Final Fantasy Hacktics

Looks like there was an issue in the Goug/Mustadio Joins event with this one. Since I'm nearly completion of a v.016 this is more just a warning that a new game won't add Musty to the party after Goug so you might not want to start a new playthrough until .016 goes live. Sorry about that.

I'm not exactly getting into ASM writing or anything here but since I've got something to share that I don't think exists in any other capacity, I figured I could finally start a thread here.


Modify Female-Only Equipment Access
This lets you change what equipment female units get access to (Default/Vanilla is Ribbons, Bags, and Perfumes) regardless of their class. You can also use it to swap that access to Male units instead, or disable the extra equipment access entirely.


Gender Byte - Set this to 0x40 for Female or 0x80 for Male. There currently isn't support for anything else.

Equipment Entry - Set this to 0x00 to Disable any extra equipment for units regardless of the Gender Byte set. (Make sure to set it for both 1st and 2nd Equipment Entries to fully disable it.) Otherwise set your Table value here (0x4A, 0x4B, 0x4C, or 0x4D. These cannot be combined in the same Equipment Entry.)

You can find a list of the appropriate table values over here: Formula Hacking

You can add the values to make multiple pieces from the same Table accessible.

Ex: The default 1st Table Entry uses 0x4C (Table 3) and the 1st Equipment Entry is a combination of 0x40 (Bag) and 0x02 (Ribbon). Perfumes get set on the 2nd Table Entry and with the 2nd Equipment Entry.

For another example of adding the Equipment Entry values: you could set a Table Entry to 0x4B (Table 2) and the associated Equipment Entry to 0xA9 (0x80+0x20+0x08+0x01) to give access to Staff, Gun, Longbow, AND Spear to a specific unit gender.



Hopefully this thread won't be empty of anything else but who knows.

"Why is Celdia necrobumping a thread that hasn't had a post in nearly 8 years?"

Because someone else using this suite of spreadsheets might run into the same issue I just did.

In the "Status, Terrain, and Multiplier Workbook Compilation" the Terrain Editor tab is broken in such a way that any attempts to add status to a unit when they move onto a certain terrain type causes the game to hang because of some buggy code that jumps to empty space in the game somewhere. I assume it is part of the functionality that was added to allow it to cancel statuses as well? Either way, used as-is (presumably all Vanilla values) will cause your game to hang in Zigolis Swamp and ONLY in Zigolis because that's the only place with poison-inflicting swamp tiles. I can only presume it will do this to any other tile type you modify to add/cancel a status effect, but I didn't test it beyond that. The other functions of the sheet that modify data tables that already existed in vanilla (like the Geomancy ID reference list) work perfectly fine, but something with the new parts added to BATTLE.BIN are all kinds of fucky and shouldn't be used. Doesn't help that when you're just playing it in something like psxfin the console window reports no errors, so if you've ever used this sheet and got a weird game freeze in Zigolis (or anywhere you modified terrain to add new statuses) that's likely why.

This has been your super-timely PSA of the decade. See you in another 8 years.

Quick bugfix update with a little more content balancing.

[v.015]

*Updated ENTDs to award more sensible items with a heavy increase in Synth Shop materials.

*Lowered the number of Knight units that field without Shields. Shouldn't be quite so painful to deal with them if they aren't Doublehanding EVERYTHING from Ch1 on.
  - This got overkill. They've all got 2 shields now instead of weapons. So, uh... have fun with that until .016

*Fiddled with the element tuning support skills, they should be working properly now.

*Removed the Individual Crit Rate hack for the time being. It might return later. I need to do some specific testing with it first. As this only affects the Vorpal Sword currently, I've given that the classic Add: Dead effect instead.

*Actually put the new Devout skill 'Normalize' into their skillset. When making new stuff it should really go in the game.

*Changed Strategist's 'Creeping Death' skill to inflict Undead+Poison+Don't Move.

*Fixed issues with previously being able to equip Synth materials.

*Updated weapon icons for Nunchucks, Bells, and Hammers.

*Updated more descriptive text in various places.

Probably some other things I forgot to note. I definitely forgot what the hell I was supposed to be fixing... so much for keeping good notes. Anyways, come and get it.


Edit: DIscovered a bug with the new terrain data settings. Enemy units trying to move in Zigolis Swamp cause the game to hang because of some issue with the Add:Poison swamp tiles. Working on a fix. Fixed! Grab the .015b download for the fix. I haven't done anything else with it yet, so it's still .015, double-shield-carrying Knights and all.

