Final Fantasy Hacktics

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=4868.0 (ignore the talk about the Squire being unsuitable to edit, that's a mistake)

In short, you don't want to edit anything about the Chemist's skillset at all. It's hardcoded (meaning that instead of relying entirely on what FFTPatcher can set up with the various menus like most of the Jobs, it's got unique, specific coding to perform a unique, specific function) to work differently than a regular job.
While the hardcoding isn't as bad as it is for Mime or Onion Knight, the only change you could possibly make to the Chemist skillset would be to change what the items themselves do, or how much JP the skills cost.

But if you want to unlock Monk before Chemist (or just earlier than Monk is normally unlocked) you can definitely do that - with the Job Level tab in the patcher.

There is. Jot5 does it, with some ASM hacking. (Meaning that if you want this for the PSP, you're out of luck.)

Interestingly I can't seem to change Ramza's type at all, even when I use a different sprite and Shishi shows the floating arms on the new one. But I know I was getting the floating arm issue in-game when it came to importing Red Mage sprites over Arithmetician...

It says it's 482 in the properties - "File version 1.0.0.482", and I'm pretty sure I just grabbed it from the .482 Patcher Suite at http://ffhacktics.com/wiki/FFTPatcher_Suite.

Something I'm noticing this morning is that the changed Type will appear properly if I look at the Frames, but not the Animation, unless I reimport.

Never worked that way for me. I wondered if that was just another one of those "haha PSP version sucks to edit" issues but the same thing seems to happen with the PSX version? I opened my Jot5, exported Ramza, and checked the difference with his animation by setting the dropbox to Type 2 - no change. Importing while still in Type 2 caused his arms to levitate to the side.

And then changing the menu back to Type 1 didn't fix his arms, either - like the first change, it took a reimport:



I'm not sure if the changes would be there in the game after using the dropdown menu even if Shishi doesn't show it, but I'm too lazy to check at this time of night.

You need to change the type and then reimport the sprite. Just changing it in the dropdown and then going about your business doesn't do it.

So here - for the primary palette I pulled colors from Ch2 Ramza and Rapha to replace the purple and the cyan. Darkened or lightened them slightly, and edited the pants a bit so there isn't just a ring below the knee with more purple pants underneath it on some frames.
Edit: Finished the portrait, too.




Oh, and - unfortunately...

QuoteDarkest colour should be #282820

Doing that turns the sprite into this:



It's also notable that the Knight sprite my MK is based off of doesn't use a darkest color that's quite that dark. I did darken mine a bit, though.

You actually helped a lot with that one, Twinees! I'm very definitely not at the point where I can do a realistic looking turban the way you have, as you might have noticed from the rigid lines on all of my attempts

The only thing I don't think fits well is the gem - your design makes it look more like a clasp, which the Mystic Knights this sprite is based off of just don't seem to have on the turban. Not that I don't like it - I think I'll use that one on the cloak instead of what I've currently got there. Just that it doesn't do what I was going for on the turban, y'know? But I'll try to get something less plain than what I had before.

As for the colors - I'll definitely poke around in Shishi's some more. Most of mine were just grabbed from the color wheel in an effort to match the concepts I built the MK from, but colors that fall more in line with what we've already got in FFT certainly can't hurt. And that's only true for the first palette; I'm not super attached to the colors for the others, so I'll try to pick those ones with a little more care.

Okay, no new responses in a couple weeks, so I'm just gonna ask: does the current version look good to everyone, and I can call it finished now - or is there any more criticism I could use to improve it further?

What I'm looking at right now is this:


_{Haven't yet updated the first post to reflect the latest changes in the sprite so just be aware of that.}

No, I mean that I believe the color that appears for your Cloud sprite when you're choosing him for battle is the only color you can use for a unit you're fielding. There might be multiple different palettes on FFT sprites, but the only viable one for party members is their very first palette, their default palette. The other palettes only exist for the purpose of making enemy units obvious at a glance without every enemy thief in existence looking exactly the same.

I believe that Xifanie made a Palette Editor specifically for stuff like this - it should allow you to easily swap around one of Cloud's later palettes for his normal default, changing his default appearance in the game. Except in the formation screen, because that's from two separate files.

The only exception to the rule are the monsters. But they don't at all work like regular Jobs do. Whatever they've got going on probably isn't something you can mimic with a regular character.

I'm not too sure why you chose to slap abilities on it in the first place then. 

