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Final Fantasy Tactics: Another Story

Started by RayKamiya, August 30, 2015, 01:43:11 pm

RayKamiya

August 30, 2015, 01:43:11 pm Last Edit: November 26, 2016, 04:29:36 pm by RayKamiya
Well, This is a Hack I do plan to work on my own but to be honest I need help using the editing tools to pursue it, I do want to work on it but I need a lot of teaching and practice, But I do have one hack in mind that I wish to do.

I don't mind collaborating and getting different viewpoints as this is what I have in my head right now ^^;

I do plan on changing many of the jobs from Vanilla and replacing many of the Jobs and items and trying to re balance everything, making the game a bit more difficult but also fun.

here is what I have planned so far, I do plan to update this when I can, Real life work and such gets in the way.

Updates: Removed all the lists of Items that have been moved to the Database, also added a few more key characters and more info. 

--Final Fantasy Tactics: Another story--

Several Years after the Lion War and Delita rules a united Ivalice as King, A young Cat girl named Meko has been studying at the Gariland academy to become a knight, However while shes out on a training exercise her Unit is attacked by Knights under the flag of the church.

Meko and a few of her fellow Cadets escape, When they arrive back at Gariland the dean does not know of any sort of activity being planned with the cadets and asks for the teachers whereabouts, Meko states her case and tells him about the attack.

The Glabados Church and Delita are at arms with each other, after their plans to overthrow the royal family and install a puppet government failed The church has been secretly arming for another war.

as Legends and Rumors about Ramza and The Holy stones surface Meko sets out on her journey to bring peace to the war sick Ivalice.

All Class notes and Items are slowly being transferred over here to this Excel Spreadsheet and will be updated as much as i can any suggestions would be appreciated xD I left the older notes here to compare notes and what I have done.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/worlzqfvxxft3tn/Final%20Fantasy%20Tactics%20Notes.xlsx?dl=0


All story and battle notes are being compiled here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/76vjshz67lfuo7y/Final%20Fantasy%20Tactics%20Details.docx?dl=0



dw6561

This sounds interesting! It's always good to have a plan before you start things, after all. I particularly like the way you're portraying Delita in a positive light. You could also throw in some conflict about Ovelia if you wanted, and have some old characters show up. What do you need help with? I know how to use FFTPatcher and some rough ASM stuff (haven't really done anything myself yet), but I am completely blind about eventing and spriting. Many basic questions can be answered if you look around for them, and I know I learned quite a lot about the do's and don'ts of FFTPatcher from just hanging around on the PSX hacking section.

I have plans for a hack too but I can't really get the job classes right and have no idea where to begin with their stat multipliers/constants. I don't want to post it until I have at least something to show for it though.

For classes so far, I have some advice and critiquing. Meko looks fantastic. A lot of the abilities already exist in some form and you can just rename them/use them. Keep in mind that there is limited space for new abilities, especially if you still want monsters/generics in the hack, and you can't really use some skill slots (charge/jump/item/elemental/draw out) normally because of hard coding.

And by the CTs you have listed, I'm assuming you mean the speed of the spells listed in game, because they would be way too high to be the actual CT of the spell. The CT is the number of clockticks the spell takes to resolve, and the speed listed in game is 100/CT, meaning:

0 CT - now
1 CT - 100 speed
2 CT - 50 speed
3 CT - 34 speed
4 CT - 25 speed
5 CT - 20 speed
6 CT - 17 speed
7 CT - 15 speed
...

So that means no 19 speed spell, because the CT will always be an integer. And 5 AOE is quite a lot, I'm not sure if that's what you meant to do. Did you want the elemental sword abilities to be like the sword skills in vanilla? Also, break should probably cost quite a lot more MP or have a low hit percentage unless you plan on having copious ways to cure/prevent petrify. You can probably work out the details later, I just wanted to throw my two cents into it.
  • Modding version: PSX
This is FF Tactics. All the Tactics you can ever have, all in one byte.

Nyzer

Due to the sheer amount of work such a mod would require, I'd suggest aiming for a very, very short storyline, with minimal changes to the base game, if you're coming in as a complete newb to modding. Even if this short storyline is set up in a way that allows you to return to it again later and expand the story into something much greater, it should still be something minimal that comes to a decent close in a decent amount of time for now.

