Final Fantasy Hacktics

Quote from: Kalas on October 28, 2011, 02:55:02 am
The Gale Hairpin bug is present. :/

And, just a general question, but did anyone else not get the Charm Bangle after the Vector Banquet?

In the newest version, the Gale Hairpin has become a pretty cool unique accessory for Setzer. I'll let you find out what it does... And, I did get all 24 soldiers at the banquet and received the Charm Bangle. Maybe you missed someone.

I've been way to busy to play this lately, but hopefully this weekend I'll have a chance to make some more progress.

I'm afraid to say I am having quite a lot of trouble with Ultima's 2000-per-tick Regen too. Been working on him for quite a while with several different parties, including the all-girls reflect ring group posted above, as well as parties that have even more potential for damage. I can sometimes make it to the second stage but my luck always runs out before I can finish. It'd be a hard fight on its own but wouldn't be nearly so bad if I didn't have to either play so riskily to outpace the Regen or take a few turns to take care of the party and quickly fall behind. Also if I didn't have to run through the entire FC to change parties =P I'll keep working on it - my next idea is trying a party with Edgar for Debilitator, hopefully he's affected - but as it stands I do think the high Regen should be toned down or removed as its high healing rate makes the fight uncharacteristically long and luck-dependent for what I think has been a pretty well balanced though difficult hack so far. The Air Force battle had a similar "dps check" with the doom but was handled a bit less annoyingly.

Up to you though. I also wanted to let you know about a couple more bugs I've noticed, one obnoxious and one just weird. The first bug is that using the "remove all equipment" function from the guy on the airship will also remove the permanent sprint shoes effect on those characters it affects. Choosing "unequip everyone" will definitely remove the effect from everyone, while choosing "only unequip people not in my party" seems to only sometimes remove the effect, I'm not sure. I dunno if you can do anything about this or if its just the way the game is programmed, but its something to keep an eye on. If anyone else becomes afflicted by this, I was able to restore the sprint shoes effect for myself by using the zsnes cheat code file from http://zsnes.zophar.net/cht/

The second bug is just kinda funny. There are two listings for Gale Hairpin, each with slightly different stats and description.

As far as I can tell they both increase preemptive attacks, its just that one has +2 more speed than the other. I wish I could tell you where I got them but I wasn't really paying attention at the time.

Here's some more notes. The number in parentheses is roughly my party's level.

DADALUMA (17): Wow this guy is a beast and took me many tries. I first tried with Locke, Sabin, Edgar, and Celes and got nowhere since Sabin and Locke couldn't do anything without being countered by Dadaluma. Eventually went all the way back to Narshe to drop off Locke and hire Shadow. I figured Sabin could help out by using items and casting his piddly Fire spell but he was dead more than alive, Locke's Haste would have been better. I also equipped everyone with confusion-protecting gear (the Headband is finally useful) so I could use Noiseblaster on the iron fists to avoid their damage. Shadow ended up making a major difference with his skeans and shurikens and then... what! he healed to full!! Long, painful fight but I eventually won. I noticed an oddity in that he seemed to want to counter physical attacks and Mug, but Throw and physical Tools were fine yet even the magical Blitzes were countered. Maybe he's just programmed to hate on Sabin because they use the same moves Grueling but fun fight that takes a lot of preparation.
ULTROS (19): Not too hard, basically the same as the original. Sabin's Fire 2 from the fire knuckle really came in handy. Everyone's level being 19 I was thankfully able to avoid all his L? spells. Also, I noticed that Ultros' Drain was not doing any damage or healing until about halfway through the fight - intended?
#024 (21): Not too hard. His attacks seemed more damaging than normal so Runic was very handy. Blocking confuse also made it much easier. The magitek factory leading up to him was a little intense at times, and I wish that the new item Rubber Boots was available on this continent.
#128 (21): Quite a troublesome foe, though the fight mechanics were mostly unchanged I quickly realized his higher stats and annoying statuses meant if I didn't take him out fast I'd lose to attrition. My first try failed miserably but then I equipped Carbuncle and Phantom and they made a huge difference, allowing everyone to get in a few free hits without having to worry about healing the massive damage going out. Runic would have been great here, I miss it already.
CRANES (21): Very easy. Used Carbuncle and killed them quickly. Nice little breather fight after that annoying gauntlet.
FLAME EATER (25): Surprisingly tough, though the mechanics hadn't changed much each characters limitations made the battle difficult to survive. Nearly any attack from any enemy in the fight would one shot a character, especially the self destruct and flare. After some trial and error, my strategy was to immediately break an ice rod to clear the bombs and do quite a bit of damage to the boss. I summoned Carbuncle right after that to protect Locke and Strago for a couple rounds. Once a new group of bombs showed up I used Siren to completely neuter them for the remainder of the battle. Morphed Terra and started pounding the boss with Ice until it died. She had a reflect ring to stay mostly immune to the boss's attacks and Kirin to heal whatever got past it. The beginning of this fight and dealing with the bombs was the hardest part and required some quick timing, and Siren was extremely useful so I could just silence the bombs instead of having to kill them over and over. I like how this hack makes me think about my esper attacks - the base game was easy enough I didn't really bother summoning them too much. I could have made this easier for myself by buying some extra ice rods I guess, but I figured it was doable without.
ULTROS (26): Seems unchanged, which is ok because its basically a cutscene.

