Final Fantasy Hacktics

First and foremost I would like to say thank you to everyone that entered the contest. We had an amazing seventeen submissions this time around which blows last year's Halloween spriting contest out of the water! So let the voting begin! As always, only one vote per user [please do not use alternate accounts to vote multiple times] and it is generally considered poor form to vote for your own sprite [but we really can't stop you.] Please refer to the judging criteria for guidance in voting, though it should be noted that all the following sprites are considered valid submissions. Feel free to discuss or ask questions in this thread and for those of you just burning to critique the various entries now would be an appropriate time to do so.

Voting officially ends on Halloween night, October 31st, at 11:59pm EST! I will tally up the votes and announce the winner then! Prizes will be determined shortly after!

If you submitted a sprite that is not on this vote list and you do not believe is failed to meet the submission rules, feel free to PM me with questions.

Judging Criteria:
1) Personal Preference: Vote for your favorite character that gets submitted! The old 'Creativity' criteria doesn't really fit when the goal is to replicate something.
2) Artistic Ability: The more like the original character/costume, the better. However, make sure to balance this with the visual quality of the sprite. General pixel art ability, design, and palette choice are important here.
3) Valid Submission: There are clear expectations for submission, please try your best to follow them.

Well it's that time of year again. Come on over to The Annual FFH Halloween Spriting Contest Thread and find out how you could be the winner of fabulous prizes!

Disclaimer: Prizes may not actually be fabulous but there ARE going to be prizes this time around!

Heroes From Other Worlds

It's time for the Annual FFH Halloween Spriting Contest! I'm starting this a bit earlier than it was last year in hopes of getting more entries this time around. Last year our theme was "Decade of the Zombie" and we certainly got some creative entries. This year I thought we might keep the theme a little closer to the holiday itself and make it a broader scope as well. So the theme this time will be "Heroes From Other Worlds" where the goal is to make a character sprite of a hero or heroine from another game world or one of your favorite Ivalician dressed up like someone from another game! We already have some great custom sprites out there of characters from outside of Ivalice - the roster of which is going to expand with the work being done on Journey of the Five - but maybe there's some game franchise you think is terribly under-represented? Or maybe you'd like to show how your favorite FFT characters would look like dressed up for Halloween? Now is the time to step up and get your favorite heroes thrown into the mix!

As always, this is a beginner's level spriting competition. If you've never done a sprite before we'd still love to see what you can do! The competition is open to EVERYONE and you may make as many or as few submissions as you like. You may also continue to update your submissions to the very end of the due date. Feel free to give feedback on entries as they get posted to help people make the best sprite they can. Also, if someone else is doing a character you yourself would like to do, don't hesitate to post your own version!

Submissions are due by 11:59pm EST on Friday the 26th of October. Once the submissions are closed, all entries will be organized and a public voting poll will be opened for every community member to cast a vote. The poll will be closed on Halloween, the 31st of October so the winner can be announced that evening. The poll will be blinded and all users are allowed one vote, so please respect the voting process.

Since I'm proposing the contest theme this year I'll put myself out there for providing actual prizes for the top three winners. As always, you can expect at minimum some kind of permanent recognition for your accomplishments. However, flaunting the trend of previous competitions, I will personally make perler bead prizes for the winners. I haven't decided exactly what but that may depend on the entries themselves. If I can, I'll try to actually make the winning entries into perler bead figures. For those unfamiliar with perler beads, go have a look over here. (Acceptance of perler rewards will require providing an address to ship the prize to. Keep that in mind when entering if you want to be eligible for a prize.)

Submission Requirements:
1) A minimum of 1 front diagonal frame.
2) A name for your entry. This can just be the actual character name you're making.
3) Provide a spoiler'd image or link to a piece of art of the character you're submitting.
4) Please use a sprite from FFT or a Custom Sprite as the base for your submission. You can also make a wholly original piece of course, but try to keep it in the style of FFT. Submissions using sprites obviously taken from other games as a base will not be considered valid entries. Also, please credit "SQUARE" for anything based on FFT sprites and make appropriate credits when using Custom Sprites from our collection.
5) 100% Zoom in either BMP or PNG format.
6) Post your submission in this thread and it will be officially entered.
7) Loosely follow the general FFT style such as dimensions and palette choice. However, submissions are NOT limited to 16 colors.
8) Submissions need to loosely follow the general competition topic.
9) Follow general forum rules, such as no nudity.
10) There is NO limit on the number of entries per member as long as they are significantly distinct.
11) If there are multiple valid versions of the same submission posted in the thread, the latest version will be considered the competition version.
12) Characters that a Custom Sprite already exists for will not be accepted as valid entries. Click here to see what custom sprites already exist.

Judging Criteria:
1) Personal Preference: Vote for your favorite character that gets submitted! The old 'Creativity' criteria doesn't really fit when the goal is to replicate something.
2) Artistic Ability: The more like the original character/costume, the better. However, make sure to balance this with the visual quality of the sprite. General pixel art ability, design, and palette choice are important here.
3) Valid Submission: There are clear expectations for submission, please try your best to follow them.

