Final Fantasy Hacktics

Update time again. This one comes later than anticipated since I was down with the 'rona for the past week or so, but it has a lot of minor bug and balance fixes, including a fix for Malak's evtchrs, and at least an interim solution for the in-party monster colors behaving oddly.

Update in the original post.

Hopefully in the next day or so I'll add a "Hints" section that will help players better navigate the unknown areas of this mod.

You're probably right; I'll have to look into it to figure out exactly where it's going wrong since it's possible that I'm using an old version of one of the hacks, or mixed something else up.  I currently use 2 hacks that relate to this, "Activated Paletted Portraits for Special Units," and "Sprite Hack (special units, generic humans, and generic monsters."  I'm aware of the limitation on using the last 2 palettes (although you could use them on enemy units with the "Immortal" flag, or as a boss unit).  I had a thread where I asked related issues in the past, and if I can't get it working, I can bring it up there.

Once again, thanks for the feedback, and glad you're liking it so far.  Chapter 3 is the most new-content heavy section of the mod, with 6 extra joinable units, I hope you enjoy that as well, although as usual, I'd wait a few days for the latest update. 

Regarding bugs:

Quote from: Aiolon on July 19, 2020, 12:20:46 pm- Thunderbird appears as a purple chocobo on formation but if you bring one into battle it appears as a regular chocobo?

This is a known bug with all monsters currently in this mod, and is listed in the "bugs" section. It's the result of one of Xifanie's hacks I used to make more monster palettes available, but it's not worth breaking all the other monsters for.  This should be fixed in the next update in a few days, and I've been able to address just about everything else you've mentioned.

As for the difficulty of random battles, I'll look into those as well.  Some of them are meant to be fairly difficult (like the Goblins + Guest Chemist in Mandalia North), but are meant more as late-game battles to keep things interesting even when you have a strong party.  I may switch the order of some of those battles (so that the more difficult ones are the last ones unlocked), but feel free to call out any other battles you find are too difficult beyond any reward they may bring.

New update in the original post. It solves most of the issues Aiolon mentioned, and I consider it to be generally satisfactory from Chapters 1-3 (and probably decent in CH4, although I haven't yet had time to comb through that with this update). Barring any major gamebreaking issues, the next update should be out in about a week or so, and should come fairly close to wrapping up this mod to the point that I may move it to the "completed mods" forum.

Quote from: Elric on July 16, 2020, 08:47:04 pmYeah that slot is completely fine to use. Undead bit is just job related, and only breaks the tutorial and yuguo and cemetary battles with zalera. But TLW fixes those with the special snowflakes hack, which freed up space for those sprites to be easily used.

On the other hand, if you arent using the included special snowflakes hack...

I was using in the first version, and would have liked to continue using it, but unfortunately SS conflicts with Pride's Item Attribute Rewrite hack, which is pretty central to my mod, and AFAIK there's no way to resolve that conflict. As such my workaround to free up undead units was to make a generic "death shade" job that can be used with any sprite, rather than different jobs for "undead knight, undead wizard, etc," or applying a set of statuses via SS.  I've tried this and it seems to work well enough, but I'm having this particular goblin issue.  Gonna check it out now

Very possibly, but the slot I'm currently using for "goblin" is 3D/Undead Knight, since I replaced the goblin family with another monster.  Could be other shenanigans afoot, but if so it's probably a simple fix.

Ok, thanks for the feedback, I'll look into these. A few notes:

Quote from: Aiolon on July 16, 2020, 12:55:29 pm- Dunno if intended but there is a wannabe goblin at the save boco araguay woods battle. has cool looking gaffgarion sprite. and speaking of wannabe goblins...
- There is a random Battle at araguay woods where you fight an army of chocobos. there is a guest goblin with a female knight sprite. prettiest goblin i've ever seen.
- Same thing in Mandalia plains. there is a Goblin chief followed by an army of Hot female goblins using female chemist sprite (they look buggy). EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. again, Don't know if this is intended but this is very bizarre

This is not intended. I was aware of this bug, but hadn't added it to the bug list yet.  As far as I can tell, it happens when the unit using the goblin's slot appears in any encounter that has a guest.  There's nothing about the way I set the unit or those fights up that should cause this, so my best guess is that it has something to do with unknown hardcoding of the slot the goblin used.  This is medium priority since it's not game-breaking, but I think I can fix it fairly soon.

