FFT: Emergence (PSP)

[Stories8106]

As for the Treasure Hunter display, I think that is an error with FFTactext. I checked that line multiple times, but couldn't figure out why it was shorted to 2 characters. If any experienced hackers know why, please let me know.

Yeah, I ran into this as well. Not sure why, but you can fix it by finding the code in TacTaxt (4 - Battle, think, and renaming it from "Found **" to "** found!"

That worked for me.

[Sieghart Wirsing]

Heya Bleu, thanks for making this mod. Even though it's been more than a decade since I've played with the original PSX one (for only a short time, it was on a loan), your mod was the main reason I'm tackling the game from start to finish. I've been introduced to it on Romhacking, but I'm happy to find an updated version right here on the forums. It's been entertaining me for more than a month so far!

Unfortunately I also came to report about a few bugs I found while playing it Hope you don't mind me listing them.

- I too saw the "archer monks" in a few missions in so far, even though I started the game from the 1.1 on an european WotL. First time was at the slums on Chapter one, where Wiegraf makes his first appearance, there are two monks with unexplained Longbows. I remember seeing one or two more carrying crossbows, with no Equip Crossbow ability, during Chapter 3 on a few random encounters as well.

- Speaking of weird archers, during the battle where Balthier joins in, I found two completely glitched Archers with Missingno-ified portraits and no map sprite on them sans their shadow on the ground. Occasionally when they attacked, the game would crash. That unfortunately made the mission touch-and-go unless they were rushed before having a chance to have a turn, could you have a look at that? (it happened in the same map from above and all, the shantytown slums, might be related?)

- As of this post's moment, I've finished the Fort Besselat Sluice battle, the one that prefaces Orlandeau joining in. During that battle I found one of your many edits, as in having the two Knigh... Uh I mean, Soldiers, guarding the gate switches, both holding an Arondight each. Of course I stole them with a bit of effort (read: resets) and a Black Chocobo~♫ But for some reason I cannot equip them on my Magus characters. For the record, those Arondights have their item sprite looking like shaded Defender knightswords, instead of the crystal blue short ones from the original game. And unlike the fellsword class, they can be equipped by Ninjas as well...? I'm honestly confused, why is that?

[BleuVII]

Thanks for the bug report. I don't know what is going on with the Balthier battle. I'll look into it.

Two notes: the Magus is NOT the Dark Knight. It is a new class. As for the equipment changes, those are intentional. Samurai can equip knight swords, and ninja can equip fell swords. Soldiers can equip both.

[Sieghart Wirsing]

Oh, shoot, I thought the equipment availability was still the same even with the class name change In that case, other than ninja and soldiers (also Ramza), who else from the special classes can equip them?

Also, the readmes mention that low faith boost their damage, but what's the exact formula for that boost?

[BleuVII]

I updated all of the item descriptions, so you can just press select on the item. For special characters, I don't remember offhand.

The damaged formula is the same as normal Fell Swords.  WP*PA*(100-Faith)/100.

[Sieghart Wirsing]

Found a few more things that I thought should be reported:

- Now here's something I should be able to notice earlier, thanks to myself not trusting you actually made Marach a very good unit now, and postponing using him until that late in the game Nevertheless, the problem is, his Nether Terra got somehow mistaken with Nether Aqua. The name, the description and the parameters refer to the skill itself, but the attack animation and the applied elemental is from Nether Aqua, and vice-versa as well. The same is also happening between Nether Ventus and Nether Fulmen. It's not something that serious, just a minor bother, but I thought you'd like to check on that.

- Since there were no mention of these on the readmes, were any of the Treasure Hunter item pools changed? I'm at Nelveska Temple trying to get the infamous Escutcheon II and Javelin II, but instead I've been finding, respectively in their spots, Flame Shields and Chameleon Robes, instead of the usual regular Escutcheons and Javelins. Did they got moved somewhere else?

- Apparently the same "monks with bows" weirdness happens with Samurais as well past Chapter 4. Somehow they're able to equip bows, the Artemis Bow specifically, and still be able to use their Draw Out skills even without a katana in sight. In fact, until said Sluice Gate battle, random encounters included, not one of them got katanas anywhere, only bows. How is that possible?

- This is probably an unintended mixup, since the readmes and the in-game prompts say nothing about it. Thieves not only got innate Reflexes, but Poach as well. Odd, helpful too, but I'm kinda afraid this'll mean enemy thieves can snipe my monsters before I can revive them. Can the CPU even poach? Won't this cause a crash?

- And lastly, since it's been almost a week with no answer (merged post), I decided to restart my file. And I've noticed that any enemy from the Skeleton line got an innate 50% dodge modifier against bows and bowguns. Concentration doesn't even affect these odds, they always force the hit chance to stay between 54% to 32%. In-game prompts about them say nothing about any innate ability that permit this. Could you please check how them bones suddenly got fast enough to dodge arrows so much?

