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My progress in FFTA hacking [Map, Events and Text editing] [Engine Hacks]

Started by Leonarth, July 16, 2018, 12:14:58 am

rrs_kai

Quote from: Leonarth on August 02, 2020, 11:57:47 amWhich jobs did you use the ability with? Which ability was it? Which weapons did you try it with?
Human White mage - Staff - Bolt sword
Human Archer - Shortbow - Fire sword
Moogle Thief - Knife - Fire Sword (working)

I randomized again and now it's working for humans but not for Viera.
Viera White mage - Staff - Bolt sword
Human Thief - Knife - Bolt Sword (working)

Quote from: Leonarth on August 02, 2020, 11:57:47 amMore importantly, did you use the patch included with the randomizer? Or did you use the engine hacks?
I did not apply the .ups, just used the engine hacks.

Edit: I tested again on vanilla and my mod with the engine hacks, and no bugs were found. Somehow not with the randomizer, so maybe just ignore it.
I added some extra jobs for all the races in the unused slots. They have proper stats and sprites but no abilities similar to the Battle Queen. This may be causing the randomizer to have problems?

Edit 2: Tested more without the randomizer and found that the Human thief was fine but White mage and Archer got bugged.
FFTA_hack_Randomized.zip
FFTA_hack_Randomized_2.zip
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Leonarth

Quotethe animation exist for Human thief but not for White mage and Archer.
It does exist, all jobs have all animations, what happened here is that even though this is an ability, it uses a weapon animation, and the new code is not prepared for that.

I assumed abilities that use weapon animations would just either have a special animation for it or just use the weapon animation getter, but apparently not.

Also, unrelated, but I did make the option to display up to 9999 hp, have you tested that yet?
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

rrs_kai

Quote from: Leonarth on August 02, 2020, 03:49:01 pmIt does exist, all jobs have all animations
I apologize if that sounded rude, my intention was to say that I've come across a bug. I edited my post.

Quote from: Leonarth on August 02, 2020, 03:49:01 pmAlso, unrelated, but I did make the option to display up to 9999 hp, have you tested that yet?
Wow, it works! What more can I say, its awesome and I like it!!
All I have left is say is the problems vanilla has:
-HP and MP can only be 255 base, but the remaining stats can be 999. Odd design choice.
-Max growth rate for any stat is only 25.5. The 2800 is the max possible and that too because you've allowed Lv.100. If we had a growth rate of 99 then we'd be hitting the 9999 mark. Either way, it's great having 4 digits for HP.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Leonarth

Quote-HP and MP can only be 255 base, but the remaining stats can be 999. Odd design choice.
-Max growth rate for any stat is only 25.5. The 2800 is the max possible and that too because you've allowed Lv.100. If we had a growth rate of 99 then we'd be hitting the 9999 mark.
I don't think these are really issues...
Big numbers for big numbers' sake don't add anything to the game.

I think allowing HP to go higher like this is good only because it allows distinction between units that would have capped at say 1000ish and others that may go much higher, we don't need to inflate the HP all the way up to 9999.

That said, I think if I made a hack I'd rather make all numbers smaller.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

dck

Funnily enough uncluttering the stats was one of the first things I did in LN, to allow more scale in differences between the player's party and other units. Recently had to up hp slightly though, to make a few differences less rough.

Anyway, I tested this too and target stats display seem to be offset (by two digits) whenever looking at them from the movement or attack aiming prompts:
That unit in particular had 206/92 HP/MP.

Forgot to mention earlier, good thing you guys were talking about it.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
  • Discord username: adri#1824

Leonarth

Not really sure why the tile offset of the numbers was brought up, is there something wrong with that?
That was a conscious decision, it's not a bug.

The display on the left with the portrait and the smaller one on the right are actually essentially unrelated.
They are not drawn through the same routines, they aren't even made of the same stuff, the one on the left is made of two background layers and some sprites for the portrait, the one on the right is entirely made out of sprites.

Anyway, I figured that since the max HP won't fit anyway it would be best to give some breathing room between the HP and MP icons and their numbers.

Either way, that is not what it looks like for me.
I'll have to look more into it
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

dck

Sigh, nevermind. I meant the shorter display used for tergetting units while moving/attacking, but I forgot you can actually toggle off the level displayed by pressing select, works (and looks) very good when you actually do that.


