Mega Tact: Online, multiplayer FFT

[Mogri]

Apologies for spamming it up on my first post here. Hopefully, this will be worth your while.

After four years of on-and-off development, Mega Tact has finally entered beta. What is Mega Tact, and why should you care?



Mega Tact is an online, multiplayer simulator of the tactical RPG you all know and love. (Bonus points if you recognize the map.) You create units, then pit them against another player or the AI (which is as questionable as its source material, so don't expect a challenging opponent).

Now that Mega Tact has entered beta, the intent is that the core functionality is complete and bug-free. That means that all units (even the Gameshark-exclusive ones, aside from dummies such as Delita's Sis) are playable, and you can theoretically use any ability in the game. Mega Tact isn't finished, but future releases will be dedicated to bugfixes and meta features such as inventory management that don't directly impact the flow of battle.

The Hacktics community might be pleased to know that Mega Tact is moddable. For the most part, you should be able to reproduce the mechanics of your patch (i.e. units/abilities/items, but not maps or anything else story-related, and probably nothing that would require ASM hacking) in Mega Tact and try out some multiplayer 1.3 or LFT or [your patch here]. Global rule changes like Arena's Fury mechanic or changes to Zodiac compatibility are not supported at the moment, but you can do stupid things like giving skeletons innate Auto-Potion or Always: Jumping, making an ability that damages a unit's maximum HP, or making Haste status put affected units under AI control.

I am looking for a larger player base to give Mega Tact a workout. There is a high probability that many, many bugs exist, and I am interested in enlisting players who are familiar with the inner workings of FFT so that they can spot discrepancies. Any bug reports are greatly appreciated. (There are a few intentional discrepancies: AT ties go to the unit with the highest CT instead of tiebreaking strictly by unit order, and Math Skill currently only allows you to draw from spells in your other skillset -- so, for example, a Wizard with Math Skill could calculate any Black Magic, but nothing else. Also, some of the more ridiculous scenarios involving Mimes and Quick are not covered at the moment.)

If you are interested in helping more directly, you can try your hand at cracking the "Needs research" list here. These are edge cases not addressed by the Battle Mechanics Guide, but they ought to be fairly easy to verify in FFT. (For example: what does a unit do when he's both Berserked and Blood Sucked?)

And if you have no interest in helping, but just want to play some online, multiplayer FFT, then that is fine, too

Thanks for reading, and here's the link: http://www.slimesalad.com/fft/

[3lric]

Underground Cemetery of Limberry Castle

[PX_Timefordeath]

Terrible boss fight

[formerdeathcorps]

If you need mechanics help, feel free to ask me or secondadvent.

[Mogri]

If you know these off the top of your head, my hat's off to you:

• If a Mime mimics Elemental, does he get the effect of the tile he's standing on or the same effect as the original caster?
  
• When a Charmed unit acts, which team's Mimes will pick it up (if any)? What about Invite?
  
• Does Monster Skill affect the other team's monsters? What if the unit is Charmed? What if the monster is Charmed?
  
• If a Blood Sucked unit is Berserked, will he attack or Blood Suck?
  
• When a monster is Berserked, does it use its first ability or does it use the Attack command?

Some of these are trickier than others, but they should all be fairly easy to verify in FFT.

[formerdeathcorps]

1) Mimes mimic that of the tile he stands on.
2) A charm / invite unit counts as a member of the team that charmed / invited him for miming purposes.
3) Monster Skill doesn't affect enemy monsters.  I forget about charm because I just ASM'd the skill out in my patch.
4) Blood Suck over Berserk.  They take the same overall AI behavior (attack the nearest target), but blood sucked units default to their special Blood Suck skillset (which only has the Blood Suck attack).
5) Berserk monsters use the "Attack" command even though they do not normally have access to it.

[PX_Timefordeath]

Monster skill does affect charmed monsters

[Ilium]

Hello, this looks very interesting. How large can the maps be, and how many units could be supported?

[MasterGrand]

I like it ^_^

[Mogri]

Hello, this looks very interesting. How large can the maps be, and how many units could be supported?

There is no technical restriction to the size of the maps. Currently, maps are limited to about 18 tiles in width because that's how wide the content area is. I believe the largest map currently available is the 15x20 randomly-generated map.

You all probably know better than I do what the restriction is in FFT proper. Mega Tact probably supports larger maps even with the width limitation. (Maps wider than that can still be used; you just have to rotate them so that the smaller dimension is used as the width.)

As for units, there's no hard limit. Randomly-generated maps have four team slots with nine units each. If you used all four teams and max units, that'd be 36 units. Obviously, sprite limitations are not a concern, so you could have all of the Zodiac beasts and both Altima forms in the same battle. Most maps have fewer unit slots, though.

Theoretically, I could make a 15x50 map with capacity for 100 units on each team. That would be silly, though.

[Angel]

FFT has no length restriction, just a hard limit of 256 tiles per map. You can have a 128x2 map, if you so desired.