Final Fantasy Hacktics

Quote from: undefinedIn fact, is it also possible to make a function that basically works like the Mix Ability from X-2, via engine hack or through the Nightmare Module (or similar)?

Through the existing engine hacks: no, nothing related to that has been done.
Through engine hacks in general?
Learn ASM, write the code, the GBA runs it. The specs are the limit.

What you are suggesting isn't really that far out there compared to what already exists in the game: you have Throw/Hurl (select an item, power is based on the item) and Double Cast (select two abilities) already, so the game even has built-in support for menus like that. It still wouldn't be an easy job, of course. It's also not something I'm interested in making, I had to look this up to even know what you were talking about.

Quote from: undefinedSo with the latest engine hack, is it possible, for example, for the Alchemist job to use "Conjure Potion" to use a Potion for free at the cost of MP? Or where they always able to do something like that before?

That's actually a good thing to bring up.
Although you could always have done that, doing so would have also costed a Potion, if the player had any. That's no longer the case, the item ability effects now only consume items when used through the Item ability.

But you aren't even using the macro there!
You defined it and then ignored it, you are instead copypasting the macro's definition.

instead of doing:

Quote from: undefinedPUSH; ORG newHume+(8*1); SHORT 0x1BD 0x173 0x134; BYTE 1 5; POP

do:

Quote from: undefinedability(newHume,1,0x1BD,0x173,0x134,1,5)

The macro is there precisely to save you from repeating all of the structure over and over.

Either way, I think the part kai is having trouble with is the repointing?

Edit:
Looking at this more closely, your table won't really work.
As it's set up, it's only good for editing the existing abilities, but not for adding new ones.
Also, if your humeabilities file has 0 eights as the last entry, DO delete them! Otherwise the engine hacks will assume the table ended early.
In order to fix it:
Below your already existing macro, add this one:
#define ability(name,desc,effect,type,ap) "SHORT name desc effect; BYTE type ap"As you can see this is the same macro but without the label and index. When using the macro without setting the label or index, it will use this one instead, which is what you'll use for the new abilities past the end of the table.
For the new abilities, you want them to go between the #incbin and the BYTE 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.

Quote from: undefinedbut I guess with job&race customization learnable ITEM abilities are also a thing

They are not. The way Item abilities work means it won't even check if you have learnt the ability, it wouldn't work if it tried to, anyway.

Let's use an example: You have an Hume Soldier with the Item ability, and you have made it so Item abilities can be learnt. You purchase First Aid for your Soldier, and now... The soldier has also learnt Potion, because Potion is the first ability of the Item race, just like First Aid is the first ability of the Hume race.

Both are the first ability of their respective race, so both would set and check the same bit when trying to check if they have been mastered. Without a mountain of exceptions to handle that, having the Item abilities be purchasable can't be done. And at that point I'd say it would be more worth the effort to make it so other action commands can use items instead of MP, making an Item command for each race and removing the original Item race.

Quote from: undefinedMaybe steal/item destruction abilities?

Steal/Aim:Weapon, Drop Weapon and all such abilities all worked straight out of the bat once I replaced the item give and item lose routines, so I would be surprised if there's some ability that's still broken.

Quote from: undefinedSensing hidden items?

This has nothing to do with the party inventory or how the party inventory works.

Quote from: undefinedIf you set up a new item-related ability, there's no reason it has to go in the ITEM command, right?

It has to go in Item. That's what the table does. How would you even display the item count in any other list anyway? There would be absolutely no way to tell if it's just an MP cost.
If you want to give jobs new item-consuming abilities I suggest you either just stick these abilities in the Item command (you can check for a specific ability being learnt and that job's action command being equipped) or make a new ability effect that brings up a menu with items to select or something? Like Mirror Item in A2. Although I guess what you want to do is more aking to Item Lore.

Either way, I only changed how the game builds the item command list and such, I didn't touch how it decided to use items instead of MP or anything like that, so yeah, this is only for the Item command.

Quote from: undefinedThe custom ASM conditions would be basically anything

ASM is code, you write it, the GBA runs it, the custom condition can be "can you clear 200 lines in this tetris minigame I made" or whatever else you imagine. In a similar vein, you could write new effects or targeting conditions with ASM.

That said, if the item is equipped it wouldn't be able to be used, so that condition doesn't really make sense.

On today's news: your save is now worthless, throw it out.