Edit #2: We fix something, we break something. .015b is a special kind of broken. Here's .015c 

Quote from: EnderC on January 03, 2021, 10:06:44 pmIf you're taking additional requests though, I'd love to see old and/or useless threads removed or hidden, but I realize moderating the forum that tightly becomes a lot of work.

In line with that: Can we Archive the Tethical board already? I think it's long-dead enough to not merit being a highlighted subforum.

Quote from: Nallrad on January 06, 2022, 04:45:40 pmSeeing your name attached to a new mod makes me super excited.
Over all the FFT mods I have played I'm sure your Complete Patch is the one I played the most.
Maybe I'll have a new favorite now? 

I'm still surprised every time someone says one of my projects is their favorite, so thank you for that. <3 I can only hope this one lives up to my previous work. As of right now there's definitely a lot more fine-tuning and bug-chasing that needs to be done. Strategist is a bit of a mess with their new skills for instance (but at least I know how to fix them,) and I can't figure out why I keep getting seemingly-random crashes in newer emulators. The inability to consistently replicate those is proving to be a real pain in the ass for figuring out what's wrong... 

Just in case you didn't catch it on the Discord, Glain dropped me a modified Synth Shop sheet that plays nicely with more emulators and I'm using it alongside Pride's Attribute Rewrite 2.041 and it works beautifully. I'll attach it to this post or you can grab it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OFbRV5QlDjRH9udclPlyh5qh82vQUPST/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108117944314653076421&rtpof=true&sd=true

So after about 7 hours of troubleshooting, I have something that seems to reliably work in PCSX ReARMed both for starting a New Game (no more Crash at Orbonne) and making the Crafters' Guild properly work (apparently I can't have items cost 0 gil there.)

Lots of other changes going on, but we're still a little ways from done.

- New changes in v.014 -

New Simple Skills: Non-Red Mage base jobs have each gotten one new CT-only skill, a couple of which are specifically to help deal with early status-effect spam from the enemy. So those bits in White/Black Magic that don't actually require MP are intentionally so.

New Support Skills: The base six generic jobs have access to a set of elemental-tuning Support skills with various benefits and all carry an elemental weakness as well. Balancing comes later, have fun with those. As a result of space-needed to fit this into Red Mage, Move-Get JP has been removed from the Cantrips skillset as well as Unique Job skillsets.

There is a new status effect called Immutable finally accessible in game. Right now only the Devout job has a skill that applies it (Normalize) and the status' effects are listed in the skill description.

Four Heroes of Light Edition: This is officially the closest thing to a hard mode update there is. Future updates will have new and more varied enemy loadouts for battles because the player is now limited to only fielding Ramza (Our "Warrior of Light" since if he dies the story is still Game Over) plus 3 other units max in any battle. If you find this restriction too daunting to deal with, replacing ATTACK.OUT with a vanilla copy will return things to the status quo for now.

Unique Job Roster Extended: Worker 8 is remodeled for battle and Orlandu is back in the pool of characters who will Join Up again. Enjoy their new skillsets/designs.

- Other Fixes -

- Agrias should stop spawning with Jump twice on her skillset.
- Units with a <Random> secondary skill may spawn with a doubled skillset if they are also that skillset's Promoted Job currently. I don't intend to do anything about this as it is functionally unimportant.
- Monsters not-attacking was bound up in the bit that let AI units use bonus skillsets from Promoted Jobs. That functionality has been removed and now Monsters are hostile again.
- I lost track of all the text changes but there were a ton more and many more skills and pieces of equipment should properly list their intended values. Unique Jobs should have info in them about their equipment options now.

The PCSX ReARMed core via RetroArch handles the mod as perfectly as I could hope for now, so that's where I suggest giving it a play. For the time being, Duckstation still chokes on the Crafters' Guild/Synth Shop (but everything else seems to work) so I can't recommend that or other similar emulation cores (BeetlePSX, MednaFen) for it. ePSXe Mobile has been functioning fine to the best of my knowledge and at the end of the day psxfin always works.
Glain fixed some shit in that amazing way he does and now we have v.014-Duck, which is compatible with both PCSX and Duckstation emulators now (and very likely some others, I just haven't tested any others.) I'll be working off this version exclusively going forward unless I run into some kind of new error, but I hope that won't be an issue.

I'm sure there's other stuff in there too like some animation fixes and likely some others that got overlooked especially among the new stuff that got added. As always, let me know if something looks totally fucked.

 

Once more with feeling. Went through the Ch.1 ENTDs again because I guess I forgot to save while working on them at some point and stuff I thought I'd fixed wasn't fixed. Also unfucked RDMs cantrips a bit and they should hopefully act as their descriptive text reads now.

