Final Fantasy Hacktics

Quote from: Celdia on April 09, 2014, 11:28:44 am@Hikaru: Did you notice that after Delita walked through a friendly 'stuck-flying' unit that the unit had no shadow for the rest of that battle? I find that even more eerie.

That... is rather eerie. Is this from experience with Brawlers in your patch? I've always loved that glitch there, where it's less malicious and more hilarious, and where they sometimes airwalk downwards instead of falling (which is actually why I thought to point out that mine fell in my first post).

Quote from: Choto on April 09, 2014, 12:26:50 pm
If you look at the action menus tab in patcher, BC is the Pisco Demon skillset. I know when you hack in anything above 0xB0 as a units skillset it comes up as a direct command a la monster skillsets.

as for "anything".... no clue. Does it work as a direct command (monster skill) or as a skillset?

It appears to work as a direct command. When I click it, it brings up that window and asks me yes or no, which is presumably the "skill use confirmation" part. However,  whether I press Yes or No, I just immediately get spat back into the Attack/Black Magic/Item/Anything window. This may be because the actual TARGETING part of the skill has been replaced with some kind of "spawn a window" thing. The contents of the window ([Blank]/Attack/Black Magic) never changed (though presumably they'd be different on a unit with different skillsets) and the game itself actually froze (or maybe it hung, I don't specifically remember) immediately after that unit's turn, but that's because she used a potion on the other party member who isn't shown in the screenshot due to being in the upper stratosphere, and the game had trouble trying to get back down from there in time for the next unit's turn.

So I did a little test in FFT Patcher. Made a patch with ONE EDIT ONLY: changing Fire's animation bytes to 0F 3E 00. It was to test using the Jump UP without the Jump DOWN, and boy did it ever! If Fire was cast, then you moved, then you started to change your facing, the jump replays whenever you switch (presumably because it's a new animation due to the facing change), allowing you to jump upwards infinitely. When you move, you fall back down (with both hands up! woooooooooo what a ride!), but other kinds of interaction don't necessarily cause this. I also am guessing that if the sprite changes/moves, you get placed back on the ground, since when Delita walked through a "flying" character she was suddenly on earth again in order to move out of his way.

Anyways, suddenly, after I had jumped someone up quite a few times for fun, another character starting having the "Anything" command seen in the screenshot attached. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Also, I thought she might have been the one with Equip Change equipped, but I just checked and it was the other one. So I guess it has nothing to do with that...

I have far too many FFH tabs open just so that I don't have to bookmark or write down or otherwise remember where certain threads are. Sometimes it pays off!

Quote from: Celdia on April 08, 2014, 03:22:47 pm3. ...if you want a unit to change how they move while casting a spell, you need to change the values in the Animations tab of FFTPatcher. I don't believe there is an accurate listing anywhere of what these do exactly. If you compare values on different skills you can figure some things out pretty easy though. [Ex: the Break skills are all 07 00 00 which makes a unit swing their equipped weapon and do nothing else]

This post is rather informative. It's not exactly perfect, but it makes for a wonderful starting point. From there, comparing values is ideal - for example, if we check Jump, we can see that one of the "spell charging"s listed in the first spoiler is used as the first byte for all the jump skills. If we give a normal skill x76: Land Jump as the second byte with something else as the first byte (such as one that causes crouch charging), the first animation will play, then the character will immediately jump up and then land on the enemy. It's not very smooth, but the skill quote would probably appear before the jump happens. If instead we pair them up like the Jump skills do, the character will jump as their prep animation, then land on the opponent as their execution animation. If the skill has a quote, this leads to them jumping in the air, saying their quote while in the air, then crashing down on the enemy. Pretty cool if you ask me!

That said, according to some testing I did 5 seconds ago, you should NOT give animation x0F (byte 1) to a skill with a charge time, and you should certainly make sure to pair it up with x76 (byte 2) afterwards (otherwise... you don't come down). When you use a skill with charge time, then move, then change facing, the charging animation replays each time you switch - necessary (I'm assuming) for skills where the animations are normal and not hacked to pieces, but here it means that you can just keep jumping, upwards and upwards, as far as you like, and it's possibly capable of causing skillset glitches in other characters (which is wacky enough that I'll probably ask about it in its own thread, if I don't find anything by searching).

In any case, this is all related to...

Quote from: Murex on April 08, 2014, 02:17:13 pm2. Is there any way to get enemy abilities to be used as my player abilities without having a weapon appear while they are used?

*I KNOW NOTHING, THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IS NOTHING BUT EDUCATED GUESSWORK*

You'll notice that some of the animations state that they use temp weapons. This (I'm assuming) indicates that the dagger sprite is used in the animation. Presumably, some animations call something they can't find, so it defaults to using the dagger sprite as a placeholder. For example, when using a Yagyu Darkness as a normal weapon, Pokeytax saw that it would call the dagger sprite when used to attack. When I have one of my human units use Triple Attack, without editing it, the unit will raise its arm, which is suddenly holding a Dagger outwards, and then the attack will happen. It looks REALLY cool (if somewhat jarring and nonsensical) and should be manipulable by editing whichever sprite it calls. As for making the enemy abilities usable as player abilities WITHOUT the dagger popping up... you might find success with changing the animation bytes. Triple Attack and friends are running off the MON spritesheet, so their animations are different - the post I linked before has the human ones, so see what happens if you change it to one of them. Of course, this'll break it for use by monsters, so if you want a blue mage you may just have to learn to love the dagger... or find another solution, like an animation that works for either one. Of course, if it doesn't work that way, then there may be other solutions still.

It's almost 4 AM and I'm rambling, so it's probably time to post this and hope it's coherent enough to be helpful! As for #5, it's in the thread that Celdia linked but it never hurts to repeat it: Never patch over an already-patched file! It's both an easily avoidable mistake if you know about it and an easily makeable mistake if you don't, so it's really great for beginners to hear about. Good luck, and I apologise for any errors in my "helpful" guesswork