Final Fantasy Hacktics

The primary point of this patch is to make Final Fantasy Tactics A2 much more of a challenge than it was before. I'll be looking over pretty much every aspect of the game, and changing what needs to be changed. This will definitely take a while with all that I have to do, so if anyone is interested, feel free to give me any ideas or suggestions for improvement that you may have. I'll consider anything.

If you don't like the pace at which this patch is progressing, remember that one person can only do so much in his/her spare time.



- Examine all jobs, abilities, items, and equipment; make changes if necessary. This also applies to monsters and bosses.

- Fix/remove anything game-breaking. This applies to the aforementioned.

- Balance out all stat growths for every job. This is one of the tougher things to do.

- Remove all laws.

- Give enemies increased levels, more abilities to choose from, and better equipment.

- Make all hidden jobs available from the start of the game.

- Create new "Challenge" missions. These will replace Clan Trials.



General


Jobs



Equipment
Coming later.

Abilities

How did you make units start with full MP?

Quote from: ArcticPrism on November 20, 2014, 07:39:17 pm
How did you make units start with full MP?

It was Darthatron's discovery - modify all of the bytes at these addresses in a hex editor.

BD180: B8 03 C4 E1
BD18C: 00 10 A0 E3
BEC44: BA 03 D5 E1

Thanks!

Anyone have any ideas of what abilities could be used in the Mediator's skillset? I'm not exactly sure what direction to go with that job.

Good job, i have a few questions though:

How can you do the following?
"- Remove all laws.

- Give enemies increased levels, more abilities to choose from, and better equipment.

- Make all hidden jobs available from the start of the game. "

Also, how can you change Job's names? Do you know how to change job descriptions? What about skillset names and descriptions?

As for Mediator... Well, i don't really remember many skills right now, but what about making them a 'dialogue' based status effect job? With things like Provoke, Advice and the like?

Quote from: FrozenDragon150 on November 26, 2014, 01:28:15 pm
Good job, i have a few questions though:

How can you do the following?
"- Remove all laws.

- Give enemies increased levels, more abilities to choose from, and better equipment.

- Make all hidden jobs available from the start of the game. "

Also, how can you change Job's names? Do you know how to change job descriptions? What about skillset names and descriptions?

As for Mediator... Well, i don't really remember many skills right now, but what about making them a 'dialogue' based status effect job? With things like Provoke, Advice and the like?

Well, I already know that the Mediator is a speech-oriented job. I'm just not sure of which statuses they should inflict, ability range, etc.

To answer your first two questions, look at Lennart's "Enemy Data" spreadsheet. You can find out where to mess with enemy data there, along with laws. Setting the Law byte to 00 removes laws for that specific battle, but if you want to remove laws completely, you'll have to do this for every battle in the game.

I don't know how to make hidden classes available yet - I'm not even sure if this can be changed on hex level. I'm still looking into it.

If you want to change game text, Lennart's spreadsheets include what bytes correspond to which characters. I did make a table file from all of it, which you can use in WindHex, or any other hex editor that can load table files. I find editing text this way to be much easier. If you're using WindHex: File > Open Table File > Table #1.

If you're making Mediator, I would start by moving Advice and Parley onto them. The range of the skills could be anything from 1-4 and be perfectly reasonable since it's all talk. I would just balance the range and MP costs based on how powerful/important the skill is. The problem with Mediator is that they were originally useful for manipulating Brave/Faith scores which only exist in FFT.

Other possible skills:
Invite = Inflict Charm, single target
Encourage = Heal and add Regen, single target
Insult = Inflict Berserk, single target
Accuse = Inflict Slow, single target
Negotiate = Steal Gil, single target
Warning = Inflict Doom, single target
Threat = Inflict Def- and Res-, single target
Mislead = Inflict Confuse, small AoE
Pray = Inflict Reraise, single target
Mediate = Inflict Stop, large AoE
Mimic Montblanc = Inflict Berserk, all units

Mimic Montblanc = Berserk

That made me fall of my bed laughing

...And hit myself in the face, curse you bcrobert...!

All of those skill ideas are great. I'll be sure to take note of them.

If Montblanc is anywhere on the field after Mimic Montblanc is used, all Berserked units, allies and foes alike, specifically target him.

Hey, i just had an idea, if i can edit text, does that mean i can create unique classes for characters by replacing the dummy ones?

I'd love to make one for frimelda, kinda like a female Orlandeau, called "Blademaster" with "Blade Skills" as Command, and having Holy Blade, Blade Dance, Parivir elemental blades and possibly other Sword-based skill. Oh, and being able to equip Swords, Blades, Greatswords, Knightswords and Katanas.

Maybe that's just a dream though

It's definitely possible, but I don't think it's simple.

Also, text editing has its limits right now. No one has found where the pointers are yet AFAIK, so any new text you add in can't be longer than what it was originally.

Quote from: Blue on November 26, 2014, 08:41:16 pm
If Montblanc is anywhere on the field after Mimic Montblanc is used, all Berserked units, allies and foes alike, specifically target him.

OMG YES.

Well, i already changed a "Gimmick Unit" (The one in the 93 slot, right after Nightshade) to "Blademaster"

I did that 'cause as far as i know, Gimmick Units are not used by the game anywhere, but the Commands are a bit more complicated since i think the game uses all of those

Gimmick units are things like pots and chairs. They're all used in the game at some point, I believe.

Really? Oh, well, back to the drawing board there.

But, if all classes on the editor are used at least once in the game, that would make it even harder to create unique classes...

That's really my main concern right now, some characters really need these, namely, Luso, Cid, Frimelda and Montblanc (this one less so than the others)

After all, it's not fair that everyone else has their super-sweet-and-awesome special classes and these ones are left out.

In fact, i already have some ideas for Cid and Frimelda, Cid should be a "Protector" an upgraded version of the Defender, but with more skill variety, Cover, higher defensive stats and attack, able to equip Knuckles, Broadswords, Greatswords and Spears.

Frimelda, like i said before, should be a "Blademaster" with "Blade Skill" or "Swordsmanship" as command, having high Attack, Defense, Speed and Resilence (status defense) as well as Blade-based skills.


Btw, i noticed that Gifted one and Nightfall, as well as a few other classes are absent from the Editor

I was just doing some memory editing - and I believe I have discovered some text pointers. I'll dig into this further.

There are two unused slots, if you don't plan on creating more than two classes.

"Gifted One" and "Nightfall" aren't actual classes. They're just the normal Hunter and Ninja jobs with specially assigned job names for specific battles. That's why they're not present in the editor.

2 slots? Oh, great news then, Cid and Frimelda may have new classes, Luso might as well work as a normal hume since he's got all that "wants to see everything about ivalice" theme

...Which slots, by the way?

Text pointers... Does that mean that it should be possible to edit descriptions and names?! Awesome!

Also, have you found a way to do level scaling? I think a crude version of it is present in some battles, i've noticed level differences in enemies during multiple playthroughs, i once fought against Ewen at the Rupie Mountains, he was level 25, then i made a low level run and he was level 19

I'm not sure how to make the enemies scale with the highest leveled unit in the clan, but you can change the maximum level of every enemy in each battle, up to 99.

You can already edit all text, but you can't go beyond a certain number of characters, depending on what you're editing. For example, you can't change "Parivir" to anything longer than seven characters without the text overflowing. 

Job slots 8C and 9A are free.

Awesomesauce!

Well, i suppose just making them have better abilities and higher levels should make up for the lack of scaling, i guess they could be given some of the best combos, like giving Ewen a High Magick secundary with Magick Frenzy for him to combo with his Ninjutsu, and maybe Dual Wield

Magick Frenzy? As awesome as that ability is, I'll likely end up removing it. It's broken on a whole new level. Either that, or I'll nerf it so that it only works with weak magick spells, but I don't think even that would balance it out completely.

Really? I generally avoid removing abilities, greater variety gives it kind of spice, instead, i just buff other abilities of similar caliber to match it.

For example, remember that "Starter/Advanced" classes i had posted in my thread? Well, since Paladin, Parivir, Seer, Illusionist, Ninja and Hunter were the Hume's Advanced classes, i always make these classes roughly equal, for example, while Seer has Magick Frenzy, Parivir has the Blade skills, which are technically equal, if you use a dual wielded Magick Frenzy, you still could not match the power of a Geomancy-boosted Blade skill, but Seers still have Elemental spells, healing and revival spells, which the Parivir doesn't.

Something like that, Advanced classes are meant to compete against each other, not against starter classes, you could not set a Seer against a Thief, for example.

In fact, the only skills i ever remove are the Ultima skills, now THAT's overpowered.

That's just me though XD

But without Magick Frenzy I can't have my kickass dual-wielding Illusionist of uber-death! :(

OP units are definitively OP, but you can't tell me that they're not satisfying to use.

Quote from: bcrobert on November 28, 2014, 02:08:38 am
But without Magick Frenzy I can't have my kickass dual-wielding Illusionist of uber-death! :(

OP units are definitively OP, but you can't tell me that they're not satisfying to use.

This, if you don't want to ruin the game by using OP units, make stronger enemies that make you actually need these OP units

Quote from: bcrobert on November 28, 2014, 02:08:38 am
But without Magick Frenzy I can't have my kickass dual-wielding Illusionist of uber-death! :(

OP units are definitively OP, but you can't tell me that they're not satisfying to use.

Quote from: FrozenDragon150 on November 28, 2014, 06:51:07 am
This, if you don't want to ruin the game by using OP units, make stronger enemies that make you actually need these OP units

Alright, those are actually good points. I think I'll leave it in.

I wonder, why aren't there any more tools for this game, other than Lennart's, when there is so much research made? Sure, it's no PSX FFT but there are lots of stuff that can be edited, A-Abilities, Jobs, Names, Descriptions, THE WHOLE GAME SCRIP, etc.

I mean, it's not like i'm really bothered by it, just wondering.

...And no, this has nothing to do with wanting to edit the story's dialogue or anything, nor does it have anything to do with me hating how everyone speaks in the game, with rhymes all the time or anything, no sire, not at all

Quote from: FrozenDragon150 on November 28, 2014, 06:13:10 pm
I wonder, why aren't there any more tools for this game, other than Lennart's, when there is so much research made? Sure, it's no PSX FFT but there are lots of stuff that can be edited, A-Abilities, Jobs, Names, Descriptions, THE WHOLE GAME SCRIP, etc.

I mean, it's not like i'm really bothered by it, just wondering.

...And no, this has nothing to do with wanting to edit the story's dialogue or anything, nor does it have anything to do with me hating how everyone speaks in the game, with rhymes all the time or anything, no sire, not at all

There aren't a whole lot of people actively interested in FFTA2 unfortunately, so no one's bothered doing anything else with the game.

In truth, I find A2 far more interesting than TA. Once I'm done with FFTA GG, I would really like to focus more on A2. It really is a great game.

Quote from: FrozenDragon150 on November 28, 2014, 06:13:10 pm
I wonder, why aren't there any more tools for this game, other than Lennart's, when there is so much research made? Sure, it's no PSX FFT but there are lots of stuff that can be edited, A-Abilities, Jobs, Names, Descriptions, THE WHOLE GAME SCRIP, etc.

Because literally all of that research was done by five or less people. Lennart was the only tool designer to have put a decisive effort toward this game.

A game has to be unbelievably popular to attract a listing of tool designers. Any game that isn't Pokemon, Metroid, Mario, Zelda, etc is lucky to even get one tool. If Darthatron hadn't been interested in FFTA, then the hacks coming forward now may have never existed. That's how much sway programmers have.

I find FFTA2 to be better than FFT, I dunno, I just find the sound, graphics, and other stuff to be more appealing, plus, character designs are much better than FFT's, I mean, in that game everyone seems to be anorexic or something, and nobody has noses.

Also, game mechanics are much simpler in FFT A2, except for skill learning, that's one of the few bad points

Quote from: Eternal on November 28, 2014, 08:47:49 pm
In truth, I find A2 far more interesting than TA. Once I'm done with FFTA GG, I would really like to focus more on A2. It really is a great game.

Agreed. It did many things right.

+better law system
+fixed most broken stuff from FFTA
+clan trails were strategic and fun
-introduced newer broken stuff
-story is purposeless and so is the main character
-monster skirmish doesn't have as much variety as clan wars

It took a few things from Tactics Ogre that IMO didn't fit well into the game
-10MP regen per turn makes slower classes incompetent (in TO MP is regenerated per passing turn of every character, meaning the slower you are, the more MP you regen by the time your turn come up)
-60exp per battle (if only enemies scaled in levels, not just monsters and Ewen)

The gameplay felt very balanced in the beginning, that is until the newer classed got unlocked and the AI degraded in intelligence

Quote from: FrozenDragon150 on November 29, 2014, 10:02:22 am
I find FFTA2 to be better than FFT, I dunno, I just find the sound, graphics, and other stuff to be more appealing, plus, character designs are much better than FFT's, I mean, in that game everyone seems to be anorexic or something, and nobody has noses.