Anyone trying this, let me know if you have issues with the game crashing at the Orbonne starting event. I am and the thing I usually know of to fix it isn't helping.

Edit: The number of unfinished and overlooked things among unit skills was too much for me to leave alone for even half a day. Here's v.013, now with less mystery skills and wholly broken shit. Still probably chokes at Orbonne. You might try getting past the Orbonne battle, saving before Gariland, and then loading that in a different emu and it might work from there forward. I'll figure that shit out eventually.

I have no idea why monsters have decided the don't want to attack anything anymore. That's next on the fix list.

Holy fuck am I ever tired. This might be the only update for a while barring exceptionally minor bugfixes.

FFT: Honored - v.011 Ready for download


- Factotum Removed
- Strategist job Added
- Red Mage Revised
- New Support skills added, including but not limited to Versatile Mage, Heretic, Equip Gauntlet, Equip Ring, Heavy Form
- Many RSM skills renamed
- Synth Shop applied (This makes Duckstation an unsuitable emulator for this mod now)
- Many jobs had their RSM abilities shuffled around
- Piercing Spell was removed as it didn't actually work-as-intended.
- Ninja skillset got a big facelift.
- New weapon type: Bells - Only usable by Malak (and I think Bards? I might've forgotten to flag them)
- Some new spell animations applied; nothing amazing but you should notice them when you see them
- Propositions have been Disabled for now
- Crossbows have been mostly removed except for Algus because he's a twat.
- All Promoted jobs have access to their Base job's skillsets while in use or when the Promoted skillset is taken as a Secondary. There is still a max skillset limit of Attack + 4 Skillsets.
- Some status effects have had their durations modified, others can no longer refresh while already applied.
- All random battle locations should have an item listed as a collectable reward for the Synth Shop in their descriptive text when inspected on the world map. Fighting in those battlefields will always offer a single one of those items for fighting there, in addition to anything you Poach. (Later updates will have adjusted ENTDs/formations for more sensible hunting.)
- Some unit sprite updates and palette changes.
- Removed buyback of broken/stolen gear so be more careful around Knights, Thieves, and Ninjas.
- Monster Skill is gone so all monsters have access to their 4th skill if applicable. Have fun with that.

I'm sure I'm still forgetting a pile of shit in addition to the myriad of bugfixes I made but I'm just beyond mentally and emotionally exhausted with this project right now and I need a break from actually trying to make a playable product. v.010 should hold up for a while.

Please report any bugs or game-breaking things you notice to me either here or in the FFH Discord server in the Celdia's Complete Patch channel there.

While I've still got a fair bit of work planned for this project, a break is absolutely in order. Enjoy the ride and let me know what you think. This is much closer to being fully-realized and I feel like further updates will mostly be a lot of cleanup and finish work.


Edit: It would help if I patched things in the right order so it actually works. If you downloaded it this morning, just grab this one instead. Sorry about that.

Edit 2: I mis-flagged a TON of Synth-Only weapons in the shops to be buyable from the very start of the game (pre-Orbonne) and since I use a hack that limits enemy access to weapons via shop availability flags, there may be ridiculous shit in the opening battle and there is absolutely access to things that shouldn't be until WAY later and also not shop-buyable currently. I'll have a fix up later today (12/30) for that in v.011. If you want to see a lot of the late game weapons though, feel free to keep playing with this. Alright, got that shit sorted out. Enjoy v.011!

v.008 Ready for download. Hopefully this one won't implode. Only the gods know what I did to the versions between v.005 and this. 

v.JamesBond - Fixes some elemental bullshittery and some other stuff from v.006 as well. Still a long way yet to go though.

If you downloaded this, just delete it. It's a fucking busted mess. Get v.008, that one is actually working.

What started as a difficulty-mod intended to take some inspiration from Final Fantasy 1 has taken on a life of its own and thus we have FFT:Honored.

