Final Fantasy Hacktics

Awesome, I'm glad you got it working!

That's really odd. I can't replicate the error you're getting. It works fine when I try it using the xdeltaUI program. Maybe there was an error with file corruption during download or decompression? Is anybody else encountering this error?

After months of work, version 1.2 is released! I'm happy with where the patch is at right now, and am probably going to focus on other projects for awhile, so the next update is probably a long ways away. Just fair warning. If there's something you'd like to see in the next update or you run into a problem feel free to let me know!

Quote from: nasuma on January 27, 2024, 05:53:37 pmI'm having trouble with editing AP costs down to single digit Hex values.
Clearly the editor can read values like 100 as "a" but when I type in the text box, it converts it into "A0".
Is there a solution?

That's just a visual bug. As long as you entered the value correctly it should work properly, even though it shows the digits reversed. Just make sure you input a 0 as the first digit, e.g. 0A instead of just A.

Unfortunately there isn't, at least to my knowledge. I really wish there was, both for translation projects and just to rewrite story scenes.

Yeah. I'm intensely grateful to have the editing tools available; as I hope is apparent, I was able to make some pretty dramatic changes to the game with them. They're labors of love that people spent zillions of hours on just to help out the community, and I'd never speak ill of them at all. I'm so grateful for those applications because this project definitely would never have happened without them. But they do have their limitations.

There's a lot more I could do with the game if I were a better programmer and could do the legwork myself. Unfortunately I've got sharply limited free time and energy for my creative projects. I've got a bunch more I'd like to figure out eventually, if my schedule opens up. But for now I'm just doing as much as I can within the constraints of the editors. It's been a fun challenge to see how good I can make the game without being able to do every single thing I imagine. I find that sometimes the second solution I come up with is better than the first, but I never would have gotten there if I had just been able to do what I wanted from the start.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amAs I've been experimenting with late game builds I've started to realize the Nu mou jobs are very samey. I think this is more of a problem with the base game, but I haven't played vanilla in ages so I can't say for sure.

Nu Mou are really frustratingly constrained by some things that are hard-coded into the game. They have a very limited pool of weapons available, and giving them anything else crashes the game. This combined with the fact that all of their stuff is magic-focused except for Beastmasters puts them in a really tight box. They pretty much all just cast big spells and/or bonk with sticks when they're out of MP. I really wish I could do more with them. I wanted to give Beastmasters bows soooo badly.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amScholar feels like a terrible illusionist, spending an absurd amount of mana to damage every unit, even your own, isn't great. Maybe there's some way to revamp this class? My pie in the sky idea is to make it like a nu mou version of the summoner with large area spells with smart targeting. I don't know how feasible it is to change a class that drastically though. Also study just has to go. IDC what it gets replaced by, it's just not very useful with how thieves have been changed.

I like the idea of giving the Scholar the Tinker treatment, cuz like, yeah, Scholars are a pretty dead class. And Nu Mou can only really do the huge AOE thing with Meteor currently, so they'd have at least a little bit of a niche. I'll look into if it's possible. I also like the idea of replacing or reworking Study. I'll give it some thought.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amSage and Alchemist kinda blend together for me, especially since you swapped their spells around. I also am not a big fan of the transmute change. If I'm gonna go for gold drops I'm gonna grab my sniper or my fusilier/thief and get gold from long range. Maybe make it so transmute turns enemies into ethers and rarely elixers or the crystals? That'd give us a good way to farm them. And maybe sage could learn some sort of earth spell like sandstorm instead of blind, would make more sense than a random debuff spell.

I really wish I had that fine-tuned a control over what Transmute gives you. That would be sweet. Unfortunately it's a hard-coded table. Its utility is mostly in being an instant remove effect that just gives you a little bonus on top. I agree it's one of their more niche spells.

