Modifying a Patched Rom?

[Darkholme]

I'm curious...

If I want to make a few adjustments myself, can I make them on top of a completed mod, or would I probably have to just make my changes to a clean ISO?

If I try to open up a PPFed rom (Say, fft 1.3, fft 1.3 easytype complete, or fft rebirth) with FFTPatcher, and make some changes to some Jobs, or Abilities, or the like, will it work?

What about if I add an ASM they weren't using, via FFTorgASM? (such as the one that changes enemy equipment selection to match story progression, or counts all swords for swordskill restrictions?)

Will it break the game? If so, how would I go about making it work?

[Angel]

You can open any patched image in FFTPatcher by going to PSX -> Open patched ISO. The text will not be updated to reflect changed job or ability names, so it can be a tiny bit confusing, and for a story patch like Journey of the Five, you need to do a lot of snooping around the ENTD tab to figure out which characters are which.

Adding ASM hacks isn't cut and dry. Some hacks play nicely with each other, and others do not. To be vague, the hacks that were written under proper convention and are not trying to modify the same space will work when mixed in together.

[Darkholme]

Will modifying a patched ISO in FFTPatcher bugger up the ASM hacks already installed in said Patched ISO?

[Timbo]

As long as you are just modifying the ISO with shishi, tactext, and fftpatcher, it shouldn't cause problems. The only catch is that some of your formulas may not work as expected if any of them were modified by ASM, so be on the lookout for that. Which patch are you trying to modify?

[Darkholme]

I'm going to do a playthrough with my girlfriend.

Our two candidates are fft 1.3 easytype complete and fft rebirth, leaning towards rebirth. Rebirth is closer to vanilla in playstyle than 1.3 easytype is, but is still mostly a rebalance mod.

Was thinking of trying to change a few classes: Maybe Make Archer/Lancer More interesting (if anyone has done it), perhaps change the Ninja's skillset to something less throw and more assassin-ey.

Here's the biggest change I was wanting to do: I was going to try using Xif's Everyone gets 9a mod, and make 9a a duplicate of the item skill, giving everyone the item skill, mastered, then swap the Chemist out for something else, either changing its skillset in FFTPatcher (and setting it to default instead of item menu) or if that approach proves impossible trying to find a way to disable it and add in a class that shares its JP and ability slots using RAD. Change all things requiring chemist to require squire instead.

Potentially add in WotL's Dark Knight class, or one of those Blue Mage, Red Mage, or Sage classes I've heard people mention. I'd be cool with dropping Calculator for another caster class if there are two of them that are good. I think a Blue Mage would be a hell of alot of fun.

From what I understand, swapping out Calculator should be pretty simple, but the archer, chemist, lancer, and ninja may prove more annoying or maybe even impossible to change.

[Timbo]

If you can be patient, I'm releasing a modified version of KO: Critical Mode that incorporate's the WotL script. It does all of the things you are asking for except for the Archer and the Ninja. There simply weren't enough ability slots to make them into something better.

Here's a quick preview of new jobs:
The Squire is now a mobile skirmisher gaining the item breaking capabilities of the Knight as well as more attack options.
The Knight is more of an armored support and debuffing unit.
The Thief is no able to do more than just steal stuff, he now has some unique debuffing and striking options.
The Dragoon gets Jump as a support skill and new skillset with Dragon themed skillset.
The Calculator has been replaced with a Sage with the highest of arcane arts.
Rad is a Dark Knight with new skills like Corruption, Necromancy, and Army of Darkness.
Alicia is an Onion Knight. I'm considering giving her some of the basic skills of the non mage classes.
Lavian is a Red Mage with abilities from the white, black, time, and mysticism skillsets.
Mustadio is a proper Sniper with more diverse skillset.
Agrias is a Paladin with additional healing and defensive abilities
Orlandu gets about half of his skills cut.
Beowulf gets a whole new skillset that combines FFTA2's Templar with FFV's Mystic Knight.
Reis becomes a nerfed Calculator.
Luso gets Blue Magick to make him a proper monster hunter.
Balthier gets his skillset from Revenant Wings.
Boco becomes a White Chocobo

Several Monsters are added. Lamia, Tortoise, Flan, and Tonberry families as well as a Cacuar are added with no monters being replaced. All of them have unique skillsets as well.

It will probably be a couple months before I release it though.

[Darkholme]

That sounds kindof awesome, and I think I'll want to play it when its done.

However, this is on a "We're going to play this over the holidays" sort of timeline, so I ideally want something I can throw together quickly and have ready to go for tomorrow night.

If you could point me in the right direction for thebasic changes (even just the item for everyone + swap chemist for something else), that would be a huge help.

Is that a WotL mod? I thought none of the ASM hacks worked with WotL, and I haven't gotten it to emulate properly (Running it on my PSP doesn't work so well when there's two of us sharing the adventuring party).

[Timbo]

It's not. The best way for me to make a relevant vanilla patch in a world of vanilla patches was for it to be WotL themed.

[3lric]

It's not. The best way for me to make a relevant vanilla patch in a world of vanilla patches was for it to be WotL themed.

Actually, it being WotL themed will cost you more people than you'd think  

Still interested to see what comes out of this though, I'm working on putting some of the WotL
stuff into a PSX version myself. Namely all the events and such.

[Timbo]

That's why I plan to release a vanilla version as well. Those events are something I would be more than willing to put to use, Elric. Once I get my base patch completed I'll intend to start learning how to event for that specific purpose. Hopefully, I'll be able to contribute.

[Darkholme]

Well, I for one am interested in WotL stuff.

I have a hard time understanding why anyone would be butthurt about a bunch of cinematic cutscenesand a bunch of expansion content, including two new base jobs, and two new named characters.

I understood the annoyance with the slowdown. I understand you may not own a PSP (and thus may have a hard time getting PSP games to emulate smoothly.

But the first was fixed a while ago (I provided some info I found, and someone else figured out how to fix it based on said info), and the second is a non-issue if you're trying to import WotL stuff into the PSX Version.


But back to my question: What method did you use for giving everyone the item skill? What did you do with the Chemist afterward? (Did you simply disable it, or did you replace it with something)

[Timbo]

I didn't give everyone the item skill. I am however planning to change the chemist a bit. Either, I'll make his items cancel positive status in addition to healing negative status or I'll keep remedy and get rid of everything else in favor of alchemist flavored items. I haven't decided yet.

Most people hate the WotL translation. People tend to either prefer the nostalgia of the original or they prefer the GameFAQs translation. I can understand the nostalgia thing but the GameFAQs translation is very similar to the WotL one in style. It takes a couple weird liberties here and there, Like Knights Aquilar instead of Knights of the Southern Sky, for example. Honestly, though, I found it similar enough to the WotL translation that I decided to go with the official one.

[Darkholme]

Interesting. What is it that people dislike about the WotL Translation? Just that it's different? I'm pretty nostalgic about FFT too (I've worn out two physical PSX copies, I have a third PSX Copy, I have 2 copies of WotL (that was an accident, but no matter), I've played Roms/ISOs of both and Emulated them, and I'm on this website, but WotL has always seemed to me to be FFT with an expansion pack added in.

WotL's translation seemed pretty good. There weren't so many grievous places of broken english (We found out the treasure!), etc.

But really, I think the translation is rather insignificant. It's the cutscenes, extra content, and widescreen format that WotL has over the original. Plus, if we could get the PSP multiplayer working in an emulator over the internet, that could be a hell of alot of fun for PVP.

If the only part they don't like is the translation, they could make an inverse project of FFT Complete Easily enough, swapping WOTL's translation for the PSX Translation. I suppose they may want to re-dub the cutscenes. If they want to drop the cutscenes, it would probably be pretty easy to just use the PSX Events instead.

WotL Bonuses
- Animated Cutscenes with Voiced Dialogue
- New Jobs, Items, etc.
- New Sidequests.
- New Special Characters
- Widescreen Format
- PVP Multiplayer
- Seems to be more space available for more content to be added. Hardcoded job limits may be increased as well, which would give us much more room to play around comfortably.

It's been a while since I've tried to emulate a PSP game though, so I'm not sure how not-glitchy PSP FFT is in an emulator.

PSX Bonuses
- ASM Hacks devised for PSX don't currently work on WoTL and would have to be converted over.
- Some Tools for PSX could need to be updated for WotL compatibility.

Were I more familiar with ASM hacking (I may be, eventually) I would like to try to convert over some of the FFTorgASM hacks people have made to work with WotL. I'm familiar with higher level programming (its what I do for a living, and it's what I got a degree in) but I've only ever dabbled in ASM.

I just see lots of potential in the WotL version, plus, I like having more content.

[formerdeathcorps]

What?  That's not even true, Jack.

