to take a patch in fftPatcher that was designed for the psx version and then convert it to a wotl patch for use on a psp?

If yes, how?