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FFT Returns

Started by Jon, July 18, 2012, 11:23:10 am

Jon

July 18, 2012, 11:23:10 am Last Edit: August 14, 2012, 08:21:16 am by Jon
Hi everyone! I've been working on a new project for the past few days which I call Final Fantasy Tactics Returns. What I'm trying to do is keep the game as close to vanilla as possible and only removing / editing things that I feel kill the whole tactics aspect the game- which it is supposed to be about. I also obviously want to make the game have new and fresh elements, so I've been carefully adding more enemies per battle. Yep, right from the start (Gariland) you will be facing 8+ enemies per map. Here are some changes I made so far:

- I used Cheetah's Complete patch because I want the most recent version script
- All units have innate Defend and Weapon Guard
- JP Scroll Glitch fixed
- Phoenix Down does 25% HP damage on Undead Updated!
- Removed (from various skillsets) the following: Defend, Weapon Guard, Gravity, Graviga, Golem, Lich, Drain, Blade Grasp (please let me know if there are more that should be removed)
- Added the Calculator Reaction/Support/Move abilities to other jobs
- I've gotten rid of all spell quotes for abilities
- Magic Sword abilities like Shadowblade are now evadeable (but the exact same in every other way)
- All Rare Items are no longer rare, and the ones that had 90+ are now around 40-60 (so expect to see some powerful enemies late game and train some Thieves!)
- Fixed the messed up abilities like Petrify and also changed Chantage to have Reraise at the start and not forever
- Removed all Mantles (including the ones you get from monsters and Treasure Hunter) Updated!
- Knight, Dragoon and Samurai lost the ability to wear robes
- Calculator is gone altogether, both for the player and enemy
- Mantles removed from Move Find Item mainly replaced by Elixirs (and other Items)
- ENTD totally changed (only up to half of Ch.1 for now), all enemies are manually given weapons and armor for story battles, and there are as many enemies that I can squeeze onto a map that is possible
Edit:
- All guest units are now controllable
- Starting units at Gariland all have level 2 Chemist and a random second skill set (so they might show up with Black or White Magic, Item or nothing)
Edit2:
- Certain battles with monster will have ??? stats and +x level (10-20), these will be hard challenges but I'll try to keep it fair and balanced
- Monsters at this point have not been changed, but might change their movement around a bit since they should have some advantage to humans besides their skills More move and jump!
Edit3:
- Rod formula MA*WP
- Undead ignore Phoenix Down and receive 0 damage from healing spells
- Brought Mantles back into the game but nerfed them, which isn't exactly vanilla but a necessary evil I have to do
- Float weak against wind, Oil weak against fire (why this isn't in vanilla is beyond me)
- Orlandu is now a Dark Knight. His stats are now lowered to Gafgarion's. This is probably the furthest I'll try to go from vanilla, but T.G. Cid is just too broken.
- Can rename any unit, only added this asm because if people want Rad, not Ladd, etc etc, plus "buying" new generics just to name them is stupid



So please let me know what you guys think so far, crits, comments and ideas / suggestions are all welcome!  :mrgreen:
There ain't no gettin' offa this train we on!

Lydyn

From what I can tell, those are some solid changes to the original game that could both make it a better game and change up familiar fights and still keep everything as is (mostly). It might even be a patch I'd be interested in actually playing, which isn't that often. Can't promise anything, but it sounds good to me. Watching a show, so no additional comments at this time. =)

Dome

Even if it does have some differences, this project looks a lot like FFT: Kind of & FFT: Anti breaking
Might want to give those two topics a shot :-)

"Be wise today so you don't cry tomorrow"

Jon

Thanks guys!

That'd be great Lydyn, that's the goal, I want people to play it when its done :) I just want to point out right now that this is not oriented as being a hard-type mod, just balance and staying true to the original game. Of course its going to be harder than vanilla, but it is not going to be the next 1.3 or FFT +.