I'm not against replacing Blind, since it is a bit of a weird outlier on the Sage's spell list. It's just hard to find a spell that the Nu Mou don't already learn to replace it with. I wish I could just put Quake or Sandstorm on a weapon (I really, really want to put Blue Magic on weapons) but they're not indexed for it. I don't really have an Earth spell to teach them besides Poison or Bio, and those are the Alchemist's thing.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amI feel like Arcanist needs jesus or something. Those level whatever spells are so cheeks. I feel like this Job should be the undisputed king of giant explosive magick. Would it be possible to give it access to nightshade abilities like dimensional rift and turn this thing into the final unlock for nu mou? Also maybe it could learn blood price, I know it works with nu mou since Twiegel has it in one of the house bowen quests early on.

Unfortunately I can't put Nightshade stuff on weapons to learn, because that is an incredibly sweet idea. I really wish I could do that now. I agree that their level-based spells are kinda junk even with buffs, but their gravity-based spells, Drain, and Syphon are all really good. This is another case where I really wish I could just make entirely custom spells or change the animations on skills. What I might be able to do is just turn them into normal spells e.g. Dark, some kind of Haste, and Shadowflare. And that I could work with. I have to check to see if those weird targeting modes are hard-coded into the abilities or something I can switch off.

Giving them Blood Price is kind of terrifying. I mean, I kinda wanna do it, because that sounds rad. But Blood Price is extremely broken, and I have to be really careful about what spells the Viera can learn because they have access to it. I feel like giving it to the Nu Mou, who have access to stuff like Meteor, Gigaflare, and Drain, would be utterly insane.

...but I'm still going to try it out and test. I could put it on some late-game enemies to make it sorta fair. And it would retroactively make Tweigel make sense.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amAlso a little thought on the white mage, I do think the increase in MP costs really makes it unviable till late game. I just had my thief dodge tanking and running potions to people for healing. Honestly I'm not sure what I'd do with this one, maybe cure could be 10 MP instead, that way they can get heals off every turn, but in exchange they won't be able to save any MP up.

My current attitude on this is that anything that heals has to cost more than 10 MP, so that it can't just be spammed every turn. I really want to give healing abilities to the enemies, but if healing is cheap enough to spam it makes fights extremely frustrating and boring, and kinda breaks the enemy AI besides.

I agree this kinda wrecks the White Mage but I'm not really sure what to do about it. I'm not super happy with the Arise spell being in the game at all, so maybe I could swap it out with a different spell? I'm just not sure what thematically fits the White Mage, would plug the hole in their early-game usability, and wouldn't just make them a better Black Mage. The other thing I could do is, say, drop Holy to 18 MP and reduce its power commensurately, so that you'd have a decent attack to use every other turn. I'm worried about this, though, because I'd either have to substantially weaken Holy or deal with the fact that you could cast it every turn after learning Half MP. I also feel like making the White Mage an attack bot works against what they're supposed to be about. I suppose I could maybe teach them Aurablast instead? But that would be redundant with the Fighter; I try not to double up like that.

But I probably have to do something about them, because they're pretty clunky right now.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amBTW I could have sworn blue magick was able to be magick frenzied in vanilla, but it won't let me. Is that some kind of bug? also no matter what I try, Hurdy's Hide doesn't work. Crime spree is broken as well, which is an absolute shame considering how bangin it would be. 3 loot, 3 items, and 3 gil drops? YES PLEASE.

I think the only Blue Magick that works with Magick Frenzy is Quake. And I honestly have no idea what's going on with Hide, Crime Spree, and Jackpot. I'm trying to fix them but they're just not working and I have no idea what I broke.

(Also, Crime Spree is just one piece of loot, one item, and one double gil drop. I can't actually cram any more loot into the ability than that in the editor.)

Quote from: Disith29 on November 20, 2023, 03:39:59 pmThanks for your answers! It was very helpful, I'll try to get a magick viera soon.

I am a bit confused with the patch tho. I have applied the 1.1.2 to the same vanilla rom I did with the 1.1.1 (I am a bit paranoid while storing stuff) but does not look like anything changed.
First thing I did was look for Djinn Flyssa but it still has no skills. Black Quena also teaches Zombie, Ghost and Mist's Embrace.
Maybe it does not work if I already had the item?