[butula13]

I checked in FFTPatcher, and while the Javelin II is still there it's in the place where the Elixir/Nagarock used to be, and the Estucheon II is no longer on that map.  As far as I can tell it isn't placed anywhere, though I may have missed it.  It could also be equipped on an enemy.

[butula13]

I just wanted to pop in and say thanks for the really good work on Emergence!  I just finished playing through the game and I enjoyed it immensely.  I especially liked the streamlined job tree and inherent Dark Knight Ramza, as well as most of the tweaks you made to the various classes. 

I'd like to make some suggestions, mostly regarding your tweaks.

1) Unless the inherent reaction skills are supposed to be limitations, I would remove them.  They automatically overwrite whatever skill you try to equip, which can be a drag.  If they're intended to serve as a check on otherwise overpowered classes then never mind.

2) Fill out Ramza's squire skill list with Chant and Salve.  Lacking those two skills makes him quite a pain to level up in the early game, and Salve stays (relatively) useful throughout the game. 

3) Giving players access to Master Teleport is utterly game breaking.  Magus isn't that hard to get, and while the price is steep it makes "run up and backstab the boss" an ovewhelmingly easy strategy.  My suggestion would be to give Magus inherent Teleport and a movement range of 8-10, and maybe bring down their PA modifier to 80-90%.  That way you can't tack it onto Ninja or dual wielding Knight for cheap kills, but it still feels like the Magus has access to goodies that other classes just don't get.

[DrWolfnstine13@mail.com]

So I really wanted to try this out, but upon downloading and unzipping there seems to not be an actual PPF Patch. Instead there is just two unknown file types that I believe are supposed to be the patch. PPF-O_matic finds nothing in the folder I unzipped it to.

Update: I was able to get PPF_O-Matic to read it by renaming the file to .PPF manually. Now that I got it working I am looking forward to a new play-through with this.

[Leon]

Hey!

Positive:
You had a very good idea IMO, to give Ramza a special class. And Dark Knight was really made for him. Also, now as all other special classes, its now tied to a certain biography. Turning Ramza into it, via process, was something particularly that added more to the sense of progression. Cogratz

Negative:
However.. Maguses are too strong. And giving something like a summon to squire is a little too much to expect from a basic class. In the same pace, a normal wizard having Dark powers that drawn energies from the plane of Lucavi.. it would be better IMO, to have only demons and special characters have that, its not something that just affects balance, but also the logic of the story.


I guess these are the points!

[BleuVII]

I had a lull in other projects, so I took the time to revisit this and see if I could fix some of the bugs, particularly the "Monks with Bows" issue. I have officially updated from version 1.01 to 1.1. I have updated the original forum post with the new version.

Here is the changelog:

spoiler

CHANGES MADE IN VERSION 1.1

ABILITY CHANGES
*Moogle Charm - Moved from Squires to Onion Knights. JP dropped to 0, since Onion Knights cannot gain JP.
*Master Teleport (Magus) - cost increased from 2000JP to 3000JP.
*Tremor (Geomancer) - status effect corrected to bestow "confuse" instead of positive effects.
*Plunder Devotion/Plunder Cynicism (Balthier) - status effects corrected (they were swapped in version 1.0/1.01). Plunder Devotion now bestows "atheist", and Plunder Cynicism now bestows "faith"
*Cross-Slash/Omnislash (Cloud) - damage formula, MP, and range updated for balance.
*Shock/Crushing Blade (Beowulf/Ramza) - the magic casting animation was removed; this is cast by swinging the character's weapon.
*Nether Terra/Nether Aqua/Nether Ventus/Nether Fulmen (Marach) - animations and elemental attributes corrected.
*Snipe Attack/Snipe Magick/Snipe Speed/Snipe MP (Mustadio) - the magic casting animation was removed; this is cast by swinging the character's weapon.
*Spirit Blade (Ramza/Delita/Argath) - animation was corrected so that the sword does not disappear after swinging it.

BY CHARACTER
*Beowulf (Spellblade) - Gained the ability to equip Spears.
*Meliadoul (Arcane Sword) - Lost the ability to equip Crossbows.
*Reis (Dragon) - Gigaflare removed from learnable skills.
*Delita (Holy Knight) - Delita retains the Spirit Blade skill in the battles where he becomes playable.

