Final Fantasy Hacktics

Don't worry too much Rai, I'll keep looking into where the AI begins in proper.

Oops sorry about the delayed response, Raijinili.

Unfortunately, the complete work flow of the AI is still somewhat of a mystery to me. I've been focusing more on individual decision mechanics rather than the overall flow. It's something I'll get to eventually, but right now, I wouldn't know exactly where the AI decision hierarchy begins in earnest, and where a good entry would need to go. If you come to the arena discord or PM me though, I could give you a more detailed run down of what I do currently know.

QuoteWall (Must be enemy-only.  The AI will always consider walled units to be not targetable, even if you unflag ignore attacks and change the relevant ASM bit from 40 to 42.  There's probably another behavior bit involved that we don't know yet.  Units with wall will not be targeted for damage or healing...though you can make them revivable if you have death cancel wall.)

This is confirmed. The AI will ignore walled units like they ignore Jumped units.



The AI hardcoding for Charm, Confuse, and DS is hard to bypass because they are in several places. Charging a spell, however, will supersede the ignore hardcoding.

So I just finished uploading every AI routine I've documented so far. Some are okay, but many of them are from my early research and thus are spotty and lacking in understanding like some of the later works. However, know this: I am no where near done working not just on AI research, but on formatting and notes. They will all look something like this when I'm finished.

Anyways, I hope you all take some time to look through what has been uploaded and I hope they help you all in your endeavors. As always, feel free to drop me any questions or concerns. Thank you.

New Movement: Range + 2

Replaces Jump + 3. This movement skill will increase the range (red squares) of any ability provided:

• The Ability ID is less than 0x0170. This excludes Jump, Throw and Item.



• The Ability is not using Weapon Range, so it does not increase the range of Attack, Charge or anything of the sort.



• The Ability's range is 2 or greater.

This ability will not overflow. At 254 Range, it will add +1 Range instead and at 255 Range, it will do nothing.

The AI is aware of this change and should expand their target acquisitioning accordingly.

Oh and this hack does not come with any text changes. You have to do that yourselves.

Known Bugs: The game will still display Jump + 3 adding Jump while being selected to be added to a unit in the Formation Screen. The Unit Data Screen however wiil still correctly display that Jump + 3 did not add any Jump at all once added to the unit. It has no mechanical impact on the game.
lol idk where display code is.



As always, let me know if you find anything glitches or bugs.

Nothing for Round 1 because I already watched that when it came out.







It might take a while, but I'll get around to everyone's vids.

I think we have a problem here.

It's MassHex's fault, Xif.

And yeah, I'm using the latest version (v13).

Leaving Help messages on lol. I still refuse to turn them off even after all these years. It's just a part of the game to me at this point.

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The following are ported teams from the past versions, with the intention of being tested against. If the original team maker does not want his team up, I will take it down immediately.

Xifanie, I can't seem to import any .xml into the spreadsheet unless at least one hack contains an Variable line.

With this, I'm soon to be poised to release my very own lol patch with the most bossest of slapped together ASM and imported anime characters.

Targeting Reflect Units



I forgot to finish talking about this.

Apparently, the AI sets if it wants to bypass targeting Reflect units with Reflect or not. So why the hell would it try to target Reflectunits with a Reflectable spell? To use that unit to bounce Reflect off of course. This is merely the start of how the AI banks spells off of Reflect units.

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How the AI mitigates Spells



So how does the AI attempt to mitigate spells? If the unit can't midcharge the spell directly, it will then ask this question: "Hypothetically, if I had Innocent, Reflect, Jump, Wall or Float, would this ability I have null the spell being targeted on me?" And if this routine returns 0, "Yes, it will mitigate the spell." then it enables usage. It's a theory I have however. I have to actually see if the governing routines do this, but I think it's pretty likely it does.