Also, game mechanics are much simpler in FFT A2, except for skill learning, that's one of the few bad points

In FFTA2 the AP from battles is shared among all party members (even those who didn't participate), the AP from dispatch missions is also shared...how is that a bad point?

Quote from: Blue on November 27, 2014, 05:56:27 pm
Magick Frenzy? As awesome as that ability is, I'll likely end up removing it. It's broken on a whole new level. Either that, or I'll nerf it so that it only works with weak magick spells, but I don't think even that would balance it out completely.

I also dislike removing things from a game unless they are utterly incompetent.

Since you can change what triggers Magick Frenzy why not increase their MP cost, or maybe give an MP cost to Magick Frenzy itself
BadgerLordZeus's post (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=9486.20)
if all else I would love to see the No Mou use it (if possible), they can't dual wield anyway

Quote from: rrs_kai on November 29, 2014, 11:52:55 pm
In FFTA2 the AP from battles is shared among all party members (even those who didn't participate), the AP from dispatch missions is also shared...how is that a bad point?

I feel like he meant the equipment system. Your ability to learn skills is limited to what equipment you have. It worked in FFTA but in FFTA2 you have strict limits to your inventory because of the poorly implemented bazaar system. Until you unlock auctions. Then you suddenly have the best most broken equipment, which isn't exactly better.

Unrelated note: Smashing my lovely assassin in the face with a nerf hammer is not "fixing broken stuff." Ultima Masher is just as OP as ever and the nerf to status accuracy just means that status reliant units are worthless. Imho FFTA2 is the most imbalanced game in the Tactics series. :/

Yep, I mean't the annoying equipment skill-learning.

I believe Ultima skills need to be removed, that way the classes that had them should be used for other things. Fusiliers are awesome if you leave the gunmanship skills intact, having a high chance of debuffing the foes, and having elemental damage for spice. Of course, without Ultima, Fusiliers actually need a relatively small buff.

Assasins wouldn't really need a nerf, without Ultima they are your nice rouge-type advanced class, high speed, attack, can equip katanas and greatbows, they're awesome, not utterly broken but not weak by any means.

I still use the 'Starter-Advanced' stuff, it makes balancing easier since it means some classes are mean't to be stronger/more specialized than others, like, the Parivir is supposed to be an upgrade to the Fighter, or the Paladin to the Soldier, or the Hunter to the Archer.

Hey, Blue, did you manage to find out anything about the text pointers?

Quote from: FrozenDragon150 on December 04, 2014, 05:09:04 pm
Hey, Blue, did you manage to find out anything about the text pointers?

I've only found them in memory; I haven't found any in the game's data yet. This has been my first priority for a while now, since a lot of skill renames won't be possible without this. But there's no need to ask - I'll post anything I find as soon as possible.

There's something that's been bothering me for a while

How are class sets chosen? Generics get their respective race's classes, but what differentiates them from unique characters with unique classes like Adelle, Vaan and Penelo?

Is it their IDs? If so, would it be possible to add/remove classes from these sets?

I just realized that if i give characters unique classes, what would they do once they reclass? They wouldn't be able to change back

I have almost no idea. I'm guessing it's all linked to a character's ID, but even then I don't know how to change what classes it can access.

Characters might have a defined class set in RAM that's checked whenever they change classes. If you recruit an Assassin, without the prerequisite abilities, then change her class, it should automatically remove Assassin from her options during the checks.

The mystery is how the game knows that a character has met the seemingly invisible prereqs to be a Heritor or a Sky Pirate or whatever. They didn't cop out by abusing the race system, like they did in FFTA, so it really has to be something unique to the character's data.

My issue is that I've never been able to pin down this "unique thing." Always felt like I was closer when I was screwing around with action replay codes though, so maybe their compatibility lists are somehow saved directly to RAM periodically.

Hey, could someone here upload Lennart's Data and enemy Data?

Mediafire isn't working on my cellphone, and i'm getting impatient, my desktop is a no-go, i wanna get experimenting with his findings NAO D:

Oh, actually, forget about that, just got it all.

