Xif's Fixes (ASM Hacks & Spreadsheets)

[R999]

@Zodiac: Well... since you were away in Chat I'll list the questions here.

The reason why there were problems when changing the "problematic generic jobs"'s linked skillset pointer to another non-generic skillset is because the JP/Abilities learned for the non-generic skillsets are based on what you have learned from the Squire job.

My question is, have you fully tested to be sure that the abilities learned corresponding and translate properly into battle?

For example.

1) Generic Lancer job, Skillset has the first 5 abilities learned,  and using this hack to repoint to a non-generic skillset (example, 0x77).  If the generic has 0 abilities learned in the Squire job, what happens in battle when Jump is set to Primary, and when Jump is set to Secondary?    

2) What if he has 5 abilities learned in Squire but nothing learned from Jump?




I'll give it a test sometime later. If it works as it should this is a pretty clever solution, not something the Japanese were able to figure out.

[Xifanie]

My question is, have you fully tested to be sure that the abilities learned corresponding and translate properly into battle?

No.

This has nothing to do with learnt abilities. You don't get it. The routine was too complicated to edit manually so I made a hack that considers the skillset to be another at the point where it checks how to allow the player to use the skills depending on the skillset type. If you don't get this, sorry but I don't know how to reformulate it to make it clearer.

[Vanya]

I'm getting a bug with the generic skill set fix.
At Orbonne Monastery battle as soon as I try to use any action the status window in pSX says the there is an illegal opcode and lists the entire table of skillset values as the offensive code. Meanwhile the attack command just dumps me out of the menu. However, Ramza's Guts command works just fine.

[R999]

@Zodiac: I get what it does, but that's exactly what I don't get as well:  so this hack solves nothing and would still require the use of the "Squire-workaround", which only had one limitation (requiring the Squire job to be mastered, after which point all of the generic skillsets can be remapped via FFTpatcher -- the generics would then have all the abilities mastered by default for those jobs with remapped skillsets). Changing the action menu + mastering the Squire job is still required, so what's changed?

The only job that does not work with the workaround is Mime, something that could have been fixed via your previous hack.

[AvengerXP]

I would like to request "Hired soldiers arrive at [Ramza Level]" instead of 1. If you can, you can also scale the cost accordingly (may I suggest 1000+worn items resale value+50xLv beyond 1). Hiring a Lv99 char would cost about 6000 gold which isn't unreasonable. 100xLv is also a good number.

Tremendous work Zod, looking forward to more. Speaking of which, I've been dying to use that :

 

[FFMaster]

I'm getting a bug with the generic skill set fix.
At Orbonne Monastery battle as soon as I try to use any action the status window in pSX says the there is an illegal opcode and lists the entire table of skillset values as the offensive code. Meanwhile the attack command just dumps me out of the menu. However, Ramza's Guts command works just fine.

Well, I added the fix to my ISO and whenever I try any command, ePSXe crashes. Attack, a spell, Throw, Draw Out. Those were all I tried.

[Xifanie]

Lol, it's as I thought. I yold to write the routine at 0x000E9438 instead of 0x000E9358. The first one being where the opcode starts.


EDIT: Just tested myself. Works. Draw Out caster animation might need to be changed as it now has that funny palette 0 ninja blade slashing out of nowhere like the weird Monster Skill bug (a human casting hurricane for example, drawing a knife).

[FFMaster]

OK thanks. I'll update and tinker around now.

EDIT: Now it crashes when I target a unit. Used Throw Stone.

EDIT2: Haste/Haste 2 doesn't crash the game. However, an enemy Archer did. Blaster(panthers) didn't crash the game either.

EDIT3: If it matters, I'm testing all this on the Arena ISO. Also, a Red Chocobo just crashed the game. It didn't even move. As soon as it got a turn, it crashed about half a second later.

[Vanya]

I tested it again, too. It worked just fine.
Tested out a Chocobo with value AF (Night Magic) and it worked fine & allowed all 4 skills to be selectable without the 4th one being dependent on Monster Skill.
Also, I tried an experiment with setting Attack to 05. It made Ramza use Heaven Thunder as his normal attack instead of loading a menu with the skills I had chosen for the Attack skillset. I haven't tried giving Attack a set of skills with a Generic unit, though.

Update: Seems I messed up the 'Attack' Command test. Forgot to set it to <Default> in the action menu tab. Retesting now.

Update: OK. I tested 'Attack', 'Defend' & 'Equip Change' as default 05 commands. Equip Change seems to be completely unaffected by the hack. Attack & Defend seem to work just fine as menus and they seem to always have all of their skills learned. I set all the skills I tested to 100% chance to learn, but this might not be necessary. The only snag with Attack was that the blank Attack command above 'Potion' itself seemed to ignore the presence of weapons and always used the bare-fist animation instead. I didn't test if it was using the weapon stats or not. I'll give it a try with various weapons to see if it accepting their ranges and thus probably also their stats. If so, then it'll just be a matter of checking ability and animation settings to make sure that isn't the problem. Aside from that, it seems to work just fine so it could be combined with the 'Ability Requirement Hack' to have weapon specific abilities. With the right kind of hack it might even be possible to have the 'Defend' command appear in the Attack skillset as well. This would free up the Defend skillset for use as a special secondary skillset. For example a Risk Breaker job could have a set of spells for their primary skillset and weapon specific Break Arts as a special sub skillset. Another idea would be to change the Ninja's main skillset into Ninjutsu Arts and turn Defend into the Throw command. The same thing could be possible for the Lancer + Jump, the Geomancer + Elemental, the Samurai + Draw Out, and Calculator + Math Skill. If we got to the point where we could hack some of the support abilities to add a specific skillset like Defend does these could all be added to their respective jobs as special commands that can be equipped. The only question now is what happens if I make Defend act like a problematic skillset? We'll see in the next round of testing.