Quote from: Aiolon on July 16, 2020, 12:55:29 pm- Zirekile Falls breaks the amount of allowed sprites and turns the fight into a buggy mes. there are so many weird things in this battle that i honestly don't know what is intended and what is not.

I'll fix this, but it should be the only "bug" in that battle.  The other issues you might have noticed are that the (normal) cavalier unit's death pose looks very similar to its critical pose, but that's an issue best addressed by the original sprite creator (although I may get to it down the road), or the fact that the royal cavalier appears in that battle without introduction (but I already referred to this in the "limitations" section).

Quote from: Aiolon on July 16, 2020, 12:55:29 pm- Chemists are able to learn "Soft" but the item "soft" is missing. in battle, even if the ability is learned the option will never show and i haven't obtained or seen the item in game so far. and yes, i only found out because i needed it and there was nothing i could do about it.

Maiden's Kiss cures petrify as well as frog, as stated in its description.  Soft has been repurposed into a completely unrelated item, but I guess I forgot to update the "ability" description to match. Easy fix incoming.

Quote from: Aiolon on July 16, 2020, 12:55:29 pm- Royal Cavalier Description states he has Innate Meatbone slash. yet he comes equipped with Critical quick in battle. giving Innate reaction abilities to human units NEVER works.

He does have meatbone slash, and it should work properly (try it by going into a random battle and having your own units attack him at 1 range).  I use an ASM in this mod that *should* improve the way reactions work in such cases, and I've just tested this one myself.  As for whether he's a human, well, that's another matter that will be addressed in the next patch (apparently a couple of the unused or enemy-only jobs have some unusual hard-coding).

Quote from: Aiolon on July 16, 2020, 12:55:29 pm---- THIS ONE IS DEBATABLE ---
- There is a high chance that if you pick "Save Mustadio"

I'll give him some speed gear.  IIRC there is no brave penalty for choosing not to save Mustadio (and whether he is impossible to save depends you being exactly at the level at which enemy units cross the threshold into 1 higher speed), but I agree there's no reason to punish players for not knowing this. 

I would recommend pausing your playthrough until I get the next patch out - I've recently done a replay of CH2 as well and there are a couple small but significant things I want to improve, in addition to fixing most of what you've mentioned here.  It'll be a small update, but it will have important fixes (like making sure Mustadio spawns in the Zigolis battle with "Seal Evil" learned, instead of leaving that up to chance) It will be out sometime tomorrow.

Update time! I've "flattened the [difficulty] curve" somewhat in the first chapter, giving the player more of an opportunity to ease into the mod, and have addressed most of what I consider the major balance issues in the early chapters, including some changes based on the feedback I received.


So check it out! New version has replaced the old in the original post

Alright, that clears it up.  Bummer about the incompatibility, but at least the way forward is clear, as I can make do without SS.  Thanks for looking into that and explaining it. 

Ok, that makes some sense.  I imagine the conflict is not in the free space then, since it looks like this: https://ibb.co/WVf53gm

I don't really get how free space works, much less why ASMS are written in anything that's not the free space (unless it's prohibitively small).  All that's kind of over my head right now, but it seems like the conflicting data could just be moved if there's space, even if it's done manually.  I'll probably reach out to Pride, and see if he can look into moving that section if it's possible, unless you're familiar with how that might be done.

This looks awesome, especially the ability to set formation sprites in FFTPatcher, and the conflict checker and free space viewers.

I have a question about how to use the free space viewer and the "move" option for best results, since in my hack I have a conflict between Special Snowflakes and Pride's Item Attribute rewrite, which is causing bugs.  The conflict checker reveals that they overlap in SCUS, and the free space viewer in SCUS shows this: https://ibb.co/86RfGp4

And this may be a silly question, but I'm not sure how to interpret what is shown here in order to know how much to move the hack by.  Does "length" refer to the length of the overlap/conflict, or the length of the highlighted hack?  If it's the length of the whole hack, would I subtract [hack] "length" from "Space to the Next Patch" to know how much to add to the address?  I'm obviously not very knowledgeable about ASMs, but I'd appreciate any guidance you could provide.