In all seriousness, I just added an inventory rework, which will 100% destroy your current inventory, it is considered an essential engine hack. So far nothing really depends on it but either way I think it is worth your time.

The whole point of this engine hack is that it cuts the space inventory items take in RAM from 4 to 1, leaving us a lot of free space to do whatever else with. I'm not sure what could be done with this area, but it is good to have it freed. However, as a side effect, items are always sorted by ID, manual sorting is no longer possible.

As for immediate benefits, the items used for each Item ability command can now be customized (more on that down below), the items the player starts with can also be changed, the tab each type of item appears in on inventories can also be altered and more importantly, the item list can now be extended without having to worry about inventory issues, up to item 0x1FF.

As for the Item ability bit, you can now set which item is to be used for each Item ability, this can be a consumable item or something else, you can also set a chance for it to be consumed and a custom condition for the command to be usable. For example, you could make an item ability that allows you to cast Fira using a specific rod, with a 20% chance for it to break, but only if you are an Alchemist.

It is very likely that this broke... Something. Somewhere. So please keep an eye out for any issues related to items, so you can report them to me to have them fixed!

Well, you are overwriting the data so of course it changes the nickname.
This is not a bug and there is nothing odd about it.

Like I said, this uses the space freed by 1 bit abilities, that's to say, the space that would normally otherwise hold the AP accumulated for each ability. You are using a cheat that writes to that space in memory so anything new I make that uses it will be destroyed like that.

Instead of using cheats, you can manually set the learnt abilities: Go to 0x2000080 + 0x40 + (0x108 * unitID) and set first 0x20 bytes there to 0xFF. Or make a new cheat that does that for you, I guess.

Also, looking at your cheat, that wouldn't even get you all abilities if you are using the 1 bit abilities engine hack anyway.

Thanks a lot for reporting this, it seems like I made a big mistake when making the patch which resulted in the capture not working on the latest build... I'll go fix that right now. To clarify, just capturing a monster should add it to your clan directly.

If you download the hack from the first post of this thread, it will be the fixed version. RHDN does take a bit longer to update.

Quote from: undefinedRegarding the complete spritesheets, spriters resource already has most of them

Not at all, I would even say it's missing most of them... and I would be right.

For regular jobs, it has 21 of them, FFTA2 has 62 jobs. That's not even half of them.
As for the (more important) jobs new to FFTA2 (and again not counting special characters) it has 6 out of 18. Again, not even half of them.

It's also worth mentioning it only has a single monster that is new to FFTA2, the chocobo, which I also already adapted the sprites for, it's missing a few poses and a proper script, though, as well as the water poses.

Also, like I said, I already have a complete Green Mage. Have had it for over a year. And yeah, it was very easy to port, way easier than the Hunter Gria. Most of the work was on making the poses that either were not in the sheet or just plain don't exist in A2.

Quotedo you mean ability animations?

No, but that would be the same as anything else: just repoint the table that governs them.

I'm talking about the unit animations, battle sprite I think is what AIO calls them.

Quote from: undefinedI tried making viera spellblade match restrictions of GBA

I already have a full spritesheet for the viera spellblade, as well as portraits.
It was even posted on this thread (the animation, not the portraits):

I also have a viera green mage one and a gria hunter one.
Either way, the format is wrong and it's missing most sprites, as well as the in-water version.
If you want to make more spritesheets, please stick to the format provided in the animation template and make sure your image is in indexed 4bpp mode and respects the original color order. If you have any questions please DM me.

You can always find the most up-to-date template here: click here

However, the best thing you could do to help make more of these is to either learn to and rip the sprites from ffta2 or somehow find complete spritesheets of them. Even if you do that there's going to be a lot of poses missing, though, since there are a lot of differences between the two games, but it would be a great help.

Quoteand hope at least her will be in base mod out of the box

No. That's not what the engine hacks are for. If someone wants the viera spellblade animation they'll have to insert it for themselves using the templates (which is as hard as copying the files over and writing a single line in a text editor). If hackers show interest then I would consider starting a thread here on the forum so we can make a collection of spritesheets, or have them added to the repo so people don't even have to go get them, but I'm not going to be changing the vanilla game like that, adding new jobs and such.
I've said this many times, and I will repeat it: this is not a romhack, but rather a collection of engine hacks for people to base their hacks off of, think of it like a base.

