Final Fantasy Hacktics

Hmm, Golbez is "Clad in Black" after all. I'd be more than impressed if you managed to get the cape as well.

That is an impressive opening! I enjoyed the esoteric speech between the ?Heavens? and the Spirit, beyond that I have to wonder where you got that matching font for the place names, this is definitely a promising work.

Hello Eldiran. I see you've made an interesting little hack here. With Choto's DQ/Classic FF "Inn" hack I was thinking of ways to make FFT into a more classical RPG, in some respects. I did a little digging and found that if you nullify "0018d700: a0a40000 sb r4,0x0000(r5)      Store Earned Experience"
You skip both Experience routines for both JP and Exp. I'd love to try and incorporate this with an Exp. gain in the same way you used JP, but I'm not sure how logical it is to start the battle at a Level Up instead of at the end of battle.

...Wow. That is an Amazing Golbez! It is always good to see another one of the FFIV Crew get a sprite, terrific!

The Japanese version and the English version have several notable changes in JP and the like. A better comparison may be with the final English version and this Prototype. A shame that CD Mage doesn't show you total file sizes when it's an actual folder, but I guess you could open up each folder and examine their file sizes in that manner.

It is interesting all together though. The additions to Battle.bin means they've probably already fixed some of the bugs that are in the Japanese only release.

Was Elmdor's death line the only non-translated part?

Wow! This is classic Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest work with this! I am eager to see how people use this.

You can open the files with CD Mage (back it up first, of course) and post pictures of the files and we can tell you whether the files are the same size or not, or what files are missing or added.

This is extremely impressive work Emmy! This looks to go a decent way towards balancing some more difficult to balance aspects of FFT.

Quote from: Borman on January 21, 2016, 06:42:26 pm
It depends on which ones I played before. I have other footage of the beginning part of the game, so I went quickly. Most of the time, unless I zone out, Im quickly comparing the script on Gamefaqs with the alpha build.

Well that is good. A microscopic lens should be taken to the script as you are doing. I believe the value of this will lie in seeing what steps the translators were taking as they seemed to nearly be finished by this point and why they chose what they chose or what errors they just didn't notice or care enough to fix.

Have there been any delineations in terms of events? Since this was a late preview model I highly doubt it, but you can't be too sure until all avenues are explored. For instance Ocarina of Time supposedly had you earning the Fire Arrows with the Fire Medallion even late enough for this bit of misinformation to get into the guides.

Wow! What a find, I do sort of wish while watching your stream replays that you wouldn't dash through text, since that's where everything different would be andthe only differences here seems to be a translation in transition as evidenced by that terrific picture where it shows that they flirted with the idea of referring to the Orders in a more proper syntax before throwing their hands up and just calling them by their Japanese names.

Some differences I noticed throughout...

Stasis Sword - Steady Sword

"little money..." line is missing!

When you say "Something keeps popping up..." - It says "Reading..."

"A gang of thieves tortured is trying to..." Should be "gang of tortured thieves..."

Alazlam is currently Arazram.

In the Alpha, Ordalia is called "Sea Gull" by Zalbag.

Full stop when he mentions "Zeltennia".

Dycedarg is called Dycedag in the alpha, at least all throughout Balbanes's deathbed scene.

The intro text with Alazlam is different, I believe, but you skipped right by it so I can't say for sure if it was right or not.

Kind of surprising that they don't let you access the "Party" menu in this Pre-release. Party would let you choose from enemy formations as set by ENTD's as seen with the normal Debug code, but I suppose they didn't think a QA playtester would have needed those functions possibly?

Quote from: Xifanie on December 17, 2014, 03:02:59 pm
Did you even read his last post?

Also, Tales-eque? Toshiko said it was Disgaea like... I say it's xifi-style.

I did read the last post, hence why I said; "I understand this is meant to be a base patch". The previous post mentions Fixing Things, it never once mentions the pre-requisites for anything else that may be added to New Game +, hence my curiosity, but the response seems to be that no, there is no plan to add in a hard mode.

You have to be a bit softer in your tone, otherwise you risk driving people away.

Thanks for the heads up on an update Elric. It is interesting to see you putting in Tales-esque game bonuses for FFT and making New Game+ a rather different experience. My only fear is that FFT is rather easy as it is and I understand this is meant to be a base patch, but are there any thoughts to include a "hard mode" unlock like some Tales games have to make the new toys you're getting feel a little more relevant?

I was unaware that The Lion War has been finished by this point. I know that I responded about my hopes for it a few months back.

Let's clear up some things, shall we?