Stuff:
I have noticed two bugs. Nothing major. The first is in the last save room of the phantom train and what appears to be the top half of a ghost is next to the save point. If you walk on it you are unable to walk off. Good thing I used the save point first.



The second is on the status screen. The "ag" popped up sometime recently, if I had to guess exactly when I'd say when Relm joins your party after Ultros.



Still enjoying myself and looking forward to the reportedly even more different WOR. Each character's magical limitations renders their skills, equipment, and espers a much more tactical and interesting choice. I was somewhat disappointed to see esper level bonuses are still in, but its not too bad since there are only a few spells to learn and I guess those stats have to come from somewhere. But those job names look great. Before I head off to the flying continent, though, are there any of Strago's lores you've made only available in the WOB? I'd hate if I missed a good one.

I am pleased to say that I have been enjoying this hack for the last few days. I've been taking notes after each big fight to sort of chronicle my progress, I hope this is useful to you as feedback. I've just made up to Terra becoming an esper, and felt this was a good point in the game to post my feedback and maybe ask a few questions. For everyone else, I do discuss some fight strategies which you might consider a sort of spoiler so be careful. Without further ado my crappy notes:

WHELK: This battle was surprisingly tense. Added soldiers made the beginning a little hectic, and early into the fight I managed to mistime a shot and hit his shell. Biggs and Wedge were instantly killed by his counterattack, but I had used Barrier with Terra and she was able to whittle down the rest of his health by herself.
MAGITEKS: Does this count as a boss? It was certainly hard enough! I actually had to go grind a couple levels with Terra to get through this as her health was just so low the first couple times I tried it. Granted I usually grind a bit with Terra here anyway. Their laser is devastating and this fight was a careful balancing act between hitting one enemy with all I've got to even the playing field as fast as possible, and keeping everyone's health high to avoid getting oneshot.
VARGAS: Nothing special as far as I could tell. He didn't really seem too interesting. This boss was actually a little easier than some of the random encounters coming up the mountain, which were a pain with all their status effects until I just went back and bought everyone some relics.
ULTROS: Lots of wacky status effects, but this was still not too bad thanks to Banon. I got lucky and had a white cape on Terra and blazed through this fight in one shot.
TUNNEL ARMOR: First time I had to really pay attention to a boss. This fight was hard. I don't remember if it was as unforgiving in vanilla FF6 but you really have to be on the ball with Celes to get through this, if you mess up once it's game over. I had a hasted Celes standing by ready to Runic every spell while Locke chipped away at his HP. The one-two punches of back to back spells were pretty brutal. You really had to be quick with Runic to survive.
GHOST TRAIN: This was a lot more hectic than in vanilla. Constant instant death attacks made for a very defensive battle fought at very low health where I got to put to use all those Phoenix Downs that drop from the enemies in the area. I really like how different all the bosses have been from each other and this is no exception, you turned a really boring and easy boss into something really exciting and challenging. Really had to change up my tactics for this. Also, Sabin suplexing the train will never get old.
PIRANHAS: I wasn't expecting a real boss here! The boss piranha was actually pretty tough, but luckily Cyan's Tiger (half hp) worked on him and he quickly went down. It would have taken forever without that.
KEKFA: Whooo finally. That was a good fight. Seemed almost impossible the first time, but became easy once I figured out the trick. The trick being Runic - Celes and a party of physical attackers were able to beat him down quite handily, it was almost pathetic. I'm gonna start using Celes more, Runic seems like it could be a very useful defensive tool in this hack.

