Concept: Monster takeover

[Emmy]

Not sure where exactly in these forums to post this.  I've been working on this project for a while now, but need to know if certain things are possible to ASM (also how to do this?) to know what direction to take the designs of later game encounters in, etc.

Readme/changelist so far:

spoiler

Global changes:

Only 2 humans (Ramza and Agrias) remain humans when they become permanent party members.  The rest have turned into monsters.  Some custom, some generic.

Generic purchase at Soldier office disabled - can change any character's name there though.

Equipment price increased - you only have 2 people to dress, though, so you're still likely to have a huge pile of cash at end game.

Equipment effects changed to lower redundancies/amount of outdated equipment by end game.  Evasion equipment nerfed or reworked to allow smaller evasion amounts + an additional effect.

Some notoriously broken equipment from vanilla (Excalibur, perfumes, thief hat, etc) removed or changed.

Fur shop reworked to allow repurchase of stolen/broken goods.

Monster breeding/poaching removed.  Several poach exclusives from vanilla now become steal exclusives.

Permanent brave/faith alteration removed.  Brave lowering abilities still exist (and are still useful offensively to disable enemies).  Abilities that formerly increased/decreased faith changed to set faith/innocent status.

All party members who join via the game giving them to you have brave/faith changed to reasonable numbers, to make up for the loss of permanent brave/faith alteration.

All monster classes are MUCH more dangerous than their vanilla counterparts.  They are given much higher stats, better innates - reaction/support/movement changed, some weaknesses removed, some new elemental resistances/immunities, status immunities, innate statuses, etc.  The player gains access to these, but they usually appear in higher levels/numbers on enemy teams.  In general, each is given a very limited moveset and little/no equipment options, but is *very* good at what they can do.  Monster recolors have similar innates/stats but are not direct upgrades to each other.

Encounters rewritten to make them more of a threat.  This includes, but is not limited to: better abilities, better equipment, increased numbers/levels, increased stats, better positioning/use of terrain, etc.  Lucavi encounters reworked to prevent quick assassination ala vanilla.

Skill changes:

Gained-JP up removed.  Action abilities have reduced JP requirements for compensation.  This also results in human enemies actually having skills to use against you!

Every class has at least one free/nearly free action ability.  Every offensive mage class has one high end ability with a non-crap damage formula.

Secret hunt removed.  Math skill removed. 

Several broken abilities (blade grasp, Mp-switch, etc) have been given exclusively to monster classes (on which they are more balanced due to not having access to other broken abilities/equipment) or enemy-only units.

Character changes:

Ramza given exclusive use of Invite, which only works on generic monster units.  Given to his Guts skillset, very low accuracy. 

Agrias's stats boosted slightly for better versatility.  (70 br/74 faith, random zodiac sign)

Other special classes replaced by monsters.  Might be replaced later by special/rare monsters.

Monster recruitment areas:

Each random gives a freebie, with a particular species predictable to the area.

Ch 1:

Mandalia West - Red Panther
Mandalia North - Goblin
Sweegy West - Yellow Chocobo
Sweegy East - Bomb
Zeklaus South - Juravis
Mandalia South - Black Chocobo
Lenalia South - Pisco Demon
Lenalia North - Grenade
Fovoham South - Steel Hawk

Ch 2:

Fovoham West - Flotiball
Araguay West - Black Goblin
Araguay East - Woodman
Zirekile West - Red Chocobo
Zirekile South - Squidlarkin

More written in several posts over this topic on another forum:

http://www.insanelyderpy.com/board/index.php?/topic/5767-fft-hack-concept-monster-takeover/

What I need to know if these are possible:

1.  How to remove hard coding on monsters equipping items?  I'd like to create a subset of monster only accessories.  I found a topic in the boards that details how to allow monster equipment, and tried that approach and it only worked for allowing an enemy to equip them (which is only useful for making encounters harder).  The ability for a player to access an equip screen as a generic monster appears to be blocked by hard coding.  Custom monsters (which use unused classes) seem to work though.

2.  Editing damage formulas?  I want something like what I saw in patcher but was confirmed to be a broken/mislabelled formula (pa* br/100 * ma).

3.  Minimum brave/faith = 60, except for force edited encounters.  This is both a quality of life issue (so people don't reset until they get something with useable stats in the recruitment areas), and to make randoms slightly more challenging.  Ever see a monster or a monk with <60 brave, or a time mage with <60 faith? You'd know exactly what I'm talking about here...

4.  What on earth could cause this bug? http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v519/broccoli7314/noclue2_zps173baf71.gif  I've only seen it on that particular battle.  The enemy unit is supposed to be a female summoner, but was replaced with a floating undead lv 1 squire who has no skills learned, but has summoner equips (rod, linen robe, hat).  If my unit is reachable, it just walks up to it and hits it for ~6 damage with the rod.

[Angel]

Editing formulas is not only possible, but easily done. I've never tried my hand at ASM hacking before, but custom formulas are made and used all the time.

[Xifanie]

• Given that Mime is part of the "Monster" range in terms of code, the effort should be minimal (for someone who knows what they're doing and experienced) to alter the mime hack to include monsters in regards to equipment.



• I've never really successfully edited formulas myself without breaking things, but that was before Choto and others compiled that mountain of information for us on the wiki: http://ffhacktics.com/wiki/Formulas



• If you actually learn to ASM, this is the easiest kind of hack you could accomplish. It's just a base value + randomized value.



• It seems like that squire is a special unit, I can't really say more with just the information you've provided.

Despite what I've said about ASM hacking, if you couldn't figure out yourself how hard/possible those tasks would be even before learning ASM, I feel you're going to have trouble with it. Sadly, I don't really take requests. :/