Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Grim Grimoire (Latest version: Beta 0.993)

[Madeen]

@Madeen: Bombs are Halve: Ice, Absorb: Fire, Immune: Earth, Weak: Water. All Staves (except the Mythril Staff, IIRC) heal on hit now and have generally defensive boons.

Oh I had no idea, didnt see anything under monsters on first page so I wondered, thanks for clarifying

[Oryman]

i everybody and congraturations for the job done with this mod, you turned my favorite childhood game into a very challenge!
I played all the mission and also the judge sidequest and I have to report that dual wield from juggler doesn't work, frighten from orator and dark magick from reaver have 0% accuracy, blue mage can no longer learn night (maybe also roulette). I played the mod during last summer, maybe I've forgot something...
And now some personal opinions:
-great job with the new classes! I loved the reaver, samurai and orator offer good tactical choises during the battle, I haven't tried the green mage and the myrmidon to much... why don't you work on the viera? I suggest an improvement of the elementarist with more range, more choises on debuffs and maybe less power, something like a long range magick debuffer
- I liked that final:berserk now work as buff for all stats but samurai can no longer learn it 'cause he can only equip katana...
- can you extend the choise of weapons? it can be cool to to equip, for example, blue mage with rapiers/maces, or paladin/mog knight/samurai with spears, fighters with knuckles...
- I will reintroduce the mp regain, using mp break and matramagick make me win a lot of battle
- I miss the chance to steal the kotetsu and maybe other weapons or armors... can you reintroduce all the "basic" goods buyable in the shop, maybe after the end of the games, in order to don't miss the chance to learn some ability?

thanks again and sorry for my improvised english 

[Madeen]

Just had an idea... how about adding an accessory that would prevent the gain of exp?
Would be great to train units who cant do dispatch missions such as Marche and Montblanc.

Edit: Something else, just noticed shoes and accessories such as rings cant be worn together, is that intended?

[Eternal]

While I love the idea of a 0 EXP accessory, that's not really something I can do without ASM, which I lack knowledge of. And yes, all accessories are one type now, and you can only wear one. Choose carefully!

[chocolatemoose]

Will Christmas come tomorrow? 

[Eternal]

Christmas already came for FFTA2. :p

I'm working on FFTA still, of course, but a part of me is really tempted to redo everything from scratch with the tools we have now, since I'm having a lot of trouble keeping everything straight because of how much duct tape and bubble gum was used to keep things together. And if there's one thing I learned from PW 1.0 development, it's that that always catches up to you later on and becomes a pain in the ass. So I'm not sure yet, honestly. I know that's a depressing (and not very helpful!) answer, but I want to put out a truly good patch for the game.

[chocolatemoose]

I think that's understandable.

I suppose the question would be what takes more time: figuring out the jobs/abilities/etc. or trying to code out bugs? I'd imagine you have most of the former worked out.

You could always release a .994 for us to play with while you redo GG with newer tools.

[Eternal]

Honestly, I think it'd take more time having Darth or someone look at the code of everything and fix it, since they're busy with other things. One of the big problems I'm having is that I had to hex edit a lot of things way back in the early days of FFTA modding, which in turn messed other things up, and makes things hard to keep straight. If I restarted it, not only would things be done faster, but everything would be more concise to keep together. The big thing keeping from just restarting it right now is that I'd have to redo every formation, every job, every tooltip, every piece of equipment, etc. It's a lot of long, tedious work. I'm definitely going to release an update in the near future, but I really want to fix some of the bigger things first.

[chocolatemoose]

Sounds good, looking forward to the update when it comes along. I'll try to start playing your FFTA2 mod soon; I'm pretty close to wrapping up a vanilla game (~300 missions done so far).

[JoeCool]

So december now, talking about restarting the project. Its been a year and change LOL

[Eternal]

Eh, it's just talk for now. I'm still actively working on what I have right now. The more I'm playing with it, the less necessary it seems to restart it from scratch though. Thanks to Darthatron I have a fix for the status/boss exploit/issue, which is a fairly large issue right now, everything else is relatively minor aside from some random crashes that lack a decent explanation yet. When I clean a few more things up, I'll release an official new update and see how it plays from there.

[bcrobert]

If you use a patcher that can produce a log of the changes for you, then you might be able to split up the patch somehow to isolate problem areas. But that's theoretical. I don't have the attention span to research the viability or difficulty of that method.

Also I'm settled into my new place. My roommate's kittens are adorable.

[Eternal]

Blanky, I'd like to catch up and discuss quite a bit of stuff on IRC when you have the chance.