The original concept was a minimalist approach to difficulty: Limit the players choices but keep the AI/Enemy units in command of the full (or nearly-full) range of jobs, skills and equipment. The limitations on jobs were to be kept to the six jobs seen in FF1: Fighter, Thief, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, and Red Mage. But the question kept arising: "Will you be including the promoted jobs as well?" Initially I wasn't planning to, with the minimalist idea trumping any others. Thankfully, good taste prevailed. Hence the patch name, which is drawn from this NPC in FF1, whose dialog changes to the following after you class change by bringing Bahamut proof of your courage:

Thus, FFT: Honored

The minimalist idea is still here in a less-extreme form; Instead of being limited to six base classes, they can now all class change at Job Level 6 (Pending Idea: JL6 + After the end of Chapter 2) in their respective jobs:

Warrior: Proficient in the use of most weapons, they possess skills to bolster allies and strike multiple foes at once with physical attacks. Promotes into "Knight".
Thief: Lightly armed and quick, able to steal equipment from enemies as well as demoralize them to make them easier pickings. Has access to simple recovery skills of questionable origin. Promotes into "Ninja"
Monk: Martial artist skilled in delivering physical punishment to individual foes. Their understanding of energy flows in the body lets them help in a smaller support role as well. Promotes into "Yojimbo"
White Mage: An expert in curative and support magics, the backbone of a well-rounded team. Skilled in only the most-basic of martial arms and equipment. Promotes into "Devout"
Black Mage: Weak in hand-to-hand combat, they can rain elemental destruction down upon their foes from a distance. Powerful but fragile. Promotes into "Magus"
Red Mage: "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one!" Skilled in multiple weapons, armors, and cantrips, but not especially good at any one thing. Promotes into "Strategist" (as do all Unique jobs.)


Knight: Upgraded version of the Warrior. Keeps access to all Warrior skills in their new skillset: Chivalry.
Gets access to the powerful Knightswords - huge, double-edged blades with immense damage potential. Gains the ability to smash a target's equipment while they're wearing it, rendering it useless for the remainder of the battle.

Ninja: Upgraded version of the Thief. Keeps access to all Thief skills via their new skillset: Ninjutsu.
Learns to use five new weapon types, some heavier armor, and access to some limited Black Magic as well as a small variety of new skills. Focuses on speed and mobility.

Yojimbo: Upgraded version of the Monk. Keeps access to all Monk skills with their new skillset: Secret Arts.
A martial artist similar to the now-absent Samurai, gaining access to Katana and Longbow weapons. They provide an elemental edge to physical attacks in an area around them at instant speed.

Devout: Upgraded version of the White Mage. Keeps access to all White Mage spells in their new skillset: Holy Arts.
A veritable font of holy power, their spell repertoire is doubled and reinforced with the most powerful recovery magics known to man or beast.

Magus: Upgraded version of the Black Mage. Keep access to all Black Mage spells via their new skillset: Dark Arts.
Expands their spell list greatly and stands unrivaled in destructive magic, calling upon the very personifications of eldritch power to lay waste to the battlefield.

Strategist: Upgraded version of all other jobs. (All Unique jobs will unlock Factotum as Red Mage functions as the new base class in place of Squire.) Has a small collection of skills that don't work like many others in their skillset: Tactics. (Yes, the names were inverted again purposely, yes because of Tactician getting 'Strategy' in CCP2.)



Archer is still Archer, but they 'Charge' faster. This is an AI-only job. Players no longer get access to the Charge skillset*.

Chemist is getting a CCP-style 'Alchemist' facelift and will have some offensive items. This is an AI-only job. Players (currently) no longer get access to the Item skillset**.

Lancer is getting restyled to Dragoon just because but (at the moment) has no specific plans to change otherwise. This is an AI-only job. Players no longer get access to the Jump command*.

Time Mage remains Time Mage, but there are a few skill changes in Time Magic. This is an AI-only job. Players no longer get access to the Time Magic skillset*.

Summoner becomes Caller to indicate they are generally less-powerful than the original Summoner class because I've re-routed some summon spells. This is an AI-only job. Players no longer get access to the Summon Magic skillset*.

Bard and Dancer are almost completely unchanged except their slowest Song/Dance are made a little faster. These are AI-only jobs. Players no longer get access to the Sing or Dance skillsets*.



Oh, right. Did I mention the Crafters' Guild??? Advancing your equipment is going to take some extra steps in Honored because you won't just be able to always buy a shiny new upgrade as the story advances. Instead you'll have to take the bits and pieces you either find (All Player units have Move-Find Item innately; Enemy units have this function disabled and won't be able to snag your prizes) or cut off of Monsters when you Poach them (as well as getting some from random battles as war trophies, the availability of which can be checked from the information text of different areas on the world map.)

The Crafters' Guild has been rolled into the Fur Shop and serves the functions of both. Due to limitations of space, right now only weapons can be synthesized. Most require a small gil fee to be paid and one to three different items (in varying quantities) to craft a weapon, destroying those items in the process. This is the gateway to much more powerful and even unique weapons as the recipes in the Crafters' Guild expand as the game progresses much like the shops themselves do, so make sure to check back in frequently! Every Trade City as well as the Imperial Capital has a Crafters' Guild accessible and all Monsters have poachable materials designated per-family. There are no more Rare Poach chances, nor Move-Find entries to be had so no worries about keeping a low-Brave unit around for anything like that, either.


