ALMA 4: Excalibur grants Forever: Orlandu

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

So I can add 0x80 to a suit of armor or a helmet and get the stepping stone attribute without getting negative jump?  Then how do I get negative Jump?  Is that explained in the summary?

[pokeytax]

Oh. No, that's crazy, you're crazy!

But... if you had an attribute grant 127 Jump, then chained it to another attribute adding 1 Jump, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Another, probably better way to do it would be to use the following ALMAscript:

equal to // next step // 1A Head // Grand Helmet
REWARD // set flag // custom byte: 3B // custom value: 80

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

I give up.

[pokeytax]

There's now an .ods in ALMA 4.zip. It works okay for me and my computer is pretty bad. Feedback is appreciated.

[formerdeathcorps]

And did you ever clear up the problem with the negative Move/Jump/SP/PA/MA?  The problem being an oversight where whoever coded it didn't notice that 0x80 is used in Jump to signify Stepping Stone, and decided to make 0x80 give -128 Jump.

and

So I can add 0x80 to a suit of armor or a helmet and get the stepping stone attribute without getting negative jump?  Then how do I get negative Jump?  Is that explained in the summary?

Load the jump from SCUS (job table data) as signed.  If negative, then flag stepping stone as true, and set as positive.  (If positive, obviously, skip this step).  Then load the jump from SCUS/ALMA (item table data) as signed.  Add the two jump values.  If zero or negative, set as 1.  This should obviate both errors.

[SentinalBlade]

v 4.03
- Some bugs were due to this code brushing against the end of the kanji table/freespace. I've temporarily moved it (so the hack functions) to the SentinelBlade/VincentCraven block, like a huge jerk, but I'm going to have to come up with a permanent solution, 'cause that's obviously not cool.

If you havent done this already, don't worry about it running into my block.
If you really do feel guilty about it, just send me the lines you used so i can avoid them if i ever get the chance to ASM again ;P

[pokeytax]

If you havent done this already, don't worry about it running into my block.
If you really do feel guilty about it, just send me the lines you used so i can avoid them if i ever get the chance to ASM again ;P

That's really thoughtful! But it's still not cool for one person to be sprawled out over half the ASM freespace. Either the hack needs to be slimmed down, or someone needs to implement a patching method that makes efficient use of freespace, or both. Along those lines, I'm probably going to release Diet ALMA without passives/ALMAscript to fit back in the original space, and I'm looking into rewriting some hacks with an .xml code standard that could be patched anywhere in freespace.

[pokeytax]

ALMA doesn't strip equipment from enemies anymore (and give it to the player!). Things seem to be settling down now bugwise.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

I think that'll make a lot of people rather happy.  Definitely makes me happy, because the insanity of those errors was making me wary of using ALMA at all.

[Timbo]

I just downloaded ALMA 4. Is there a tutorial or something that lets you know how to use this? How goes the quest to make Jump passive?


The ability to give Lancers a more skills is tasty. I've been thinking about using RAD to create both a Lancer and Dragoon Job with the same prerequisites. One Job grants you the ability to buy the various Jump Height and Distance skills and the other buys you Reis Dragoner Skills. The main Job would have all of the RSM abilities, the Dragoner skills, and Jump as a Passive ability.

I've got a pretty good handle on RAD, what I'm not sure about is ALMA. Is the passive Jump thing possible yet?

[pokeytax]

I just downloaded ALMA 4. Is there a tutorial or something that lets you know how to use this?

not yet ._.

What you're looking for is in the 'Skillset' tab. Set a row (e.g. row 18) to "Comparison" = "Equal to?", "Byte" = "03 Job", "Value" = "057 Lancer", "Skillset" = "12 Jump". This will grant all Lancers Jump.

There's a minor snag with the AI, which will not learn skills from RAD jobs. So unless you cheat with ALMAscript and grant AI units some Jump skills, or separately grant AI units Izlude's 34 Jump skillset which autolearns its abilities, they will be packing dinky jumps.

[Vanya]

not yet ._.

What you're looking for is in the 'Skillset' tab. Set a row (e.g. row 18) to "Comparison" = "Equal to?", "Byte" = "03 Job", "Value" = "057 Lancer", "Skillset" = "12 Jump". This will grant all Lancers Jump.

There's a minor snag with the AI, which will not learn skills from RAD jobs. So unless you cheat with ALMAscript and grant AI units some Jump skills, or separately grant AI units Izlude's 34 Jump skillset which autolearns its abilities, they will be packing dinky jumps.

Does that mean the Lancer class would have Jump as well as their skillset listed in FFTP? Also, how would that affect the learned skills, or would it force it to be a dinky jump?

[pokeytax]

Does that mean the Lancer class would have Jump as well as their skillset listed in FFTP?

Yep.

Also, how would that affect the learned skills, or would it force it to be a dinky jump?

It would default to using Lancer skillslots for 12 Jump. You should probably use 34 Jump for everyone, honestly. Just set it to contain whatever horizontal/vertical range you think Jump ought to be.

[Vanya]

It would default to using Lancer skillslots for 12 Jump. You should probably use 34 Jump for everyone, honestly. Just set it to contain whatever horizontal/vertical range you think Jump ought to be.

You mentioned that Izlude's jump skillset is auto learned. Is that true for any other skillsets?
You know a set up like that might make it worth it to do a hack that makes the jump distance calculated off your jump stat.

EDIT: Wait. Can ALMA add a skillset based on the presence of a skillset? That way Jump could simply be a skill associated with the Lancer's skillset. That would make it more in line with the regular FF games too. If there are other skillsets that autolearn their skills this could be the perfect fix for Item, Throw, Draw Out, & Math Skill.

[pokeytax]

You mentioned that Izlude's jump skillset is auto learned. Is that true for any other skillsets?

Yes! But, I don't know which, apart from that many of the "boss" skillsets are.

I agree that bypassing Jump skills for a better base mechanic is a better idea all-around.

[Vanya]

That really has my mind filling up with ideas! ^___^
A Red Mage that specializes in reducing charge time that automatically has access to his Black and White spells he learned.
A Sage that can use all 4 main spell categories.
I could definitely do some cool stuff for the Geomancer, Ninja and Dragoon without having to worry about recreating their primary skill.
Sweet! Thanks for making this.

[Timbo]

This is incredible news. I'm so excited. Now, I have to rethink my patch a little bit.

[Vanya]

I just had a thought. Couldn't I use Xif's Skillset Fix patch to make any skillset work like a "boss" one?

[pokeytax]

I just had a thought. Couldn't I use Xef's Skillset Fix patch to make any skillset work like a "boss" one?

I think that functions for a different part of the code. RAD has a more pertinent check that tells skillsets to mimic existing generic skillsets and reference, say, Learned Ability Slot 4 (Archer) in unit data, but even that isn't quite on the nose.

Adding a way to easily flag skillsets as autolearn, and/or to frankenstein byte 1 of learned Black Magic and byte 1 of learned White Magic into Red Magic, would be a nice improvement, I know.

[Timbo]

I've kind of figured out a way to do the Red Mage so that it gets a combination of the skills you've all ready learned. If we use RAD to create the higher tier white and black mages described here:http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7031.40. Although you preserve the costs for all of those skills when graduating from white mage to white wizards.

You could effectively give the Red Mage a simple skillset or empty skillset that and tell ALMA to give a unit the lowertiered version of White Magic and Black Magic based on the presence of the Red Magic Skillset. Does that make sense? It's essentially the Jump trick from above with a RAD twist.