[ChaosCaine]

Fun rom hack so far, almost every item teaches Alchemists Rumah tho I'm guessing it's a bug.I was also wondering if by some chance in the future you could add more Vieara classes like that dancer from War of the Lions? o3o PS:Sorry if I spelled anything wrong I cri

[snowday]

Really liking how much harder this is, as my gripe with the original was how easy it was. Some questions though...

How come some magic differs in it's aoe? Like I'll use fire with one character and it hits in the normal space it did in the original game, and some hits a lot of characters in an area i can't quite make out.

When do I start getting weapons/equips to learn better skills? It's getting to the point where enemies have skills and abilities way past anything I have access to. For instance, I have access to only 2 spears, javelin and the mythril one that doesn't even teach anything. I have 40 missions completed up to the 2nd totema, which isn't all of them but its a lot, and I still have shit equips and the stores don't have much at all.

Also, I feel like my characters can't do shit for damage. Watching the videos on youtube of this game, Marche just 2 levels higher than mine deals ~60dmg to an ultima crystal with what appears to be a dagger, wheres mine does like 35 with the highest hitting weapon I can equip him with.

Is there a guide anywhere explaining all of the changes to skills? Sometimes I just can't tell what they do, since the text is bugged, or I can't see the .squares of the AoE (like whirlwind, wtf is its hit space? its massive and hits a ton of units). this aspect is discouraging me from playing, as some stuff just doesn't make sense.

Upon reading this thread, I feel like I don't have the most recent version, even though I downloaded the proper one on the first post...

[snowday]

On second thought, I'm at emerald keep and I feel there is too many problems for this to be playable...

Its too easy for me to just doom and frog all enemies and cheese every battle, so many abilities not working correctly/no explanation for what they do (nurse triggering counter?), the range on magic and skills like whirlwind have no explicable range..

I enjoy the increased difficulty but damn, I think i might just try a different hack:(

[Eternal]

Hello, Snowday, and welcome to FFH!

To answer some of your questions, FFTA GG is quite playable- and finishable, as many people have done- though I'll admit it's currently not quite to where I want it to be, which is why I've been working on reworking quite a bit.

I'll start with your question about magick. Black Magick is different in that each element has its own gimmick. Fire has a large AoE, Thunder has enhanced Range, and Blizzard hits the hardest. Using each element as needed for each given situation is key to winning. Things like Poison are also incredibly useful.

You're almost to the point where you can buy new gear. Keep progressing through story missions and you'll unlock quite a few new weapons that'll teach you new skills. One of the things I'll be changing is what gear unlocks when, so future updates will see more gear in stores, earlier.

Whirlwind's AoE was bugged in the last version but is fixed in the next update, which I'm hoping will be released soon. Frog and Doom are also problematic because debuff resistance (on bosses) is bugged, and Doom/Frog are pretty broken as they are. I've been doing a lot of work on FFTA2 GG, and I've learned a lot in doing so, so I'm going to be revisiting a lot of stuff in FFTA1 GG soon. If you're not having fun, I would encourage you to keep your save and play when the next update is released. What problems are you having at Emerald Keep? Either way, I appreciate the feedback and I appreciate you playing the mod!

[snowday]

Hey thanks for getting back to me!

I'm not having any problems at emerald keep, I just meant that battle, which should have been hard, was really easy just turning everyone into frogs. Doom (using deathsickle with a sniper) is also really overpowered I feel.

Didn't mean to sound like a complainer though!! Love the difficulty increase, the first battle with ritz gave me a run for my money. I like that status conditions are worthwhile. And I'm not sure if I just didn't notice it originally, but did you change beastmaster at all? When I played this game years ago I never bothered, but now I'm finding it very useful. I also like that I'm not just given all the items and equipment in shop, it makes me actually fight clans and do more side missions to get the good equips.

I guess I'll just list off things I noticed that you might want to fix or take into consideration:

-Nurse triggers counter, not sure if it was always like this, but it renders the skill useless if my bangaa is gonna slap me for 50 after I heal him for 30.
-Parley seemed to just proc immobilize, not sure if that was intended.
-Doom/Frog too good of hit chance, lets me cheese a lot of battles.
-I'm sure you're aware, but a lot of skill descriptions don't make sense, like Split and Entropy off the top of my head.
-Basically, a list of the changes to skills would be awesome
-The only time I felt really deprived of equipment was before the 2nd totema battle, I think thats when the shop upgrades the first time. Since then I've had no problem with having too little equips, and as I said before I like actually having to do the clan fights in order to randomly (i think its random?) get nice stuff.

I think I might just keep my save until the next patch.

EDIT: Accidentally sent this as a PM, my bad!

[Eternal]

I replied to your PM!

[snowday]

Saint Cross doesn't seem to work. I click the ability in battle and I can't click anything after that.