Final Fantasy Hacktics

I don't get it. You keep calling yourself lazy, a bad designer, and so on, yet have been consistently churning out detailed posts with a pretty good amount of well-thought-out design material. If it's your subconscious fishing for compliments via self-deprecation, I'm not going to argue with your own self-criticism... been there, done that, and it's a bit exhausting. Still, you'd do well to stop being your own worst enemy, to hate/disparage yourself less, and not disable yourself and your potential with nonsense self-insults and criticism.

Anyway, this is a pretty good looking plan, and makes for an entertaining read... I really hope you keep at it, and it sees full development some day. Try Google Docs for backing things up, if you want things out in the cloud where you can retrieve them on any machine. Also, ModDB is here. They have a tab for PS1 modding, and it's still active.

In the process of checking this out... looks like a lot of work went into this!

After rocking through the Oribonne Monestary fight, I'm having a pretty rough time with the Gariland fight... I think it's the lack of heals and starting with a suboptimal party makeup. This seems very item-dependant, even more than vanilla FFT; in the Gariland fight, it seemed that all the NPCs all had swords/armor, and I went in with a mix of Swords/Daggers and Robes/Clothes/Armor. Since all of the Trainee skills are close to 95% failure rate due to the new equations, having caster-items really didn't do much for me. I like the universal item-use, but you could use some starting healing items, or else that first fight could be impossible if you're unlucky enough to get mostly daggers/clothes on your initial characters.

I'll share more thoughts as I go. Very excited to check the rest of this out!

I'm genuinely surprised by how much this thread resembles my youtube/livestream channel. Maybe it's just the shared interest in game tweaking and hacking, but even the Minecraft Mods and Sonic Hacks... it's crazy-similar.

Supposing I'll share this bit from the Livestream. It's lengthy, but pretty entertaining I thought:

Posting to follow. Some really neat balancing ideas here!

As a relative newbie to the hacktics scene, what sort of tools do people use to create ASM hacks such as these? I'd love to try my hand at implementing a few of these, and am not afraid to dive into hex-editing.

Also, is there anywhere folks have submitted completed ASM hacks that aren't packed with FFTorgASM? Some more examples would be spiffing.

Pokey, trying to learn how to work RAD 3 through trial and error. I was wondering if you could share the raw Job Wheel page data you used to generate your ppf demo?

For background, I'm running an interactive Let's Play type thing with user-submitted character builds, and am hoping to avoid special characters entirely. I wanted a way to open up some of the NPC-only skill lists to characters who had Mastered (alternatively just reached a high level in) one of the generic jobs, but I need an example to dissect before I can do that.

Also, where's a good place to find the Hex values for different jobs? I'm still rather new to this modding thing.

Registered just to post! Let me say that going through the dev logs has been a surprisingly entertaining read so far; I like your style. You ought to mirror your development on ModDB or something for publicity. Though less familiar with the ins and outs of FFT, you might have better luck generating balance discussion and possibly finding other talent to ply where you need it.

Anyway, I found this by looking for FFT mods that emulated more of the cannon FF classes, such as the Blue Mage / Sage, and Red Mage. After playing a few balance mods like FFT 1.3, I figured Blue Mage would make a great replacement for Arithmetician, and using the seldom used Learn-On-Hit mechanic is a great way to handle it. I might suggest limiting the overlap of classes too... default FFT classes were very focused, because you could mix and match abilities. A lot of your proposals sort of functionally bleed into one another; for instance, is a Paladin functionally different enough than a Knight with White Magic on secondary to warrant a new class?

As an aside, if you need a few classes to round out your roster, consider some kind of Templar... with a set of brave-powered MP-costing weapon-strikes, some of which proc secondary effects ala Holy/Dark Sword. For parity, balance it against a Weaponmaster, which has different skills available based on the weapon type(s) they have equipped... a sort of deconstruction of the Samurai class, but one which would wield all weapons. I know conditions can make certain skills available, but am not sure if weapons can... but if not, hidden conditions could be attached to different classes of weapons to handle this.

Also, let me be that one vehemently dissenting voice; I love the PSP translation. As a writer, there is so much more character and emotion there that the Engrish PSX script just maims and leaves bleeding in a gutter. To be fair, I'm kind of in love with writing and language in general, so I might just have enough of a background to be able to appreciate it... but I'd strongly suggest you consider using the PSP script, and writing the new chapters/dialogue in a similar style. The PSP language isn't a thing of pretentiousness; the nobles are all haughty and proper and shit, while the commoners speak in a rougher, at times vulgar, way. I'm all for using the simplest language needed to tell a story and all that, but this story is one of political intrigue and social strife, set in a Late Middle-Ages/Early Renaissance world. Flowery speech is to be expected (and it kicks the pants off of Cyan/Frog's "Thee and Thou" BS).

Lastly, if it wasn't readily apparent, I really like this project. Though I've only dabbled with this brand of modding, I'd like to help out in some capacity, if possible. I do know my way around sprite art and such, but the shear number of sprites used in FFT for poses etc. is daunting, and I don't know if I have the skill for it. I am a pretty talented writer and editor though, and an obsessive study of game mechanics since childhood has rendered me incapable of love, but pretty bitching when it comes to game design. More generally speaking, I've got a knack for pulling in and organizing talent where needed as well. If you're interested, feel free to hit me up via email.