Important Dates:
Opening of Competition: 9/22
Submissions Due: 11:59pm EST 10/26
Voting Begins: 10/27
Winners Announced: 10/31 Halloween

A tiny thank you to Cheetah because I poached his post from last Halloween when making this one.

My work continues and something new is on the way.

I'll just sum this up with a few quick statements and some links so you can educate yourselves further.

For those not previously aware, the folks over at speeddemosarchive.com like to run gaming marathons for charity. They have raised some amazing amounts of money for various charities in the past few years. A week from now will be the beginning of their next marathon with 100% of the donations going to O.A.R., the Organization for Autism Research.

I'm posting about it here to make as many people as I can aware about it and to encourage you all to do the same. Share this event with your friends. Tweet about it and post about it on your Facebook. Whatever you do to get the word around, just take a minute of your time in the next week and let someone know. Even better, join the fun yourself next week and make a donation yourself! There are spiffy prizes to be won [including some perlers I donated to the cause] and you can take a look at those in the bottommost link below. I hope to see you all there. ^_^

Marathon Information
Marathon Schedule and Donation Prize Times
SDA's forum thread about Donation Prizes

Feel free to add your own.

"If all else fails use fire." Admittedly, the usefulness of this one has proved erratic at best.

There has been another general outcry for a tutorial on how to edit spell effects lately, so here we are once again. Hopefully this tutorial will answer a lot of the basic questions when it comes to effect editing. First and foremost, what will be covered herein:

- Extracting and Importing Effect Files to and from your ISO.
- Modifying effect palettes. [Fancy way of saying changing the colors of spells.]
- Removing unwanted parts of effects.
- Replacing parts of effects with something new.

And a short list of what will NOT be covered and why:

- Screen/unit tinting effects: There are commands in the effect files that do things like tint the whole screen one color or fade to black for an effect. Others, like the example below, will tint an affected unit a specific color. To my knowledge, no one has dissected the effect files enough to know how this is done or if they have then I'm unaware of where it is documented. The instructions below will not cover anything that tints the whole screen or units.
- Sounds in spell effects: As with the screen tinting, as far as I know we just haven't discovered how sounds are controlled in the effect files.
- Making wholly new effects: Again, this comes down to a lack of detailed knowledge on how the effect files work. As of right now all we can do is modify existing effects into something else that will follow the same general pattern of motion on the screen. Until someone decides to start taking apart the effect files and decoding them into something we can understand and more easily modify, this is about as good as it gets folks.

With that out of the way, let's get down to it.

What you will need for the purposes of this tutorial: CDMage, GraphicsGale, TIMUtil, a HEX editor [I will be using HxD in my examples].

This tutorial will also assume that you know how to use FFTPatcher to choose your effects for the skills in your patch. I will not be covering anything involving FFTPatcher. I will also be assuming you have at least a basic working knowledge of how to use GraphicsGale or similar image editing programs. If you don't, just go play around with GG for a while. Its not too tough to figure out.

Step 1: Go here and get a BMP file of the effect you intend to modify. Xifanie has very graciously ripped the effect images from every spell effect in the game and made them readily available. We should thank her. Thanks, Xifanie! For our example today we will be modifying effect E052 "Faith/Face Up". As listed on the effects page we can see the filename for the effect is E052.BIN.

Step 2: Go into CDMage and open your ISO as "M2/2352 track".

Step 3: Open the EFFECT folder and locate your effect file on the right and right-click it to bring up the menu and select Extract Files. Make sure your effect filename matches the one from the effects page. Just save this to wherever you'll be keeping your working files. Also make a note of the number in the Size column for your file. We'll need that for Step 8. It has been cut off a bit in my example image but for this example our filesize is 46076.

~Removing Graphics~
Step 4: Open your downloaded BMP file in GraphicsGale. You are going to want to overwrite anything you don't want in the spell effect with pure Black. This has RGB values of 0 as you can see highlighted in the image below. This is usually the very first color in the image's palette as shown by the red arrow.

We will be removing the heart from the spell effect here. Now just save the BMP. If that was all you wanted to do then proceed to Step 7.

~Changing The Colors~
To change the colors of an effect you will need to change the palette. Palettes for spell effect are "indexed" which really just means each pixel in the image refers to a color in a specific place on the palette. If you only want to change a few colors of an effect then select the color you want to modify in the palette and use the value boxes [as highlighted in Step 4 above] to change the color. This example will be for changing the colors of the ENTIRE effect.

Step 5: For GraphicsGale you will want to go to All Frames and select Adjust Color. [In Photoshop this is usually called Hue/Saturation and can be found under Image > Adjustments. Your version may vary.]

This will bring up a new window with a lot of options. We're only interested in four of them: The RGB sliders and the Saturation slider. You can change other things there but I won't guarantee your effect will turn out as planned. Basic rule of thumb here: Do not increase Brightness ever and do not raise the RGB values over 0.

I want to change the pink colors of the effect to gold. As you can see here, the image changes to reflect my changes to the sliders. When you've got colors you like, click OK. If this is all you need for your effect, skip ahead to Step 7.