Actually it looks like there was a problem with the patch. I must have accidentally uploaded the wrong file. It should be fixed now if you redownload the patch and apply the new one.

Quote from: Disith29 on November 19, 2023, 11:25:34 pmHi, Im new here. Downloaded your rom like a week ago and I am totally hooked now (first romhack I ever played and like 5y since vanilla run). I am around lvl 22 hard run and just beat the sand ant boss. Here are my thoughts so far:

Hi! I'm glad you're enjoying yourself. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Quote from: Disith29 on November 19, 2023, 11:25:34 pm1. You made Thief amazing, maybe too good. I loved him in ffta1 but in 2 he was just useless. I always hated using the attack command but now half my team uses strongarm instead. I also love that no class has to default attack unless silenced now.

2. Thanks to the Thief, rushing the weapon tree feels very very good. It made me focus more on early classes (that are now way way more interesting) intead of hopping all the time. I wish I had another moguri and another viera, but I am getting only nu mous...

It pleases me to know that the thief is doing its job. Just a note, which kind of units you can recruit depends on location and time of year. There's a Rumor in the pub called New Recruits that gives you hints, otherwise you can just look it up. (If you're already read the Rumor it will appear in the Clan Notes section of the Clan Info menu.) Recruiting more Viera in the early game requires you to have completed the quest called The Moon Seal. Otherwise it's just a matter of passing time at Lezaford's cottage until the time of year when Moogles and Viera are available.

Quote from: Disith29 on November 19, 2023, 11:25:34 pm3. I think that the skill that steals money is sometimes busted. You can steal ~500x3 from wild beasts but I just beat Red who was giving me ~7000x3. I am not sure if this was abusable in the original game tho, never used thief at this point.

This is a weird interaction with those particular fights. The amount of gil you steal is based on the enemy's level, so it scales throughout the game. The various color king fights are against one really high level enemy, so they give a ton of gil. It's pretty exploitable, but since those fights can't be repeated I'm not too worried about it.

Quote from: Disith29 on November 19, 2023, 11:25:34 pm4. I like how you changed combat but I feel like White mage got nerfed because of this. It does not have time to do anything early game and heal at 12 seems impossible to fit. I just unlocked holy but it costs too much mana for now to be relevant. I wish there was a smaller holy spell to fit in this class.

Yeah, the increased cost of healing spells did hit the White Mage particularly hard since that's half of their ability list. I kind like the idea of cutting Holy's MP cost and power so that it's more of a mid-range spell than a top-range one, but I'm not sure it'll work out; it's tricky to balance around the late game passive ability that cuts MP costs in half.

Quote from: Disith29 on November 19, 2023, 11:25:34 pm5. I never liked bangaa but now the one I have is very good. Slow as expected but when he gets to mele the job gets done. I just got a second one and wanna try the ranged classes. I never recruited a second bangaa in the original game.

6. Got tinkerer and illusionist super early but the skills I have cost too much mana for now. Fights are not finished but decided after 3-4 rounds. They will probably start to be relevant after I find any mana related support.

Yeah, those are definitely high MP cost job classes. The Tinker is a bit like a Summoner, except instead of doing tons of damage they inflict status conditions. They're actually really powerful; they only get to use their abilities once or twice a fight but hitting half the enemy team with Blind or the entire friendly team with Haste is so back breaking that they really only need to do it once.

Illusionist is a victim of its infinite range. The fact that you can park one in a distant corner the enemies can't reach and just spam your illusion spells means that they need to be pretty expensive. They're also heavily balanced around stuff like the Half MP passive and the Seer's Recharge. This is definitely a job that gets way stronger in the late game.

Quote from: Disith29 on November 19, 2023, 11:25:34 pmI also have some noob questions. I am sorry if this is common knowledge:

1. I see some texts changed ingame but others seem unchanged. Also job requirements displayed with (y) seem to not be updated. Did I mess up with the patch or is this normal?

