Final Fantasy Hacktics

The reason I made this patch is so people can play challenge runs properly, it might be true that it's too hard to balance for resurrection abilities but it's not my job to make sure people don't go out of their way to ruin the fun for themselves by prolonging the battle.

I'm also currently working on a version that has a time limit for resurrection, similar to FFT. That will probably play nicer with resurrection abilities, since standing around waiting for MP might not be fast enough to resurrect dead units and you can't wait until the end of the battle to do it either.

This is a small patch I made, I decided to make a new topic for it instead of throwing it with my other stuff so people can see it more easily.

The patch is very simple in what it does, it makes all maps act like Jagds, there are two versions, one with judges and one without them, having no judges means no laws and no JP but it has nothing to do with permanent death so you can choose whatever you like the most.

There is another change, ending any battle in a loss is a Game Over, ending any battle with Marche dead is also a Game Over, on top of that, ending a battle while Montblanc is dead before the first Jagd is reached also results in a Game Over (Montblanc can die after/during the first Jagd, just not before it).



There is a third patch that only removes judges.

These patches do not use any freespace at the end of the rom, they instead replace unused events, this means they should be compatible with any FFTA mod that exists so far, the patching program might complain about the files not matching but that shouldn't be an issue, just disable/ignore the notification (tested with Grim Grimoire and NUPS).

Please, post any problems you find or any feedback you have in this thread.

This is an update to the skill purchase system, I have been updating the files on dropbox these past days but I thought I would make a post here about what's changed.

To anybody that is wondering, you can use this engine hack with existing saves for both vanilla and hacked FFTA versions without issues.

The only thing that I think is left would be to change the judge reward graphics (JP1, JP10), I might do that at some point but I do not consider it important. I would say the patch is now at a 100% playable state.

I want to remind people that this patch makes it impossible to use combos and totemas.



Fixes and Changes:

First of all, I made a lot of changes so sorry if I forget about some of them.

• Added a better display for the current AP, it now shows both current AP and total needed AP.


• The abilities menu should now never bork graphically.


• Changed the way blue magic is checked, the old way (making it have 0 AP needed) was causing too many problems. (It now works through a forbidden-to-buy list)


• Fixed Steal: JP.


• Fixed judge JP awards.


• Made it so unmastered abilities don't show for enemy units.


• Made it so unmastered abilities don't show for ally units during battle.


• Added options to the "Rom Buildfile.event" file.

Options:
This is a list of things you can easily change by just opening the buildfile.

• Steal: JP's "damage" threshold. (base, variance up, variance down)


• Judge JP rewards. (Hunting reward will be JP reward*10)


• List of forbidden to buy abilities.


• Option to remove judges from the game. (default OFF)

The default base damage for Steal: JP is 20, with 10 up and down variance, the judge reward is also 20 by default, judges are NOT removed by default.

Download Links are still the same:

The patch for vanilla FFTA:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vv44ec74uof50xl/FFTA_JP_Skill_Purchase.ups?dl=0

The source buildfile, which you can use to apply this to any FFTA romhack, as well as to customize the whole thing:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cbjl8bahx29rpyq/ffta%20skill%20purchase.rar?dl=0

(A friend has been testing Skill Purchase with Grim Grimoire, so I thought I would add an .ups file for it)
The patch for Grim Grimoire, apply over a rom with Grim Grimoire already patched:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eccmgnwwrnoitfo/FFTA_JP_Skill_Purchase_GG_Beta_0.993.ups?dl=0
Keep in mind that this mod might update in the future, rendering this .ups patch unusable, if that happens use the buildfile download.

The combo/totema disabling is just a one instruction change, it's in the jpLearn.event file, in line 7, removing line 7 and building the rom again would enable combos and totemas but any unit would be able to use totemas every other turn which is why I disabled them.

I haven't posted anything in a while so I figured I would get something together in case anybody wants to check it out, I'm releasing the first version I made of the skill purchasing, it includes no balance changes (other than disabling combos and totemas), it's purely the engine hack.

Please, notify me of any bugs you encounter.

Explanation and Features:

With this engine hack units will be able to learn abilities by using their JP.

The units earn JP points at a rate of 1 for every EXP point they obtain, judges will still grant JP but that will hardly matter. The max JP a unit can have is 999, this number is by-unit and is shared between all their jobs, unlike in FFT.
Units can't learn an ability for a job they don't have access to.
JP cost of an ability goes down as the unit earns AP for it.

To purchase an ability you need to visit the abilities menu (Pick Abilities -> Press R (info)), simply scroll to an ability of a class the unit has access to and press A, if the unit has enough JP a prompt with the cost will appear, otherwise nothing will happen (for mastered or unpurchasable abilities) or a message saying there is no JP available will show up.
All abilities for all unlocked jobs will show up even if the unit has 0 AP for it and doesn't have the corresponding item equipped, so you can go for your favorite abilities right away.