~Replacing Graphics~
For this section we will be using the heart-less version of the effect we made in Step 4 as well following the palette changing instructions in Step 5. The reason I chose gold is because the graphics I want to paste into the effect file are mostly gold and anything you paste into your BMP will attempt to match itself colors to the existing palette. Because what I want to paste into the effect uses white but the palette does have a white color, I have changed the very last and brightest color to white.
Step 6: This is really just as simple as Copy and Paste or just drawing your new graphics over what you want to replace. If you want to know how to make nice graphics, go read a spriting tutorial. Or you can just be like me and steal some graphics from another game. As shown below, I've replaced the hearts with a clock I stole from one of the Castlevania games. Looks kind of unimpressive here compared to the heart but it will serve for this example.

Step 7: A few of the previous steps will may directed you here. That's because this part is required no matter what you're changing or how. You will need to convert your BMP into a TIM file. Open TIMUtil and load your modified BMP file. Now the important part - you MUST click both of the checkboxes for 'Translucent except black' AND 'Transparent for black'. This is why we removed existing graphics with a pure black color. If you don't do this, your effect will look all wrong. Once you've got that done, click Convert and save your TIM file.

Now here is where I think a lot of people get lost trying to make things work. Open your HEX editor and open both your extracted BIN file and your TIM file you just created. If you're not familiar with HEX editing you're going to see a lot of numbers and letters that won't mean a lot to you. We are only concerned with all of the little pairs of numbers and letters in the middle of the window.
~Importing Your New Colors~
Step 8: Click on the tab at the top of the window that is your TIM file then bring your cursor to Offset: 14 as displayed in the bottom left of the window. This is the beginning of the palette data for your spell effect.

Now highlight down to Offset 213. The status bar at the bottom should read Block: 14-213 and Length: 200. Offset 213 is the very end of the palette information. You want to Copy this block of data.

Now remember that filesize number I had you make note of back in Step 3? This is where we need it. We now have to figure out where in the BIN file we have to Paste-Write this data for the palette.

Step 9: Read what's in the following spoiler.

You got all that? Our example effect is larger than 34KB but smaller than 70KB, so we are going to take the filesize [46076] and subtract 33796 from that: 46076 - 33796 = 12280. That gives us the where but its in decimal. We want that in hexidecimal. After a quick conversion we get 2FF8, as in Offset: 2FF8. So you need to click on the tab for your BIN file now and you want to Goto that offset. You can find it manually or use the Goto function built into your hex editor to find it. I opt for the latter.

Step 10: Now you don't want to just Paste normally here. You want to Paste Write or Paste Overwrite, depending on your HEX editor. If you just Paste or Paste Insert you will increase the filesize. This will ruin your effect. You want to see this:

Not this:

If all you're doing is putting in new colors, then you're done here. Save your BIN file and skip ahead to Step ###. If you are removing or otherwise modifying the graphics, read on.

~Importing Modified Graphics~
This part is pretty much the same as importing the palette information, functionally speaking. You're just going to be looking for more data in a different place in the TIM file. However, this is a lot easier to find where you want to Paste Write it to.
Step 11: Once again you will need to open your HEX editor and open both your extracted BIN file and your TIM file. If they're still open from Step 10, that's fine. This time however, we're going to use our IMAGE size to find out where we need to copy from in the TIM file.

Step 12: Click on the tab for your TIM file again and go to Offset: 220 and then just select everything to the very end of the file. Make a note of the Length value here and Copy.

Step 13: Click on your BIN file tab once more and bring up the Goto window again. This time you want to change the 'Offset relative to' from 'Begin' [default] to 'end (backwards)' because we'll be telling it to count backwards from the end of the file.


As you can see above, I've set the Offset to 7FFF, 1 less than 8000 in Hex. This is to compensate for how HxD is going to count backwards. The goal is to bring us to the offset in the file that will let us Paste Write that Length 8000 block of data and end at the very last byte of the file. [If doing a smaller image you'll want your Offset to be 3FFF. If larger, Offset should be FFFF.]
Step 14: Paste Write in your data from the TIM file here. The data should come to the very end of the file, no more and no less.
If you get this error then you're not exactly Length 8000 from the end of the file:

If you see black numbers left after the red/changed values like this then you're not exactly Length 8000 from the end of the file:

You'll need to adjust where you're pasting your data from accordingly, but if you followed these steps properly then you should be right on target. Once everything is in place correctly, save your BIN file.

Step 15: This is the last and easiest part. Go back to your ISO in CDMage and right-click your effect file in the EFFECT folder again, but this time select Import File. Go find your newly modified BIN file and load it in. That's it! You've just created your own custom spell effect.


A fun note: Since this effect uses exactly the same graphics as the Innocent effect you can actually import the graphics data to E053.BIN [after adjusting for the different filesize] and get another new effect there but using that effect's special code which makes for another interesting looking spell. I've done that and applied the other three changes done in the tutorial here into a video.


The first questions I would expect is "Why is it green like that? What happened to the gold?" and the best I have is a theory and it goes back to the list of what isn't covered in this tutorial. The effect file has instructions in it to modify the colors of the palette to make that green color. If you note on the original/heartless version [top left] there is that burst of blue color, but our palette has no blue in it. I believe the effect file for Faith has instructions to apply a modification to the graphics based on existing colors in the palette, giving us green where once there was blue. This marks a great example of some of the limitations of effect editing right now. Simpler effects, like Esuna, take palette modifications beautifully as you can see here:

Other effects will just ignore any changes you make to their palette [I'm looking at YOU, Stigma Magic. >_< ] So for right now some of this is still a little hit and miss. Try your own edits, see what you come up with and as always...happy hacking! ^_^

Or rather, play this: http://king-soukutu.xsrv.jp/flash/rokko.html

I played this for a solid hour, took out half the Robot Masters and the whole time felt like I was playing a classic Mega Man title. The graphics are spot-on for the style. The stage designs are good, starting simple and ramping up quickly as you learn the lay of the land. The bosses are a solid challenge and nicely varied. The action gets very fast-paced and the music just screams classic Mega Man. These tunes are definitely going to be stuck in my head later and that's no bad thing. My only concern with the game itself is the controls. Don't mistake my meaning here: your character responds beautifully though her slightly higher jump takes a little getting used to...but I found this to be almost completely unplayable while using. Yes, you can remap them to other keys on the keyboard - which is great - but I still recommend grabbing something to let you map keyboard inputs to your gamepad [Google JoyToKey if you don't have a utility for this] to help this little gem shine.

Here's a little teaser image of the post-win graphics for when you get a new weapon.


Too cute!

Oh and a couple other observations that are notable; you have a suicide button for some reason, so avoid hitting Esc if using the default controls...and lastly, you can't re-enter a stage you've completed like some of the other games, so if you see something you want make sure you get it before finishing that stage! Good luck. ^_^

I move that this get added to the ranks of with the code of

This topic has been moved to Archives by author's request.

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7841.0

I know some of you have seen a bit of what I've been working on as I've linked them in IRC, but now I have an Etsy page up for anyone interested in buying some perler art.

8-Bit Sashimi

Put the coupon code 'FFHCCP' and get free shipping! ^_^

Here's some samples that aren't listed on the shop page.

I don't recall having seen something on this before but if there is (or if its in Shishi and I missed it) please let me know.

Choto was asking about finding graphics in a file earlier today and so we cracked it open in TM to take a look. The file in question is Zodiac.bin in the BATTLE folder and what we found were the sprites for Frog/Chicken/Crystal/Treasure'd units. I couldn't find a usable palette after messing around with it for about a half hour. I thought maybe someone else might be able to do better with it. Viewed as 2-dimensional 4bpp linear, reverse order at 64 tiles wide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OYOg3Dftiy0#t=893s

I'd use the YT tag for this but then it wouldn't start the video at the right time.

The double-arrow graphical glitch is amazing fun at the edge of the map. Welcome to Limbo!

King's Quest. Police Quest. Gabriel Knight.

If you grew up in the 80's and had a computer, you've probably run into a few of these titles over the years. I have some fond memories (and some memories of utter, rage-inducing frustration) thanks to this genre of games. World-spanning epics, sometimes with almost as many sequels as the Final Fantasy series managed (but before FF made it vogue to have so many), that required a kind of not-logic to succeed in and invariably ended in hundreds and hundreds of deaths. Classic gaming - some would say at its best - and the genre still has rabid fans to this day.

I am not one of them. Adventure games drove me fucking batty at the best of times.

However, for those of you who may be interested in such things that are still being produced, I would direct you to a pair of projects. The first is the unofficial 9th game in the King's Quest series: The Silver Lining. This was a freeware project that managed to actually overcome not one but two C&Ds from Vivendi/Activision through sheer force of will from its creators and those fans that love the series so much they dedicated years of their life to seeing the project come to fruition. I have friends among those fans and creators and well there's nothing like a little bit of advertising for your friends to be helpful. That and it does look like a genuinely good game. Secondly, I would ask that you take a look at that group's newest project called Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller. Of course you can read all about what they have to say on it in the link there, but I would like to just make a quick note here on it being another ambitious project from the people that developed The Silver Lining and they managed to sign on Jane Jensen as a story consultant for Cognition. For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Mrs. Jensen worked as both a writer and a designer on various titles among those I listed above, so it is possible that if you're familiar with and enjoyed those games that you may find some interest in this latest project as well.

I'll be honest here, I work better running something by the seat of my pants than I do planning out a bunch of details ahead of time. Also, since it seems like the displayed interest in this game is less serious-minded and more humorous in nature, a deeply-detailed epic story would probably drown in the sea of silliness. I currently have no starting plot in mind as I thought I'd see what kinds of characters people intend to bring to the game first and then work from there. This method has worked in the past and I hope it will continue to work for this.

The basics of the game are probably all that is important. It will be a high fantasy medieval setting. This means magic is common and technology is low. Monarchies and magocracies are the rule as opposed to modern forms of government. Monsters roam the world, both above and below ground. There are multiple planes of existence to be traveled across and through, even those that are the homes to the gods themselves. Welcome to the world of Sephyr. If you want to know more, click the spoiler. If you think that's all you really need to know about the setting, feel free to move on.

Here's a piss-poor map of the Human Kingdoms and surrounding lands.