* - Access to Charge/Item/Jump/Summon/Sing/Dance will be through unique job classes only, who will lack access to Red Mage and the Red Magic skillset. They will still get access to as many of the Red Mage's R/S/M skills via their own unique skillsets as possible. Orlandu, Cloud, and Worker 8 are currently unchanged from vanilla. Orlandu does not Join Up in current versions of the mod.

** - While some Unique units may give the player access to other Generic job skillsets, the Chemist's 'Item' skillset is never properly assigned to any unit that joins the player. Check Mustadio's 'Engineering' for a poor imitation of some of the basics.

- Known Major Bugs -

Emulation seems to be wonky regardless of how careful I am creating things these days. New Game seems to stall/crash modern emulators when trying to load the initial Orbonne Monastery event. I thought I knew what the fix for that was but my attempts to fix it have all been in vain thus far. However, if you get past that first battle the game immediately gives you the option to save BEFORE the Gariland cadets event. A save file loaded from there into another emulator seems to work fine and is recommended to use if you don't want to be stuck using psxfin or some other less-accurate/less-discerning emulators. Akashachi has reported that ePSXe Mobile seems to run it all perfectly fine though. I do know the Crafters' Guild won't work if you're playing in Duckstation or using the BeetlePSX core, but PCSX ReARMed (tested as the core loaded via RetroArch) seems to handle the Guild just fine, but it suffers from the Orbonne crash.

- Known Mechanics Bugs -

Brave and Faith reset back to battle-start values when an unit affected by a change levels up. The cause is known in a general sense but a fix is yet to be devised. This is being worked on and my hopes are that it will stop being an issue before I'm finished with this project.

- Known Display Bugs -
Items in the equipment List function show seemingly random Immunities/Innates. Does not affect gameplay/intended functions of affected equipment. No fix is planned at this time.

Some equipment shows incorrect stat modification previews (most common seems to be showing +Jump when there is no change to Jump) but the items have been applying the proper adjustment to stats once equipped, so if something seems wrong just slap it on someone and compare the intended changes. They should be working correctly otherwise.

Something is causing off-hand equipped weapons and monster units to have wildly inaccurate Weapon Power values in their status screens. This doesn't affect anything with monsters since they never use attacks that calculate in WP. As for equipped human units, the weapon's proper value appears to be what gets calculated and is only a visual issue, so try not to shit a brick if you see a Ninja show up with an off-hand knife displaying 250 WP.

Edit: v.003 update to fix some of the more major early bugs. If anyone else sees the Saber turning people into Chickens, let me know. It shouldn't do that.

v.004 Uploaded with more bugfixes.

v.005 fixing some stuff I thought I caught in v.004. Nothing huge but that Romanda Gun might actually shoot now.

Updates should be in the last post in the thread with the current download.

Quote from: Rabbi Raccoon on October 29, 2021, 11:55:36 amSo I did the Colliery. It was very glitchy (played the dialogue for a couple other side scenes before the battle began) but got through them just fine, and got Worker 8 but the next Goug scene won't play. Did you flag that scene to be later?

Also, I'm loving Rad. Haunt/Lightning Soul is a fun one-two snipe and I've used Choco Cure far more than I thought I would.

EDIT: Christ, I'm a moron. I hadn't even triggered the scene with the flower girl. I did notice the empty quotes when getting items at Nelveska, though. And it looks like Reis can learn more skills Blue Mage style. More hunting!

EDIT 2 Last one I promise: Does Zalera still have a Blue Magic? Because I've been having a helluva time trying to get him to do literally anything besides 2 moves

Sorry I didn't catch these here, Rabbi. (I think you found answers via reddit but just to confirm) Zalera not actually ever casting Flare 2 is just another one of those things that speaks to the unfinished nature of the patch. To be fair, Rad's Blue Magic wasn't well thought out at all and I think I picked stuff mostly on the basis of "this would be neat" and "I don't think there's much/anything in the generic skillsets that do this". Flare 2 specifically was chosen because I had it on Meliadoul's Blue Magic list in CCP1.

.....

Playtesting! \o/

Presented without context.

I've taken down the older version since there haven't been any noticeable issues with this latest upload. Enjoy the new, properly-functioning Magic Blade and Swordskills.