The deal here is that the text editor program I'm using doesn't give me access to all of the text in the game. So I updated all of the job descriptions with the new job requirements, but unfortunately the game is drawing on some other text that I can't edit when you check job requirements in the job change menu. It's something I could probably fix if I knew more about hex editing, and it's something I definitely want to do because it's extremely frustrating. For now, you'll have to rely on the included Job Requirements text file.

Quote from: Disith29 on November 19, 2023, 11:25:34 pm2. How do I update the patch from .1 to .2? Directly to the original Rom? Or should I use the one with .1?

My recommendation is to always patch from a fresh ROM. Sometimes weird errors can accrue if you repeatedly patch the same ROM.

Quote from: Disith29 on November 19, 2023, 11:25:34 pm3. Will the save be compatible if I update the version?

Yes, it should be.

Quote from: Disith29 on November 19, 2023, 11:25:34 pmThats all for now. Thank you very much for your efforts. I will post again if I see anything else interesting in the midgame.

Edit: I was thinking that my problems with white mage, illusionist and tinkerer could be solved with mana potions. I will check it when I have some spare time. I do not even remember if I have mana potions, never bothered using items before in this game except for first quests and endgame. If they are available I will be able to buy lots of them thanks to the Thief

Ethers are intentionally pretty rare. Also, unfortunately, they don't restore much MP on their own; this is because there is a passive ability that doubles the amount restored by healing items, so I have to balance around that. If you can get an Alchemist or Ranger with Item Lore, though, Ethers might help solve your mana problems. There's also some later-game stuff like Half MP, Recharge, Syphon, etc. that will help make MP costs easier to reach as the game goes on.

Thanks so much for all of your feedback! Please do let me know if you think of anything else or come across anything that's troubling you!

The 1.1.2 update is out! Just fixed Blade of Peace and Checkmate, and added in all of the abilities that were missing. I've got some more stuff in the works, too, but I wanted to get this fix out as quickly as possible since those missing abilities were kind of a bummer.

Quote from: SoloCross on November 17, 2023, 07:59:27 pmDual Wield can actually work with Viera as well, but that's about it. (This does mean that Viera can use the animations for the Paravir's elemental sword skills too)

Wow! I was unaware of this, and I kind of want to play around with it now. Dual Wield makes a lot of thematic sense for Viera. Do you know how it interacts with Doubleshot? Do you get four attacks or just two?

Quote from: anniejazz on November 08, 2023, 12:14:30 pmCommenting to say I love this mod. 130ish quests done right now, 2/3rds of the way through the story. Your hack has become my main "before bed" game, and my favorite way to play FFTA2! I do have some thoughts on it though, if you don't mind me sharing:

I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I'm also super excited for more feedback. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 08, 2023, 12:14:30 pmThere's too many weapons with nothing to learn on them. The changes you made to the loot system are phenomenal, completing the bazaar and farming for loot is incredibly fun with how much you get from stealing, and all the different classes that can do it add the right amount of spice. Unfortunately, now that I'm getting into the A tier of weapons there's just nothing on these really cool looking weapons, and the stats on them rarely wow me for how coveted they are. I don't really like the idea of spreading learnsets out more, so maybe you could have them learn some reaction/passive abilities races don't normally get, like dual wield on Vierra or something. Or you could just straight buff the stats if that's not possible.

I've gotten this feedback from a couple of people and I think the way I'm going to go with it is to just buff the stats of any weapons that don't have abilities on them. It would be cool to spread stuff like Dual Wield around, but unfortunately it's hard coded to only work with Humes. I really wish there was an easier way to do more stuff with passive abilities in general, because I'm not happy with how most of them are, but it's a bit beyond me right now. I'll just hand out some stat boosts to make the rarer weapons that don't have abilities on them more exciting to get.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 08, 2023, 12:14:30 pmNext, I feel like Moogles are in a pretty terrible spot. The characteristics you gave the races are really cool and help diversify shared jobs in a fun way, but Moogles, main those bonuses really suck. You don't really run into a lot of magick users in the game, so the +15 Base res and +2 growth doesn't really come in handy as often as you think, especially when you consider the fact they also have -10 base HP and -1 HP growth. Sure they're great evasion tanks with the buffs to that, but my Hume Thief can reach 89% evasion with flee, and that's plenty for me considering they don't have to deal with the -5 Base attack and -1 growth the moogles have. That attack nerf really hurts when all but 2 of your jobs do physical damage. Speaking of jobs, idk what's up with the moogle knight but blade of peace is dealing no damage, and everything else besides Ultima on that job deals pitiful damage. Jugglers don't really have much to do besides run around dodge tanking, loosing quicken really hurt this job and it doesn't have much else to make up for it. With how you reworked thief, I'm sure you could figure out something really cool for this job to do instead of being a smile bot. Finally the 2 Gunner jobs aren't really worth the investment. Fusilier is like a bad black/green mage. The debuffs rarely hit, and the elemental bullets cost too much MP considering they're single target. The increased damage is nice, but it's not really enough to make it worth 16 MP. Flintlock takes a lot of setting up for not much reward. Outside of Ether Boost and Ether Cannon, the rest of the abilities aren't great. Shell and Protect cannon should be merged into barrier or maybe scrubbed entirely, considering the green mage can drop Barrier on 5 of your units on turn 1. Moogles are my favorite race, so I just wish they were as good as the rest of them here.

I find your argument compelling. Looking over things, it looks like I gave Moogles the short end of the stick (pun very much intended) which is unconscionable. The struggle I have with them is that I want to make them useful without just jacking up their damage numbers to Bangaa or Nu Mou territory, so I'm trying to keep them good in a support role.

Right now I'm working on getting the missing abilities added and fixing Blade of Peace, so that'll be the next patch. But in the next real content patch I'll take a pass at all of the Moogle stuff and see what I can do. I'm very open to suggestions, and I'll keep in mind the ones you've already made. Right now I'm planning to change their shared attribute modifiers and buff Jugglers, Fusiliers, and Flintlocks. I might buff the base stat numbers on Moogle Knights, too.

Also, I'm curious as to whether or not you've tried Tinkers and if you have any feedback on them in particular. I think they're the one Moogle job that's actually in a pretty good spot, but I'd love to know what the players think about it.

Thanks again for the feedback! I hope to have that patch for the missing abilities out soon! I haven't been able to work on this project for months but I'm finally messing around with it again, so hopefully more updates coming in the near future.

Thank you guys so much for the detailed feedback and testing! Also, oh shit, those missing abilities are an extremely large problem. That's going to take a little fixing. Unfortunately I'm swamped at work right now; summer is an extremely busy season for me. I'll try to hammer out a fix as quickly as possible.

Alright, pushed out the 1.1.1 update real quick. All of the notes included in the post and in the patch folder should be fully up to date with all changes included.

Quote from: Hyatt on July 09, 2023, 12:56:19 amHey, I made an account just to comment on this! I'm approaching 50 hrs in, it's really been adding a different flavor to the game, but I think I discovered a class-breaking issue.

In the write up, you said that nu mou can't use edged weapons without breaking the game, so you gave Scholars cards as their secondary. I'm trying out a Scholar now, and he can't equip cards, even though I've already purchased one that has a Scholar ability. Meanwhile he can equip knives.

You also mentioned that you bumped up Cannonneer's Potion Shell to 70, but it's still doing 30 for me.

I'm pretty sure I'm using the 1.1 version, not any of the older versions, and most of your other tweaks mentioned seem to be in line with the 1.1 changes. Would it be possible to re-patch the game in progress?

Oh shit, I must have missed those. Yeah, I'll push out an update maybe later today that fixes those. Scholars with knives is a real problem.

Glad you're playing it, though! Thanks for letting me know!

Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it. It's very well-thought out and helpful. I'm looking forward to more of your thoughts as you go.

