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March 28, 2024, 04:57:11 am

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Is it possible to speed up cast time and make Beastmaster global?

Started by Kiresaur, June 23, 2016, 09:57:08 pm

Kiresaur

Hi there!

I'm new to this whole modding thing, so I don't know what is actually possible, so that's why I'm asking you guys.

I feel like the beastmaster skill is kind of useless because you end up having to give up on a friendly just so you can unlock the true potential of your monsters, and you are almost always going to allow enemies to use their secret attack on you. So if you could make the skill global, as in, as long as someone has it, it affects every monster on the stage, friend or foe, it's still harmful to you but it makes using monsters a lot more interesting. But is that even possible?

And cast times. I feel like it is almost impossible to use the -Ja spells, or the highest power summoner spells, and this has always bugged me. I end up, as a black mage, rushing to get a -Ga spell, arcane strength and that's it, even flare is rarely useful, because it takes so long to cast that my mage OR MY TARGET get killed in the meantime. Well, actually, you just end up learning spells to use them as an arithmetician. Which is a boring class to me. Yes, you can get swiftness, but that is just another limitator instead of being arithmetician. I've always wandered why your own personal speed isn't added to the cast speed of a spell. That could allow things like ninjas with support spells, because they have such high innate speed that they can cast most spells in a semi-barrage fashion, even if they are weaker. Or giving speed items to your mages, instead of MATK ones. It just feels that high-level spells aren't supposed to be used at all out of arithmetician or swiftness-combo. But that sounds a lot more trouble than the Beastmaster one. Is that even possible to mod?

I never found anything about these changes, so I guess they are impossible to do. But if someone tells me they are possible, I can try to learn how to mod them into the game. And just to be clear, I'm talking about the War Of The Lions version, but if it is possible only for the PSX version, that still interests me.

Thanks for the attention!

Jumza

Quote from: Kiresaur on June 23, 2016, 09:57:08 pm
I never found anything about these changes, so I guess they are impossible to do.


:o I'm surprised you didn't find literally anything on these, there's an ASM hack for the first bit and the FFTPatcher solves the second.

Although the first one becomes trickier with WoTL instead of the PSX version. For reference, anything is possible on the PSX version, the PSP version is extremely limiting in terms of things we know how to do currently.
  • Modding version: PSX
Nyzer: Alma teleports out of her own possessed body.
Raijinili: Remember that you're telling a modding community that the game they love could use some fixing.

Kiresaur

Maybe I just reaaaaaaally suck at google searching. I'll go with that explanation. I even tried to search again and I still can't find things about them. I am what you may call a-dumb.

So, okay, for PSX version it's clearly possible. Any quick hints on where to start getting those changes?

Jumza

The FFTPatcher can be downloaded on the site, and it works on both PSX and PSP. The ASM hack I'll take a quick look around for and edit this post with the link if I find it, if not, instead of google searching try using the search function on the site!
  • Modding version: PSX
Nyzer: Alma teleports out of her own possessed body.
Raijinili: Remember that you're telling a modding community that the game they love could use some fixing.

Nyzer

Beastmaster: To be honest, this skill is stupid no matter how you look at it. While increasing the number of abilities a monster can have from 3 to 4 is good for someone looking to do more than the usual... the monster setup right now isn't exactly impressive. Every monster save the Treant has a Basic Attack as their first skill, with no special effects tied to it. That's barely useful. Some of them have barely useful or stupidly gimmicky skills in there as well. Again talking about Treants... they have an MP restore. It's literally impossible for monsters to consume MP via spells.
On top of that, some monsters don't even have three basic spells to start with.

You'd get way more bang for your buck by going over the monsters and rethinking what you can do with all the bloat there. I'd advise you to take a look at what Journey of the Five does with its monsters. Three skills each, no Beastmaster, but all the skills do something. R/S/M innates are also used to great effect instead of just "eh, let's throw Counter on some of them and call it a day". Jot5 monsters with their three spells are way more threatening than anything vanilla can pull up even if Beastmaster was field-wide.

Spell Speed: If it really bugs you that much, drop the CT of the spells and increase their MP or decrease their Y value in the Patcher to compensate. Maybe give a job Innate Swiftness. Scrap the entire Arithmetician job for literally anything else - it's too broken to make any goddamn sense. Do something else magical there that'd be a good choice to throw Swiftness on, and center that Job around all the -ja spells.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Kiresaur

I didn't expect the beastmaster thing make monsters actually good, but i find them fun to play with, and i just wanted to make it funner, even if weak. But yeah, sure, I'll check Journey Of The Five! Thanks for the tip!

I'll get the patcher and start playing with it. I have thought on doing that for years now and I always get scared thinking about how complicated it could be. But yeah, FFT is one of the only games that I still find fun to play, so I'll drop that fear and start playing with mods.

Thanks a lot for the attention, both of you <3

Emmy

So Jumza pointed this thread out at me.  I don't have the psp version of this hack, but if you are willing to mod psx version instead:

Edit - Use Xif's instead.

Of course, there are other options if you want to remove some of the hard coding regarding monsters.  Generic Skillset Fix will allow monsters to use MP.  This thread is old, but the trick to give monsters more than 4 skills still works (with the drawback mentioned): http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=413.msg6632#msg6632  If you do this, make sure Chemist is unlocked by 2 Squire levels to avoid additional bugs.  As was said, make good use of R/s/m, and also innate status effects.  Innate Reflect is quite interesting on monsters, Protect/Shell/Regen for defensive monsters, etc.

Cast times can be more easily balanced if you freeze speed (use the ASM that interprets "0" in patcher as frozen growth).  Speed values 6-8 are best balanced with (most) of vanilla's charge times, though you still might want to adjust some of them (lol Cloud).  The other 1/2 of the problem is the formulas used in vanilla.  Either switch to all linear or all quadratic based for the entire game if you don't want one form of damage strictly outclassing the other.  Also get rid of the Calculator.  Just about anything you can replace it with would be better. :P

As nyzer is saying with the bloat, you can also get rid of a lot of the bloat with the wizard/summoner skillsets.  Do we really need 4 fire spells in 1 class that have no other effect?  Or 9+ damage with no other effect?
  • Modding version: PSX

Xifanie

Yeaaaaaah, you really don't want to be using that hack. It messes with the AI hardcore. I'm not sure what exactly Kisesaur wants, but my hack isn't buggy while Razele's is. Both our hacks have a goal of always enabling the 4th monster ability without the need to be close to another unit, much less one with Monster Skill.

Also the newer version of the Generic Skillset Fix is called Skillset Behaviours: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=953.0

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Patches>
  <Patch name="Monster Skill is disabled">
    <Description>All monsters can use their 4 skills as if Monster Skill never existed. Also frees space from 0x80182438 to 0x80182660 (BATTLE.BIN).</Description>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="135C00">
      80000234
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="1345D8">
      80000234
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="11B430">
      0800E003
      01000234
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="133960">
      00000000
      00000000
      00000000
      00000000
      00000000
      00000000
    </Location>
  </Patch>
</Patches>

Taken from my topic: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=953.msg211678#msg211678
  • Modding version: PSX
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Anything is possible as long as it is within the hardware's limits. (ie. disc space, RAM, Video RAM, processor, etc.)
<R999> My target market is not FFT mod players
<Raijinili> remember that? it was awful

Kiresaur

I'm currently playing the Jot5 mod and checking it out, I'll look into Xif's mod and end up messing with patchers on my own eventually, after I get a good look into how these mods alter the game.

Thanks so much!