Sorry about the bother!
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
  • Discord username: adri#1824

Leonarth

Quotebut I forgot you can actually toggle off the level displayed by pressing select
I never knew this.

I'll have to rework the stuff to take this into account
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Leonarth

I just pushed a big new feature that I've been working on and off on for a long while now.
Although, honestly, most of it was done in two big pushes, one about a year ago and another one the last few days.

Remember when I kept saying that 1bit abilities would open up a lot of possibilities thanks to the unit data space that it would free?
Well, it's taken a while but I've finally made one of these dream features I wanted from the start: Nicknaming.



It's what it sounds like, you can set a unit's name to whatever you feel like.
You don't like the name you chose for Marche? Change it.
You wish a generic had your friend's name? Change it.
You got bored of your clan's name? Well, too bad, that's not what this feature does.

I know it might feel like a let down, that after all this time the first thing I do with this free space doesn't even impact gameplay in any way, but this is something I always wanted to see in the game as a kid, so it takes priority.

Anyway, nicknaming a unit is very easy, first of all it has to be a unit that's allowed to be nicknamed, you can change which units can be renamed in the options.event file. By default, only Marche and generic units can be renamed, so not special characters like Montblanc or the named secret characters like Eldena.
(Even if you nickname a unit, that won't change what others call them in the story (except for Marche), so that's why by default renaming forced name characters is not allowed. Feel free to change it, though).

Once you have the character you want to (and can) rename, just go to the unit menu, this has to be done outside of battle, if the unit can be renamed you will see a new button saying "Start: Name".


Simply press the Start button and enter your desired name, just like when naming Marche.


Andt that's it, you are done, you will be taken to the party menu and you can keep playing just like normal, but with a customized character.


On top of nicknaming, this engine hack also expands the character limit from 9 to 10, although the width limit is unchanged because of technical reasons (yes, there's a width limit for names in vanilla).

As always, any bug reports are very much appreciated, just be sure to read the included info beforehand, just so you don't go reporting intended things as not working correctly.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

dck

Haha, that is super cute. I actually kind of expected you to release something like this- not sure if because you mentioned in the past or because I thought if you already fiddled with when naming happens for the tutorial skip, porting the feature to all generics would be a natural thing to want.

Also I dont think anyone will be disappointed it doesn't impact gameplay. I think this is something almost everyone who's ever been into ffta wanted at some point!

I'll try it out in a few hours and edit in some feedback about how it works later :D
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
  • Discord username: adri#1824

ExL

Bah, I don't care for the names of those pesky minions of mine! Though calling them minion 1, minion 2, etc. may help giving them commands... :twisted:
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Blunderpusse

I seem to have run into a problem. I just updated/redownloaded the Engine Hacks and when I ran the "MAKE HACK" I get an error saying the "nocash-sym" doesn't exist. I assume I have to get that file, but I just can't find it on your GitHub.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
"You sure are a keen observer of the obvious, kupo!"

Leonarth

nochash-sym is a flag, not a file, you don't need to get the .sym file, rather it will be generated for you.
The .sym file contains the offsets of all the labels, it's only really useful if you are debugging with no$gba.

Anyway, if you are getting this error that just means your ColorzCore is old, get an updated one.

The old Core.exe assembles regardless of flags, it just ignores the flags it doesn't know and gives a warning about them (which does not prevent building), ColorzCore in the other hand will throw an error if the flag is unknown, so it seems the version you have is from before this feature was added.

You can always get the newest ColorzCore.exe from this link:
https://github.com/FireEmblemUniverse/ColorzCore/raw/master/ColorzCore/bin/Release/ColorzCore.exe

Download it, rename it to Core.exe and drop it in your Event Assembler folder.
ColorzCore is way faster than the old Core, so I recommend anybody reading this to get it.
It will drop your build time from a few minutes (at worst) to just a few seconds.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Blunderpusse

Solved. Thanks. :)

Quote from: Leonarth on August 05, 2020, 08:04:29 pmIt will drop your build time from a few minutes (at worst) to just a few seconds.[/b]

It only tooks about 3 seconds to build the rom hack, so that's another "life hack".
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
"You sure are a keen observer of the obvious, kupo!"