...My problem is, er, how the hell is the enemy data supposed to be read? maybe I'm just dumb, but I don't seem to understand how to read it   :?

Made an account just to say how excited I am at the possibility of playing a hack like this.

Have you considered trying to make un-recruitable units like Illua playable?

Illua playable wouldn't be too hard in theory. Unfortunately, if you hack Illua into your party, it crashes the game when an Opportunity Command arises. Not sure how that could be fixed.

Quote from: Eternal on December 16, 2014, 11:03:38 pm
Illua playable wouldn't be too hard in theory. Unfortunately, if you hack Illua into your party, it crashes the game when an Opportunity Command arises. Not sure how that could be fixed.

Don't opportunity commands have dialogue attached to them too? So she'd probably need more sprites and more dialogue, and it would have to be correctly pointed to. That sounds like work. Just add her to the game and save often in case of opportunity crashes. :P

Alternatively if someone finds the routine that decides when an opportunity command happens, they could just remove opportunities from the game. The only thing they really effect is basically Sequencer.

I liked opportunity commands!   double strike or a free psudeo-hastega were always very welcome in my book.

Anyways, the bazaar system is my biggest gripe in this game. I would love to be able to edit monster loot drops and quest rewards to remedy the system. The fact that Animist only had 2-3 available skills out of their marginally decent skill list by the time you got Hurdy is unacceptable.

Personally I think everything would be fine if the monsters just had smaller loot tables. If I want Pink Tails I should be able to look up the appropriate monster and have a decent chance of getting them. Instead I have a tiny chance from a handful of monsters, even when using steal loot.

My favourite part of FFTA2 would be diretional damage.  It would be great to have that in FFTA.
Something like 0.75 front and 1.25 back.

I wish that Frimelda, Vaan, Adelle... not be humes. Not saying all should change, just that for instance, I like to play with special units only, I get a bangaa, 2 humes, a moogle, another hume, a viera, another hume, a moogle, aaaand another hume.... the last hume cannot even change jobs... he stayed an agent...
This is my first post XD hope i didn't boored anyone to death with my request and bad english. Mery christmas everyone and peace.
Ps love what you have been doing so far.

This project isn't dead, if anyone was wondering. I've just been finishing up this semester in school. Now that it's over, I'm getting back to work.

Quote from: Kaijyuu on December 19, 2014, 03:23:19 am
Personally I think everything would be fine if the monsters just had smaller loot tables. If I want Pink Tails I should be able to look up the appropriate monster and have a decent chance of getting them. Instead I have a tiny chance from a handful of monsters, even when using steal loot.

I'd like that also. I wish I knew how to change any of that.

Quote from: ruiso on December 24, 2014, 03:57:36 pm
I wish that Frimelda, Vaan, Adelle... not be humes. Not saying all should change, just that for instance, I like to play with special units only, I get a bangaa, 2 humes, a moogle, another hume, a viera, another hume, a moogle, aaaand another hume.... the last hume cannot even change jobs... he stayed an agent...
This is my first post XD hope i didn't boored anyone to death with my request and bad english. Mery christmas everyone and peace.
Ps love what you have been doing so far.

If you change a special character to a new race, they likely won't have all of the animations needed for full use of that new race's jobs, unfortunately.

I've been thinking about changing Clan Trials into Special Challenges, where the player can choose to fight tough enemies and superbosses. Rewards for beating these challenges could include lots of AP, specific high-level loot, rare equipment, and of course Clan Privileges. I'm liking the idea so far.

It's funny you say that since I was thinking the exact same thing myself. I think it's a great idea. Totally support it!

What will you do to clan titles though?
One of the things i never knew was that you'd get new quests based on your title, but generally once you went throught the trials to get the titles, you were already powerful enough to beat the quest unlocked throught the rather easily (looking at YOU showdown)

Maybe you could make these quests automatically unlocked, like making the game assume you have the highest title or somethong

Blue, if you're still around, I read on the first page that you are changing ability sets for jobs and I am trying to do the same but have hit a wall. I have opened the ROM and went to offset 0x053D963C but could not decipher what the string of values meant. They don't seem to be in any logical order and I don't have a value list to go off of. Could you please explain more about how to add/subtract/change abilities in skill sets?