Quote from: Philogosten on October 06, 2013, 02:02:05 pm
The Bad

1. The renaming. They seriously tried to Americanize the names more which annoys me beyond belief when that is done. Many of the names now sound way less cool. Like "Vormav" that is badass name. That gets turned to "Folmarv" which sounds more like a name that would be given to the D&D character of a kid named Marvin. They also took "Izlude" which was another pretty awesome name and made it "Isilud". were they trying to take all the cool out of the names or something? Not to mention what they did to the Lucavi names.

I agree many of the character name changes were superfluous but the Lucavi names are Correct, this is what they were Intended to be. Belias as a reference to Belial, rather than Velius meaning something about a cow as I recall, this is backed up by the Lucavi picture in FFT's original opening. Addramelech is an ancient god that people once sacrificed children to. Zalera to Zallera is admittedly odd. Hashmalum and Hashmal are both accurate, and Queklain to Cuchulainn, as odd as it is, is the intended form of the name as it is meant to be some (bizarre) reference to the Irish hero.

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2. Changing things to make the game fit together with some of other Final Fantasy games.  Now I would not mind if they did that to make it fit with one of the GOOD Final Fantasy games like anything before FFX. Seems stupid to connect it to
some of the most hated games in the series.

I don't know what you're referring to here, FFT was the first part of the Ivalice Alliance in which FFXII also takes place in Ivalice long before FFT. It was always meant to be that way. If you're referring to the Unexplored Lands they're unchanged from FFT.

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3. Adding in Luso. No! Someone from a game made purely for young children does not belong in a game full of backstabbing, politics, and assassinations.

Purely for young children? That sort of comment leads me to believe you didn't actually play that game. Luso's main enemies in FFTA2 are assassins, in fact they're the Khamja, the same name of the group that Malak and Rafa are part of.

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4. Algus coming back as a DeathKnight. It made no sense. There was no stone by him to use
to call for one to make a deal. And if everyone can just make a deal with Lucavi without one of the
holy stones to come back to life then why are we not seeing an insane amount of super powered
undead knights? I highly doubt Algus is the only one without a stone who was willing to make a deal
with a lucavi. This was not thought out at all. It was a cheap tacked on battle in an attempt to add
more battles without them thinking of a reason why that battle is actually taking place.

Consider this, Algus' homeland was Limberry, Algus dies, Algus is then taken back to his homeland and buried. Zalera/Elmdor thinks he can make some
use out of him as an undead servant and thus revives him, remembering his valor when he was rescued in Zeklaus.

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5. The cell shaded cutscenes with bad voice acting.

...That's Yoshida's art style, and Yoshida's art. 

Bad voice acting? The voice acting in WotL is fantastic. Ramza is portrayed as the kind, gentle timber I always imagined, Delita's tone is silky with a hint of a snake in there, Ovelia sounds regal, and Agrias sounds fitting. It's probably one of the best English dubs for any video game.

[quote[
6. Bad audio

7. Slowdowns that make it feel as though I am playing it on a bad emulator when I am playing it on psp.
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I can't deny those.

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8. The addition to the Beowulf plot line. It turned rather sexist and cliche. (Oh look the woman is kidnapped so the man has to go save her.) Seriously
when playing that part I was just thinking "My arms are not long enough for the jerk off motion in my soul."  Seriously that whole part just seemed like a bad fanfic.

Notice that Priest Bremondt (Buremonda) is mentioned in FFT. It seems rather clear to me that they intended this sidequest in FFT but didn't make it in on time.

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9. The holy stones now being turned into Auracite. It took a lot of the importance away from them considering
that there are more than 13 pieces of auracite and others use them for just summoning magic. Kind of killed
the mystique and the kind of ominous feel that the stones used to have back when they weren't just 13 of god knows
how many stones used for esper summoning.

You're referring to Revenant Wings I imagine. The name Holy Stone(hijirishi) is used in that game as well. I somewhat was never under the impression there were just the 13 Holy Stones, as anything with enough importance could be deemed such, but clearly there was only ever 13 Zodiac Stones.

Hmm, you might be confusing Cherubim with Seraphim (Seraphim have four wings) and using some interpretations of our commonly thought Cherub (little babies with wings) but ancient lore actually depicts them in a way that would work quite well for a Lucavi. A body of a beast, six wings, with the head of a man, lion, and a bull.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherub#mediaviewer/File:Ezekiel%27s_vision.jpg

A pretty good representation of a Cherubim. It seems that Matsuno may have thought that out pretty well after all.

The issue in this case might is that the Lion is already represented by Hashmalum and the Bull would be represented by Duma as I recall what you did. Granted it doesn't have to look like them at all.