BATTLES
183 Opening Battle - Ramza's abilities corrected so he does not have "Red Magicks", which he cannot learn.
181 Dorter Slums - Longbow removed from Monk
191 Ziekden Fortress - Argath given his specialty "Noble" class. This increases his HP, but should make him slightly easier to fight.
199 Balias Tor - Crossbow removed from Knight
110 Beginning of Chapter 2 - Lavian and Alicia given correct pre-requisites for Dragoon class upon joining your team
0A4 Mandalia Plains South 4 (Random Battle) - Gugnir removed from Lancer
0ED/0EE The Catacombs - Gastrophetes-wielding Lancers given the support ability of "Equip Crossbows"
0F9/0FA The Crevasse - Magus given Dragon Rod instead of Chaos Blade. One soldier was given the Chaos Blade, one was given Save the Queen, and two are dual-wielding Defenders.
00A/021/02E Tutorial Battles - Equipment reconciliation on Monks, Soldiers, and Archers.

======================================================
KNOWN HELP TEXT ERRORS
Due to the way that the program FFTactext handles PSP ISOs, in order to correct any of these help text errors I would need to rebuild the ISO from scratch, a process that would take around 10 hours and open the door for other errors to creep in. For now, they are being left as-is.

TREASURE HUNTER
*Displays only the first 2 characters of the item.

ITEMS
*All Longbows - Do not list the Samurai class as being compatible, though Samurai can equip them.
*Items with class compatibilty not updated from the original game. All of these have the same compatibility as other items of their type. List: Wizard Rod (Rod), Dragon Rod (Rod), Ras Algethi (Gun), Chaos Blade (Knight Sword), Mirage Vest (Light Armor), Sage's Robe (Robe), Brigand's Gloves (Armguard), Empyreal Armband (Armguard), Sage's Ring (Ring)
*The Genji Shield's description is missing a linebreak, causing the first line of class compatibility to show up on page 1.

JOBS
* Ramza's Chapter 1 "Noble" class description is missing a line break, causing the first line of page 2 to show up on page 1.

======================================================
REQUESTED CHANGES NOT MADE/ODDITIES EXPLAINED

*Why do some abilities display damage and statuses twice?
>There are 12 abilities that do this: the 7 Marksmanship Shots, Pulsar Crush, Spirit Blade, Snipe Movement, Snipe Action, and Seal Evil. This is because the of the way FFT handles animations. There is a casting animation and an effect animation. Sometimes, the casting animation does not wait for the effect animation before displaying damage. This is fixable by updating the animation string, but I have not yet found one that shows the weapon being used, but waits for the effect.

*Can you remove the inherent reaction skills?
>I've gotten this request a few times. I am aware that they can cause a character to retain a skill they haven't yet leraned, but that doesn't happen every time, and the inherent abilities reflect my vision for this game. If you run into this, simply replace the ability.

*Can Ramza have Chant and Salve?
>If you want to use FFTPatcher to add this, go ahead. My patch will not have them. I wanted to portray 2 things through Ramza's lack of abilities at the beginning: First, I wanted the generic characters to not be expendable (This is also the reason why 3 of your generics will always be named Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie). Ramza must rely on his support team to progress. Second, I wanted to show Ramza and Delita progress into a Dark Knight and Holy Knight, respectively. Chant and Salve don't really fit into those classes.

*The Magus class is overpowered! Can you nerf them?
>The Maguses are a flashy class, to be sure, but they are not significantly stronger than Summoners. They have lower Magic Attack and MP, their spells take a long time to cast (sometimes multiple turns), and the spells are difficult to pull off without hitting your own teammates. The main point of contention seems to be "Master Teleport". I considered removing this ability, but decided to keep it in. Currently, every support ability in the game is able to be learned by the characters, and I didn't want to make an exception for this one. Also, there is no practical way this ability could be unlocked without excess grinding. It requires collecting a bare minimum of 15,740 job points to be collected, with no other abilities learned outside of the Monk and Wizard classes. At the point you would get this ability, movement isn't, or shouldn't be a concern for you anyway.

*Why do the Squires (and now the Onion Knights) have the Moogle summon?
When I added the Migardsomr summon to the Summoners, it required removing another ability to make room. Moogle was the obvious choice, since Moogles became a playable class in later Ivalice games. I didn't want to remove the ability entirely though, so I removed the summoning casting animation, changed the formula to be an upgraded "Chant" ability, where you sacrifice HP to give HP to your teammates. Originally, this was given to Squires, as it didn't fit anywhere else. After feedback from you guys, I made the decision to move this to the Onion Knight to make the Red Magicks feel more cohesive and to give the Onion Knights a little bit more of a buff.

*Why is it so hard to hit Skeletons with arrows?
Skeletons have the inherent ability "Archer's Bane". They are not the only creatures who have gained inherent abilites.

[3lric]

RANDOM SCENES
00A, 021, 02E - Equipment reconciliation on Monks, Soldiers, and Archers. It is unknown if these scenes are used in the final game.