The reason I say this is because Journey of the Five has been in development for years and still only has the first Chapter of four released. Granted, it's a very robust mod, but this is somewhat balanced out by the fact that it's had a team of people working on it instead of just a single person.

One of the things I feel compelled to point out is that you're giving two characters innate Dual Wield in their base jobs. This will make them flatly overpowered compared to every other one of your party members, without exception. Innate DW works on Ninja because of how high-tier of a job it is, the fact that Throw is a stupid skillset, and the fact that Ninjas have a limited set of equipment.
This only gets a hundred times worse if they're an early-game character (and while I'm not sure if that's the intent there, it's a possibility, so just sayin') who appears before you can reasonably expect to have a Ninja.

This is a seriously ambitious project for someone who doesn't have experience with the tools necessary to make the changes they'd like. And the more you change, and the longer you make your game, the more difficult and time-consuming it becomes on an exponential scale.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

RayKamiya

August 31, 2015, 06:55:39 pm #3 Last Edit: August 31, 2015, 07:50:15 pm by Xifanie
Quote from: dw6561 on August 30, 2015, 03:28:41 pm
This sounds interesting! It's always good to have a plan before you start things, after all. I particularly like the way you're portraying Delita in a positive light. You could also throw in some conflict about Ovelia if you wanted, and have some old characters show up. What do you need help with? I know how to use FFTPatcher and some rough ASM stuff (haven't really done anything myself yet), but I am completely blind about eventing and spriting. Many basic questions can be answered if you look around for them, and I know I learned quite a lot about the do's and don'ts of FFTPatcher from just hanging around on the PSX hacking section.

I have plans for a hack too but I can't really get the job classes right and have no idea where to begin with their stat multipliers/constants. I don't want to post it until I have at least something to show for it though.

For classes so far, I have some advice and critiquing. Meko looks fantastic. A lot of the abilities already exist in some form and you can just rename them/use them. Keep in mind that there is limited space for new abilities, especially if you still want monsters/generics in the hack, and you can't really use some skill slots (charge/jump/item/elemental/draw out) normally because of hard coding.

And by the CTs you have listed, I'm assuming you mean the speed of the spells listed in game, because they would be way too high to be the actual CT of the spell. The CT is the number of clockticks the spell takes to resolve, and the speed listed in game is 100/CT, meaning:

0 CT - now
1 CT - 100 speed
2 CT - 50 speed
3 CT - 34 speed
4 CT - 25 speed
5 CT - 20 speed
6 CT - 17 speed
7 CT - 15 speed
...

So that means no 19 speed spell, because the CT will always be an integer. And 5 AOE is quite a lot, I'm not sure if that's what you meant to do. Did you want the elemental sword abilities to be like the sword skills in vanilla? Also, break should probably cost quite a lot more MP or have a low hit percentage unless you plan on having copious ways to cure/prevent petrify. You can probably work out the details later, I just wanted to throw my two cents into it.


Thanks, I do plan on making very few changes Job and Item wise I was thinking of replacing the Mediator, Mathmatic, Dancer and Bard with new jobs but I haven't decided on what I want to do.

My main issue is... well I dunno where to start XD I know very newbish thing But I look at the programs and I'm just like "where do I start?" to which i want to make a few notes and story line ideas and see how it can flow and develop.

I'm glad you like my Idea for Delita, I have had other friends get mad at me saying He was evil and lead Ivalice to ruin, But I want to think that He actually brings Ivalice to a more peaceful age and the people who hated him and tried to ruin his name were former supporters of Larg and Goltanna who joined the Church to spite Delita.

And thank you Meko is one of my versitile characters and I want to put her in the Hack as it would be fun to have a female lead xD.

And yes I do mean the speed of the skill XD, I ment for them to have a few turns to go off and have a few more powerful skills having a longer CT or higher MP use. I like the cleric Class but admittedly Aegis was OP where it gave you almost every buff and with 30 Mp cost and a short CT It was too powerful but this way I wanna make her a powered up white mage but also have Aegis but this time make it more of a late game ability.


Quote from: nyzer on August 31, 2015, 01:06:30 am
Due to the sheer amount of work such a mod would require, I'd suggest aiming for a very, very short storyline, with minimal changes to the base game, if you're coming in as a complete newb to modding. Even if this short storyline is set up in a way that allows you to return to it again later and expand the story into something much greater, it should still be something minimal that comes to a decent close in a decent amount of time for now.