Quote from: Eternal on January 21, 2017, 08:07:03 am
Great work as always. This topic is really fascinating. Thoughts on Float though: I know I've seen it use Float outside of Critical after seeing an Earth spell. Heck, I think I've seen it used before an Earth spell was used, but the AI still "saw" it in the party's skillset.

You're certainly right. I'm positive there's an auxiliary usage routine that enables usage to mitigate spells/the midcharge behavior. Adding Reflect, Innocent, interrupting a unit's spell, all very well documented behaviors. I'll certainly keep an eye out for them.

EDIT: Oh wait, duh, it's right there in my face. I'll explain in a minute, I forgot to talk about the Reflect Bypass anyways.

Oh hey there, you are just in luck. I just so happen to be working out how the AI works in this very topic, and I just made a new post about how the AI restricts ability use. It's by no means complete, because the AI is complex and wild beast, and it's not exactly exactly what you're looking for, but perhaps you'd be interested all the same? If nothing else, it's a nice read.

One of the things I am trying to do is stop the AI from fidgeting so much. The trick to figuring out how to stop the AI from moving all the time is to figure out when the AI won't move of their own free will. I have seen them decide to not move, but it's so rare for that to happen, I don't recall any of the details of when that happened.

I know a bit on AI movement, but not enough to really form a definitive, or even a coherent statement yet and it's also not my current priority. You can try to look through the routines on the wiki and try to decode them yourself if you're desperate and/or impatient. But for now, we're stuck with me working at a snail's pace.

Hey folks, got another section for you guys.

AI Ability Use (19e5d8) has been known about for a while, but only lightly documented until now. This routine doesn't really so much decide what abilities to use, so much as says what abilities to not use. Nevertheless what you're about to read will enlighten you.



Comments and Observations

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How Wall was supposed to be used - Part 1



So far, this routine prevents the AI from targeting Enemies with Ally Only spells (and vice versa), targeting itself if the spell can't target caster, targeting units with Reflect if spell is reflectable (there is a bypass option, more on this later), targeting Innocent units if a Faith spell, Petrified units unless the ability cures it, and Jumping units. Don't target enemy units that null/absorb your element or are undead and will absorb your damage. Don't revive units with Reraise. They can even tell when it's too late to revive a unit and their spell won't go off in time. Most of this is expected and surprises no one. What might though is that Wall actually has code here.

This is about what you'd expect: Don't target units with Wall, duh. That is, unless you can cancel the status. It's interesting that Wall was far enough along in development that it has it's own processing in this routine. I wasn't really expecting the AI to know how to handle Wall at all. Wall must have been removed from the game rather late in the game's development then. Maybe they realized that becoming invincible on command for 32 CT and still being able to act was kinda broken even for FFT? Even if you could dispel it?

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How the AI breaks Charm/Confuse/Sleep with damage



This is how the AI is allowed to target it's allies with damage abilities to break Charm/Confuse/Sleep. The AI is finnicky in removing Charm somewhat. It won't remove Charm if it can't get the spell off before the unit acts. It shouldn't matter for Throw Stone, but it might for everything else with a charge.

Speaking of Charge, the AI won't use Charge to break these statuses. Of course that leaves Jump on the table. This can be fixed to check for Charge and Jump, but it requires extra space to do so because of all the load delays. But since Arena doesn't use Charge, you could just have the game check for Jump instead. Then you should have no more Jumping on sleeping units.

There is also Elemental Healing here as well. It works the same way normal healing does (more on that later). What's really odd about it, is that if an ability has an Element, but doesn't deal HP damage, the AI thinks it's blocked by Absorption and won't use it! That is absolutely not the case for any non damage formula, most of which can't even accept/don't check for Elements in their spells, and there are no non damage spells in Vanilla that even have Elements. I actually think this might just be an oversight because it could have just branched to the very next section and it would have been very relevant for it to do so.

Also in theory, the AI, if you made a unit Always: Confused, should constantly attempt to break a unit's Confusion because it doesn't check if it's an innate like it does Sleep and Charm.