If you are using the newest FFTP, all the ENTDs are properly named, so it should be easy to tell. I spent a long time updating those names for everyone goddammit

[BleuVII]

Aha! There it is when I start a new PSX patch. They are the tutorial battles!

Looks like the info wasn't copied over to the PSP xml files. Want me to copy those over? There are a few more updates that the PSP xml files could stand to have (such as damage formulas for the new attacks). If I do that, where would you prefer it be posted?

EDIT: Quick question, what does "and BS" mean? Is that "And Battle Scene?"

[Nyzer]

If you'd like to work on fixing up the PSP version, by all means have at it! Few of the most experienced FFHers bother with the PSP version.

That said, there is a small group of people working on what looks to be a superior PSP specific tool - Chantage. Though I'm not sure what its progress looks like right now.

[3lric]

BS means Bravestory

[BleuVII]

Well, here is a resources.zip file that contains updates to the damage formulas and event names. Thanks, Elric, for all of your work. It made this super easy. I'll post this on the WotL forum too.

[Sieghart Wirsing]

Thanks a lot for the update, Bleu. I forgot how your mod made this game fun <3 And thanks for not nerfing the Magus class as well. I enjoy a measurement of OPness in my games, especially when you have to put the effort to get to them, like you did with that class in particular.

But, as I always do, there's a "unfortunately" somewhere in my messages, apologies for once again coming to report a problem. It's something minor though: the Judgment Sword skill is now conceding random buffs to its targets. This has escalated to the point that a CPU-controlled Agrias is purposefully targetting my own units to bestow Shell on them. And Regen. And sometimes Reraise...?!

I gotta ask, how was that even possible? xDD

[BleuVII]

I just double-checked, and that bug was present in version 1.01 too (the one I had up for 2 years). Here's how bugs like that happen. Final Fantasy Tactics has exactly 127 status effects. That might seem like a lot, but those have to get spread out over 765 abilities/items in the game. It adds up quickly. In order to create my new abilities, I had to remove pretty much every duplicate status in the game, then point old abilities to the consolidated status.

Now, there were 2 statuses that inflicted "Slow": x2B and x75. I re-used 75 for the weapon Aegis Staff, but as I was checking the abilities 1 by 1 for occurrences of status x75, I missed Judgment Sword. So, Judgment Sword does damage and inflicts positive status effects. The reason I didn't catch this in my playthroughs is that the Aegis Staff was one of the last items I added. By the point I added it, I was far beyond using Judgment Sword with Agrias. Curiously enough, this status is also used by Crushing Blade (Ramza), but the damage formula for Crushing Blade doesn't allow statuses to be inflicted.

I'll work on fixing that small bug. Did you notice anything else?

EDIT: I found several more things to fix. For statuses, there was Judgment Blade like you noticed. Also, Esunaga was missing "Undead" as a status it cured, and the Salve Staff cured WAY too many statuses. The Wizard Rod was missing 1 MA, and the Windslash Bow was not marked as a wind-element. I also found 5 abilitiess that had a status listed, but were not capable of inflicting status effects: Crushing Blade, Osmose, Drain, Ama-no Murakamo, & Shout. Finally, there was some left-over data in the abilities from when I tried to set up the Onion Knights as Blue Mages. It didn't do anything, but it was messy. I'll work at getting a PPF out by end of day.

EDIT 2: Posted. Check the attachments on the first forum entry.

[Sieghart Wirsing]

I just double-checked, and that bug was present in version 1.01 too (the one I had up for 2 years). (...)

It was? I swear I used to have Agrias spam it on the previous versions for Slow... Could be wrong myself tho, it has been two years...

One minor thing that I only noticed recently because I'm still relatively newbish to FFT, but... Did the Crossbow and Knightslayer got their names switched? I checked on the wiki, and the blind-inducing one was supposed to be the one with the edgy name Instead of the greenish regular yet stronger version.

Oh yeah speaking of which, another thing that I'm not sure is an actual glitch or it has been always like so. The Blind status. It's not affecting anything at all. Skeletons routinely push it on my men, anyone wielding either the Crossbow mentioned above or Blind Knives do the same with a number of enemies... And the afflicted are still swinging swords to people's faces with 100% accuracy. Could you check on that?

Thanks once again for the patching! I'll be on the lookout for anything else.

[BleuVII]

Yes, I did switch the Crossbow and Knightslayer names for aesthetic purposes. Everything else about the two stayed the same. I'll look into the blind thing.

EDIT: I checked into the blind bug, and you're definitely on to something, but it's not caused by the Emergence patch. I loaded the same save file between Vanilla and Emergence, and the blind status worked the same way in both.