The mechanics are in BOOT.BIN, compressed in EBOOT.BIN (which is the file actually read), but C/P'ing BOOT.BIN into EBOOT.BIN (which is done automatically by FFTPatcher) works too as long as you don't change the file-size.
The events are in TEST.EVT (inside fftpack.bin).  They can be modified without any error with existing tools.
The movies are in the movie folder.  Although the data format is unknown, I can already delete the movies without freezing the game and insert events in place of the movies.
The sprites require ROM expansion for the same reason they required ROM expansion in vanilla.  Editing ShiShi's source code to deal with it should be doable.

[Timbo]

I'm sorry. Thanks FDC. Well, now I'm even more disappointed that nobody is editing WotL.

[Darkholme]

So... Why isn't everyone editing WotL instead then?
- The slowdown is fixed.
- If you don't like the translation, that's a simple (though kindof time consuming) thing to change.

I'm still just seeing a bunch of extra content that people are just ignoring because... I have absolutely no idea why they're ignoring the new content. New content is nice.

And given that everyone is playing it on a PC, and PCs have widescreen monitors, playing the game in widescreen would seem preferable.

Plus, potentially multiplayer (if the emulator can handle it).

[Xifanie]

WotL Bonuses
- Animated Cutscenes with Voiced Dialogue
It's nice I suppose. I just wish they'd make videos for stuff they couldn't do in events. Just seems rather... pointless. But that's just me.

- New Jobs, Items, etc.
The new items and jobs are broken as fuck. We already had Excalibur, Orlandu, Math Skill... what's the fucking point? Plus they are horribly hardcoded into the game and are pretty much player only items.

- New Sidequests.
Which are, if I'm honest, pretty dumb for the most part since they are just there to introduce new recruitable units that shouldn't be there in the first place. Exception to this would be Aliste/Bremont, the latter having a fugly sprite... Mind you, I haven't played WotL at all so I have no idea what the sidequests are like. Except Mustadio having a crush on Agrias. Yeah, that totally makes sense. He almost did show interest in her before.

- New Special Characters
Special Characters horribly sprited that are far off from the PSX's original spriting quality.

- Widescreen Format
Which is horribly stretched and actually deforms the video making it lose quality visually. This might only be PSP WotL though. There might be a fix for this though, I forgot.

- PVP Multiplayer
Which I heard has absolutely horrible lag between one player acting and the other player seeing it happen on their screen. And well, you kinda need someone physically close to you that has a PSP, WotL, and that wants to play. For most people it's: "Good luck with that".

- Seems to be more space available for more content to be added. Hardcoded job limits may be increased as well, which would give us much more room to play around comfortably.
Yeah, the PSP's RAM and VRAM limitations should be higher if that's what you're talking about. For CD space, well, increasing the CD size to 650mb is a joke, which is far more space than we'll ever need.



You didn't even list the one thing that I really cared about: Expansion of the party roster, which is impossible in the PSX version.

I also don't think you understand all the trouble there is to hack WotL instead of the PSX version. I don't even know if PPSSPP works well enough to test things out. But besides that, all the stuff added to WotL is hardcoded, so it's pretty tedious to hack anything out of make it apply to other things (like the mastered job requirement).

Of course, I didn't even talk about the translation, which, yeah, I hate.

New quality content is nice.

fixed

[3lric]

I personally didn't like the wording used in WotL. "Blame yourself or God" was one of my favorite
Quotes.

I'm going to release a vanilla iso at some point soon which will include atleast the bonus events.
Though I doubt I will add the luso/balthier due to skillset issues and party space.

Ill likely add I a new game+ option as well since I was supposed to do that a while ago anyway.

Ill release the resources for it so people can use it as a base for mods if they want to.

[Angel]

I have a hard time understanding why anyone would be butthurt about a bunch of cinematic cutscenesand a bunch of expansion content, including two new base jobs, and two new named characters.

WotL's translation seemed pretty good. There weren't so many grievous places of broken english (We found out the treasure!), etc.

I have no problem with the added material (aside from the quality of the new portraits), but the translation... oh god, the translation.

The dialogue is over-inflated and sophomoric. I prefer the simple-minded intern original translation to the simple-minded English major dropout WotL translation by several orders of magnitude. And fuck the new proper nouns. All of them. And 'magick'.

The slowdown is just what made it unplayable. The retranslation is what made it unforgivable.
</endpointlessrant>

[Dome]

The slowdown is just what made it unplayable. The retranslation is what made it unforgivable.

Btw, I fully support a vanilla psx patch that adds wotl stuff
Maybe using this patch