Just wanna say thanks for making this hack - there have been a lot of cool developments and breakthroughs lately, but the unit bench hack in particular stands out at something that has been requested for many years, and is a must-have for every mod.  It's awesome to be able to save a human unit for later, or have a variety of monsters in the bench so you can breed only the ones you need at any given time.  Heck, you can even potentially have 30 units (if 4 are guests), but that's being greedy.

Hey, thanks for trying it out, and for taking the time to respond.

Quote from: Aiolon on July 10, 2020, 10:42:17 pmand that you are not planning to make adjustments to the balance.

To clarify, my statement to that effect was largely to pre-empt demands from entitled players who have little idea of the work that goes into making a mod.  While my overall concept of balance (which is not fully revealed until all the little details are worked out) is unlikely to change, there will be many small changes that I will make to the mod before I consider it to be fully in line with my vision.  So let's look at what we've got, piece by piece. 

Quote from: Aiolon on July 10, 2020, 10:42:17 pmThe first battles were really long. Squires are very powerful. instant Regen, Instant raise skill with high success%, Instant massive heal all of these without MP costs. it was ok at first but it is so tedious to have to constantly pile on a dead body so it doesn't get revived instantly by the enemies because it really feels like every one can revive with either wish (Squire) or phoenix down (Chemist) this was particularly annoying if you wanted to have an enemy turn into a crystal or treasure chest, cause 1 mistake and boom, they are back alive.

I agree that squires have too many strong abilities without enough of a cost.  On the one hand, abilities like wish are extremely useful, and almost necessary for the player to have easy access to, since it's an alternative to phoenix downs early on when you can't always afford to drop the cash for 4 or 5 in a single battle.  On the other hand, I know that it's annoying when the enemy has the same recourse.  A partial retooling of the Squire abilities is in the works, although I don't want to go too far, since I've increased the squire level required for knight.  The easiest solution is that I'll probably increase the cost of some of their abilities, add a mana cost to their heal, and reduce the frequency of enemies with "basic skill" or "item" equipped.  I'll probably add a cost to "defy pain" in that, while it provides healing, it cancels out any active positive statuses.

Quote from: Aiolon on July 10, 2020, 10:42:17 pmThe woods are incredibly hard. all the enemies are faster than you (heck, the dogs attack twice before your guys have finished their round), they have more range than you, deal way more damage than you (Guaranted 2 shot), have way more HP than you and the bombs in particular are pure bullshit.

You're absolutely right.  I had done the woods battle before, but had made some last minute changes to monsters that I didn't think would be that impactful...but I replayed it a few days ago, and that battle was a nightmare, even for me, and I'm the mod creator.     For the record, I did not intend for it to be nearly that difficult.  To be honest, once you beat that derpy battle, you've probably seen the worst of it until Riovanes or somewhere in chapter 4...  The mod is intended to start off somewhat intense, but not too difficult, and slowly ramp up over the first couple chapters (by which time the player will have access to lots of characters and abilities).  Anyway, I'm going to make chapter 1 easier by making Delita +3 lvl in all battles, as well as upping the level requirement for higher damage weapons like spears and flails to be wielded by knights, and am going to rework some of the monster abilities, especially Lava ball.  Giving bombs that ability was a bad idea without first lowering their MP Growths/Multipliers substantially first, so I'll either scrap that ability, or adjust their stats accordingly. 

As for the Algus battle, it's not meant to be difficult as long as you have units that can range Algus.  Unlock most mini-bosses, Algus doesn't have a unique job class with Def Up/MDef UP, etc, so he's meant to be the arrogant pushover that he is, and the battle should be one of the easiest of Chapter 1.

Thanks for the bug reports as well, I'll add those to the list and start looking into them. 

I have an update I've been working on that should see release in 2-3 days.  It addresses some of the bugs, and most of the egregious balance issues from Chapters 1 through 3, and will include more tips and info.

Edit: 4/4/22 - New update

Hey y'all!
So I've been working on this project, on and off, for quite some time.  It's a vanilla mod, which was originally heavily inspired by the old 1.3, but has deviated substantially therefrom, and draws inspiration from a variety of other mods, such as Celdia's patch and FFT+, with a generous dose of my own imaginings.  The main draw of the mod is that it adds a plethora of new content much as an "expansion pack" would in other game series. It features a wide variety of invitable new characters and monsters, and the addition of many new items, many of which do more than was possible in vanilla.  While it by no means complete and polished, I've got a fairly workable, fully playable version of the mod here and ready for some initial playtesting.