Update: The Defend -> Jump experiment has proven to be a failure... for the player units anyway. The AI seems to use the skill fine, but the jump seems limited to a range of 0. The same is true for the player, but it comes out like a weapon strike instead of a jump attack and the hit rate is 00% on top of that. The other unorthodox skillsets will probably have similar problems, I imagine. However, standard subsets like the idea for break arts seem to work just fine. I'll try out the Throw command just to be sure.

Update: Same deal with Throw. The AI can us it with base parameters, but the player can't. This time it showed that no abilities could be used; same thing for Equip Change when configured for Item inventory. Tried using the blank skillset '04' as a standard one and that worked. Maybe a support skill can be hacked to add 04 to the action menu?

[R999]

@Vanya: Zodiac had a hack that could attach a new skillset under the menu before this one, of which when combined with ARH would yield similar results to changing the Defend command. With that skillset and Defend, we would have up to 16+16=32 abilities that can be distributed between two sets... which could be interesting. The limitation here is that we could only have up to 16 abilities per skillset, something that Zodiac's had already started working on I believe.

[Vanya]

Yeah, I saw that one. The thing is that one is good for universal ARH skills that all units could share regardless of their current job.
Also, keep in mind that there already exist separate codes to make all units have Defend, Item, & Equip Change innately.
So really there are up to 4 (-1 ability for Attack command) skillsets that can be used for ARH abilities.
Attack (15) + Defend (16) + Item (16) + A9 (16) = 63 possible abilities.
The problem, however, is that if you place Attack, Defend, Item, A9, Equip Change, Primary Skillset, & a Secondary Skillset on the same menu the last 2.5/3.5 lines of text get cut off because the Act menu isn't programmed to handle that many lines.
Now I don't think anyone would ever need that many innate abilities.
I think it would be more useful and better balanced to have more support skills that allow subsets of skills to be equipped as with Defend.
Then if the GSFH could be upgraded to allow the problematic skillsets to function normally as subsets it would be pretty kick-ass.
Alternatively to expanding GSFH, if some custom formulas could be added that could mimic the functionality of Jump, Throw, etc. that would also solve the problem.

[Xifanie]

It's really not that simple. The skillset types affect its whole content and we can't have throwing items + normal abilities in the same skillset unless someone made a huge hack for it, which I currently can't because I have absolutely no idea how to proceed.
Act can hold 7 skillsets, or lines if you prefer. My other innate all skillset hack simple writes that skillset in the last/7th slot.

[scatttman]

about throwing i was experimenting and make equip change innate all and the change the action menu for equip change to weapons menu (throwing) but didnt work i cant even open the equip change menu anyway to fix this ?

[Vanya]

Act can hold 7 skillsets, or lines if you prefer. My other innate all skillset hack simple writes that skillset in the last/7th slot.

Really? I had problems with just defend, attack, prim, sec, & equip being active at the same time. I'll double check and post pics.

[FFMaster]

Can someone tell me how to get the hack working properly? I seem to be messing up somewhere.

1) Add the hack into BATTLE.BIN.
2) Change skillset in Action Menu's to <Default>
3) Change skillset abilities.

Even just implementing causes crashes on normal abilities.

EDIT: According to Zodiac, Fury hack and the skillset hack overlap. So if you are using both, use the new skillset hack in the front page! Thanks Zodiac for the fix. And Global C-EV also overlaps sprite hack, but he hasn't updated it yet.

[Xifanie]

IMPORTANT
UPDATED GLOBAL C-EV [CONFLICTED WITH PALETTE FIX]
UPDATED GENERIC SKILLSET FIX HACK [CONFLICTED WITH FURY HACK]

[Patri]

Is this Generic Skillset Fix Hack uploaded into the ARH or FTTPatcher or is something that has to be put in manually?

When I see code my mind stops working...

[Vanya]

What you're seeing isn't code, just hexadecimal notation that has to be put in manually with a hex editor.
If you have any questions about it take a look at my hex tutorial.

[Patri]

To those of us who are illiterate in hex and programming everything looks like code, ha ha.

I know how to use Dreamweaver. Do I get points for that? ....

[FFMaster]

Update: The Defend -> Jump experiment has proven to be a failure... for the player units anyway. The AI seems to use the skill fine, but the jump seems limited to a range of 0. The same is true for the player, but it comes out like a weapon strike instead of a jump attack and the hit rate is 00% on top of that. The other unorthodox skillsets will probably have similar problems, I imagine. However, standard subsets like the idea for break arts seem to work just fine. I'll try out the Throw command just to be sure.

I managed to get the player to have 8 range jump. However, the AI still uses it as regular Defend. How did you get the AI to use it as Jump?