Final Fantasy Hacktics

The general answer is always maybe, but don't count on it. The only way to know for sure requires having the ASM hacks for the mod yourself.

It just lets you cancel the Defend if you change your mind.

That's not a glitch. Benching has always dropped unit nicknames and unspent JP, and reverted their total JP to match the minimum for the current job level. If they didn't, the number of Bench slots would have been far more limited. The memory card space had to be increased to the maximum just to get Benching to function. There's no way the roster space could have been increased for this instead.

That said, levels and job levels do not actually drop to 1.

Quote from: old school on September 11, 2024, 08:17:08 amGame Over occurs when poaching an allied unit.  Unsure of enemies and guests, will edit with updates when available.

I deployed a Black Chocobo and poached it without any issues. You'll need to be more specific.

Quote from: pontifficator on September 11, 2024, 09:39:20 amIn the second battle (the one where you save that guy) I'm getting a rather long delay before enemies take any action. Also, the enemies first turn has me controlling him for some reason.

Neither of those things was happening for me. Are you using an incompatible emulator or a bad copy of the game?

The .401 designation is for 4/01; the first of April. Because I had a few visual edits for an April Fools joke.

I can guess one possible reason why that game over issue is happening.

Zodiark being called something different is largely because this is the PSX translation, so I felt it was fitting to simplify his title a bit.

Version 1.2.07 is now out! Mostly just bugfixes, but I also added a backstab mechanic to Gil Taking if using Bandit's Eye and a knife as your primary weapon.

Might be more bugs that need fixing, especially with regards to deploying Guests. It's past 10 PM on Sunday night though and I really need to call it here.

Nothing is increased. The damage formulas just all have a check in there for Protect/Shell and reduce damage if so.

I don't want to discourage you from coming up with ideas, but ideas alone from someone who isn't fully aware of how the game works aren't particularly useful. There's no shortage of ideas around here, and most people who make mods already have their own ideas they want to use anyway. If you want to see any of these ideas implemented, it'll be up to you to do so yourself.

There's also already a pinned topic for jobs and other ideas to be shared.

None. They do not increase a stat.

You would also need to set the ATTACK.OUT settings for that event to return you to the world map. I have no idea if that can be done with the Patcher.

Quote from: Mutteo on September 04, 2024, 10:32:12 pmI was comparing an older version to the beta and the Koutetsu Knife raises the stat to 255 for some reason in the beta, which could be possibly problematic if an enemy uses it for 999 damage on you.

Dammit. I changed two of them to have different WP for testing purposes and didn't close or reopen the Patcher file before the next time I saved it. Thanks for the report, that should be fixed in the next version.

Quote from: ChuckyMclove on September 02, 2024, 05:22:48 pmIs there any way to add or edit damage formulas? MA (y), PA (x) SP etc. I would like to know if there are any tutorials that explain anything about this, as I have not found any.

This falls under the category of ASM hacking.

Adding other hacks onto the mod would come with some risk. It would really depend on what could be added without conflicting with the existing hacks used by it.

Smart Encounters would probably be fine. It removes more lines of code than it uses, and I doubt anything else was put over its code location. I think all the rest of the QoL stuff uses kanji space, though. Which is a common dumping ground for code that got too big to fit in the routine it belongs in. All it takes is for something else vital to be using the same kanji space, and crashes start happening.

Quote from: Ripley on September 02, 2024, 09:29:01 amOne thing I've noticed is that in a NG+ run, when you already have Orlandu for instance, as you reach the point where you'd get him you don't receive his Items like when you do with Agrias. It would be nice to receive his items too. Another Excalibur is always welcome. xD

In The Lion War, you get the items that guests are holding, not the ones that the joining units are holding. I may have given the joining guests' items through War Trophies to account for the fact that your guests retain their progress (and gear) before joining for real, but I don't remember? Anyway, I wouldn't be changing that.

If you want more Excaliburs, the best thing to do is to knock off some Rendezvous battles.

Version 1.2.06 is now out! A couple bugfixes and tweaks, but most importantly, a lot of new Extra Options, such as the return of Improved Level Scaling. A few of these options can even be used to increase the difficulty of the game somewhat.

It can't be done without the Event Instruction Upgrade Hack.

This quick tutorial will assume that you have already downloaded the Resources for TLW, and either patched the PPF of The Lion War to your game or built it from scratch with the Resources. (You shouldn't need to do a full Resources build just for this.)

I'm going to be using The Lion War of the Lions for this, but the process should be the same no matter which version of TLW you use.

We'll be starting with inserting a custom sprite. There are custom sprites all over the place, with one such source being the FFH Custom Sprites page. https://ffhacktics.com/sprites.php You can also find them on the forums, or extract them directly from mods. I'll be using the Agrias sprite from Journey of the Five, because it amuses me.


Within the Resources, you'll want to go to the ASM folder, where the FFTPatcher Suite is kept.


Choose the top option - the .495 folder.


Open ShishiSpriteEditor.


File -> Open ISO. Navigate to your TLW ISO and open it.


Click the dropdown menu for Sprites. TLW opens up several blank slots for you to use.


That said, not all of them are completely free - there also needs to be no existing (used) Job in the same slot in the Patcher. You also need to use the entries earlier up on the list - once you reach the generic unit sprites, you start dealing with some hardcoding issues.

We'll use 22 here. It's free in both Shishi and the FFTPatcher (as we'll see later).


Before importing a sprite, make sure the Type is set correctly. There are few different kinds of sprite types, and if you get it wrong, you can see issues such as how the arms won't be attached correctly. In this case, Jot5 Agrias is Type 1, so it's fine. Move your sprite folder window next to the Shishi window, then drag and drop your chosen sprite in.



Click on the Other Images tab and choose "UNIT.BIN (Formation Screen Sprites)" from the dropdown menu.


Find an entry that goes unused in TLW/vanilla, such as 12 - Balmafula. She never joins the party, not even as a guest in vanilla.


Make sure the same entry is also just as free in WLDFACE.BIN. Entry 12 is also Balmafula there, so we're perfectly fine.


Follow this guide to create and import UNIT and WLDFACE entries for your new unit: https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=6702.0

(In my case, I just exported them from Jot5 Chapter 1 and inserted them here.)


That's the sprite stuff done! Now close Shishi - a very important step, since Shishi remaining open on the ISO prevents other edits from being made to it.
Then, let's go to the Patcher and prepare the job.


Go to File - Open Patch. In the Resources, you'll find the FFTP file within the PATCHER FILES folder.


In the Jobs tab, go to entry 22.


Set up the job however you like. Since I'm using an Agrias sprite, I'll just copy the stats directly from Agrias' 1E Holy Knight Job by right-clicking it, selecting Clone, then right-clicking Job 22 and clicking Paste.


There is one more important thing to do here, though - you must change the Formation Sprites entries, and they must match, or the colors get completely fucked up. Remember that we chose 12 earlier for the UNIT and WLDFACE? Just change these ones to that.

Finally, you may want to customize your own Skill Set for this unit, but I won't cover that here. It's pretty straightforward as is. Besides, most people want sword skills anyway, haha.


Now we'll insert this custom unit into an event that she can join in. Go to the ENTD tab and choose 102, which in TLW is the Military Academy event in which Delita and the generics join the party in Chapter 1.

Note that because our unit has a unique sprite, you should count the number of unique sprites used in the ENTD. There can only be 9 unique sprites on the field at any one time. Thankfully, there are 8 unique sprites total here - so having one more is no problem at all!


Choose an empty unit slot in here and fill out the fields as you like. You can set the unit's equipment, equipped skills and skillsets, gender, and so on, as you like.

Set the Unit and Current Job to 22, the Sprite and Job ID of the custom unit.
The Name ID 22 is set as Mustadio, but in TLW, Mustadio should always use Entry 16 - this is just a now-unused duplicate. So we'll use it here instead.
Pick a free unit ID - 88 should do.
Click the Join After Event and Always Present boxes.


There's one last thing to do, though. Your unit needs a valid X/Y position to stand in - if 0,0 is off the map, they won't appear, even while checked as Always Present. You can take a look at the FFH Map list and see what's open here.

https://ffhacktics.com/maps.php

Since this is the Military Academy Auditorium:

https://ffhacktics.com/maps.php?id=24

Also for reference, you can check out a playthrough if you want to see all the locations on the map that are taken up during the event. 19:50 on this video gives us a good view of the Academy:

https://youtu.be/xwH9kGeG1DU?t=1190

The middle corner on the bottom-left seems free enough. According to the map image, that's got the coordinates of 1,1.


Let's go ahead and put the custom unit there.


That should do it for Patcher changes! Save your patch next to the TLW FFTPatcher file, and then apply the patch to your ISO under PSX - Patch ISO.


Now, close the Patcher. It's time to alter the TacText files.

There are two ways to do this: using TacText directly, and using the FFTText Editor. The FFTText Editor has more functionality, so I'll be using that, but you can feel free to use TacText if you don't have access to Excel or don't feel comfortable unblocking the Editor.

Go back to the Resources folder. This time, open the Spreadsheets folder, and go to the FFTText Editor. Right click it, and select Properties. In the window that pops up, click Unblock. The reason for this is that the FFTText Editor uses macros, which have the capability to write to other files. This functionality is blocked by default on files from unknown sources.



Now open the FFTText Editor. Towards the top, you'll likely see a prompt to enable editing. Click the button.


Go to Column AP: Quick Edit | Units - Names. Click "Ramza". Any one will do.


At the top, click Add-Ins, then Edit All.


You'll have a new view to look at. Scroll down to 022 Mustadio.


Click the "Mustadio" entry on the left and type in your new unit name.


Click Save Edits on the top left of the window.


Go to the next column on the right, AQ: Units - Quotes. Again, click one of the entries and then click Edit All.


Once again, go down to 022 and edit the quote to what you want the unit to have now before clicking Save Edits.


Scroll to the left to Column AI: Jobs - Names. Edit All, once again going to 22 and changing it to what you want before clicking Save Edits. Note: if you want this job to share the name of existing jobs, make sure to add an exclamation mark to it for now.
Then do the same for column AJ: Jobs - Descriptions.


Go to Column AK, Jobs - Requirements. Unlike before, we won't go to 022 - these entries are sorted differently, with generic jobs on the top. Scroll down (or use Ctrl+F) until you find the name of your new job. Looks like it goes in entry 35 this time. But something's off - there are only four lines there for this entry as opposed to the eight that other, full entries have!


Click one of the lines for this entry, then go to the top and click Add Pages.


We only want one more page, so just click OK.


There we go. NOW we have two pages.


Get your Requirements written up - typically, just the job description again but with Requirements: None on the second page - and click Save Edits.


If you gave the unit a unique skillset, go to Columns AN and AO to edit the name and description of it. After that, we're done! Click Export .ffttext on the top left, save it next to your TLWotL Text file with a new name, and then save and close the Excel file.


Now to import the .ffttext into the ISO, we'll need to use FFTactext. Go to the ASM folder like you did for Shishi and the Patcher, and open it.


File - Open .ffttext


You'll get a warning about missing files and will be asked if you want to load the rest from the ISO. Choose no. You DO NOT want that.


It will take a little while for TacText to open the file. But once it does, if you didn't make the changes in the spreadsheet, do so now under the Quick Edit dropdown selection. Otherwise, or when you finish, click ISO - Patch ISO.


Go ahead and patch your ISO. This will take some time as the program calculates what to do and where before getting started.


Eventually, you'll see "Success".


And that's that! Go in game and see how your unit looks.

I don't keep my resources in an organized manner as I go, and I have some files separate from the main folder because having certain files in OneDrive folders causes certain functionality not to work, but I don't want to take my files out of OneDrive folders because backups tend to be helpful. I actually deleted a bunch of files at the end of 2022 and would have lost absolutely everything from the Preparation Menu if not for backups that weren't deleted. Ended up learning that OneDrive has a Recycle Bin feature for a while after something is deleted - it was extremely useful.

At this point, I have also changed certain ASM hacks for the upcoming 1.2.06 anyway, and I didn't keep 1.2.05 specific backups of them.

Quote from: Mutteo on August 27, 2024, 04:07:27 pmI've been playing version 12.05 and noticed a couple bugs.  The first one is that the Defend command freezes the game and the other involved the Retraining function.  I put three characters in it and when the training was finished, it would freeze after the first message box.  I was able to reproduce this on all three tests, one was all monsters, and others were variations on just my human units.

Probably an emulator issue. It's working fine on Duckstation, which is the recommended emulator to use.

Well, that's not really a toggle. But yeah, it's a sort-of hidden feature because I personally like the idea of keeping random battle functionality when I'm playing for real and not just doing a test run. But I also like being able to not worry about it when I don't want to!

If I could just display the info about it somewhere while on the world map, I would,   but I don't believe there's any way to do so.

I'm pretty sure that's the last of the "hidden" functions. Everything else, I was able to show outright (like refunding abilities).

I don't have any specific FAQ on the ability changes. Most of what I've done, I've listed across all the changelogs. Train in particular is just the upgraded version of Monster Skill, so that's where that functionality comes from. I tried to make several less useful abilities stack effects from also less useful abilities that could be unlocked before it.