All blue magic that is mastered through Learn has had its cost changed to 0, making it unpurchasable.

Combos and Totemas can't be used. Units can still learn combos, they just can't use them.

Download Links:

The patch for vanilla FFTA:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vv44ec74uof50xl/FFTA_JP_Skill_Purchase.ups?dl=0

The source buildfile, which you can use to apply this to any FFTA romhack:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cbjl8bahx29rpyq/ffta%20skill%20purchase.rar?dl=0

If you are trying to apply the engine hack to a FFTA romhack you will need to find where freespace starts and change the FreeSpace definition at the top of the ROM Buildfile.event file.

Known Issues:

After purchasing enough A-Abilities to unlock a job you will need to visit the job changing menu for it to get unlocked, that's just how the game works, I don't consider that important enough to fix it for a demo.

After purchasing abilities and exiting the menu you can see the old JP value flash for one frame, again I think this isn't important enough.

I never liked combos or totemas, combos don't add much, movement abilities are a way better alternative in my opinion.

The final goal with the JP learning is to have abilities be either learnt or not so that they only take one bit in the save data, this will give way more space for saving other things, meaning the limit of abilities by race (which is currently about 0x82 due to how the game saves the AP for the abilities) will be able to be increased to 0xFF, a different pool of JP for every job would potentially be possible, or other data like custom unit names could be saved.

It still needs some polish but currently learning works and the first movement ability is complete, including a replacement for the Combo icon made by a friend.

Units can also earn JP to spend on abilities by just earning EXP, with a 1 to 1 ratio.

Today I got sidetracked yet again:


This is what I have been working on today, I noticed that JP is stored as a short, I never liked judges or combos so I went ahead and:

• Removed combos and totemas


• Made JP go up to 3 digits in every screen


• Made all abilities always show up, regardless of if you have the weapon equipped


• Made the A button bring up this popup instead of closing the ability menu (there's a different message if you don't have enough JP, and no message shows up if you have mastered the ability)

Things that I still need to do for this to be complete include:

• Stopping the player from being able to teach the unit abilities for jobs they can't change to


• Make the actual learning part when you select yes (although that's halfway done already)


• Make a new way to gain JP (I was thinking units would gain JP equal to 20% of the exp they get for an action)


• Stopping this menu from working during battles


• Updating the graphics for the menu when an ability is learnt


• Turn Combo abilities into Movement abilities


• And probably other stuff I'm not remembering right now

You can find the source for my ASM here, as well as instructions on how to apply it.

Since I'm using Event Assembler for everything it might be hard to deal with for people that aren't using it though.
The initial installation shouldn't be a problem, but dealing with the tables without EA sounds like a pain, maybe you can use the .nmm modules by changing the offset or something, I haven't used nightmare in years so I wouldn't know.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cmvqbril78938t9/ffta%20party%20sprites%20and%20portraits.rar?dl=0

I haven't shown anything in a while so I figured I would post what I'm up to right now:


I have been working on making custom party sprites and portraits work, as well as making completely new jobs.
(Well, new to tactics advance, I'm pretty sure anybody reading this would know where that gria is from)

I wanted to make events for the map but I got sidetracked.

Party sprites and portraits use pretty weird formats which probably explains why I haven't been able to find anybody that had done much with them, I modified the routines in order to add the possibility of loading uncompressed graphics for both of those things, as well as making assigning them to jobs and characters easier.

Thanks for the comments!

I have tried making isometric maps in tiled but I haven't found a good way to place the map as an image below the isometric grid, I might end up trying to make a custom tool for it, though I would first need to learn how.

Right now I'm working on fixing monsters in the party, after that I will start making the cutscenes for this map.
I figured I would post an update, this is how the map looks now:

Hello, everyone.
I have been romhacking for quite a while now, but I just recently took interest in hacking FFTA, about two or three weeks ago.
FFTA was a game I played a ton as a kid so I have affection for it, I was susprised to find out there isn't much for it in the way of tools, though the AIO editor is pretty cool.

I have been poking at the game with an edited version of Event Assembler that a friend from the Fire Emblem hacking community put together and the old trusty debugger that totally never crashes for no reason: making adding text easy, documenting event opcodes and making EA raws for them to make event editing a breeze, taking notes on tables and structures...

Today I finished making a script to turn Tiled .tmx files into insertable maps.
(the bush going over the characters took me a while to get right, in fact it took 4 of the 5 days...)

I don't think any of the tools are ready to be shared yet, but I figured I would share a video here:


And here you can check what the maps are like in Tiled:


I still haven't found a good solution for making height maps so for now I make them by hand, if you guys have any ideas please let me know.