The reason I say this is because Journey of the Five has been in development for years and still only has the first Chapter of four released. Granted, it's a very robust mod, but this is somewhat balanced out by the fact that it's had a team of people working on it instead of just a single person.

One of the things I feel compelled to point out is that you're giving two characters innate Dual Wield in their base jobs. This will make them flatly overpowered compared to every other one of your party members, without exception. Innate DW works on Ninja because of how high-tier of a job it is, the fact that Throw is a stupid skillset, and the fact that Ninjas have a limited set of equipment.
This only gets a hundred times worse if they're an early-game character (and while I'm not sure if that's the intent there, it's a possibility, so just sayin') who appears before you can reasonably expect to have a Ninja.

This is a seriously ambitious project for someone who doesn't have experience with the tools necessary to make the changes they'd like. And the more you change, and the longer you make your game, the more difficult and time-consuming it becomes on an exponential scale.


Indeed they will be very late joining characters (if I keep them I mean) and I may remove the Ninja for another class who knows.

Right now I'm in the planning stages of it and I do want to start with a small hack maybe one chapter and if it grows from there then hey It might be fun to do I still have a few more Ideas and notes to make and my work has gotten busy all of a sudden.

But I will be updating what changes and jobs I do want to make as I can though.

gatebuster202

Eventing. Because everything else is easy in comparison and your mod is story based. The entire story is told in events. Eventing is the hardest thing, most daunting and no-one can really help you who isn't already engaged in their own projects. Elric and Xif can help if they have time. (This is not me speaking for them, they are the resident went experts though.)

See my project and posts in spam/FFT Lounge. I asked the same questions, Elric PM's me an event motivational once a week to keep me going. (Thanks Elric!!!)
  • Modding version: PSX
Winner of the 2nd FFT Arena SCC Tourney. -Geomancers

RayKamiya

Quote from: gatebuster202 on August 31, 2015, 08:28:13 pm
Eventing. Because everything else is easy in comparison and your mod is story based. The entire story is told in events. Eventing is the hardest thing, most daunting and no-one can really help you who isn't already engaged in their own projects. Elric and Xif can help if they have time. (This is not me speaking for them, they are the resident went experts though.)

See my project and posts in spam/FFT Lounge. I asked the same questions, Elric PM's me an event motivational once a week to keep me going. (Thanks Elric!!!)


yeah XD I need to work on what I want to do and do up more notes as to how I want to event my story xD

someone shoot me XD

Nyzer

QuoteI'm glad you like my Idea for Delita, I have had other friends get mad at me saying He was evil and lead Ivalice to ruin, But I want to think that He actually brings Ivalice to a more peaceful age and the people who hated him and tried to ruin his name were former supporters of Larg and Goltanna who joined the Church to spite Delita.


The people who hate Delita and assume he was evil weren't paying attention to the game then. While the loss of his sister does indeed knock his moral compass way off-balance, there are many points in which his buried good guy side comes out. On more than one occasion he spares the lives of people who neither need to nor deserve to die, and he gets visibly angry when it's suggested that he was merely using Ramza. He only stabbed Ovelia after she attacked him, unprovoked, with the angry and false assumption that Delita sent Ramza off to die, when the truth of it is that both Delita and Ramza knew that the Lucavi had to be defeated and that Ivalice needed a new ruler - and neither of them could have changed course at any point along their mad journey. At no point during FFT does Ramza ever resent Delita or feel like Delita is using him for his own goals, because even though Delita does indeed benefit from Ramza's work, Ramza is still acting of his own accord.

And he's not even the one responsible for burying the truth about Ramza. The game flat out tells you the Church did it.

Also, I'm pretty sure no one actually tries to ruin Delita's name. FFT tells you that Delita was a hero who led Ivalice to a golden age.

QuoteIndeed they will be very late joining characters (if I keep them I mean) and I may remove the Ninja for another class who knows.


I would still very strongly advise against giving any character Innate Dual Wield in their base job, no matter when they join. And removing Ninja (assuming you don't put DW in somewhere else) again makes that worse.

TG Cid is already known as being stupidly overpowered despite being a late game character, and you're essentially taking that whole design and trading off the lack of cost for his abilities for Innate DW.

It would be far better to make him appear with the Ninja (or other dual-wielding) job unlocked than it would to give him DW without even taking up an ability slot.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

gatebuster202

I, personally am removing Dual Wield on most items, and it is no longer innate. I have two classes of Guns, one of which can be Dual Wielded. This requires me to make sure that classes that can equip melee Dual Wield weapons will be segregated from Ranged Dual Wields. Dual Wield is powerful, more then Attack Up or Two Hands. If you plan on adding in Innate Weapon Guard, even more so. You get a second attack. Stacking with Attack Up or Concentrate gets stupid powerful. Making it a choice though. Now you have to ask, why choose the Vanilla Ninja if it only has Throw and really high speed?? And I point to to Xif's ARH 2 hack. (But I am getting off topic.)

Innate Dual Wield was the most broke thing in Vanilla. Equip Swords and pack on a pair of Rune Blades and Cast any Black Magic... Yeah. Or any number of stupid combos. (Two Hands on the other hand is a little easier to balance.)
  • Modding version: PSX
Winner of the 2nd FFT Arena SCC Tourney. -Geomancers

RayKamiya

Quote from: gatebuster202 on September 01, 2015, 12:45:21 am
I, personally am removing Dual Wield on most items, and it is no longer innate. I have two classes of Guns, one of which can be Dual Wielded. This requires me to make sure that classes that can equip melee Dual Wield weapons will be segregated from Ranged Dual Wields. Dual Wield is powerful, more then Attack Up or Two Hands. If you plan on adding in Innate Weapon Guard, even more so. You get a second attack. Stacking with Attack Up or Concentrate gets stupid powerful. Making it a choice though. Now you have to ask, why choose the Vanilla Ninja if it only has Throw and really high speed?? And I point to to Xif's ARH 2 hack. (But I am getting off topic.)

Innate Dual Wield was the most broke thing in Vanilla. Equip Swords and pack on a pair of Rune Blades and Cast any Black Magic... Yeah. Or any number of stupid combos. (Two Hands on the other hand is a little easier to balance.)


Yeah I was also thinking of limiting what can be dual wielded, keeping it limited to normal swords and Daggers, making Katana's and Knight swords and Lances two handed. while yes dual wield in Vanilla was really OP I think it can be balanced by lowering the Weapon power of many of the weapons people use with it Chaos Blade for an example was WAY too OP to the point there was no point in it having the petrify effect because enemies would either die in one hit or are immune to petrify.

Again I'm working on what I want to do to Balance it out i'll update the first post when I get the chance to.

RayKamiya

I added an update to some of the jobs so take a look and added some personal notes. I may make a few changes this weekend.

RayKamiya

updated the jobs this time.

will add Items later.

RayKamiya

Okay major update.

Added in the Equipment and made a few small changes to the jobs, Later on when I get the chance to I'll go into more detail of the Jobs skills and their effects, right now I think I did a good job on equipment balancing and working within the limitations of the memory available, Let me know what you guys think. 

dw6561

Commenting on all of the equipment is going to be quite the ordeal. I haven't actually read all of them yet, but it seems like there are more items then there were in vanilla? As far as I know, you can only change existing items, not add new ones. I'm assuming you mean to hack the PSX version. I will edit this post if I come across anything specific that I find.

Specific Things:


I don't think the speed-1 on Iron Sword is worth it, and I would advise against giving that property to early gear because of the drastic difference even just one point of speed gives. As an example, if you look at FFT Arena, the masamune gives always: haste and -2 Speed, and nobody ever uses it because of the speed drop.



First of all, will Cloud even play a part in your hack? If not, you can replace Buster Sword/Materia Blade (or at least its property to enable limit, which I always thought was stupid anyway) with something else. Second, good choice on nerfing Excalibur to initial: reraise instead of always: haste.

  • Modding version: PSX
This is FF Tactics. All the Tactics you can ever have, all in one byte.

RayKamiya

Quote from: dw6561 on September 06, 2015, 04:25:28 pm
Commenting on all of the equipment is going to be quite the ordeal. I haven't actually read all of them yet, but it seems like there are more items then there were in vanilla? As far as I know, you can only change existing items, not add new ones. I'm assuming you mean to hack the PSX version. I will edit this post if I come across anything specific that I find.

Specific Things:


I don't think the speed-1 on Iron Sword is worth it, and I would advise against giving that property to early gear because of the drastic difference even just one point of speed gives. As an example, if you look at FFT Arena, the masamune gives always: haste and -2 Speed, and nobody ever uses it because of the speed drop.