Dome, I looked at those two, they are quite similar but neither (perhaps I'm wrong here) have max enemy units per battle and Mantles have not been removed. The one thing I always found disturbing is that units by late game could literally evade everything, and monsters stood no chance because of this. I updated the list, I am thinking about monsters for some reason now, I want them to have some advantage against humans but trying not to make them OP.
There ain't no gettin' offa this train we on!

Dome

Just make sure you do something different than those 2 patches, or else few people will play yours.
And I doubt it's fun spending hours of work for nothing!

P.s: FFT + is not hard, at all
While enemies level up with you, they don't upgrade their gear and you can easily grind your way through the game XD

"Be wise today so you don't cry tomorrow"

Jon

I've been making one battle at a time and then testing it, so far its actually pretty fun since its the beginning of the game. For example, its your 6 units vs. 10 enemies at Gariland, all male and female Squires. Same deal at Mandalia except a mix of Squires/Thieves/Panthers. Sweegy Woods has 10 monsters but is still quite easy. The only edge you have as the player is that some of your units might come with Black Magic (which is good for crowd control) right away at Gariland, and you'll probably end up using it for Chapter 1. Another unique thing is that I unintentionally gave FFT the feel of the Tactics Ogre games now, all units and monsters can defend, have innate weapon guard and monsters still counter like normal. Since there are no mantles, there's no "cheat evading" going on. The game (for me) feels fair now in my honest opinion.

Is anyone interested in being a tester for this? Like looking for bugs and giving feedback? Once I finish Chapter 1 I'll release an alpha-alpha ppf. :mrgreen:
There ain't no gettin' offa this train we on!

Jon

July 20, 2012, 03:33:16 pm #6 Last Edit: August 03, 2012, 07:43:45 pm by Jon
Alright, I released for a quick glimpse what I did so far, Alpha version 1.0. You can play until the end of Dorter 1. If you continue on to Sand Rat Cellar its vanilla again. If anyone's interested, please see my first post, download and unrar the file, patch with PPF-o-Matic and enjoy :mrgreen:

Good luck with Dorter 1, might be slightly tough but don't get too frustrated! This ain't no FFT + or 1.3 you're dealing with! :P

Edit: Irrelevant now so removed the alpha's alpha. Probably would give the wrong idea...
There ain't no gettin' offa this train we on!

Jon

August 02, 2012, 11:28:15 am #7 Last Edit: August 02, 2012, 12:03:08 pm by Jon
Hi guys, another status update on what I've been doing if anyone's interested:

- I realized that sadly I'm not as skilled as I thought I could be, and I'm going to remove the whole added enemies (8+ enemies) to story battles. This is too time consuming and doesn't really make the battle that much harder, only longer. Its gonna be like vanilla again...maybe I'll give enemy units one step ahead gear than the player (e.g. Enemy Iron Sword, player Long Sword, etc)
- I've decided to give monsters a +2 to their current move and a +1 to their current jump so that they can actually keep up with humans
- Since mantles are gone, the only problem now is farming, which I've decided to remove as well. There will be no human enemies in random battles until chapter 4, I know this kinda sucks but most people would just farm great gear which would totally ruin this mod because all enemies in story battles have fixed gear (appropriate to the player's units)
- Expect to see more lower power rare weapons on more enemies, like Knights with Defenders in chapter 3 or Dragoons with Holy Lances in late chapter 4 (all stealable!)
- At some point in the game (mainly late game) I would like to see at least once every rare weapon/armor used by some enemy, so many awesome rare weapons that only the player could get is now over! Of course if the enemy is wielding a Chaos Blade they will have Safeguard and be immortal (no count down, just the little star thingies)
- More trophies after every fight, mainly items like Potions and Ethers. 4 minimum for story battles, random for random battles (monsters that aren't showing up every time will have trophies, but nothing too crazy)
- Gonna remove Defend completely from the game, its pointless (when there are no mantles and I see monsters wasting turns doing this)
- Changing the generics at Gariland back, no more unlocked Black and White Mages
- Transparency loses 100% accuracy and AI will attack invisible units
- Death Sentence - Ignore Cancel:Dead
- Float weak to Wind, Oil to Fire damage

That's it for now, I really love comments and feedback so please go right ahead and give me your suggestions :mrgreen:
The main goal for this mod is to keep it as close to vanilla as possible, have the same feel but actually make it harder and fairer to the AI! If you have any ideas for this, even if its tiny and seems pointless, don't be shy, who knows it might get used!
There ain't no gettin' offa this train we on!