Anyway, the spritesheets I've mostly adapted myself, although for some poses (the KO ones) I had help from a friend, this same friend also helped a ton with the portraits, although I'm sure he would be happy to share them so people can use them. I would have to ask him but I don't expect he'd be opossed at all. (Actually asked him already, he's fine with it).

However, in the year and a half the template has been available I haven't seen anybody actually use it (or even contact me about how to use it or anything like that), other than myself and a friend, so I'm not sure people are too interested in inserting new animations like that for their hacks or if this is because people don't know they CAN add new jobs to the races or if they just don't want to, or don't know how to get more animation IDs and job IDs.

Quote from: undefined2- characters might miss out on points if they level up and "hold" 0.5, only to switch to a job with whole numbers and forever carry that 0.5 that isn't actually factored in until they level up again in a 0.5 job and it's added to their total stat score

The way it works is pretty simple:
The game multiplies the growth by your level, and by your level-1.
Then if the level*growth number is bigger than the (level-1)*growth number (removing decimals) you gain the difference between the two.

So, for example, if you leveled up all your levels with a job with 0% growth in speed and then switch to a job with 0.1% grwoth in speed, you could still get one point the very next level up, as long as and only if (in this example) the new level ends on a 0.
0.1*9 = 0.9
0.1*10 = 1
1-0.9 = 1

0.1*10 = 1
0.1*11 = 1.1
1.1-1 = 0

[...]

0.1*19 = 1.9
0.1*20 = 2
2-1.9 = 1

and so on.
Eventually, when I get around to it, the decimals will actually be saved to unit data (if using 1 bit abilities) so that they can be fetched and added up even if you switch jobs.

QuoteI think that the main draw with rounded stats is easier min-maxing.

For me it's the absolute opposite: I don't want to have to think about the stats, I don't want to have to check if I had a terrible level-up or whatever, fixed level ups makes it easy to ignore because there's nothing I can do about it anyway.

Quote from: undefinedI don't think we get to see Li grim and a totema, in their special palette, paired on the same map in vanilla.

We totally do.

Quote from: undefinedLi grim is paired with the Deph-purple variant

Which uses a unique palette that is loaded to slot 3...

Quote from: undefinedwhich does not cause any palette shifts.

Which does change palette 3.
Also, this purple palette is used for the Remedi fight as well, in order to have two different totemas on the map at once.

If you do go look at the palette you will see that it's not like the regular red palette at all, it has more shades of purple than it has shades of red, the colors are less vivid and the yellow/brown part is pretty different. And, of course, the order is different.
As for the Li-Grim palette, it is mainly blue, and it does have the blue colors on the same place as the normal blue palette, but they are slightly brighter and the palette has golden instead of green, as well as dark purple instead of yellow/brown.

All of these sprites could be redrawn with the already existing palettes and they would look pretty okay, or if not then they could be drawn with two new (static) palettes, which would be purple + blue and green + red, which is why I say these palette slots could be freed without necessarily having to lose the totemas and such.

I'll explain this again:
Totemas use palette 3.
Li-grim uses palette 4.
Or viceversa, I'm actually pretty sure it's the opposite and I have been saying it backwards the whole time but I haven't looked at it in a while and honestly the order is the least important part.

If you won't believe me, just open the debugger and go look at it yourself.
Simply go to a map with a totema (or more) and you will see how palette 3 is updated to match them.
Do the same with Li-Grim and palette 4 changes.
You can actually have Li-Grim and any totema on the same map and it will work perfectly, it's only having 2 different totema (unless they are deph totema) that breaks colors.

And just to be clear, we start counting from 0, so palette 3 is the one that goes right after the 3 regular palettes.
(So the first black one, unless there's a totema).

Anyway, we have hijacked this thread enough, this is moving into off-topic category very fast (sorry), if you want to keep talking about these things I'd say that it is best to either start a new thread or take it to the DMs.

Quote from: undefinedI tested and saw that the game can handle a totema and Li-grim on the same map.

Of course it can, that's what I said, and also happens in vanilla. The 3rd and 4th palettes are used for this.
The 3rd is used by totemas, the 4th by Li-Grim.
Either way, that has nothing to do with what I said about freeing the palettes so I'm not sure why you are bringing it up.

