Final Fantasy Hacktics

I just started writing a sequel of sorts these past couple months... I always loved the story in FFT.  I hadn't played the game for 5+ years but I replayed it this spring and started thinking about new story lines.  I love how the game is so deep but still leaves so much unexplained (it works really great for fanfics). 

It started out as just a couple vignettes but now I'm working on connecting the dots into a logical story.  Its begins right where FFT left off explaining how Ramza and Co escaped from the Necrohol (actually its from the perspective of a new protagonist so it actually goes back a bit before that).  The back story does make some minor changes to the story, but it's still 95% compatible with canon. 

I started writing just for a fanfic but now that I've discovered this site I think it would be cool to bring it to life some of the cut scenes and possibly build a sequel game around it. 

The biggest changes I made to the original story don't conflict directly with it so much as enhance it.  Even though I loved the story, I did have some problems with it.  The biggest problem I had was how it seemed like all the guest characters had these mini-story arch's in the game, but when they were done, they just fell into this generic category and stopped growing.  For example, when you finish with Mustadio's story with the Rudovich and his father, he no longer contributes anything to the main story. This is prolly linked to the game-makers decision to allow special characters in Ramza's party to die, which I think is a mistake on their part. 

But even Ramza's character arch seems to stop around the end of chapter 2.  He goes through a lot of changes while he's a cadet and a mercenary, and then in chapter 2 he goes against Gafgarion and his brothers, but after that its like there's no more development or changes in him.  And after Wiegraf dies, there's not any really good villians either (besides Vormav).  It just devolves into a sort of beat em up video game.  Ovelia, Orlan, and Delita's story stays interesting but you're so far removed from it it doesn't matter. 

I guess my point is if you're gonna make a sequel, I think it would be a good idea to go back to the end of chapter 2 or 3.  Then you can make it so Agrias, Mustadio, etc, can't die and give them and Ramza more cut scenes together.  It would also give you the chance to develop the other Shrine Knights like Kletian and give some more dimensions than just another baddie.

Phew.  Sorry, I didn't mean to run on that long... needless to say, I like the idea of making a sequel. 

Yeah, I looked at developing a move-set like 'golemancy' in the help section, but it looks like it sounds like it would be next to impossible to do in the way I was hoping.  I guess it would involve a ton of ASM hacking.

But there is another way you could go about it... though it wouldn't be as dynamic during the battles, you could have specialized mage classes, like fire mage, ice mage, lightning mage, etc... they would have innate strengths and weaknesses of that element and boosted MA (compared to normal black mages) at the price of your magic being limited to a single element.  I imagine this could be done just like other job/monster innates. 

Or if you didn't want to use up all those extra jobs, you could make 'fire elemental', 'ice elemental', etc support abilities in place of 'magic attack UP'.

Jon, so this 'shift' idea has been used before?  I haven't played a lot of the other Final Fantasy's, so its news to me.  I thought I made it up lol.

So sounds pretty difficult / impossible to implement... Thanks for help anyways!

I was wondering if it would be possible for unit to have a negative value for CT... If abilities could be made to set back a unit CT so it took longer for their next turn to come around.  Would it require a bunch of ASM?

Sure enough, I enabled the sound plugin and it started working again just fine.  Thanks for the help.

Sorry about using the wrong forum, just wasn't sure if this was directly related to modding.  If I have anymore questions I'll post them here.

Hey I've been having trouble with my ePSXe.  I've been trying to play hacks on it lately... It used to work just fine but now all of a sudden its always freezing at the squaresoft screen.  I tried my Tactics Ogre iso and it freezes on the opening load screen.

Any help or suggestions?

My bad I got interrupted and accidentally posted early... My finished Q's are up now

Alright, I'm a complete noob when it comes to this and I've done very little FFT hacking.  Thought I'd try my hand at it, but I've got some questions...

1.  What properties do the elements in FFT Vanilla have?  I thought the element wheel functioned kind of like this:
Fire -> Ice -> Wind -> Earth -> Thunder -> Water -> Fire
Something like that? What damage multipliers are used in resistance/strengths?

2.  Is there any way to change the properties of the elements or remove elements?

3.  I guess I should probably tell you what after.  I want to make a class called a golemancer to replace geomancer.  Essentially, a golemancer would have an ability called soul-shift, which would cast element-like status effects on units: for example, "fire shift" would make them weak against water attacks, resistant against ice attacks, boost their fire attacks, maybe make there weapon attack carry the element, etc.  Is anything like this possible?

I think this could make elements a lot more relevant in gameplay, as well as make the strengths and weaknesses of characters more dynamic during a match.  For example, if an enemy unit is about to use Infrit on one of yours, you could "fire shift" the unit to nullify the attack. Or if you were casting Infrit you could "fire shift" the caster or "water shift" the target to intensify the attack.

PS - Thanks in advance and sorry about the cut-off post earlier, I got interrupted. 

I really like your idea of having elements play a more vital role in FFT! ...I kind of had an idea for a class to supplement it, though I'm not sure it would work since your elements are hard-lined to jobs/weapons (plus I don't know if its even possible, hackingly speaking ).  The idea I had I was calling "Soul-Shifting/Golemancy".  Basically all the elements could all act like statuses and there could be a class of mage who could change the element of units at will.

I think that this could be a cool way to make the game less static in terms of strengths and weaknesses.  For example, maybe the enemy is about to cast Infrit and smoke your guy BAM! your Golemancer shifts him to fire elementals and nullifies the attack.  Or if one of your mages are casting Infrit, your Golemancer could either change the mage to fire elemental to boost his attack or change the enemy to ice to weaken them to it.

I was thinking maybe it could work for your patch if the element "shifts" could stack on the weapon elements.  Maybe? Just a thought...

As far as name changes go, I kinda oppose having Izlude changed to Tristan just because its so close to Isolde... because its also close to a lot of male names.  For instance, it could be changed to Isidor.  That's a definite male name and still retain the 'Izzy' root.

Wiegraf should stay. Or Master Folles.  No Wiglaf!

Didn't really Kletian was a problem. (I pronounced it "Cle-shan" though, so I could be off)

And while on the subject of names, was Cuchulainn the author's intention for naming Queklain?  It just seems bizarre how almost all the rest of the Lucavi seemed fairly consistent in naming (most are refs to angels and demons) and design (most look like the animal of their zodiac) but Cuchulainn is a hero of Irish folklore (nicknamed the Hound of Culainn) and Scorpio either represents an eagle or a scorpion, yet he's just looks like some sorta Oogie Boogie knockoff.  Just wondering... 

Quote from: Jon on October 12, 2012, 06:41:37 pm
Double post, whatever. Here is another possibility to start off the mod, bring Ramza into FF IV:

spoiler

If not, this could be used as kinda like a sequel to FFT, the next events after Ramza and Alma escape. Yeah, crits and feedback? Sorry that its like 13 minutes, you can skip the cemetery since you guys know it. Skip to 2:03ish.

Wow, that's a cool idea... Did you make that event?

If you think that FFT's soundtrack was one of the most beautiful ever written, I think you'll agree with me on how awesome this is! 

Thanks! ...I'm gonna look into those, is there a good tutorial you'd suggest for them?

Hey everybody!

I'm excited to check this place out!  I've tried out a couple of hacks (insanely derpy, Celdia) and they're awesome!  After seeing how great they can turn out, I would really like trying out a few ideas I've had for the game... But I'm pretty much starting at ground zero here (I've done some programming in java, c++, but not much)... I'm sure I'm getting in wayy over my head, but any pointers on where to start?