Some random thoughts:

In general I like the way everyone feels, though I'm not far enough yet to really know. I really like the FF9 style equipment-magic system, even at this low level I find each character more distinct than in the base game. Character-specific relics and spells give the characters that have them a useful niche, eg I like how Locke learns Haste. Edgar's Tools revamp were a surprise and made him much more strategic to use instead of his usual role as the most overpowered character in the early game. NoiseBlaster being all-targets makes for quite the chaotic battle, that sometimes is even tactically sound on the right enemies. BioBlaster is decent as always, but a lot better now in comparison to the flaky Autocrossbow, which I find misses too much to use reliably. Blitz still rocks and Swdtech still kinda sucks, though Cyan can be pretty good at just fighting with his genji gloves.
Random battles are much better now, they actually take a little bit of effort and some configurations can be quite challenging. Each enemy simply being tougher means you have to consider your moves a bit more carefully. I also like the potent new moves I've noticed on some enemies as well. I especially liked the evil new Leafers and quickly learned to kill them in one hit. Though I fear some are perhaps too potent. I suppose that is what the run away button is for, I have definitely been using that a lot more

I have a couple of questions too. Some may be kind of stupid or obvious so bear with me.

1. The first post in this thread requests you alphabetize Gau's rages, which you said you would do on page 4. Upon getting Gau I noticed his rages were in the default order. I then downloaded the linked Gau alphabetized rage patch and applied to the game with LunarIPS. Started up the game again, saw the rages were mostly alphabetized, fought a few battles, didn't notice any bugs. My question is this: I'm kind of worried somethings going to glitch out somewhere down the line, so, did you not apply the patch because it conflicted with your edits, or was there some other reason? I am not trying to blame you for not including it, just wondering if there is an important reason not to use it, such as that it might conflict with or overwrite the changes you have made to the game. I know almost nothing about the technicalities of SNES ROM modding or hacking. If it helps, the Gau patch's readme says it changes ROM addresses 25A41 - 25A63, 2FCD0 - 2FDCE, 2FDD0 - 2FDD3, 355C7 - 355ED, 35633 - 35634.
I dont mind restoring my save from before I applied the patch if it is indeed incompatible with yours.

2. Also on page 4 you have some neato screenshots of the characters having jobs listed in the menu. Did this not make it into the final version?  Just wanna make sure I applied the patch right. Actually, since there were other cool sounding features you've discussed in this thread, do you have a more recent changelog since this old readme? http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/617/ Or are the changes since then relatively minor enough that one is unnecessary.

All in all I have been having a very good, challenging time with this hack and hope the quality persists to the endgame! Thanks for making it

I'm sorry to say I have not been able to get the patch working. I have tried patching it using the latest LunarIPS with several different copies of the FF3 US rom, both 1.0 and 1.1 and headered and unheadered. ZSNES always says "bad rom" and only shows a black screen. I also tried patching with SNESromutil, the game then occasionally ran but with major glitches. Does anyone have any advice?

edit- perhaps the new fix may work better

Quote from: Eternal248 on October 01, 2011, 05:40:33 pm
Tweaking some more stuff with this during this week~

Does that mean you expect to release another update pretty soon?

I've been watching this for a while but just decided to register to show my support. FF6 was always my favorite FF and I think this project looks extremely promising and creative.

Wow, this mod looks really fun and cool! I have a question though and forgive me if its a dumb one: does this patch work with the psp-script patch? Can I apply both of them or does that break things?