Dual-Wielding Ninja

I really appreciate all of the work you have been putting towards Final Fantasy Tactics Advance! :mrgreen: Although my OCD brain's telling me that you should change "Start:Name" to "Start:Rename".

Anywho, since JP is attached to Combos (if not changed out for something else or disabled altogether) and Totemas, I was wondering if there would be some way to change their minimum requirements in order to activate?

As well as ask if you can put one of those "Poof!" effects after the monster merges with the Morpher and before they unmerge with them? (Dunno if you'll get what I mean.) I just find it funny that your Morpher's sprites could instantly turn into a monster's without any fanfare, even knowing this game's visuals sometimes.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
  • Discord username: Dual-Wielding Ninja

Leonarth

Quote from: undefinedchange "Start:Name" to "Start:Rename
That wouldn't fit. At least not without looking un-vanilla.
It's also the only option you ever get related to the name of the unit, and it can be used to restore the unit's original name so I think Name is just fine,

Quote from: undefinedAnywho, since JP is attached to Combos (if not changed out for something else or disabled altogether) and Totemas, I was wondering if there would be some way to change their minimum requirements in order to activate?
I can't think of an ammount that would be healthy. Even if you increase it to 100 or whatever that could easily lead to players grinding to get 9999 JP so they can spam combos or whatever.

Honestly I think the whole JP earning system needs a rework, but either way I think combo abilities and totemas are just... absolutely uninteresting? Even more so compared to movement abilities. They could be added back in other ways, like in FFTA2.

Quote from: undefinedAs well as ask if you can put one of those "Poof!" effects after the monster merges with the Morpher and before they unmerge with them?
I guess you mean like with Toad? That would look pretty nice. I know nothing about animations and I don't really want to look into that just to add this, it could be something I add in the future but it's not a priority.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

dck

IMO the combo system deserves more credit than it's often given:
The only two factors that break them are the extremely high user-JP multipliers active on any multi-unit combo and the lack of control over the base damage for the user. Although in truth, either of these alone would be enough to deal massive damage to basically anything.

Still, the core idea of the move is requiring multiple units within range of a target- often one dangerous enough to warrant all this in the first place; and in case of longer range combos that are more lenient with positioning, risking allies just not landing their hits at all, since hit% for ally hits drops for longer range combos and is unaffected by anything.
On top of this, the fact user JP zeroes after using it means that if the enemy survives you'll be locked out of initiating combos with that unit- while if you kill the target you'll be able to continue combo'ing (at a much lower multiplier).

It has a few flaws like rewarding having JP stacked beforehands, but I think the system is fun to play with when you have restrictions what items you can wield when using combos and lower the JP multiplier significantly. At least I've had a lot of fun clearing fights with combo-oriented teams this way.


Totemas, on the other hand, are unsalvageable and completely boring.

Also, to make this more relevant to the thread since it's not really meant for mechanic discussion; is there any part of the JP-learn system code that can be placed as a standalone in the main buildfile to disable the Totema option in battle from appearing?
The intended effect would be to disable Totemas without enabling the whole JP-learn system.

EDIT: Seems like the only line for that I see is this? at least out of the commented ones or the ones with dmps I can follow
PUSH; ORG $C8088; SHORT 0x2000; POP //disable combos and totema summoningI guess a workaround is just leaving them enabled and reducing max JP, would allow for more fine tuning with how to ramp up combo damage as JP increase.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
  • Discord username: adri#1824

Leonarth

PUSH; ORG $C8088; SHORT 0x2000; POP //disable combos and totema summoningWhat this does is that, instead of getting the JP of the unit, it gets "0", and since it thinks you have 0 JP combos and totemas are never available.

If you want to remove totemas only, use this instead:
PUSH; ORG $26100; SHORT 0xE066; POP //disable totema summoning
And here's one for combos:
PUSH; ORG $CD4C8; SHORT 0x2000; POP //disable combos
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Dual-Wielding Ninja

In that case, maybe there's a way to make Combos and Totemas cost MP instead of JP? I can easily see Totemas being uber-powerful Summon Magic Abilities or item-only Abilities similar to the Scions from FFTA2.

Combos on the other hard might be trickier to implement appropriately, at least to me.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
  • Discord username: Dual-Wielding Ninja

Leonarth

I haven't looked into this at all but I would expect combos and totema summons to just be action ability effects that you can give to any ability you want, so just do that.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown