Final Fantasy Hacktics

Hey everyone, I've updated the above to v2.51 to add a few bugfixes, balance tweaks, and optional patches!

Quote from: MiniEquine on December 22, 2022, 08:41:27 am...you can totally get softlocked with old habits. I removed Agrias' gear after she left with the princess since that's what you do in unmodded versions. When she returns during the rescue mission after Warjilis, she had no gear, and gets 1-or-2-shotted from the archer and knights!

This situation has been addressed in v2.51 - Agrias will now stay on the formation screen so you can fix her equipment before this battle!

Quote from: ampulegado on December 23, 2022, 12:11:39 amIs there a way to make the summoner's eidolon be an additional unit you can control with unique abilities? The summoner doesn't really feel like a summoner, it's just a spell caster with flashier spells.

As much as I absolutely love this idea, it's vastly out of scope for this mod (and maybe for FFT's engine entirely!)

Hey everyone, I learned PSP ASM and spent the last two years using it to improve my PSP mod, War of the Lions Tweak! The mod archive has the full source included (grab it here: https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=12993.0), but also, here's the disassembled boot.bin that I was working from while making the mod:

UPDATE 12/23/2022: More notes (and RAM addresses) since I updated my mod to v2.51!
UPDATE 08/06/2024: Someone asked for my latest in discord, so I might as well make it available here!

Tzepish_PSP_ASM_Notes_2024_08_06.zip

I've added several comments, but only to the parts I needed to decipher for my mod (you can control+f for # to find the comments). Hopefully the community can make something of this!

New as of v2.50+:

• This is the first release to really embrace game balance as a goal in itself, rather than just as part of QoL.
• Balance pass across the game. The early game is easier; the end game is harder.
• Boosted underpowered options to make more builds viable.
• Various changes to make physical/magic "hybrid" character builds more viable.
• Standardized "Growths" so you can't be hosed by leveling in the "wrong" jobs.
• Gender equality: female and male characters now have the same base stats and equipment access.
• Tweaks to characters who are just better or worse copies of other characters (Balthier vs Mustadio, Luso vs Ramza, Orlandeau vs Agrias and Meliadoul). Now no character is obsolete - each has something that makes them unique.
• Reis can use her dragon powers on humans for half effectiveness.
• Various equipment-related ASMs for better damage formulas. For example, Axes are good now.
• Updated the multiplayer item distribution throughout the campaign for a more satisfying progression.
• Sidequests are easier to activate / harder to miss.
• Broken/Stolen equipment can be bought back at the Poachers' Den.
• Tons of additional tweaks!

EDIT: And here's that thread: https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=12994.0

More Valhalla notes:

• There's a bug with the "Party Roster Extension" ASM hack: After battle, there's a good chance you'll see a phantom "Curaja" (sometimes Curaga) at the bottom of every job's ability list. This happens about 75% of the time. Closing out the game and restarting it fixes this.
• There's a bug with text editing - most of the tutorial text gets destroyed. While playing the tutorials, every text box simply appears blank or it repeats the names of the AI characters in the tutorial battle. This happens even if you blacklist the tutorial text changes and tutorial names ASM hacks. Seems to affect the "Magick" tutorial and each one listed after that. I'd still say Valhalla is superior to FFTactText for text editing though - I'd take this over the crashes.
• You can indeed assign multiple multiplayer items to a single character in ENTD - just add all the slot values together in the unit's palette. For example, if you want to assign mp items to helm, body, and accessory, then assign palette number 38 (20 for head, 10 for body, 8 for accessory).
• For Treasure Hunter multiplayer items, note that the unlabelled flag activates 9b items for the rare slot only - the common slot will still only contain normal items. In my mod, I had "Treasure Hunter always finds the rare item" and I did that by copying the rare item slot to the common slot for each Treasure Hunter tile. That didn't work for multiplayer items, so instead, I hacked the "Treasure Hunter rare minimum brave" ASM hack to use 100 Brave instead of 20.

Hey guys, I'm playing around with Valhalla and FFTPatcher, and I think I've finally got them working in harmony by putting my FFTPatcher-patched ISO into Valhalla and applying asm and text edits from there (with $-uuid:replace-data-files-001 blacklisted so my fftpatcher edits aren't nuked).

My questions are about some specific ASM patches - I'm not sure what they do from their names alone, but the Valhalla descriptions are vague or "self-explanatory". After some googling I'm also not finding the answers.

EDIT: I've updated the below with my current understanding/questions (2020/12/27).

• Battle jobs list: Valhalla says "Fix what status jobs list show in battle" - is this saying that status effects innate to certain jobs weren't showing in job descriptions during battles, and this hack fixes it? Or is it saying something like, "now correctly shows status effects active on units during battle?"
• Formula 36 is now +PA_(X) and +MA_(Y): Looks like this is supposed to make Focus work on both physical attack power and magic attack power, but it doesn't seem to work (still only does physical).
• Mighty sword v2: Valhalla says "Now it wont do damage if gear is about to be broken." Does this mean the ability now does either break a thing, or if there's nothing to break, deal damage (instead of doing both)?
• Switch formation and absorb: Would it be simple enough to hack this code to remove the "absorb" part? I took a quick look at it hoping to find an obvious place to noop it out, but I didn't see one.
• Test entd 9b items: Valhalla says "Testing purposes only" but I really don't know what it does when it's turned on. I would assume it does something weird like adding all the 9b items to your inventory or something, but I'm not seeing them there, so I'm not sure how this hack helps me "test" them.