Final Fantasy Hacktics

Quote from: Super Saiyan Eevee on Yesterday at 07:00:08 pmJust started playing this. I loved the new Luso event! Being able to straight up diss Algus is a thing of beauty! lmao

I definitely had fun with it! I never liked him as the main character of Final Fantasy Tactics A2, because he just seemed so irreverent and unaffected by what was going on. But I was inspired by reach the future and how one of its characters is, to quote the creator of the mod, a himbo.

So I decided to lean into that and give him a stronger comedic relief role here, allowing him to play off of Al Gus both to amuse the player and to show a faint glimpse at the latters true depths.

The concept of the battle itself was also one that I really liked getting in the game. Even if I did have to tweak it over and over again until the AI would reliably stop ganging up on the player and making the battle nearly impossible. Setting up specific zodiac compatibility was very helpful in that regard! But once it was all put together, it was great to see and hear about how people react to what they thought was going to be a horrible slog of a battle turn out to be a three-way fight in which most of the enemies keep themselves distracted for several rounds at the start of the battle.

A quick Version 1.2.10 is out. Some major bugs should be locked down now.

Do you have Equip Shield on Luso? If so, that's just normal. Equip Shield was given Monkey Grip functionality.

Several bugs have been fixed with 1.2.09.

Version 1.2.09 is out, with several bugfixes and an additional Extra Option. Knockback should now be much more widely usable, with Immortal and Ramza protections removed from it.

New hidden skills are tied to the Depths of Murond, which become available after beating the game. They're a feature from the base The Lion War mod.

I have no intention of including a text file of some specific changes; the changelogs exist as a comprehensive list of changes from patch to patch, starting with what has changed in comparison to The Lion War.

I would expect that if you're running into that many graphical glitches that nobody else has reported that something is wrong on your end. Are you using special settings for Duckstation, such as the widescreen hack?

They have different names because you're using the different translation of the script that gives them different names.

Quote from: Zack Randall on September 26, 2024, 04:55:33 pmTwould like to learn how to disable the BGM (not sfx) in the PS1 game so I could rip the sfx.   Not sure where to begin.

Not by asking in a random unrelated topic.

Nyzer -- Today at 9:10 PM
have you ever looked into the Proposition mechanics

Pride -- Today at 9:11 PM
no i will not look into the proposition function
=p

Talcall -- Today at 9:11 PM
No and now I don't want to

Nyzer -- Today at 9:12 PM
When I made Dispatch Missions, I legitimately didn't do it out of any intent to replace the core mechanics of it; I just wanted to make them more accessible instead of missions being tied to individual towns thanks to space issues and expand their functionality.

Nyzer -- Today at 9:13 PM
Then I looked at the breakdown of how the mechanics functioned.

Nyzer -- Today at 9:14 PM
As I looked over the breakdown I kept going back and forth between "what the fuck", "oh my god", and "whyyyyyyyy???"

Talcall -- Today at 9:14 PM
Oh no

Nyzer -- Today at 9:16 PM
Melonhead's Errands Guide.txt
43 KB
(For the next ten minutes, in between chat, I copied and pasted different excerpts from the guide. Leaving them out here for the sake of brevity.)

Talcall -- Today at 9:18 PM
why do specials and monsters have stats here

Talcall -- Today at 9:19 PM
what the fuck

Talcall -- Today at 9:20 PM
????????

Talcall -- Today at 9:21 PM
it's already almost impossible to fail prepositions unless you have a dogshit team what in the goddamn fuck is this

Nyzer -- Today at 9:22 PM
Does this seem unnecessarily complicated for a system that literally has zero indicators about a single piece of this information??

Talcall -- Today at 9:22 PM
yes why wouldn't it seem unnecessarily complicated

Talcall -- Today at 9:24 PM
you're telling me it's possible to hyper optimise propositions

Pride -- Today at 9:25 PM
jr r31
all done

Nyzer -- Today at 9:25 PM
they coded separate categories for propositions despite having almost next to no effect on... like, anything
and not being clear which missions are which category

Pride -- Today at 9:27 PM
some dev was tasked with making it but didn't want to do anything so they spent a long time making it really confusing

Nyzer -- Today at 9:30 PM
the fact that there are no fewer than five different tables for figuring out the base fucking success rate of a mission with four of them having different values based on the unit's brave/faith ratio is fucking brain-meltingly stupid

Talcall -- Today at 9:30 PM
faith and brave are already completely nondescript on their own without external advice

Nyzer -- Today at 9:31 PM
and it really is like Talcall said; I did some math and found that unless you accidentally stumbled into a group that was basically tailor-made to be garbage at that particular mission, you had a near guaranteed shot at full success
note that I said full success, because it is possible to partially succeed and win a participation trophy amount of gil and JP
but without getting the treasure/UX land (if there is one) or flagging that mission as truly beaten
Which I could almost understand if they decided "oh shit, this is too complicated and it's too close to the deadline to implement better transparency"
but it would have taken them so little time to just write code for "Success Chance = (Number of units / 3 * 100)%"

Talcall -- Today at 9:34 PM
maybe implement another ratio for daysTaken/maxDays
I guess

Nyzer -- Today at 9:34 PM
oh no, that doesn't impact success rate at all

Talcall -- Today at 9:34 PM
what

Pride -- Today at 9:35 PM
Ha

Talcall -- Today at 9:35 PM
no I'm sorry did I just gaslight myself

Talcall -- Today at 9:35 PM
what the fuck

Pride -- Today at 9:35 PM
I always stayed longer cause I thought you got better rewards lol

Talcall -- Today at 9:35 PM
:why:

Pride -- Today at 9:35 PM
thats awesome

Bee, -- Today at 9:35 PM
you don't??
SIGH

Nyzer -- Today at 9:36 PM
No, Bee, don't be stupid! Why would something like that influence your success chances? That's not intuitive at all! Instead, you should consult all of these separate tables about hidden values that determine success rate on a mission by mission basis!

No, that isn't even remotely how that works.

Oh, man, this old topic. I do vaguely remember this!

Quote from: old school on September 24, 2024, 09:46:50 pmI know Nyzer will disagree, which is half of why I'm posting it.  For example, we were both against armor at the beginning.

Nah, actually. A lot of my arguments were based on the fact that the Red Mage, lacking Doublecast or the ability to use the appropriate learned skills from other jobs, needed to make up for the disadvantages that it has as a result: that lack of viability, that lack of any worthwhile niche, and the slog of relearning skills that were probably available in other jobs. Trying to go with the more FF1/FF3 niche of being the jack of all trades but master of none would just make it a magical discount Monk. It would be rendered completely obsolete as a melee attacker by the Oracle  and completely obsolete as a mixed caster by a Summoner - never even mind how much worse it would get when either of those jobs started picking up good secondary skillsets and RSM. Equip Gun Summmoner or Defense Boost Oracle with White Magic or Iaido is everything the vanilla-restrained Red Mage would wish it could be.

The idea of a Red Mage being a weaker version of multiple other jobs at once and having absolutely nothing else just doesn't translate into a system with a much more customizable loadout like this one. It only works in FFI and III because there's no other way to get a unit that can do weapon attacks and magic.

The FFV system is a bit closer, but the differences it has are why the Red Mage works there but would be awful here. Even ignoring Doublecast, a unit that's actually in the Red Mage job gets access to the full list of Red Magic regardless of what their level is, making it better to be one. In FFT, once you finished learning the Red Magic you wanted, you'd likely abandon the job in favor of something else. Forever. In other words, you wouldn't be able to actually use the Red Magic you wanted right away, and as soon as you finally could, you'd never be a Red Mage again. There's also the fact that you only get a single slot for equipping support abilities or skillsets; this means you can't, say, load up a Geomancer with White Magic, Attack Up, Blade Grasp, and Move-MP Up. The role compression of Red Magic is therefore given much more value. The FFT Monk also just completely bullies the role a vanilla Red Mage would have: its skillset is a bit less versatile, but it's instant and free and attached to a top tier job. The only other job in FFV that really has a similar niche to the Red Mage is the Blue Mage, but given how dependent it is on learning Blue Magic... yeah, neither of them invalidates the other.

That's why, when it came to the idea of a Red Magic in FFT without the Doublecast hack, I was leaning so hard into MP management while insisting that it needed to have good PA and MA: unique niche, quite comparable damage/support output, nice and speedy, all at the cost of being fairly frail and needing to top up the MP tank quite often compared to other jobs.

Innate Doublecast with its attached mid-level White and Black Magic solves all of the main issues that previously had to be countered in other ways. It gives the Red Mage a ton of unique versatility that cannot be so easily replicated on just any other old job any longer. Access to four skillsets at once and a watered down Non-Charge plus a second spell if you so desire? Now instead of just being a shitty knockoff of a Monk, or only worthwhile early on until you start fleshing out properly synergistic primary/secondary skillsets and RSM, it's a magical variant on the Monk design that trades output for versatility at a pretty worthwhile ratio.

Retro did mention that a couple days ago.

Version 1.2.08 is out with some additions and bugfixes.

After this, I have a nice list of bugs I'll be working on getting fixed for the 1.2.09.

In theory, I could. I have no plans to, however.

