In Search of Tutorials for WoTL > PPSSPP > Custom Jobs

[Kai Haiaku]

Hail, friends! I promise you I spent a little over four hours scrolling through tutorials before posting here, and I absolutely could not find what I was looking for. Apologies if this is a repetetive question, but I will be as specific as possible if you will indulge me.

I am running WoTL on PPSSPP, and my hacking goals are very modest. I'm planning to add a custom job, which uses abilities already within the game. I have FF Ptcher 0.457 (on the recommendation of the tools page for WotTL), Shishi, CDMage, and FFTorgASM. So far, I've worked out how to replace sprite using Shishi, and by poking around in FFTPatcher I've worked out more or less how the Jobs, Skill Sets and Action Menu tabs work.

I'd like to incorporate a job that has job level pre-requisites and a custom description, but the tutorials I've been finding are from like 2010 and either vague or severely outdated. Does anyone know which tutorials might be the most helpful for a newbie in this regard? I'll drop my specific hacking goals in a spoiler tag to avoid screen bloat.

spoiler

Job: Red Mage
Pre-requisites: Knight, Archer, Black Mage & White Mage level 3
Action: Red Magic

Goal: replace either dummied or unused character data with a custom sprite to make the job accessible to generic NPCs. Keep the game as vanilla as possible otherwise. I understand Mustadio has a duplicate sprite, and Valmafra (sp?) is unused; I've seen this quoted a few dozen times with no specifics on what this means or how to find them.

Things I've worked out: How to edit stat scaling and multipliers in FFTPatcher. How to edit skill sets in FFTP. How to set job requirements in FFTP. How to replace a sprite in Shishi. How to edit job description in FFTactext.

Things I need help with: How do I add new lines for custom jobs without overwriting those existing? Failing that, what can I edit without braking the game (either by giving enemies Red Mage as their job or causing weird graphical bugs)? How do I change the "Unknowns" in FFTP's Job Levels page to Red Mage? Once the sprite and job editing are done, how do you load this into your ISO?

 Thank you for your time and consideration.

[Kai Haiaku]

After spending another 6 hours digging and testing, I've figured out how to edit job data in FFTPatcher, and how to use the program to apply to patch to an ISO. I've edited the text for the job descriptions using FFTactext and experimented with replacing the Elder job with Red Mage. I found the BMP and SPR files for the custom job, and messed around with Shishi. I now have a .ffttext and .shishi file I'm not entirely sure what to do with.

I'm still unsure how to add a job such that you can unlock it naturally with a generic PC, and even trying to just brute force a single PC with the modified Elder job runs into trouble because Lioneditor doesn't pull the modified skillsets. Further, I don't know how to apply the modified text to the patched files. It feels maddening that I can't seem to find a tutorial that helps you pull these pieces together into a finished patch. What on earth am I missing?

[Nyzer]

You can't add new generic jobs, unfortunately.

[Kai Haiaku]

You can't add new generic jobs, unfortunately.

Gosh that is pretty disappointing, but I could still potentially play around with just a PC with a special job and edit the sprite, yes? For example, replace the Witch of the Coven skillset and Valmafra's sprites, then use Lioneditor to manually assign the job to a party member?

I haven't actually figured out how to apply the text changes to the iso, as of yet; the "how to make a ppf" tutorial I found had difficult pacing and I couldn't follow what the OP was doing.

[ActionMan000]

TacText is what you use to apply text changes to an ISO. In the menu, under ISO, you should see an option to "Patch ISO". Select the PSP game file you're working on, and let TacText do its thing. Then go into the game and see if your changes took effect. If you have any editing issues (improper line length as an example), your text boxes will bug out - may have slashes through them, not open at all, or display a bunch of characters.

I don't think you need to focus on making a ppf patch right now if you're still making your changes. I'm not sure which guide/post you're using to make a ppf patch, but try reading further into some of the threads. You may find a solution to your problem. It's done wonders for me.

[Kai Haiaku]

TacText is what you use to apply text changes to an ISO. In the menu, under ISO, you should see an option to "Patch ISO". Select the PSP game file you're working on, and let TacText do its thing.

Goodness, that's so easy, I'm embarassed I didn't see the option. Thank you for that! I was able to get the text updated, and brute force a PC with the new job with Lioneditor by replacing Valmafra's job and UNIT.BIN/WLDFACE.BIN files. I'm satisfied with that!

If you wouldn't mind a follow-up inquiry, do you know if replacing those sprites causes Valmafra's few event appearances later in the game to use the custom job sprite/portrait? It's not a deal-breaker for me, but it would be good to know for future patches.

Also, in the event I were to do other special jobs, are there other usused job/sprite combinations one would replace to make other unique jobs? I believe I remember something about Mustadio having a duplicate, but I think if you set someone's job to a guest character in Lioneditor, it will use that characters sprite.

Thank you again for helping me get this sorted.

