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Messages - Sterling LaVaughn

1
PSX FFT Hacking / Re: On the subject of Monster Skill
December 04, 2012, 06:10:36 am
Not sure if it's what you're looking for, but there IS a hack that allows monsters to use all 4 moves without Monster Skill.

  <Patch name="All monsters can use 4 moves (v3).">
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="11B634">
      01000234
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="133960">
      00000000
      00000000
      00000000
      00000000
      00000000
      00000000
    </Location>
  </Patch>
2
This is FFTPatcher stuff, which should be painless. Try tinkering around with it, I think you'll find it's pretty easy.

http://ffhacktics.com/downloads.php
3
Spriting / Re: Tojoe's Sprites
July 17, 2012, 07:13:13 pm
First thing that came to mind was FFV Bards, specifically Lenna.

The cuffs from behind are awfully dark!
4
PSX FFT Hacking / Re: Problem editing text fft 1.3
July 07, 2012, 04:09:09 pm
Well that's not true, I've been patching the same ISO over and over again.

Aside from the saving and reloading thing, the other big problem is having too much text. How much are you adding?
5
Curious to see how good these work with Behemoths/Dragons/other 128+ Jump monsters.
6
Help! / Re: ASM for formula change
July 07, 2012, 02:09:33 am
Well, here's the unfinished patch for now. I don't know how the good ASM guys decide on where to put stuff, so I just dumped it in Steal Exp for now. Lemme know if you want to move it and don't know how.

   <Patch name="Holy/Mighty/Dark Sword become WP+PA+Y, Steal Exp gutted">
    <Description>Describe Your Patch Here</Description>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="0122870">
E8FFBD27
1000BFAF
7E21060C
00000000
3E19060C
00000000
1980033C
CE386394
1980023C
D0384294
00000000
21204300
1980033C
902D638C
80000234
250062A0
040064A4
00000000
1000BF8F
1800BD27
0800E003
00000000
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="0122B48">
      1C26060C
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="0122C0C">
      1C26060C
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="0122C70">
      1C26060C
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="0122CB0">
      1C26060C
    </Location>
  </Patch>


Seeing your posts in the other section leads me to believe you'd be better off with having this apply to more than just Swordskills though. If you're still using regular physical formulas and you just want those moves to be weaker than WP*PA, check out Glain's hack to allow negative values for Y.

edit: didn't actually post the unfinished hack, oops
7
PSX FFT Hacking / Re: Problem editing text fft 1.3
July 05, 2012, 11:49:52 pm
Try this:

- Make changes
- Save file in .ffttext
- Close and reopen FFTacText
- Load the .ffttext file
- Patch the ISO
8
Help! / Re: ASM for formula change
July 05, 2012, 11:38:19 pm
Made a version that almost completely works (right now damage mods only affect PA). They're pathetically weak though, a level 50 Orlandu with Excalibur does about 30 per hit. Kinda defeats the point of anything except breaking gear and praying for status, and I can't imagine the computer ever using them. You sure you want this?
9
Anything except cutting the paths is good in my book. And yeah, the idea was to have new fights, preferably something that'd justify occasional visits. The real question is how many can I cram in one spot?
10
Search got nothing, so onwards!

These are the only ones that connect to a green dot and nothing else. There's zero reason to revisit them aside from deliberately getting into specific fights at Mandalia and B Valley. Even worse, the rare battles got dumped on those paths.

Zeakden/Bethla/Murond are at least stepping stones, and Nelveska ain't hurtin' nobody with no green neighbors. But these two are perfectly good wastes of content.

I figure the best solution would be one of the following:

A) Turn these locations (and possibly the other empty blues) into Deep Dungeon-like spots where you can revisit old story maps from a menu.

B) Redirect most or all of the ENTDs from those paths to somewhere else.

I don't know how to do either, but I'm guessing the first one is easier given all the world map/event editing stuff going around. And either my Google Fu sucks or nobody's really cracked the green ENTD selection stuff. So basically, Option A looks way better.


How feasible are those options, anyway?
11
I've been playing through the full game with the Story Progression Gear hack and the Gear Level bugfix. One thing I've noticed is that enemies will still occasionally use old items later in the game; you might see two Knights late in Chapter 4, one with a Rune Blade and another with a Diamond Sword.

It also seems like anytime you have multiple items of the same type available at the same time (Fire/Ice/Thunder Rods, Flame/Ice Shields, etc.), those items will keep coming up too. I'm assuming it counts the "extra" items as their own item types like with the old Linen Robe problem, but I haven't bothered verifying it.

Anyway, the whole thing works great. You won't notice the weird selection thing until long after you're capable of plowing through groups with <Random> across the board, at which point it becomes a cool little flavor bit.
12
PSX FFT Hacking / Re: The little asm hacking reference
January 24, 2012, 01:54:16 pm
The "Blank Support ability over Short Charge adds 25% bonus skill hit" hack seems to mess up Golem's success rate, making it something like Hit = [Faith * 1.3]%. I just changed the formula to be MA+X% since I'm okay with it always being 100%, but might as well mention it for anyone else.
13
Ah, I always assumed people only did it when they were too afraid of Dorter after their first time.

Well the only other suggestion I'd make then is some sort of automatic level cap for different parts of the game, but I'm guessing that's been discussed before since no one seems to bring it up.
14
Quote from: "philsov"
Quoteis that you can't use Steal at all if you don't want to break the first three chapters

That's one of the impasses about Steal -- if all the enemies have your gear, then theres no point in stealing it.  If they outgear you, then you steal it, and they no longer outgear you, and that advantage is gone.  Randoms with set equips don't really seem like that bad of an idea -- its akin to most other games where the stuff around the starting areas are in fact easier.  It'd take a lot of micromanagement to setup but it'd nerf steal while keeping the game more balanced.  Thuuus, Steal can gain additional abilities to not be "only for stealing".  