Quote from: undefinedI want to see how normal units look in a totema's palette

They would probably look terrible because the palettes are not made to work with regular sprites.
If you want to know just replace the palettes with your desired palette. Open the debugger, go into the palette window and just use the search function in a hex editor.

Quote from: Leonarth on July 09, 2020, 08:17:11 amAfter trying to fix the shoes issue for a while I noticed they have abilities assigned to them, for some reason... This is probably a remnant of how they used to work? The issue here is that the job the assigned abilities are for is 0xFF, which is not a valid job, this leads to weird stuff, essentially.

I had a special case for job 0, which is used for blank entries, but I guess I'll go ahead and add cases for job 1 and job 0xFF as well. The change should make sure even vanilla items work just fine.

Anyway, thanks for letting me know about the issue. The fix should be up later today. As for the Morphers one, I have yet to look into it but I have a guess of what's going on.

Today I was messing around, documenting more of unit data, and I got to a byte that I had looked at before but didn't really quite understand, byte 0x3D.

As it turns out, having an item teach an ability to job ID 0xFF DOES do something!
It sets this byte 0x3D in unit data to the ID of the ability being "taught".
Why does this matter? Because this is how the boot passives work, these ability lists are not unused after all, they are directly responsible for setting the right byte to modify movement.

There are 6 passive abilities boots can grant in total, from ID 1 to 6, any other number will be ignored.
As far as I can tell, only IDs 4 to 6 are used in-game, for the Galmia, Feather and Fairy shoes, in that order.
However, the other 3 abilities do have their own effects:
1: Movement +1. (yeah, pretty useless considering this can be done through stats no problem).
2: Jump +1.
3: Jump +2.
4: Standing type set to 5. (Galmia Boots).
5: Standing type set to 3. (Feather Shoes).
6: Movement type set to 3. (Fairy Shoes).
Anything else: Movement, standing type, jump, etc, are restored to normal when trying to move.
So yeah... all in all, not a very interesting discovery, I guess... Still, I felt like I should correct what I said, so there you go. Don't remove the list from the shoes or they'll stop working.

Party unit data starts at 0x2000080 and each entry is 0x108 bytes long, the AP earnt for each ability starts at 0x40 and Holy is the Bangaa race's 0x39th ability, so if you want to unlock Holy fast you can go to
0x2000080+0x40+0x39+(0x108*unit number)And set it to 0xE4 to master it.

You'll probably need some MP as well unless you get an advanced save, current and max MP are shorts at
0x2000080+0x1C+(0x108*unit number)
Or you can just use the save I attached. The Dragoon has Holy in the first save file.
The save is originally for the european version but as far as I can tell it works on USA just fine as well.

Only the change you posted affects the JP reading, the totema/combo only ones do not.
They would be pretty useless otherwise.

I haven't looked into this at all but I would expect combos and totema summons to just be action ability effects that you can give to any ability you want, so just do that.

PUSH; ORG $C8088; SHORT 0x2000; POP //disable combos and totema summoningWhat this does is that, instead of getting the JP of the unit, it gets "0", and since it thinks you have 0 JP combos and totemas are never available.

If you want to remove totemas only, use this instead:
PUSH; ORG $26100; SHORT 0xE066; POP //disable totema summoning
And here's one for combos:
PUSH; ORG $CD4C8; SHORT 0x2000; POP //disable combos

Quote from: undefinedchange "Start:Name" to "Start:Rename

That wouldn't fit. At least not without looking un-vanilla.
It's also the only option you ever get related to the name of the unit, and it can be used to restore the unit's original name so I think Name is just fine,

Quote from: undefinedAnywho, since JP is attached to Combos (if not changed out for something else or disabled altogether) and Totemas, I was wondering if there would be some way to change their minimum requirements in order to activate?

I can't think of an ammount that would be healthy. Even if you increase it to 100 or whatever that could easily lead to players grinding to get 9999 JP so they can spam combos or whatever.

Honestly I think the whole JP earning system needs a rework, but either way I think combo abilities and totemas are just... absolutely uninteresting? Even more so compared to movement abilities. They could be added back in other ways, like in FFTA2.

Quote from: undefinedAs well as ask if you can put one of those "Poof!" effects after the monster merges with the Morpher and before they unmerge with them?

I guess you mean like with Toad? That would look pretty nice. I know nothing about animations and I don't really want to look into that just to add this, it could be something I add in the future but it's not a priority.