Final Fantasy Hacktics

Smart encounters is an ASM hack that is bundled with the current FFTPatcher Suite (FFTOrgASM) that can be applied safely alongside your patch! If there exists a PPF of -just- smart encounters, that should be able to be applied safely as well, but its much easier to just apply the hack itself with OrgASM.

It's not usually recommended to make edits to an image once you've applied a PPF unless you know what you're doing.

A program called PPF Studio! You'll need your modified image and a base image that has no changes so that it can figure out the differences between them.

There's also a new instruction, TransformUnit https://ffhacktics.com/wiki/TransformUnit if you want to go the event route that also does that!
EDIT: Transform does have other side-effects though since it de-levels and levels back up.

It would be more useful to see the event in its entirety than just the part that is being skipped.

It sounds like you successfully edited the ENTD entry, but that maybe you didn't actually import the new event if the unit is just standing there with no effect from these commands (or maybe you got the unit ID wrong). You should double check that you compiled your event to TEST.EVT and imported it properly!

Kokobird finally gives Elric what he wants

EVSP should come with directories for all the event text files, grab the one you want and edit away! Then when you are done, compile it, and stuff your TEST.EVT back into your image using CDMage.

If you have more (specific) questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Congratulations on the release Puppy! I know you put a ton of work into it, and I will certainly be playing it soon

Strange! I think you may have a dirty image, I would try sourcing one from somewhere else and see if the problem persists. Otherwise, sorry I have no idea!

Are you using any mods? What monster are you trying to breed? Do you have any space in your party available for the egg to go?

As seen on Kori's stream: If you choose not to save Algus and he dies, his speech bubble that appears is empty. Completing the fight after that causes it to play the wrong dialogue, then jump to the windmill scene with Delita and Ramza. The dialogue gets a little funky afterwards in most scenes of this fight from what I've seen, but you can get past it still by making Algus live!


Fixed
-Elric

@Akashachi if you'd be willing to conduct and compile the interviews for the posts then you should totally go for it! I'm sure it'd be awesome!

So there are bugs related to units perma-dying, in the stream vod link that Nyzer posted above you can see at one point a Black Chocobo on the players team dying, turning into a crystal, and then that tile on all maps just becomes a hp/mp refill spot that never goes away.
Hopefully that's easy to scrub by checking on each of the players units battle stats between map changes, but I haven't tried it yet.

EDIT: So my tests continue, ChangeMap will change the units sprite, job, name, it's max stat values (like max HP), but I noticed that two of the units that overwrote enemies from the previous map had more HP than their max, and a Black Goblin that was in a slot previously taken up by Worker 8 had the Innocent status. So it seems like ChangeMap doesn't correctly adjust temporary stats

Quote from: Xifanie on August 25, 2021, 11:42:15 pmWon't this also affect the player's units though?
Or does changing map after the victory screen keep all permanent changes and restore their HP/MP/status/etc.?

What I do in this event is basically rely on the fact that the players data in Battle Stats is not overwritten on ChangeMap, all it does is write xFF to 0x0001 in their data. As long as you rewrite it to match your units position in the battle unit array (units stats table) and then AddUnit them back in, you're in business! As far as I can tell, it preserves everything for your units

Small Update: changing the variable for the current ENTD entry in memory (var x0032) and then using ChangeMap will cause the game to load up that new data into BattleStats! This means changing enemies between fights will be even easier than what I did in the example above.

I am eventually going to write a few extra instructions for the event to wipe units who are crystallized, treasured, and invite'd at the end of the fights to clear away any issues that cropped up as a result of that, and will post updated instructions for that when I do! So that people can reference it for their own mod work

(CONMAN join the Discord server if you aren't on it, people talk design stuff all the time!)

One type of encounter that I've only ever experienced once was actually in FFTA, in the fight against the second Totema. The first time I ever played through the game, I didn't really understand that I could protect myself from the charm ability the stationary crystals had, so what ended up happening was a pattern of fighting off a group of two or three of their attacks at a time until I had destroyed them, and then falling back to a safe corner where the rest couldn't attack me to regroup (heal up, raise dead allies, cure status effects). I think that that came about because the fight was against totally stationary enemies that had wicked strong offense (very high chance for charm ouch). That specific fight can easily be overcome once you know what to expect, but you could craft a similar fight that would be harder to cheese to create that play pattern that is totally different from what we're used to in Tactics games (where you can't really escape enemies on the field). It could of course also be designed to allow for multiple play patterns, bum rushing, lots of status prevention / healing, etc.

Quote from: CONMAN on August 16, 2021, 05:40:57 pmAvoid Gimmick bosses- The type that are near unbeatable with surprising status effect damage and chumps when you come back with adjusted equipment.  Also, bosses for whom one strategy is about the only way you can win.

This reminded me of a design question that I've thought about quite a bit. There are some games out there that give the player unbeatable situations, encounters where you are supposed to lose to advance the narrative, would FFT be an appropriate place to do that? Is that even ever a fun thing for players to experience? My concern is that A what happens when someone thinks they've just triggered a regular game over and just resets continuously and becomes frustrated because they can't 'win', or B that players then fall into a pattern of just giving up when they run into difficult fights (also can be frustrating when you find out you were supposed to win all along).

Hey all you Map Packers!

Here is a version of the PPF without any Attack.Out changes, and minimal FFTPatcher changes (just 1 edit to ENTD entry 110). This version of the map pack shouldn't have as many issues when patched on top of other mods, but it does not include the special event that I created for the pack!

This version, for example, is more compatible with TLW because it does not include some of the other changes. The only issues that may arise should not be game breaking. (Teta may be missing at Zeakden, there is one tile that you can place a unit on for the Sand Rats fight that will make them not spawn)

brb adding this to post signature

I think that at some point in the future I'm going to do a deep dive into that video and try and figure out where things went wrong! A few notables are Ramza riding his chocobo ally at the start of one of the battles (oops, I wasn't thinking enough about walk commands in regards to that) and whatever happened to that one chocobo who couldn't be targeted and then turned one tile on all the maps into infinite crystal activations.

And no problem Nyzer! Definitely useful to have a reference for some of the newer instructions that are available to us now, and I thought this was the perfect opportunity!

If only I had had this while making the custom event for the map pack! (But alas, I was too lazy)

The new tool JuraviS also runs using command line commands! Nice write up