Final Fantasy Hacktics

Quote from: Tzepish on November 03, 2023, 02:32:57 pmArcher is getting a revamp as well. Each Charge+ ability still functions the way it always has, but each is now getting a different secondary effect as well. For example, Charge +2 is now "Blackout +2", which functions as Charge +2 but also inflicts Blind.

Charge is its own thing so I imagine it requires more hacking and testing to get the charge amount clicker to work properly, but if you could you could easily fit the vanilla Charge effects in 4 bit flag style passive abilities: Charge + 1, +2, +4, and +8. With the leftover abilities you could increase range, AoE, and various procs.

But again, this hinges on getting the UI working with bit flags.

Quote from: Tzepish on November 03, 2023, 02:32:57 pmI don't have similar plans for those other classes, but I can imagine Ninja working in basically the same way - adding abilities that passively enhance Throw, like increased range/damage, whatever.

This is absolutely possible with ASM, yeah, and I've already done some similar things (affecting critical hit chance with status and with equipment; adding a new Reaction ability that prevents harmful status; increased status effect hit chance by default).

Some passive ability ideas for Ninja. These abilities would apply to Chemist and anything else which throws items.

This gives me an idea for a use-item branch upgrade which is inverted Chemist, in that their items deal damage and inflict debuffs. Spoiler because off-topic.

For Geomancer you could have the above upgrades to procs, range, AoE, plus a passive to invert the damage and status inflict if it hits an ally, and a passive to improve the damage formula.

Samurai could use something similar to Geomancer, but with a reduced item break rate passive.

I'm not sure how you'd do that for Geomancer and Samurai, unless there's a flag you can set to make a passive ability not show up in an action ability menu. Maybe you could put those effects on another job like Calculator and have them affect Geomancer, Samurai, and other MA based abilities.

Calculator - while OP - could use more numbers like "2" and "7". Or if you go the Sage route you could replace the Calculator effects with passive bonuses to spells flagged as calculable like reduced MP usage, increase XA or YA, faster charge time, increased AoE, and increased range. If you combine just the vanilla calculable flag spell selection UI minus the Calculate targeting UI/mechanics, then if you adjust the flags then you have a very flexible job, both for players and modders.

This is getting really off topic, let me know if you want to move this discussion elsewhere.

Quote from: Tzepish on October 29, 2023, 05:29:15 pmRe: Orlandeau nerfs, no I'm pretty happy with his reduced skill list. That's the main thing that makes Agrias and Meliadoul *not* obsolete. Orlandeau has all their skills except for the best ones, which are exclusive to those characters (Divine Ruination for Agrias, Crush Weapon for Meliadoul).

This makes thematic sense for Orlandeau. He is getting on in years, and while he's been everywhere, seen everything, and knows how to do way more things than those younger than him he's also starting to forget the details of some things. But that's just me speaking from the perspective of someone approaching 40.

Quote from: Tzepish on October 29, 2023, 05:29:15 pmRe: Dragoon, Ignore Elevation wouldn't enhance the Dragoon's Jump attacks, only the actual Jump+ abilities and equipment. So if you want the infinite jump (movement height), you'd be making a tradeoff for things that might actually improve your jump (attack).

Here's a preview of the new Dragoon changes (all subject to change as I playtest):

Base Jump attack changes - Jump attacks are nerfed by default:
* The bonus damage for using a spear has been reduced from +50% to +20%.
* The range is now based on your Jump attribute - 1 (so the default range is 3).
* Jump attacks are now slower by default (they cost a turn and a half instead of a turn), but only if you hit (a miss still only costs a turn).
* And the one buff on this list: they now work with damage increasing supports, like Doublehand (+60% damage in WOTL Tweak).

However, the Dragoon's skill list now allows you to increase the potency of jump attacks, up to and surpassing their original level of power:

          Jump Ability:           | Effect:
           - Angon                |  - Increase the Polearm damage bonus by (Jump x 5)%.
           - Lancet               |  - Recover (Jump + Magick)% damage dealt as HP and 1/4th of that as MP.
           - Unbound              |  - Jumping cures you of Poison, Oil, Slow, Immobilize, and Doom.
           - Wyrmkiller           |  - Jump has a chance to inflict Slow, Immobilize, or KO on Dragons/Hydras.
           - Long Jump            |  - Add +2 to Jump's horizontal range.
           - High Jump            |  - Add +2 to Jump's vertical range.
           - Quick Recovery       |  - Add (2 x Jump + Speed) bonus CT after landing (next turn comes sooner).
           - Jump Mastery         |  - A Polearm is no longer required to gain the damage bonus.

So if you buy all the skills and pump your Jump attribute up to the (new) maximum of 9 (instead of 7) your jump attack will be an absolute beast.

First, I am very impressed by this. I never would have thought to do it this way. In the ASM Hack Requests thread, I requested that the skillsets above be merged into a single ability slot with their basic effects, and that their advanced effects be gated behind a support skill which would then be inherent to the class or available for learning and equipping on another class. Possibly with some other effect like Equip X or current class stat multiplier bonuses, should the derp AI equip the support but not the skillset to ensure it gains some utility from a subpar choice. I requested this so something like the vanilla skillset exists, but the actual skillsets of these jobs be more complete.

The end result would be a cross between FFT and FFTA.
1. A basic and advanced version of the skills would exist as in FFT.
2. The skillsets themselves would be varied as in FFTA.

In hindsight my idea is probably a waste of time because from what I see in FFTPatcher the ability slots for Chemist, Archer, Lancer, Ninja, and Calculator are limited compared to other ability slots. They may as well be used as passive ability slots. Your idea is better than mine.

Also, it seems that there is a discrepancy in the "passive skills" array or maybe the chemist items. There is a gap of IIRC 2 or 3 items missing, beyond the "empty inventory slot" item.

Second, are you doing something similar with Chemist, Archer, Geomancer, Ninja, or Calculator? If you are, what do you plan to do with each class that is as flavorful and suitable for those jobs as tying things to the Jump stat is for Lancer?

Third, is it possible to affect rates for critical hit, knock back, spell activation, and status affection with passive abilities?

1. Change the amount of HP/MP bonus granted by head and body slot armors from fixed values between 0 and 255 to percentages of base HP between -128 to 127.

Purposes: improve scaling of armor HP/MP bonuses, improve long term viability of niche armors, allow for greater armor differentiation, and allow extreme (and extremely cursed) variation in HP/MP bonuses and penalties.

2. Merge the Equip Gun effect with the Throw Item effect.

Purpose: make both effects more useful for other job.

3. Link the various basic effects of pseudo-action skillsets (Item, Charge, Jump, Geomancy, Throw, and Calculate) to an arbitrary skill slot, so these skillsets can instead be included as a single skill in a normal skillset. YMMV as to what "basic" means for each skillset.

Purpose: retain these skillsets while integrating them with more useful and FF lore friendly skills suitable for their respective jobs.

4. Link the advanced effects of the above skillsets to an arbitrary Support skill slot. YMMV as to what "advanced" means for each skillset.

Purpose: replace many of the less useful Support skills or supplement them if linked with the Equip [item] skills, give the player a reason to use any class with these Supports inherent to them.

5. Create a table of bonuses or penalties to class stat multipliers whose effects can be linked to (or referenced by, depending on how it's implemented) arbitrary Support skills.

Purpose: link these effects to the the Supports in #4 and maybe the Equip [item] skills too to give the player a reason to use these Supports and those skillsets.

Thank you for this detailed information on species ability lists.

My plan was to give Bangaa all the melee jobs, Nu Mou all the mage jobs (except Blue Mage), humans and viera a mix of the two, and Moogles all the jobs that don't require high offensive stats to be useful. This corresponds to my proposed stat growths of each species:

• Bangaa: best physical, worst magical, good speed, best hp, worst mp
• Nu Mou: worst physical, best magical, good speed, worst hp, best mp
• Viera: great offense, worst defense, good speed, average hp & mp
• Human: good all around but varies based on job, fewer weaknesses, average speed
• Moogle: all stats poor but not worst, best speed

Humans would get the greatest variety of jobs, having access to almost all of them, while Bangaa, Nu Mou, and Moogle need at most about half of what the humans get. Viera get the jobs that require high offensive stats, so they need maybe 2/3 the abilities that humans do. I intend to consolidate many of the abilities with duplicate effects such as Blitz & Take Aim, Faster & Greased Bolt, and the near duplicate Ninja Veils & Gunner/Gladiator elemental/debuff weapon strikes.

Bangaa, for example:
With that and a few more abilities for each monster family - including several reaction and support options - I think I can make it work in the space provided as each species does not need the maximum number of abilities.

I do not plan to use the 1 bit abilities, instead my plan is to reduce grind and frustration by reducing AP costs and making more items available at game start.

2. I intend to consolidate many of the non-monster multi-species skills and skillsets, so I will have a ton of free room in this array. Even with new spells.

6 & 7. Yes, I mean ability effect sub-effects, and item effect sub-effects.

I'm not at all proficient with assembly. I've found data just by thinking very hard about how it's stored and then searching for that, so if I get around to it I'll try that. Usually there are only a few ways you can reasonably/sanely store certain kinds of data, and things like gameshark codes clue you in to how it's stored elsewhere.

If you have any idea how it's probably stored - if it's a series of data tables, or if it's entirely hardcoded - that could save me a lot of effort.

I think there's a good chance it's entirely hardcoded, but it's possible it could be something like the formulas in FFT but broken down into smaller parts. Then those parts are linked together in a data table. The effect is something like a de-hardcoded formula/effects system, or a limited scripting/bytecode just for these effects.

Unrelated: I was going to ask about mission data - rewards, requirements, and everything else - and it looks like everything else is in the Nightmare modules. I'll look over them, the notes in their thread, and everything else in their thread.

1. I think that will work.

2. I didn't notice that, but it makes more sense than how I thought it was implemented. Looks like each species (and Item) has their own array of abilities, and each job within that species can select a subarray within that.

If all the species arrays are stored sequentially within the rom and the method by which they are delimited is known, then it should be possible to change the size of the array each species has for its learnable skills. Though if there's no free space this operation is zero sum. I can make that work.

6 & 7. But there is no way to edit the effects themselves, rather than place existing effects on items or abilities? The existing effects are rather limited, even if some of them can be linked.

Looking at the AIO editor, it seems that job skillsets are determined by selecting a range of abilities. I intend to consolidate some jobs to free up room for new skills, so I must reorder the action, reaction, support, and combo abilities so they are contiguous for each job.

However, I don't see anything related to the ability animations, unless they are also hardcoded to the ability names and descriptions.

1. How and where are ability animations stored, if this is known?
2. Is it possible to reorder skills and have those skills just work, or is there anything else I must edit?

Since the AIO editor doesn't have a way to rearrange abilities (or anything else), I'm considering making a tool to do this form me by processing data dumped from the game and stored in text form. Looking at the data crystal entries for FFTA, they appear out of date.

https://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Tactics_Advance:Items
This page for example doesn't have anything for the abilities taught for an item, or the jobs which learn those abilities.

3. Is there a more up to date source for FFTA data?

I want to add new spells to the game. I specifically want to add new spells for all 3 levels of the air, water, earth, holy, and dark elements, among other things.

4. Is it possible to add new ability animations, and if so how would I do that?

I want to move some skillsets to other races. For example, I want to move the Beastmaster skillset to Bangaa.

5. Does moving skillsets to another race just work, or must I add new animations for Bangaa to handle this?

I noticed that while you can choose effects for an item or ability to have, you can't edit the effects themselves.

6. Is it possible to edit individual item effects?

7. Is it possible to edit individual ability effects?

8. What limitations are known to exist for stacking item and ability effects on items and abilities?