Quote from: SpaceCowboy321 on July 03, 2023, 10:36:10 pmAlso, would it possible to upload the version 1 change descriptions somewhere or update the version 1.1 change descriptions to include the version 1 info as well?

That's a good idea. I can put this together but it's going to take me some time. Summer's a very busy time of year for me.

Quote from: SpaceCowboy321 on July 03, 2023, 10:36:10 pmThe Fencer's Swarmstrike doesn't seem to be hitting multiple times.  Featherblow seems to be working fine.  It does twice the amount shown in the damage estimate.  However, Swarmstrike just does the damage once when I use it.

I've noticed this issue where sometimes multi-hit attacks or melee attacks that drain health don't show all of the numbers. I'm not really sure why. I think it's just a visual bug and the abilities still have full effect, though.

Quote from: SpaceCowboy321 on July 03, 2023, 10:36:10 pmI know you intended to make Thief a bit overtuned, but even with that in mind, I think Strongarm is a bit too strong, at least this early in the game.  It does almost twice the damage of a normal attack, is guaranteed to steal 3 loot, and costs no mana.  There is basically no reason to ever use any other abilities.  I like the loot stealing aspect to make acquiring loot less of a chore, but I think maybe either the damage should be toned down a bit or it should have a 10+ mana cost so it can't be spammed every turn.

Strongarm is definitely really strong in the early game. I probably do need to tone it down a little. It does fall off pretty hard in the mid-late game, though. It's still strong enough to use, but the better damage-dealing jobs you unlock eventually eclipse it. I'm walking a fine line with this one because I still want it to be usable later in the game. But yeah, if you're finding that you don't want to use anything else then it's too good.

Quote from: SpaceCowboy321 on July 03, 2023, 10:36:10 pmSimilar to Strongarm, I think the Warrior's Guard Break ability is a bit too strong, though to a less extent.  It does almost as much as Body Slam with no self damage and it bypasses reactions.  Again, I think maybe either the damage should be toned down a bit or it should have a mana cost.

This one I could definitely done down. It's less fraught than Strongarm because I'm not trying to keep it eternally viable, and it does kinda make Body Slam less worth using. Body Slam used to be stronger but got nerfed in testing, so there used to be more space between them and I guess I forgot to adjust the other Warrior moves.

Quote from: SpaceCowboy321 on July 03, 2023, 10:36:10 pmThis is more of an issue with the base game than with your changes, but I think the Animist's Tailwag ability is a bit underpowered.  A 10+ mana 1-range charm is ok if it hits, but it's generally not worth the risk.  It's also outclassed by the Thief's new Charisma ability, which Moogles also have access to.  However, I'm not sure what the best way to change it is.  Just lowering the mana would just let you spam it every turn, which would maybe be ok since the 1-range puts the user at risk, but I could see it getting out of hand.  Giving it range like Charisma would be fine, but then I think the abilities would overlap too much.

Yeah, Tail Wag is a tough one to balance for all the reasons you mentioned. My half-solution was just to put Tail Wag on really early gear, so it gets a brief chance to be somewhat useful before you get cards. I could also put some extra thing on it, but it's hard to find an effect that both fits the move's flavor and synergizes with Charm. I'll probably just leave it as-is unless some inspiration hits.

Version 1.1 is now available! Let me know if you have any trouble with it and I'll help as best I can.

I've only been using xdeltaUI, so I didn't realize there were issues with other programs.

Quote from: SpaceCowboy321 on April 04, 2023, 08:12:48 pmI downloaded the new version, but it still doesn't seem to work with the US rom.  I tried several times with different patchers, and they all report an error.

I just tested it with the 2384 build and didn't have any problems. Do you have any details on the error you're getting?

Quote from: Squire Doodad on February 01, 2023, 07:40:33 pmOut of curiosity, do you have any better documentation of the stat growth changes in particular?

Okay, I have these ready but I can't attach them to a reply. I'm going to have to put them in the zip file for 1.1, I'm afraid. If you'd like the notes earlier I can send them to you through Discord or something if you're comfortable with it.