So you're ready to join up for a rousing adventure of merriment and mayhem? That's great, but first you'll need a character. (To those of you who I've already discussed characters with outside of the forum, just post your stuff according to the guidelines below.) Now there isn't too much to worry about here - I'm not going to direct you towards a pile of rulebooks and say build a character. I just need some very basic information from you and with that I'll write up the mechanics for your character based on that info. In that same simplified way of thinking though, I don't want anyone coming to me with some fully-detailed character sheet for the game system I'll be basing my mechanics off of and expecting they'll get to play some min-maxed monstrosity. So, here is what I'll be asking for along with a note on each.

Quote
-Name: You must have one of these. If you want to have more than one, that's fine too.
-Gender/Sex: If you feel so inclined, these don't have to match up. Some races have the natural option of Neuter as well.
-Race: More information listed below.
-Age (Human Equivalent): Not all races live for the same length of time. You give me a human age and if you're not human I'll work out the numbers.
-Birth Place: Pick a region from those listed above. If you would like more information on those regions before choosing, let me know.
-Appearance/Clothing: This is hopefully self-explanatory. Try to keep it appropriate for a fantasy setting.
-History/Background/Motivation/Goals: The more you have to say here, the more I'll have to work with for a plot.
-Combat Style: Again, the more details you can give me on this, the better. Unless you want to go with Pacifist, which is also a perfectly valid choice. If you have specific types of weapons or armor you want your character to be in, make a note of that here.
-Religious Affiliation (if any): While it is not required to follow any specific faith, the gods are very active forces in Sephyr and being unaffiliated can prove potentially hazardous in some situations. Remember, even if you don't actually believe you can always fake it.

The next part Raven had easy with Curse of the Viper. There was only one race to choose from: human. In my game that just isn't so. There are many choices and for the most part if you can think it, I can probably make it playable. That said, here is a quick list of the more common races in the parts of the world I would expect the game to take place in.

As I said before, if there is a race you know of that you want to be and its not listed here, PM me about it (either on the forum or on IRC). I tend to be able to make just about anything work.

Just a quick piece on the gods - I don't want to write up a pile of information on what are still only partially fleshed-out deities. If you list something like your character worships the God of Magic or the God of War then I'll find a nice match for you from my notes. If you put in something completely out of left field, I will attempt to find some kind of match. For those of you familiar with the base D&D gods here is a chart for names to their equivalents in Sephyr.





Once I've collected everyone's character data I'll be posting your character sheets in a post below which will be updated as the game moves along. After that, I'll be starting off with a general assessment of everyone's situation and we'll begin with some kind of direction (I hope.) It seems like this is going to be a sandbox-world sort of game. You'll have pretty free reign of where to go and what to do. I'll likely go with popular vote among the players if there is some kind of dissent about what do to or where to go.

I will be running the game in 'Scenes' and 'Battle Panes'. Scenes will be the time for roleplaying, deciding on where to go and what to do and generally interacting with the world outside of battle. Battle Panes will be used for combat and they will follow much of the same format as was used in Curse of the Viper.

The game will progress when one of two things has been achieved: Either there is a party consensus or the time limit has been reached. With each Scene I will be posting a cut-off time for votes on where the game will go next. If you do not make yourself heard by that time, the game will continue without your input and you will be carried along with the flow of things. This will also hold true for Battle Panes - if you don't post before the time limit, you will forfeit your turn.

Battle Panes will have a specific format, again based directly on how things were done in CotV. It worked well there and I hope I can make it work as well here. First though I want to take a moment to shamelessly steal Raven's own words to explain again how Battle Panes will work. Those of you familiar with the system should read through it for some small changes that will be applied.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz said something like this
----------Combat and Battle Pane Explanations----------

All combat will be explained in "Battle Panes", a sort of freeze frame or ongoing novelization of each turn as it happens.  The description of each Battle Pane will be the full summary of all the actions taken, the reactions from the enemy, and a situation to work out of for the current Battle Pane.  The map will be presented to the players in the form of an image showing the locations of the player units, all known enemy units, and giving the players a good idea of what the terrain looks like.  This overview will be updated with each Battle Pane, and should be easy to follow.

During each Battle Pane, a character is allowed a default of four (4) Actions that he or she can perform, and also allowed to do things such as talk which doesn't require using up an Action. Examples of Actions are:

1. Moving
2. Drawing a weapon or item from your pack.
3. Casting a spell or using a power/skill.
4. Safely storing a held item in your back/sheathing a weapon properly.

There will also be Advanced Actions available to you as the game moves on which require more than one Action to perform. At the start of the game all players have access to one Advanced Action: Charge. If there is at least two tiles between you and a target, you can perform a Charge which will give you a bonus to your attack but will inflict a temporary penalty to your defense. Charging moves you at Running speed (see below),  but without such severe penalties to defense. A Charge must end with an Attack. You can't use a Charge to flee from battle.

When moving there is no distance cap per action. However, moving farther in a single action will delay how long it takes for your next action to trigger (as should be logical, since moving farther takes longer).  Note that there are also 2 types of movement: Normal and Running. Normal movement is just that, normal. You move at a steady pace and react to your surrounding appropriately. By contrast, Running lets you move a whole lot faster but at the expense of not being able to make attacks or put up more than a passive defense against incoming attacks. Running is good for getting the hell out of a mess, but not very useful if you intend to fight.