Well I was more referring to the idea that to properly use Steal, you gain lots of experience from crowd controlling all the enemies. The next batch shows up with nicer gear, you steal that, level up a bunch, steal the next batch, etc. Technically you can do that in vanilla FFT with random battles.

As for keeping Steal as a good skillset, I like the suggestion of usually having an enemy with a nice item to steal in each fight. Otherwise though, I'd say it'd be fine as is, but if people want more, then that's fine.

Quote from: "philsov"
QuoteEnemies are supposed to have better gear so that they'd have an advantage over you, but they lose that advantage quickly if you can capitalize on it.

Which is another conundrum.  Thus, we can use other avenues for advantage like advanced/custom/combined/etc skillsets, greater numbers, and/or higher levels.

Remember that we can still use <random> gear, just gotta limit it to Maintenance/Immortal characters outside of Chapter 4ish. It means promoting some enemies to "miniboss," but that shouldn't be an issue. The only downside seems to be that those characters are forced to use Maintenance, but there shouldn't be too much trouble in making them unique somehow.


Quote from: "FFMaster"The problem with giving set equipment for randoms/story battles is that you can power through with a team of monks. If I can do it at level 99 on Dorter 1 while they have crystal equips, anyone can do it while they have set equipment.

The abilities you gain through leveling to 99 do more to break the game than just having Monk with high attack power, even with <random> gear (since you can catch up immediately with Steal).

Which reminds me: people make kind of a big deal about gaining 20+ levels for Dorter, but how many people actually do this? There's something about this one fight that I think automatically scares people in some way or another, even if it's not particularly notable after your first time playing.
15
Quote from: "Dome"If you think there are LOTSA of crap moves, you should list them, so we can try to improve, if it's possible

Guess I probably should've emphasized "mediocre," and also noting that you really don't need every single ability in the game to be a great unit (especially as things become outdated later on).

But I would say that stuff like the gear breaks (aside from Weapon), most of the movement abilities, and a good chunk of enfeebles are crap. I'd nominate Charge but you guys beat me to it.


Quote from: "philsov"4) I disagree with this - if the player wants to grind more to get better stuff they should be rewarded thusly.

The problem people have with random gear (for those that consider it a problem, of course) is that you can't use Steal at all if you don't want to break the first three chapters. Enemies are supposed to have better gear so that they'd have an advantage over you, but they lose that advantage quickly if you can capitalize on it. You end up with something that was IMO not much harder than vanilla FFT until the endgame. It's actually worse given how much time is spent on farming gear/crystals rather than just fighting to win.
16
Quote from: "Dome"I'm against the return of gained jp up, and I'll explain you why: You don't use any other support while it's around
Jp costs have already been lowered to counter this
Maybe we can make that crystals can only heal you, and reduce a bit jp costs in order to make every job mastered with something like...3600/4000 jp? (Job Level 8 plus a bit more)

Got no problem with generally cheaper JP costs, although learning every skill and mastering every job isn't that important in itself given the amount of mediocre/crap moves in the game (unless you're going for Onion Knight, but I don't have a PSP so no comment there). And considering the wild variations in skill value and number of skills per job, the range for mastering should be kinda large between certain jobs.

Also, I heartily endorse the increased relevancy of elements and/or the divergence of elemental same-y skills.
17
Well I'm all for getting some bonus skills here and there, but full skillsets from single crystals is completely nuts. If there was a flag to prevent learning specific moves from them, I'd be all over that thing.

Also, if we want something to make mastering jobs late in the game a little quicker, why not give Gained JP Up to Mime?
18
Quote from: "Dome"2) Storyline battle enemies level should be the same level of your party, and only bosses should be set on "Party level + something"
3) Equipment of storyline battles enemies should be fixed, and just a "tier" upper yours (There's still should be something rare to steal)
4) Random battles should only contain monsters (or immortal humans with maintenance as an ability, or humans with fixed equipment), in this way you can't steal equipment outside of storyline battles

This is pretty important, imo. I played through 1.3 with the notion that you should always harvest gear/crystals off of your enemies. This is what happens:

- Every enemy has slightly nicer gear because of <random> equipment and higher levels
- Steal/Sleep/Crystal/etc. everyone present
- Because of higher enemy levels (and better survivability/raises from enemies), each fight gives several levels just from crowd control
- With higher levels, next fight has even better gear
- Repeat until Thief Hats/Rune Blades before Barius Hill or so

And this is without any random battles after Dorter. Battles end up being about farming rather than winning.

I can appreciate the notion that you're supposed to be punished for grinding, but unless you pull 20 or so levels without seeing any <random> geared humans, you're just being given an opportunity to grind for gear as well. That completely ruins gear progression through Chapter 1-3. The only real way to preserve difficulty is to never use Steal or wait for chests, but why should the fault rest on an otherwise acceptable skillset/tactic?

I've been recording when random battles open up throughout the game, a full list should make controlling gear much easier. Also should consider monster placement for the sake of poaching, especially in regards to what's available in Chapter 3.


The only non-gear related suggestion I want to make is to somehow limit the amount of skills you can get from crystals. It's fine if you can save some JP or jump start a new class, but I was getting full mage skillsets from these things in Chapter 1. Seems to be a recurring theme that new toys for enemies won't make things harder if you can just take them for yourself.
19
Figured I'd just post in this thread instead of making a new one.

I'm compiling when certain fights become available, but before I continue (mid-Chapter 2 right now) I figured I'd ask:

- Is there still no list of this anywhere?
- How much is known about World Map hacking/info? I haven't seen much from browsing/searching around a bit and FFTPatcher doesn't seem to have anything; I assume this stuff is directly connected to it