Mustadio got that Tweak-inspired buff because he had some design issues in comparison to other special characters. The obvious comparison is to Agrias, who joins in literally the next story battle. Agrias can go from Holy Knight directly into Knight and immediately start working on Equip Sword, allowing her to take her base skillset everywhere she goes. And Equip Sword isn't super necessary: Holy Knight, Knight, Geomancer, and Dark Knight can equip swords just fine without it. These jobs give Agrias a massive number of build options if she chooses to invest in them. Maybe she won't be rocking Dual Wield & Blade Grasp if she sticks to them, but she can go Vehemence, Attack Boost, and Move +1.

Every other special character is like this - or better. Rafa and Malak, WotL Luso, and TLW Ashley all have issues in the versions they're originally from, and Meliadoul couldn't hit monsters in the PSX versions, but after their skillsets were reworked, they're all right about where I want them to be for when they appear during the game. But Mustadio's issue wasn't that he suffers from bad or gimmicky abilities. His abilities are pretty fucking solid! They just serve as an anchor around his legs if you have any intent of actually moving up the job tree, so you have to either ditch them for ages or just keep him locked in to Chemist and Engineer all game.

Mustadio has to go all the way to Mediator if he wants Equip Gun. While Snipe doesn't actually require any specific weapon, melee-range Arm Aim or Leg Aim isn't particularly great, especially if he's facing off against a target that doesn't have good compatibility with him. Those abilities are absolutely balanced around having an 8 panel range. Bows and Crossbows can make up for some of that, but it's still a downgrade so massive it would be like if Agrias started with a Knight Sword and only her base job could use it. I'm sure some folks out there have gone Archer Mustadio, but for the most part, I think everyone either leaves him in the base jobs or makes a beeline for Mediator. And what does he get out of that? Does anyone actually turn him into a mage? Probably not.

Bard and Dancer work differently than that, being intentionally deeply locked behind generic job progression. And while there could be some use to bringing their equipment out into other jobs, there are better equipment abilities on both sides of the aisle that are unlocked well before that point. Why use a harp when you could use a pole or a gun? Why use a cloth when you could use a spear or a katana?

Also, the way the hack accomplishes this feat is by making Snipe automatically activate the Equip Gun support ability. I am completely out of support abilities at this point, so there isn't anything left to bind those weapon types to.

Probably. I'm not sure why you would even consider this, though. In ReMixed, Defend gives the benefits of Protect and Shell, offers immunity to many status effects, and retains the evasion boost of vanilla. If it persisted through Acting, it would essentially be a permanent massive defensive buff to the player.

Quote from: Zaxs85 on September 16, 2024, 06:31:09 amWhy does Scream remove reraise?

Well, it's definitely not supposed to. Someone did recently report a weird bug regarding losing transparent when screaming, and this is probably related to that.

If I had to guess, this is because when I removed the hard coding on stat alteration formulas, I had them read the information in the previously unused status infliction field. That shouldn't matter, because these abilities don't run the code for status infliction process. But it's quite possible that some other shenanigans are happening along the way.

Tzepish has done a great job of working on those. The original Valhalla author(s) also got a lot of them converted, I believe.

Yes, it's 10 benched units. 20 in the regular roster, 10 more in the bench.

Quote from: layerP on September 12, 2024, 12:08:22 pmI know it's not a gamebreaking bug, but I couldn't stop laughing when I saw this:

Ramza was KO'd during the battle and stayed that way for half of the dialogue, lol

And I loved everything about this event! It's so lighthearted, exacly like FFTA2, and the nods to that game's mechanics gave me a big grin.

I was disappointed when they replaced Luso with another character in TLW/TLWOTL (which I plan to replace with Lady Frimelda someday), so it was refreshing to see some FFTA2 appreciation here.

I never saw this comment until just recently, heh!

I was never disappointed with Luso being replaced in TLW because a zero progression Ramza clone in late Chapter 3 was just underwhelming as hell anyway. Especially as a "Game Hunter" who had no skills that were actually used for game hunting. I was also very underwhelmed with him as a character in FFTA2. He felt like he barely had an impact on the story, and like the story barely had an impact on him.

But after watching streams of Reach the Future and hearing how Jumza designed Guy as a bit of a himbo, I felt inspired to lean into Luso's carefree whimsy, especially when I realized how well he would bounce off of the characters if I made him mandatory in Chapter 1. Having him be just completely oblivious to how cold it is if the player chooses not to save him (and thus won't even introduce themselves to him) felt pretty fitting. And not even picking up on Algus' scorn and distrust helps it feel both like it's there just for comedic value (on the off chance the player doesn't know about Algus yet) and that it's hinting towards Algus' true personality (if the player does know). It let me both play it straight and play it for laughs at the same time, which is just such a perfect fusion of FFT and FFTA2.

And I've liked the idea of having a full Blue Mage for a long time. Luso, who can be a Blue Mage, felt like a great opportunity for making that happen without replacing anything. Making him a mandatory encounter in Chapter 1 allows the player a lot of opportunities to get him on the field so he can fill his skillset, too! Makes for a nice little optional collectible quest.