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How the AI deals with Blood Suck units (and Confusion as well)



Another way that the AI deals with Blood Suck and Confused units (besides curing it), is to disable them with statuses. The AI will only use Sleep, Don't Move, Don't Act, Slow and Stop on Blood Suck and Confused units.

I have to disagree with having Confusion here at all. It's easy enough to cure, so a Confused Unit shouldn't be getting disabled by it's own units. Meanwhile, Blood Suck need harsher statuses to be dealt with. I used to just straight up kill Blood Sucked units when I couldn't heal them because it was easier to just remove BS that way and I think the AI should think this as well.

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HP and MP Damage and Death Sentence


AI will not deal HP damage to Death Sentence. They will also use MP Damage until the unit can't cast anymore spells. This is not a surprise. What might be a surprise is that the AI won't use Ally Spells that don't add Reraise on them either...even if the spell in question would heal Death Sentence.

QuoteBut the AI cures Death Sentence all the time with Refute

That's actually because Refute is not an Ally or an Enemy spell. Ignoring Death Sentence units only applies when the spell in question is either an Ally or Enemy spell. Not being either bypasses this behavior, allowing for curing or attacking.

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Healing HP and MP



The AI will only heal HP and MP if the unit is under 50% of their respective stat. This is fine for HP, but it's very noticeable when attempting to heal MP. It's a hard 50% too.

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How the AI adds statuses - Adding Blind and Silence



First off, the routine checks if the status in question is already present or the target is immune to it, no surprises there.

The AI will only consider adding Blind and Silence if the respective modifiers are high enough. Recall that the AI keeps track of how many Silenceable and Blindable moves you know and it saves this value as 0-4, with 4 being 100% and 0 being less than 25%.

The AI will not even entertain adding Silence to a unit that has no silenceable statuses learned. Reasonable. However, the AI will not consider adding Blind if you have less than 50% P-Ev skills learned. This includes Attack and Frog Attack. This could probably be lowered to 25%.

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How the AI adds statuses - Adding Reraise, Frog and Float



The AI will not add Reraise on a unit unless they are under 50% HP. They also will not try to turn their allies into frogs. Finally, the AI will never use Float on itself unless it's in critical. Yes, you read that correctly. In critical. More on this in the next section.

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]How the AI adds statuses - Adding Regen, Protect, Shell, Haste, Slow, and Wall (Part 2)
Alternate Title: How to Train Your AI to Preemptively Buff


Here you go. So why won't the AI preemptively buff themselves with any positive statuses besides Haste? Because it's not so much Haste is special or anything, but because Haste is the only positive status that doesn't have a restriction. Yeah don't use Haste/Slow on Stop/Sleeping units, but that's besides the point.

Protect, Shell, (and Wall) will not be used unless the unit in question is in Critical. Why Critical instead of 50% HP like Regen is beyond me but it makes it kinda useless for the AI. It makes sense that these status aren't usable at full HP in Vanilla because you don't have any skill restrictions and the developers probably got pissed at the AI constantly buffing itself instead of fighting.

At the very least, Protect and Shell should be used like Haste. In fact, make it so that the AI will only use Protect/Shell/Haste if they are above 50% HP. That way, they aren't using these statuses when they just got revived.

The AI adds Regen when it's Poisoned. I think why this is, is because the AI isn't adding Regen in it's mind, it's canceling Poison.

Interesting that Wall also got this treatment as well. This means that the developers really played around with Wall long enough to try to curb it's usage.

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How the AI adds statuses - Faith and Reflect


More usage nerfs to positive statuses. This is why sometimes you see the AI use Faith and Reflect on itself when it's in critical, recalling that Faith and Reflect have slightly positive priorities and are kinda seen as gaining HP. Making the AI add Faith in a smart way is going to require some space to do, but it can be done. Same goes for Reflect. Death Sentence could probably be restricted to use on units with 50% or greater as well.