Jon

Update on FFT Returns:

I finished Chapter 1 completely. Now I'm gonna devote some time to test it and fine tune it. I think the difficulty is just about right for Chapter 1. Once Chapter 2 is done I'll release a patch for anyone who wants to test play it. Another plan for the future is to possibly recolor some special units and hopefully give Ramza's army a new unique color, can't say what though but I'm leaning towards blue and gold or black, but suggestions are welcome! :mrgreen:
There ain't no gettin' offa this train we on!

LastingDawn

If you're going to have all random battles until Chapter 4 be Monsters you should really add a few more monsters then. As the monsters in normal FFT are good, but to fight them every single random battle would be too much. There's so many unused classes and nifty sprites to use, to increase the bestiary would be great!
"Moment's anger can revert to joy,
sadness can be turned to delight.
A nation destroyed cannot be restored,
the dead brought back to life."

Art of War

Beta & Gretchen Forever!!!!

Jon

August 11, 2012, 08:03:38 am #10 Last Edit: August 14, 2012, 08:23:25 am by Jon
It definitely would be pretty cool to see some new monsters, but then its starting to become its own unique patch, I want to keep it as vanillary as possible. So that then raises 3 questions:

Should I make random battles have special units (like generic knights with Holy Sword skills)? I could set them up to have Safeguard and be immortal (no crystalizing/treasurfying). I think leaving humans in but giving them some new special skills would really mix it up, like imagine random battles in chapter 2 onwards against Dark Knights or Sorcerers!

If I add new monsters, which ones would you guys like to see?

And lastly, there should be like a vote or something, what would be better, the PSX text for the entire game or the PSP one? If I have the PSP text I cannot really make new jobs or monsters because every time I try I find I cannot edit Cheetahs Complete patch...

Edit: I decided to use the default text in FFT vanilla and simply rename some stuff that was wrong like Lich for example. Still thinking of ideas that won't hurt the whole vanillary feeling...


Edit: Believe making some generic knight sprites with names like Temple Knight or Divine Knights appear in random battles as immortal, uninvitable and safeguarded would really spice them up. Imagine dancer sprites that are really Assassins, oh wait that's already in vanilla. You'll also see Oracle or Time Mage sprites named Heaven and Hell Knights, etc etc. All the special jobs that the player gets will also appear now in random battles from chapter 2 onwards. (Just a reminder, all magical sword abilities are now dodgeable)


Edit: Thanks to Raven, he helped me to find a way to salvage Mantles, and also fix shield values. Not exactly vanilla, but necessary for balancing. Deal with it!

Edit: Working on Orlandu, he will either be just a Dark Knight or a Dark/Divine Knight with Zalbaags skillz. Thinking about how to nerf him without killing vanilla yet again.
There ain't no gettin' offa this train we on!

Jon

Awww shit, can't believe I didn't read through this before, I think Asmo / Eternal pretty much already made a patch that I was trying to do right here: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=8658.0

Hmmmm :/

Maybe I should do something else, maybe I should try event editing again so my idea stays original (since not too many people are event editing new patches)...
There ain't no gettin' offa this train we on!

Dome

Jon, I linked you that patch in the third post something like...1 month ago?
Lol

"Be wise today so you don't cry tomorrow"

Jon

Yeah you did, this is what happens to those who are tl;dr

XD
There ain't no gettin' offa this train we on!