First of all, will Cloud even play a part in your hack? If not, you can replace Buster Sword/Materia Blade (or at least its property to enable limit, which I always thought was stupid anyway) with something else. Second, good choice on nerfing Excalibur to initial: reraise instead of always: haste.



Yeah I was thinking of changing some of the Items around to add in new ones, But I may edit them out as them being a "wish list" of sorts, If it can't be done then no big deal.

I'm debating on weather Cloud would return or not, though if not Materia Blade /Buster sword could be changed to be a reference item rather than enable Limit breaks Or I may replace Cloud with Zack who knows.

The speed penalty even I debated on with many of the Iron Items, mostly because of how heavy they are but yeah speed is more important in this game than any other, so I may edit that.

Thanks, I think haste was very overused in Vanilla and in War of the Lions as many pieces of equipment gave always haste and to me Haste broke the game more than Dual wield, Yeah your hitting for between 500 and 1998 Damage tops but when you are getting 2-5 turns to your enemies 1 it kinda ruins it, although my hack wont be as hard as lets say the War of the gods types of hacks where your speed literally makes or breaks you, but I felt Initial reraise fit more with Excalibur than Always Haste.

RayKamiya

Just redid all the Jobs, will work on the special jobs later on.

RayKamiya

While I'm at work the next few nights I'll be making updates and changes to everything, Seriously I need SOMETHING to do while I wait 8-10 hours for PC's to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 at the work sites I'm at XD.

Tonight i'll be updating the Equipment lists and if I have time I'll also change and update the Special Jobs for guests and people who join the party via the story, and Yes I will be updating the story as well, I'm also interested in how people feel about some of these changes and if they are balanced or if they need some work on them.

Anyways if you want to PM me about this topic, feel free, I'll be on whenever I can.

3lric

Quote from: RayKamiya on September 10, 2015, 01:54:51 pm
Seriously I need SOMETHING to do while I wait 8-10 hours for PC's to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 at the work sites I'm at XD.



  • Modding version: PSX

Desocupado

Do you really need the following jobs?

  • Squire - weak skill set, boring start of the game
  • Geomancer - unreliable skillset
  • Mime - OP if used correctly, not usable by the enemy
  • Thief - unreliable skillset, causes players to reset if something important is stolen


I'd suggest removing those, and making Knight the starting job.

Battle skill is a troublesome skillset, due breaks being either OP or causing people to reset a battle.
I'd suggest having charge instead of Battle Skill.
  • Modding version: PSX

3lric

I could kind of agree with Squire and Geomancer (to a technically stance, not a fun stance, since i love both classes...) but Thief and Mime are kinda staples of FFT. Shit, Thief skills are a staple of FF games in general O_o

If a player is upset cuz their shit got stolen, then they shoulda had an ability to make it so their shit didn't get stolen.
  • Modding version: PSX

RayKamiya

Quote from: Elric on September 10, 2015, 07:26:13 pm
I could kind of agree with Squire and Geomancer (to a technically stance, not a fun stance, since i love both classes...) but Thief and Mime are kinda staples of FFT. Shit, Thief skills are a staple of FF games in general O_o

If a player is upset cuz their shit got stolen, then they shoulda had an ability to make it so their shit didn't get stolen.


I got some time in since an issue with the network has halted things, seriously I started at 4:00pm and its now 11:00 pm and I've been unable to do ANYTHING, Okay as I was typing this we got the call to back out of the project

I like the Squire as a starting job, mostly because you gotta start somewhere, starting as a knight or other 2nd tier class to me would be pretty overpowered from the get go when used correctly and it can impact the fun players have.

Geomancers I MAY change later on, This is mostly a planning stage but I get the reason why some people hate Geomancers but I personally like them, they can be tweeked to be more balanced.

Mimes I do plan to have as enemy units mid to late game in both random and story battles, yes I did put in that they will be equipping stuff but they will remain Locked from having added abilities on them when you use one.

Thief: I'm not removing nor am I removing the break abilities, if you don't want your shit stolen or broken use Safeguard/Maintenance to prevent your stuff from getting broken or stolen as many of the items I listed in my equipment list are ONLY going to be made available by stealing from enemies to give thieves a more useful role in battle and in game play.

I am also taking a look at many of the special Characters, who will be returning what role they will have etc I will be looking at new characters as well so bear with me.