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How the AI Removes Status - Charm, Don't Act and Don't Move



The AI checks to see if the unit doesn't have the status or it's innate. No surprises there.

The AI will only remove Charm, Don't Act and Don't Move before a unit's turn. If the Ability CT is too high to do this, then it won't remove them.

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How the AI Removes Status - Blind/Silence and Frog





The only difference from adding Blind/Silence is that the AI will cure Blind as long as you have any Evadable abilities. Since all units have Attack, that should be all the time, right? Also don't remove Frog from your enemies, k thanks.

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The AI uses Stat Abilities randomly.



This is a bit of a shocker. If it's not Praise, Accumulate, or Yell, the AI's gotta roll the dice. This is why the AI doesn't use Stat abilities that much. There's probably a better way of doing this, perhaps only use on <50% HP units? Actually fucking look at their stats?

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How the AI uses Break/Steal
<Unequip>
0019eee0: 8fc2000c lw r2,0x000c(r30)             
0019eee4: 00000000 nop
0019eee8: 30420004 andi r2,r2,0x0004              Check if ability is Unequip
0019eeec: 0002102b sltu r2,r0,r2                  Use Ability if true

Okay then.

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So there you guys have it. This routine doesn't so much tell the AI what to select, so much as it tells the AI what not to select. There is some for improvement, so go ahead and leave some thoughts on how to improve this routine.

AI Two Swords Range Fix

If your patch uses Two Swordable weapons of differing ranges, then you want this hack. Current in Vanilla, the AI will overwrite the top weapon range with the bottom weapon range. Not a problem at all in Vanilla, but is a problem if your weapon on the top hand is longer than the one in the bottom hand.
What you'll end up seeing, if you are using a ranged weapon with a melee weapon, is that the AI will think their range is that of the bottom weapon range and attempt to get in range and move right next to the guy, realize they aren't in range anymore, and are forced to find a target they can attack instead or use an ability.

This hack swaps the top and bottom weapon processing order around so that the bottom range is overwritten by the top weapon range, thus knowing the correct attack range.



Not much to it, really. With this hack you can make whatever weapon Two Swordable to your heart's content and the AI will use it correctly provided you are putting the range most weapon in your top hand.

1. Thief
2. Ninja Wizards
3. Squire Ninja

Okay before I get into my next deal, a few clarifications and corrections:

The AI does not care how much MP you have, only the current percentage and if you have enough to cast your Lowest MP cost spell.

In fact, as you'll soon see, the AI puts far more stock into your spells than your curMP.

Shout out to Choto for uploading the routine I'm basing this all of on and I presume documenting this routine and pretty much every other routine in the wiki lol.

I'll keep the code down to a minimum this time because the code is already documented.

How the AI calculates it's Blind/Silence/Caster factor

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Step 1: Usable Abilites

The AI starts by figuring out what abilities it has is usable. It starts off with Attack, then it starts going into it's skillsets. While it processes Throw, Math, Charge and Jump a little differently, it's nothing really eyebrow raising except perhaps the way Charging with Guns is treated (refuses to use Charge for guns it seems?) In any case, it first checks to see if the skill is flagged as Usable by the AI. It then checks to see if the ability in question uses MP and if it does, do you even have the Max MP to even cast it?

Yes it does reduce the MP Cost by Half of MP, but the 1/3 of MP did not update the AI to reflect this. A fix is in the works, so don't fret too much.

Then it renders abilities unusable if the ability is a faith spell on a unit with innate Innocent, or the unit doesn't have the requred Sword/Materia Blade to use said ability. You can't know a skill that requires Monster Skill without...Monster Skill, and more importantly, if you are not in fact a monster yourself. If the ability in question is 0x170 (Potion and other special abilities) or higher, it will skip all of that and go to the final step. Keep that in mind if you're trying to make those skills normal.