[ActionMan000]

If you wouldn't mind a follow-up inquiry, do you know if replacing those sprites causes Valmafra's few event appearances later in the game to use the custom job sprite/portrait? It's not a deal-breaker for me, but it would be good to know for future patches.

If the event calls the same sprite, then the sprite you replaced her with in ShiShi will appear in that event. A lot of custom sprites don't have the full range game sprites do, so you'll see some weird color pallettes. Valma has a standing sprite, and she's in a scene where she draws a dagger. You'll probably see weird colors there.

I haven't worked on PSP, but I think a general consensus is to make use of 3A and 3B. They're Celia/Lede models, but as noted in ShiShi, they're never used in game, so you should fine over writing those sprites and not worry about your sprites appearing elsewhere.

Also, in the event I were to do other special jobs, are there other usused job/sprite combinations one would replace to make other unique jobs? I believe I remember something about Mustadio having a duplicate, but I think if you set someone's job to a guest character in Lioneditor, it will use that characters sprite.

Thank you again for helping me get this sorted.

I believe ShiShi is pretty good about adding little extra notes for sprites. 3A and 3B have "(Never Used)" in their name. Some characters - like Meliadoul - have two sprites. I imagine you could over write one of her sprites with what you want, but you'll also need to update the ENTD/Event where the overwritten sprite appears, and apply her unmodified sprite, otherwise your sprite will appear.

In a project I'm working on, I did the obligatory special jobs for Rad, Alicia, and Lavian. I used 39 (Male Squire) for Rad, 3A for Alicia, and 3B for Lavian. In my test runs, I have not had any issues with my custom sprites popping up in the game, so I think PSP would be similar.

These sprites don't have Unit/Formation sprites with them, so you'll have to overwrite something else. There are some "?" sprites when you look at UNIT/WLDFACE sprites that aren't used, so I overwrote those sprites for my custom jobs.

There are a lot of unused Skillsets that you see, but in my experience, a lot of them seem to be hard coded in they auto learn skills (like monster jobs). I made a post about it in the Help! section as well, so you can check that for my observations. My solution here was to take some of the double skillsets (Dark Sword is a Skillset twice), and over write them with the skills I want them to have. Just have to be sure you update the jobs/skillsets characters use in Events, or NPCs will be using your custom skillset.

[Nyzer]

The newer versions of FFTP include an option in the Jobs tab to change a unit's Formation sprite/portrait (though the IDs should always match or else you'll see color issues). Haven't tested this on the PSP version, but if it works there, you don't specifically need to replace units that have UNIT.BIN images. You can just replace Celia & Lettie and then make the identical Job slots in FFTP use whichever Formation Sprite IDs you import their sprite/portrait into.

[3lric]

If the event calls the same sprite, then the sprite you replaced her with in ShiShi will appear in that event. A lot of custom sprites don't have the full range game sprites do, so you'll see some weird color pallettes. Valma has a standing sprite, and she's in a scene where she draws a dagger. You'll probably see weird colors there.

I haven't worked on PSP, but I think a general consensus is to make use of 3A and 3B. They're Celia/Lede models, but as noted in ShiShi, they're never used in game, so you should fine over writing those sprites and not worry about your sprites appearing elsewhere.

I believe ShiShi is pretty good about adding little extra notes for sprites. 3A and 3B have "(Never Used)" in their name. Some characters - like Meliadoul - have two sprites. I imagine you could over write one of her sprites with what you want, but you'll also need to update the ENTD/Event where the overwritten sprite appears, and apply her unmodified sprite, otherwise your sprite will appear.

In a project I'm working on, I did the obligatory special jobs for Rad, Alicia, and Lavian. I used 39 (Male Squire) for Rad, 3A for Alicia, and 3B for Lavian. In my test runs, I have not had any issues with my custom sprites popping up in the game, so I think PSP would be similar.

These sprites don't have Unit/Formation sprites with them, so you'll have to overwrite something else. There are some "?" sprites when you look at UNIT/WLDFACE sprites that aren't used, so I overwrote those sprites for my custom jobs.

There are a lot of unused Skillsets that you see, but in my experience, a lot of them seem to be hard coded in they auto learn skills (like monster jobs). I made a post about it in the Help! section as well, so you can check that for my observations. My solution here was to take some of the double skillsets (Dark Sword is a Skillset twice), and over write them with the skills I want them to have. Just have to be sure you update the jobs/skillsets characters use in Events, or NPCs will be using your custom skillset.

TLW has alot of blank spaces for sprites. And the 'full range' you are referring to are called EVTCHR, they are not part of the spritesheet, they are images called from another file, which is why they wont work on custom sprites that are not repalettes

[darkskyx]

I've done a project recently and I can say to you that PSP version (WoTL) is sadly pretty limited, You can better mod PSX version.
If you still want a "new job" you can add some new custom characters. I've added 3 in my hackmod with no issues. And maybe more can be added.
Read my FAQ that is very useful, I have links to tutorials and explanations:
https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=12942.0