Feel free to chip in with your impressions, critiques, comments, bug reports and so forth. I will probably see this thread at least every 2-3 days, at least initially.

I notice the latest resources.zip doesn't include CDProg. Any reason for that?

Edit: Wow, just kidding, you just barely mentioned it.  Now I just have to find a way to bypass the silly virus filter - it won't let me download CDProg, or transfer it from a flash drive.

Is there an alternative program that does the same thing as CDProg without the fake virus baggage?

Quote from: Delsait on June 07, 2020, 11:06:43 pmCan you tell me more about Journey of Five? Does it have a new story?

It does, IIRC it takes place after the events of FFT with Ramza as a bearded Duke and some other characters. Definitely worth checking out if you're not familiar with it, and it's easily the most intensively modded project that's ever been made with FFT.

Also, to shamelessly promote my hack, the Beta of which should be out within a couple weeks - I'm making a vanilla mod, which, among many other things, makes changes to monster classes along the lines you've described here.  For example, I've increased the move stats of the Chocobo line, made mountable mini-dragons, given regular dragons defense up, and generally made monsters more viable across the board.  The Monster skill ability is also removed, so all monsters have access to all their skills from the outset. Obviously they'll never be as flexible as generic units, but they generally act as more specialized, but more powerful units. Keep an eye out for it, it'll be called FFT Expansion.

Sure thing, it's right here:
https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=11204.0

And again, I'd recommend doing one category at a time (e.g. Items, Item descriptions, Ability names/Descriptions), then patching to see if it works, so you can isolate the problem(s).  Also be sure to use the "Scan for Invalid Characters" function before you export your .fftexts

And out of curiosity, did you make several additions to the Unit Names section? That's the only area that would cause an error with OPEN.LZW, assuming too much text is in fact the issue.

Quote from: Amkorian on May 29, 2020, 05:52:56 amEither of the three errors occur:
DTE for WLDHELP.LZW failed. The ISO has not been modified
DTE for WORLD.LZW failed. The ISO has not been modified
DTE for OPEN.LZW failed. The ISO has not been modified (most evident)

In my experience, the most likely cause of this error is that you have too much text in the areas associated with those files.  You can even do a little detective work and find out which portions of the text are causing problems Some areas already don't have much to work with (like unit or ability names).  In my patch that I'm currently making, I added a lot of text in several areas, and I had to do a lot of trial-and-error testing to see which areas were causing the problem, and more testing to see how much text I could get away with. In some cases, it came down to being just 4 or 5 characters over the limit that made the whole text patching process not work, so that's something to keep in mind.  My guess is that this is what's going on with you as well, since the Lion War generally has more/longer text than FFT.

Also, while Tactext can indeed be used to patch PSX, I would recommend making all of your changes in Xifanie's FFtactext editor, which is easier to use and better overall, and then patching with tactext .457

Hey y'all, so I was planning on using both Choto's extra job hack (1.17) along with Pride's Item Attribute hack (1.1) for my mod, but after having some issues, I checked in FFTOrgasm and it turns out they're incompatible because they overlap somewhat with their use of SCUS space.

https://ibb.co/sPKwybM

ASMs really aren't my thing and I don't anticipate making the time to learn, but I was wondering if one of these hacks (probably the Item Attribute one would be easier) could be moved to overwrite/reference a different area in the SCUS file so that both would be compatible. If not, I'll just pick one to use and go from there, but I thought I'd run it by you all first.  I gather that SCUS space is pretty limited, and making this work might mean the removal of other functions, but that may be worth the price. Anyway, I'd appreciate your insights.

Howdy y'all,
I'm looking for a way to make gil stealing more viable in my mod, partially by lowering the bonus money generated from standard battles, but even so, most of the time the ability just isn't nearly strong enough to be worth using. Ideally I'd want a hack that can change the formula to yield somewhere from 3 to 10x what it currently gives, and I don't believe there's any way to do this in patcher. Any ASM leads?