It's easy to see that the (Master) OK's niche was supposed to be a powerful Job with high defense, raw attack power, and some good buffs from the Onion Armor (Regen, Reraise, Protect, Shell), for the tradeoff of not having Action abilities. The problem is that it doesn't really work - other jobs can do the whole brute tank thing with a lot less of a grind required (Knight + White Mage alone...), and the no-EXP thing just kills what little use the job might've had.
Plus the "reward" for Mastering a ton of jobs is a job that doesn't use any of the stuff from those jobs? What?

I mean, if you want it to stay close to its original niche, but still make it halfway viable, then perhaps putting some innates on it would do the trick? Innate: Doublehand (or Dual Wield?), Reequip, Counter; innate resistance to most negative status effects; innate Half resistance to (some?) elements...
and even if you dislike the idea of giving it some action abilities, maybe some that aren't that different from the other abilities in the game? Some ability that gives it Defend (if only to keep that final Innate ability slot free), and something that gives it some ranged/magic capability, even if not very far and only in a single panel?

I just think that leaving the OK as is would be a waste. Even the Arithmetician isn't this bad because at least it's broken in a way that rewards the player for unlocking it... but with the vanilla OK, you might as well slap on level 8 Bard and Dancer requirements just to keep it off the job wheel. ¬_¬

IIRC - You can't. He can only appear that way if his event appearance sets him up for that; as a party member he'll show up in Palette 1 by default. Think about any generic units you've ever enticed with an Orator; they always change from the 2-5 Palettes over to the generic one.

You need to swap out his base palette for one of the others in the .bmp file itself, making it so that his default is the color you want. If you want multiple friendly Clouds, then you need a different sprite for each of them. 

QuoteI would just get rid of it and replace it

You can't. The hardcoding around OK makes it INCREDIBLY difficult to do anything with it. The best you can muster is to stack it with a limited amount of powerful Innates and three strong abilities.

Specifically:

- There's no easy way to get rid of the JP/EXP block
- There's no easy way to make the OK able to equip your learned Action, Support, or Movement abilities
- The OK's skillset can either be a <Default> which lets you use the same slots you've learned abilities in for your base Job, this works really badly in practice
- or it can be a <Monster> set which forces all its Action abilities on from the start, prevents the other Jobs from using that skillset, and limits the skillset to 3 abilities (4, at most, with a BM beside you)

I mean, you could replace the OK with maybe a Berserker that's got Innates. That's it.

You also can't just slap a new job in. The number of jobs on the wheel is limited to what's already there; any new job would have to be put in the Onion Knight slot, and would then come with all the disadvantages that current Onion Knights do.

Frankly, I don't know why Square fucked up the OKs so badly. The lack of passive abilities is one thing, the lack of a skillset another... yeah, they can equip some OP gear, but they're useless without it, and even with it they can't hold a candle to a dual wielding Dragoon with Iaido or magic and Shirahadori. Which you'll probably have long before you get a Master Onion Knight.

And then you can't get EXP with the job! Why would you ever use it? There are much easier ways to get a character that can avoid most sources of damage and hit the damage cap on a single target at max level. ¬_¬

Well, here's how I've planned my own OKs out:

Apprentice
Action Menu type: Monster; all abilities have "Learn with JP (Player)" and "Learn on Hit" unchecked
- Self Haste
- Self Regen & Defend
- Centered-on-self AoE Heal
Innate: Counter Tackle, Concentration

Master
Action Menu type: Monster; all abilities have "Learn with JP (Player)" and "Learn on Hit" unchecked
- Self Haste, Regen, Protect, Shell, & Defend
- Centered-on-self Chakra
- A self level up (that Banishes the user)
Innate: Counter, Concentration, Doublehand?

You can also spice it up a bit by adding Poach/Tame in there somewhere - I'm leaning in favor of giving them innate Poach myself, but only because in my planned patch the Fur Shop is meant to be used a bit more often.

And as for the level up: the Banish is really only there to prevent someone from just leveling 0-99 in one battle, but you can use any sort of restrictive measures you like on it. Or you can keep the Banish, but make it an AoE too - the OK will be banished but none of the people it hits will.
The Chakra could also be done as a wide AoE, a big group heal thing. Put a CT on it so it isn't HORRIBLY overpowered.

Alternatively, ignore all of these abilities and turn the Onion Knight into a complete support unit. Movement range of 1, no weapons, no PA, and give it your pick of three unlimited range, one-target support abilites:
- copy Move! from JoT5 but give it a (closer to) 100% hit rate, so the OK can give any of your units Quick at any given time
- Reraise
- Formula 49 to let you refresh an ally's MP by 30 for free
- Regen
- Esuna
- Sleep (for enemies; keeping this limited to one-target and the fact that Sleep breaks on hit keeps it from being TOO OP)
Plus an innate Vanish so enemies leave it alone more often

I mean, it kind of goes against the spirit of an Onion Knight, but it's an option.