Try and be creative with your Actions. Remember, you can attempt to do just about anything. Success or failure will depend on your character's abilities and you can never succeed if you don't try. (However, if you try to do something completely impossible I will let you know so you don't waste actions on it.)

I will try to remember to make notes on terrain as I post each Battle Pane. If there are questions about any terrain seen on a map, just ask then. I will keep open the possibility of both airborne and underwater combat but for now all that really needs to be noted for that is to make a note of how many tiles vertically you are from 'zero'. When flying, zero is the ground and when underwater zero is the surface.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz said something only vaguely like this
----------Range Explanations----------

There are several different combat ranges. These include Melee, Reach, Short, Medium, and Long. Ranged attacks are usually only affected by terrain when it interferes with line of sight. When counting squares for range, remember that diagonal movement counts as 1.5 squares.

Melee: A melee attack against an adjacent enemy.  In game terms, this Range is 1 Square anywhere around the unit, including diagonally.

Reach: A melee attack with a long weapon such as a polearm. This can hit enemies 2 sqaures away but not immediately adjacent enemies.

Close: Close range, but far enough away that a melee attack won't be effective. In game terms, this Range is anywhere from 2 to 4 Squares in a diamond around the unit. This is primarily used for thrown weapons and some skills.

Medium: An average combat distance that some ranged weapons function at. In game terms, this Range is 4-12 Squares in a diamond around the unit. Some weaker short range weapons such a slings fall into this category, as do some skills.

Long: A far range that most ranged weapons function at. In game terms, this Range is best used from 8-20 Squares in a diamond around the unit. It can be used for closer range attacks, but at a penalty.

As for the posting format, I do want to keep the same format that was settled on in CotV. That is normal text for narrative actions, "Bold print and quotes for when your character is speaking," and notation numbers in parentheses (1) when designating an action.



If four actions seem to let the game go too slow per turn, then I may increase the number to six later on. I'd rather start with less and add more than start with too many and take them away afterwards.

As for Scenes, I was hoping to at least keep them to the same narrative plain-text and speaking bold-text. Anything that needs to be said Out of Character should be in ((double parentheses)) or noted in some other obvious fashion.



For the time being, this part is going to be left empty since I will determine your initial load out of weapons and armor based on how much information you give me in your character's Combat Style entry. After everyone has fleshed out their characters here in the thread and I've posted your character sheets, then you'll be able to visit the shop to purchase the gear you'll need to make your way in the world with whatever Gold you have. I'm going to reserve the post after this one for whatever shops will be available to you as the game progresses. Most of the basic adventuring gear will be available in almost any decent sized part of civilization. During Scenes I will try to remember to note that the Shop Is Open or the Shop Is Closed for general restocking of gear. If you want to find something special/specific when you're in a town or city, say so and we'll see how things go from there. You can be vague in your requests to find special gear with things like "Something to help improve my defense" or "A charm to make my magic stronger." Its not like I expect anyone to come to me with a detailed list of equipment they would like to go and find.



Being in a world of high magic, even death itself can be held at bay or denied entirely. Its just not always easy. If you die, there will expectedly be some length of time you won't be able to play for. There is also the possibility that the only people likely to go through the trouble to bring you back from the dead are your fellow players. It will be up to them to choose whether or not to pursue methods of resurrection or to let you rest in peace. Should the latter option be chosen, you can withdraw from the game entirely or go onto the Waiting List, should such a thing be necessary. The Waiting List will be for anyone that wants to play in the game but is either coming in late or I didn't have room for in the initial party. If you do end up dead and there is no wait to rejoin the game with a new character, please make a new character. I don't want to see a long-lost brother that is a clone of your original dead character showing up to join the party out of nowhere, nor will I tolerate a new character joining the scene who for some reason has the insane agenda of resurrecting your old character. That kind of thing will not be tolerated. I'm not saying you can't play a relative however. Just make sure that if you intend to that they have been previously established in your background AND that they are the kind of character to take on adventuring as a lifestyle. I hope I don't have to spell that out any further than I already did.



I think that's just about everything for getting this started. I already have some players that are definitely signed on for the game and they just need to post their characters here using the format listed above (Character portrait images are encouraged.) Anyone else that is interested in playing, feel free to just throw your hat into the ring. If I get more entries than I have slots left open for the game, I'll leave it to an RNG to see who makes the cut and who goes on the Waiting List.

So the topic has come up in chat more than a few times now and I've found myself with more free time than I like while I'm at work, so I thought I might try my hand at a D&D game here on the forum. I also need some kind of break from working on just CCP all the time. Gotta have some variety.

Thing is, if I do have enough people interested in a game, it will have to be a different type of game than the conventional style you'd see if everyone sat at a table and was throwing dice about. This will hopefully be updated with some regular frequency and I would expect players to be able to keep up with that. If you don't frequent the forums all that much or aren't sure if you'll be able to devote some little bit of time to this every couple of days then I would ask you to refrain from signing up so that someone else with more time could play instead of everyone waiting around for turns to expire.