And finally, of course, it has to have actually learned the ability in the first place. Once it has cleared all of that and the skillset in question is not Jump, it will trot out the list of known abilities for that skillset. Repeat for the other skillset. Finally it will save all of this, plus Frog Attack. Yes, the AI always knows Frog Attack as well as Attack. I suppose you can think of it as the Struggle of FFT. It's also what Monster units use when Berserked. The AI always counting Attack and Frog Attack in it's skill counting is very important to remember for later.

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Step 2: Deriving Silence/P-Ev/MP skill counts and some small usage flagging

Now that we have our list of Usable abilities, we can derive our Silence/Blind/Caster mods from them. It's about what you'd expect. Add up all abilities that are physically evadable (aka evade with motion), silenceable, and uses MP. There are no restrictions against any of them other than being flagged as such.

It stores the Lowest and Highest MP costs that unit has. It flags Linear/Vertical/Triple Bracelet|Attack, and any attack over 3 range + AoE as 0x0400. It flags Reflect/Silencable or has an AoE of 0 as 0x0200.

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Step 3: How to get your Blind/Silence/Caster values and how to game the system.


So the basic formula for determine your unit's Blind/Silence/Caster factor is:

Quote(# of effected spells * 4) / Total Usable spells

This will get you a number between 0-4, with 0 being less than 25% and 4 being 100%. Remember that you must always factor in both Attack and Frog Attack into your calculations.

For an example, a unit that has no skills learned, will only know Attack and Frog Attack. He has a Silence and Caster factor of 0, but a Blind factor of 4, because:

Quote[# of P-EV abilities=2] * 4 / [# of total abilities=2] = 4

So he would be a prime Blind target, assuming he was vulnerable to Blind. But if he learned any one (1) non P-Ev ability, his Blind factor would drop dramatically to 2. Picking up two more non P-Ev skills would bump his total skills usable to 5 and his Blind factor to 1. He might as well be a mage with a Healing Staff.

So I wasn't completely accurate when I said the AI can't "tell the immediate difference between a White Mage with Healing Staff and a Berserk Cursed Ring Two Handed Main Gauche killer", because it kinda can. But it can be easily gamed to duck being targeted.

So if you want your Casters to duck being targeted, remember you always have two non MP using skills to balance against, thus you will never have a max Silence/Caster factor of 4.

Can I simply have a Summon Magic secondary on my Male Lancer, learn as many Summons as feasible and then never get targeted by Blind ever?
Not exactly. Remember that the AI kicks out any skill from it's usable pool if it has an MP cost exceeding it's Max MP. But if you have enough MP to cast any of them even once, then yes, you can grab that cheap caster aggro and be a taunt tank...exactly once before the AI casts a spell, and then you're completely out of MP and the game yanks your aggro license.

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That's about everything for today. It's not a major revelation today, sorry, but I'm a little overdue. I made a few edits to the original post to fix some mistakes in my original analysis. I don't have too many complaints about how the AI calculates the factors, except the caster value. It should compensate for Attack/Frog Attack.

A few more comments:

Remember that for certain skillsets, the abilities in them only ever count as one skill. For an example, Jump is only ever counted as 0x018a, Level Jump 2 and only that, no matter how many other jumps you've learned. Same goes for Elemental, and I believe Throw as well.

Oil has a very low priority value (-5.5%), which was why it had to be constantly bundled with other statuses and effects to be used by the AI. Makes a bit of sense seeing that in Vanilla, Oil didn't work at all.

Blind is -12.5% for each P-Ev skill known, including Attack. Silence is -17.5% for each silenceable ability known.

Transparent and Reraise have very high positive values, which might be why the AI gets so aggressive when they have them.

Anything that drops the target's priority to -50% might trigger the 'ignore completely' routine, which includes Confuse, Charm, and Blood Suck (Death Sentence gets it's own special flag and gets skipped in this routine). We could experiment and lower them to see if the AI continues to ignore confused/charmed lone targets.