There have been no .hack// sprites as of yet (but I am glad to see that as the years have gone by people are looking back at the series!) and to have a couple sprites of Kite or Haseo would be pretty neat!

Great work on figuring out a lot more about the range Dokurider! By chance were you looking into "Weapon Cast" AoE's at all? Or is that pretty much hardcoded to be a single target no matter what?

I am blown away by the amount of effort, creativity, and extraordinary amount of polish and fidelity to all of the worlds that are shown in Journey of the Five.

First the skillsets. Each skillset feels genuine and fitting. Ramza's skillset takes the old skills and retools them in a manner which still feels appropriate to their names. Link's skillset has a neat focus on his Ocarina and the Elemental Arrows (though I am slightly surprised there is no Din's Fire/Farore's Wind/ anything like that which he can use with Staves or Rods) Snake's moveset is a lot of fun with a lot of interesting ideas such as Smoke Break, Sleeper Hold, and Hide, along with others. My only complaint with Snake's moveset is the worthlessness of Tear Gas. It doesn't seem to have that great of a chance to hit (MA effected?) and it only hits a single target when it clearly has Gas in the name, leading me at first to believe that it would at least be normal cross range. Cloud is fine, very useful set-up on his skills. And Dante looks to be well represented for the hour or two I played Devil May Cry 2.

Now, the story, you present it in such a manner where there is no leaps of faith and its set up in such a manner that it could almost be believed that this is the continuation of the story, that said it is a bit fantastical, but it doesn't distract from the story being built. Delita is still an important figure (and it's good to see that he cared enough about Ramza and Alma's safety to set them up for life. Even if his motives may have been a little suspect and paranoid) the addition of Olivander and Leesha really adds a flair of that ol' political intrigue that FFT is renowned for. Every cutscene is wonderful and most of the time characterization is intact (Ramza randomly cursing as he makes his way through Araguay is a bit off-setting, admittedly) I was impressed with the length of the chapter. I had thought for certain it was going to be over with the fight against Sephiroth but then you go and set up an Extraordinarily difficult battle with Ganondorf as the finale of the chapter! That said I don't 100% agree with how Ganondorf was handled in the end... it seems a bit of a let-down that he didn't even have the chance to transform into Ganon.

Mustadio piloting a Worker was a really neat idea. Heaven forbid the Engineer actually put his knowledge to work! The asides where you battled with Alma were also unexpected and a bit of fun, and the effort put into the backstory (with an extra scene no less!) was very much appreciated and helped draw me into the world which you have elaborated on.

Everything seemed to be balanced to a great extent. I personally had Link as a magic-user who had Equip Heavy Arms and Adventure Skill so he could refill people's MP and Stop people with the Song of Time and Whirlwind Blade was always useful in someway or another. The one thing I kept on askewing was bringing the Asura into random battles with Bombs, so many Bombs... Heh, but I loved the gimmick of the Asura. A near definite Oil for low-decent damage and then a big hit with the already Fire-Elemental blade. Very creative there.

The sprite-work was amazing, the balance was top-notch and if it didn't have a cross over from so many companies I would almost believe that this was professionally made.

That final battle with Ganondorf though... wow, that was a fight and a half. Sometimes Mustadio would act really stupid and just fly around without attacking Ganondorf where in the winning time it was thanks to him that we won...

Here was the scenario... My people were spread all across the map to avoid Gravity and Energy Barrage, but it wasn't enough and when the final cutscene occurred somehow Ganondorf was faster than Snake who it was Crucial would go before him and he killed him and Cloud. Then Dante and Ramza fell in short order after taking a few more desperate shots at him. My entire team was now dead, except for Mustadio. Ganondorf has previously used Comet on him forcing him to use Reboot and he flew off. Then he came back with a vengeance! He used Dispose hurting Ganondorf for 90. Ganondorf used another Comet but Mustadio used another Dispose ending it, and Cloud at this point had 0 turns left on his counter. That was extremely intense.  I'm still not sure how to effectively fight Ganondorf though. Link got three Holy's on him at the start, but then the opportunities to strike came few and far between.


All in all I am amazed! I am now eagerly awaiting the completion of Chapter 2, along with everyone else, I'm sure.

Hmm, that does seem remarkably simple. Very similar to SNES ASM in many regards. It's just a matter of knowing where the mirror data is and what is located there. It seems like FDC did a large disassembly of FFT's Battle.bin as I did with FFIV, it seems like it's mostly a matter of knowing what each Formula works to from that specific area. The Current Action matter is lost on me though, what does that particularly refer to?