I know War of the Lions isn't exactly popular around here but I'm sure there are some people here like myself who prefer certain aspects of it. Whether or not you like the translation or not the game is considered a failure by most of our community for several reasons. Throwing in new classes and cameo characters is fine but it does nothing to correct the games most obvious problem: gameplay.
I started this project a few years ago with the goal of expanding gameplay. I completed the patch; abilities, jobs, enemies, items the works, but I realized that this patch was not something that I would probably ever be able to share with anyone seriously. So I through it out, took a break and started fresh. I got pretty far too. At least until Eternal released KO. KO was basically everything my patch was going for: Straight Vanilla gameplay improvement, and there were a lot of similarities too, the only thing was, he did it better. So I threw out my patch again, this time only half completed.
Now, I'm back. I have clear and distinguishing design goals. Some of these probably won't see the light of day for some time.
1. Use the War of the Lions Script from FFT: Complete. This will be implemented at launch.
2. Updating balancing and improving all of the games human jobs. Some of these skillsets are adjusted for both mechanics and flavor. This will be implemented at launch. The Knight's is now much more offensively minded, his stat break skills were removed and given to the squire. The Knight is armed with a few new close range attack skills that focus on battlefield control and action denial, whereas the squire is oriented more towards melee support and stat debuffing. The Thief also gets a couple new tricks up his sleeve, one of which is Sneak Attack. Sneak Attack is a weapon attack that can cancel out negative status and does 1.5 damage if it does so. Combined with Steal Heart the Thief becomes a real lady killer/man eater, he works really well when paired with an Oracle. Special Characters are not forgotten either. Beowulf gets an entirely new skillset. Based on the Templar from FFTA2 and the Mystic Knight's Spellblade skills from FFV. He pairs Elemental MA based Sword spells with Templar style action denial and MP destruction.
3. Improving and updating all of the games monsters. Each monster family has a design goal. For example: Tortoises are slow moving tanks, melee tanks. They have high HP and PA but low speed and 3 move. They use mantra magic to damage and immobilize foes from range in order to close in on a target so they can do serious damage/disabling. The individual Tortoises have specialized ways of dealing with foes from there. In addition to improving monsters I've expanded them as well. Goblins, Skeletons, Mindflayers, and Ghouls are no longer regular breeding monsters. They are now all special monsters like Byblos and yes they are still recruitable. In their place are Tonberries, Lamias, Tortoises, and Flans.
4. Re-create the WotL FMV sequences, and new cutscenes, using event editing. This will not be implemented at launch.
5. Maintain that Final Fantasy flavor. Spells Like Fire, Fira, Firaga, etc, gil toss, aqua breath, all make/maintain their appearance. A lot of patches and patch makers aren't really interested in this aspect of the game. I am.
6. Special Characters. Thank goodness for the Party Roster Hack, without it I probably wouldn't have bothered to make this hack. Unfortunately because of the amount of portraits and formations sprites adding in 13 monsters takes, I'm only able to add 4 special characters. Two of these are an Onion Knight and a Dark Knight but I'm unsure about the other two. Based on the goals of the patch I almost feel those spots should got to Balthier and Luso. Though I'm not terribly excited about the latter. If I use them, they will get different skillsets than the lame ones they all ready have. If I use Balthier, he will probably be very similar to his Parted Ways counterpart. I've no idea what to do with Luso, I could use the sprite space for something different like a Red Mage, Green Mage, or something that doesn't use up ability slots as I have absolutely none left. I would love some input and direction in this area.
If you are interested in this patch let me know. I'd love to hear from you.
I'd muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch rather have the amateur translated script from GameFAQs than WotL script. I'd even rather vanilla than WotL script. Otherwise, I sincerely wish you well.
If you call Algus 'Argath', I am personally going to murder you.
Your in luck. Dome is doing that when he finally gives up and releases FFT+'s new version. Also, there is nothing I can do about Algus. The problem with FFT: Complete is that its all or none. Thanks for replying.
Bah, I'm a bad mood about FFT+ at the moment, please don't speak about it >_>
But I like the ideas behind your patch (Except for what also Toshiko pointed out: use the script from Gamefaqs)
I wish you luck with your project :-)
The amateur translation is pretty good. While I prefer the WotL translation, I must concede that I can reach a broader audience with the other translation. I'm willing to release the patch with the alternate translation as well. Dome, do you have a patch for it?
Someone else was working on that very patch quite recently.
Jack, if you're using my Steal Woe formula for sneak attack, you should let me review it again for ASM bugs. I remember the people on ID telling me it caused the AI to deal 999 damage.