Also, for what it's worth, the OK's Monster skillset can't be equipped by other Jobs. So you can give it some of the OP factor of Arithmeticians without having the whole "copy skillset to less awful Job for blatant abuse in game" issue.

On the topic of Onion Knights - what are you doing to give them a learnable skillset? In my own testing, setting them to anything outside of Monster just caused issues - Default worked but only as a reflection of the Base Job's skillset. I.E. if Agrias knew ability 1, 3, and 4, so would the OK.

And yeah, they can't gain EXP and JP normally. If you want them to level up as OKs, you can give them innate Accumulates, a Steal EXP skill, or a level up skill with a non-Crystal status tied to it (using Wall as Banish might be a good one, preventing it from being used more than once in a single fight)

In the worst case scenario, you can abuse save states to pull off vital status inflictions.

In their base jobs alone, Snake gets an unlimited-range Quick, weapon-range Death, self-Invis, and melee-range Sleep; Link gets an AoE Stop and can inflict Slow via Ice Arrows; Dante can do a variety of stuff (but I personally made him go knife just so I could have a decent Chemist - that got me a Paralyze and a self Regen); and Ramza has Regen, which restores MP in this version.

I never found a boss that was immune to Slow.

You should also make liberal use of the Knight's Invigorate, it's relatively easy to come by, and with the MP return alongside the Reraise you'll rarely feel the cost of the spell.

If you charge in blindly on tougher battles, you'll get slaughtered. The enemies in JoT5 will ABSOLUTELY make you fight for your victories. But if you're REALLY struggling you might want to go JP grind for a while.

And think about picking up a Generic Female with perfect compatibility with Snake and a high Faith stat - He can sit in a corner and spam Move! at her with something like a 66% success rate all day long.

Oh, and as for Guests... you want your Guests to have self heals. White Magic if you don't want them to consume Potions all the time. I didn't give my Agrias a self heal, and every time she got critically wounded or revived she would spend her next turn running away from everything to go hide in a corner. ¬_¬

Quoteadding 1 more skill that doesn't work like all the others

You can have it work just like all the others, but just with different numbers. Alternatively, you can give her some kind of defensive or restorative ability.

The problem with trying to get a bunch of nearly-identical skills in a set is that the game really doesn't do that for any skillset at all. Even jobs like Knight or Oracle have abilities that break the mold, and so do several of your own custom jobs already. Following that idea for your Hunter job would've resulted in a skillset like Arm Shot, Leg Shot, Eye Shot (blind), Throat Shot (silence), Head Shot (confuse), Heart Shot (charm), Liver Shot (poison), or other creative places to shoot someone that might result in status effects - but I see Seal Evil on that skillset, which I'm guessing still comes with its vanilla effect?

Having a unit that is basically just dependent on whacking people with a staff all day is kind of like the problem with vanilla Cloud in that he required too much time spent for his base job to be usable compared to what you could already have. Granted, Cloud had other issues, like his low level and that silly Materia Blade requirement, but still.

If she had bows or even guns right from the start, I might think differently, because at least then she could be a ranged harassment unit, which gives her some actual use while she's still grinding up to her first spell. Or if she had a self-invisibility spell as befitting the assassin she's supposed to be, perhaps - allowing her to move in close without being taken down.

Quotethinking about adding a 0 JP Cost non-elemental skill for Rafa.

That's kind of what I was thinking of. Though 0 JP seems a bit low, even for a weaker spell. 80-100 for a ranged or weak all-field ability would probably be a more appropriate range - she's likely to have that after one battle.

On the other hand, if her very first appearance starts her off at Job Level 2 or 3, then she'll either have one of those abilities already or she'll be so close to acquiring one that it wouldn't matter so much. In that case, none of this matters

QuoteThe PSX version isn't nearly as complicated.

Oh, neat. Didn't know that.

For Rafa - and I'm not sure if others would agree on this, but - the idea of needing to use her for multiple battles and essentially get her to job level 2 before she can even think about learning her first action ability seems kind of harsh for her. Maybe you can put in a cheap, low-damage, low-hit-chance attack using one of the elements she doesn't have on that skillset?

Oh? I assumed that would have been something that was just designed to happen with the region change on the PSP itself, not the games. In that case, yeah, if RBS can find some way to change that on their Go...