I'll be basing my game mostly on the 3.5 Edition rules but I'll be running fast and loose with them. I intend to borrow heavily from Raven's style of play from Curse of the Viper with the Battle Panes as well as the simplified character data. If you're looking for something more traditional then this game probably won't be to your liking. If you're looking for something a little different from the norm but still at least vaguely familiar, then read on.

I'm posting this here to gauge general interest and gather a few more players. I've already spoken with a few people about it and I have enough bodies for about half of a party so far. I will be putting up a more detailed post with some information about the game world (a homebrew campaign setting) I'll be using for the game later. What I really need to know, both from those of you interested and those of you already signed on for this, is what type of game you want to play? Do you want to do something combat-centric and mission-based like how Curse of the Viper was being run or do you want to do something more player-driven and sandbox style? At the table I'm more comfortable with the latter where I just form the world around my players and let them do as they will, adventuring and discovering the mysteries of the world as they go. That said, I can run a mission-based combat game if the demand for it is high enough. If there is another game style you would prefer, let me know what it is and I'll take it under consideration. For the few of you that actually follow these games but don't participate (I know there are some of you out there) feel free to voice your opinions as well as to what kind of game you'd like to see develop here.

Well? Have you?

Anyone want a lollipop?

http://www.takethislollipop.com/

While there may not yet be a full-blown tournament in the works, the AI Battles have begun! The first few fights can be seen over here: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7865.0

If you're interested in submitting your own team, all challengers are welcome! Details on how to make a team can be found in the first post here and the Master Guide (for all your CCP questions) is right over here.

Good luck on the battlefield!

Going to be collecting all the prelim matches in this opening post for ease of access.

The Return of Kai Shin! (Barren) vs. My Very First CCP Extravaganza (Wiz)

Debuffers (Eternal248) vs. Seuss' Soldiers (Scearcely)

Some Dudes (Lady Ladile) vs. "Die, Monster!" (Aquilae)

#ihopethisworks (Kalas) vs. Bad Strategy (CT5Holy)

Some Dudes (Lady Ladile) vs. The Return of Kai Shin! (Barren)

Puella Magi (Michiru) vs. My First CCP Extravaganza (Wiz)

Seuss' Soldiers (Scearcely) vs. The Return of Kai Shin! (Barren)

"Die Monster!" (Aquilae) vs. Debuffers (Eternal248)

Sodas Rule (BlakGenius) vs. Pretty Petrify Pals (Dinosaur)

Bad Strategy (CT5Holy) vs. "Die, Monster!" (Aquilae)

CCP Grudge Match! RavenofRazgriz vs. Dinosaur

Its time for another update and this was definitely a big one. The major attraction for this edition is the removal of Warlock and the addition of the Loremaster class - a new spellcaster that doesn't rely on Faith but instead makes use of Books to access their skills. Very powerful but only able to access so many skills at a time, customize your load out before battle and change up what you need as the situation changes with Innate: Equip Change!

More details can be found in the Update Log over here: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7366.0

A quick note: These rules are just preliminary. They will likely change down the line.

The patch version that will be used for these fights is currently CCP v1.96. If you're not familiar with the changes from earlier versions, go grab it and have a look. I apologize for not having the class skills up in the Master Guide yet. Since I'm not pushing this as a serious competition yet though I don't think you all will need the kind of detail found in those lists yet. They are forthcoming, I promise.

Teams must be of 4 units.

Brave and Faith can be any value from 40 to 70. All 13 Zodiac signs are valid for this.

There is no JP cap on skills. Go wild.

Each skillset can only be present ONCE. This means if you have a Red Mage, no other unit can have Red Magic. If someone is using Valiance as a secondary, there can be no Champions in your team.

Each Reaction, Support and Move skill is allowed TWICE. I will be counting class innate skills and skills granted from equipment against this total per team. Choose your gear carefully.

Each piece of equipment is allowed TWICE. Only items available from the Shop can be used - nothing poached, nothing listed as a findable or war trophy.

While they are not banned, I would recommend not using Tactician skills since the AI doesn't handle them well.

The following skills are banned for any of the above reasons (equipment dependant) or for being too powerful: Titan Call (Ruby), Elixir, Ahriman's Eye, Mosfungus, FADE, NUKE, Bless, Resurrection.

I think that's everything. Please try to submit teams in the same format as is accepted for Arena teams. Since I use a similar spreadsheet it will make my life much easier. (You can find those guidelines here. Team Palettes won't matter much since they're not well aligned yet. I will likely just put in random numbers for those.) Thank you and good luck!

The combination you never asked for: Super Smash Bros. in old school Gameboy quality.

http://www.supersmashland.com/

I'd say more but the site there will probably answer any other questions. Free to download.

FOLLOW UP (9/4/23) - Late to the show but I realize this project is actually completed under the title FFT: Honored. https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=12820.20

So while I was taking a break from working on CCP more than a few ideas floated past me that I thought might be interesting in a patch, but none of them fit for CCP. I just compiled a list of random things and after a while felt like a combination of those might make for an interesting difficulty hack. I have also shamelessly borrowed from other patch ideas for some of the formatting of things here, so if you see something familiar don't be too surprised. So without further ado, let's get into the meat of what will be my next hack- FFT:Minimal.

Minimal is a difficulty hack based around limiting player options. There are less jobs, less skills and less equipment choices available to the player but the AI will not be held back nearly as much. Not quite sure what else to preface this with so I'll just resort to lists of changes since I'm good at those.

- Players only get access to eight job classes (base-8), plus Mime for reaching Job Level 6 in all eight of the base classes.
- All of the base-8 are accessible from the start of the game.
- None of the base-8 have any innate skills.
- None of the base-8 skills require MP. CT is required on most skills (possibly all except item skills - I'll have to check.)
- All skills cost 200 JP to purchase.
- All Equip X support skills have been removed.
- Weapon types have been reduced to the following list: Sword, Axe, Mace, Longbow, Knife, Pole, and Staff.
- Permanent Brave/Faith alteration has been removed.
- Equipment costs have been standardized by chapter.
- Most status effects have had their CT durations increased greatly, whereas Death Sentence has been reduced from 3 to 2.

I'll put together a list of the ASM hacks I've applied at the bottom of this. That should cover most of the other smaller changes and things to watch for. For now though, this extremely early release will focus on the base-8, so I'll try to cover those a bit more in detail here.









So there are the new classes. As you can see, they each have only one Reaction, Support and Move skill and some of those that persist from Vanilla aren't all exactly the same as they were. Since I started typing all this my brain has gone kinda numb so I'm just gonna list the ASM hacks here and post the PPF for now.


Another technical note: this does NOT use a restructured ISO and still contains only the vanilla sprites (except for some palette swaps on the Archer which doubles as the Ranger for now - they should be very distinguishable.) Hopefully this will cut down on some of the issues I was having with making PSP eboots of CCP among other issues.

For now v.01 only implements the base-8, new equipment costs per chapter and new loot rewards for event battles until the end of Chapter 1. ENTDs are otherwise mostly unedited. The opening battle at Orbonne has had all but one unit removed so players can more quickly start Chapter 1. You will start with a team of 6 generics, each with a different class and equipment. Ramza starts as a Fighter and the only job not represented as an option at Gariland is the Chandler (which was left out since you start with no items.)

As always, questions, comments and suggestions are welcome and encouraged. If they weren't I wouldn't be posting this, now would I? :3

So this is one I promised myself I was going to change the story battle at Finath River to be something interesting/fun but I haven't thought up anything myself to put there yet. So I figured I could make it something you want to see in the patch. Give me your ideas here, as rough or as detailed as you like. I only ask that you don't go way overboard with the scale of the battle - since this isn't a DD fight I probably won't consider anything too over the top unless it really appeals to me.

If there enough suggestions I might just put up a poll to let everyone vote for their favorite idea. No limit on suggestions, so feel free to post anything you can think of.

I just uploaded a new version of CCP and it features a replacement to the useless, old Cook class: the Butler. This class brings the idea of the battle butler to life in FFT. If you're not familiar with the idea of a battle butler, may I suggest some light reading? *click*
Also in this new update I've included everyone's favorite retainer to the crown, Cyan from Final Fantasy 6! (Disclaimer: Cyan may not be your favorite retainer to the crown.) You can get the patch and read more about the update in detail over here: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7366.0

http://www.freebirdgames.com/

Click the link and check out the games. This little indie company seems intent on making new RPGs with a very old-school flavor to them, but without churning out the same crap we've seen time and again. There are three download-able freeware titles on their site currently with another title due out in a few months. They seem to have a goal of making games that relate a great story without getting bogged down with state of the art graphics, instead aiming for something very reminiscent of say Chrono Trigger and other games of that age. To take a partial quote from a summary of one of the games on the site, Quintessence, "[this game] aims to achieve a unique outlook on 2D RPGs via a primary focus on the execution of story-telling and presentation." Also, the music for these games is absolutely beautiful. If you miss the 'Golden Age' of 16-bit RPGs then head on over to Freebird Games' site and see what they've got to offer. You may just be pleasantly surprised.

http://speeddemosarchive.com/marathon/

Just wanted to make folks here aware of a great event going on this weekend over at SDA. They're doing a gaming marathon and taking donations for autism research. Head on over there if you've got some time and lend your support!

So a friend of mine from off-site linked me to this hilarious story someone was putting up on a forum elsewhere recently. I read through a bit of it and thought I might post it here then but found out a website dedicated to it was going up, so I waited. What I think makes it remarkable is that it was just a Choose Your Own Adventure thread on a forum somewhere, nothing terribly special in and of itself; we have one here that formerdeathcorps is running. What seems to have made this one special though is the person in charge of it is a good cartoonist and also seems to be extremely witty as well. The results are glorious. I encourage everyone who loves a good story or loves to laugh to give this a read from the very beginning.

It is based on another popular game title that I won't bother to disclose since you need not know anything about that game at all to enjoy this story. Also, don't feel like you need to read every post in-between the major story posts. At the bottom of the story posts are links to the following story post (usually a ==> but sometimes they're text) and you can just follow those. The important posts that were used to generate the next bit of story will be at the top of the new story post in quote boxes and anything of particular interest will be in spoilers below the story. I would also note that this story is still ongoing and you can post your own suggestions for it.

So, without further ado, I give you PREQUEL -or- Making a Cat Cry: The Adventure!