Final Fantasy Hacktics

The "Angel Form" and the Skeleton forms I mean. Having both on screen glitch one or the other out. Is there ANY workaround to this or is it hardcoded under 19000 terratons of coding?

After a long struggle of not knowing what I'm doing, making hundreds of mistakes, I have finally completed my first mod for the community and can say that it is indeed "Complete" this time for what it's trying to accomplish. There are some things that I will address in the future, but for now, it is what it is.

Final Fantasy Tactics: Second Read
"Mr. Coreander: Ahh, but have you ever read a book twice? Books change each time you read them."
- The Neverending Story 2

Final Fantasy Tactics is beloved by many, including myself ever since I was a child. So much so, that when my brother got in a fight, we broke the disc over my head. I'd bought WotL to play on his PSP, aaaand I lost it. But still, this game is near and dear to my heart and always will be. I liked War of the Lions' cutscenes, all the voice acting, but outside of those cutscenes where the dialogue was fairly easy to follow, they tried to retranslate the script far too hard. Every line felt like it was trying too hard to be Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe and as I've joked before, was so purple in its prose that it could literally choke a violet. So upon learning that I can actually change up the dialogue, I thought I'd try my hand at overhauling the ENTIRE game's script. Retranslating the translation.

This mod is built off of The Lion War 2.021. You will have access to all of TLW's features such as the Dark Knight Job, Rendezvous Missions, Transmigration, New Game+, etc..

Features:
* Game dialogue overhaul. This is the sole highlight of this mod. The entirety of the game's script and dialogue has been overhauled to be more coherent and has better
characterizations and plot threads. Such as Olan going to Ovelia and Delita, not as an accuser of "You killed my daddy" - he's playing his role as a guardian of
Ovelia and by extension Delita... from what... you'll have to play to know.

* Scene changes such as Ramza blasting Algus
with a bolt of lightning for a very crude
comment about the Hyrals. More to be found
whilst playing.

*A new Title Screen, and a coloured Map that details borders, territories and gives tiny hints to the sidequests.


* Minor character name changes.
Izlude is now Izurud. (Izurūdo Tinjeru is his translated name from Japanese)
Orlandu is Orland (Much easier to say in my opinion)
Vormav is Volmarv (A portmanteau of Folmarv and Vormav)

* Minor gameplay changes.
In scenes such as the "Save Algus" or "Kill All Enemies"
part in Mandalia plains, you'll be given a hint as to
what's what.
The Save Algus option will have (Hard Mode)
Kill All Enemies will have (Normal Mode)

You'll also be given some hints on gameplay, like
I feel should have been in vanilla.

* Major gameplay changes
2x Job Point gains across the board. (This is not JP UP on all units innately. No units have had their passives changed in the slightest.)
You will have a much easier time getting jobs and units you want to play with and the grind's been cut down.

Second, and biggest of all, all units have the same base PA and MA. In vanilla FFT, Male units had 4 raw PA and 3 raw MA.
Females were swapped - 3 RPA and 4 RMA. Now, every unit, including Ramza has 6 RMA and RPA a slight buff in that regard for
both gameplay pleasure - you can now use Females in Physical Combat roles and they'll be as effective as a Male and so on.
You will have to start a new game to see these changes however, but that's honestly the best way to experience this
mod since the opening has been given a total facelift as well.

Palette Changes to all playable units. They'll now have a Navy-Blueish colour scheme across all jobs, some having black or
white trimmings to keep in theme with their job. This is to remove the hodgepodge of colour schemes you got whilst
playing and now have something more in-line and uniform like the opponent human units. Except Ramza, his Chapter 1 outfit will
have this Navy Blue, but the Mercenary Armor will be a tad darker, and the Chapter 4 Buttpants Outfit will hopefully be a little
less of an eyesore going for an all-grey Steel/Gunmetal look that'll hopefully make you think less about the Buttpants. Hehe!

Last but not least, Smart Encounters have been enabled. You can now SELECT when you want to fight a battle rather than hope
you don't get held up by one randomly and feel like you have to reload a quicksave just to avoid it. Just select a green
dot on the map, you'll move there without any obstacles in your way and you'll fight a battle there guaranteed.
Want to get to a different town quickly? No problem.

* Upcoming features:
Second Read: Hardcover Edition, that's still very beta and a Work in Progress, a companion and optional alternative.
Same Second Read script, new gameplay altogether.
It'll be my own interpretation of the Jobs and Abilities.
Planned features are making Hero Jobs (Holy Knight, Engineer, Divine Knight, etc.)
have a distinct identity as a base Job instead of "Squire+" due to their reactions
and supports being "Squire, but with different usable abilities" When the hell is
anyone gonna put Equip: Axes on Mustadio? Haha! They'll have reactions and supports
from other classes, but they'll hopefully be thematically fitting that you can keep
them at their special class instead of sloughing through Geomancer to get Attack Up
for Agrias.

For patching and playing this mod, use PPF-O-Matic, the provided PPF at the bottom of this post, and a CLEAN VANILLA ISO/BIN.
Do not patch on top of any other Image, you WILL break something.

And since I intended Second Read's script to be a base of its own that people could use in their own TLW2 builds, I will include Softcover's EVT in the download.
The EVT is meant for mod authors and developers, not players, so if you just want to play the mod, download the PPF.

Patch Notes
-------------------------
8 January, 2022 - Version 1.55
Fixed JP and proposition problems that arose from testing changes in the mod.
JP levels should be normal and vanilla again.

10 January, 2022 - Version 1.57
Fixed a critical crash after rescuing Rapha.
Fixed some character sprites being out of colour
in certain cutscenes.
Adjusted a lot of grammatical errors and cleaned
up some other sentences that look and feel wrong
saying them out loud.

13 January, 2022 - Version 1.59
Fixed many sprites being incorrectly rendered.

27 January, 2022 - Version 1.9
Fixed more grammatical and spelling errors. Adjusted some more dialogue to flow a bit more naturally.

Major Change: Bard and Dancer are now essentially the same class. To further push my theme of
"Less gender inequality" Both skillsets have been renamed to "Perform" both jobs are unlocked the same way, equip the same items, have the same stat multipliers and growths, everything.
As far as their passives, this has also been changed.
Both Bard and Dancer now have access to A/MA Save, Brave/Face Up, Move/Jump+3. Fly has been moved to Dark Knights since the Movement passives were redundant otherwise.

And last major gameplay change I ever plan to make, Perfumes and Hair Adornments are unisex.
You can equip them on any unit you please. You don't need to agonize over Cloud being the ONLY male character capable of equipping a Ribbon.

Also Mediator now has black pants instead of off-blue pants.

11 February, 2022 - Version 2.0
More grammatical errors and broken dialogue boxes fixed.
Made it clear Dancers and Bards are now the same class, can equip the right weapons, weapon descriptions fixed to match.
Removed "Women's ____" from equipment since now there's no gender disparity like before.
Made a slight change to the "Hacktics presents" screen as an early indicator you've got it working. Probably will be a yellow one for Hardcover whenever I get around to finishing that.
Remade all the Map Title screens. Will now properly show which maps you are going to or the game is preparing to show, "Fort Besselat" instead of "Bethla Garrison"

2 March, 2022 - Version 2.16
Fixed a couple more grammar errors. Gave Ultima a makeover. Took away her "crown wings" and a new palette.
Gave Miluda her own palette to work with during fights and scenes with her so she stands out.
New "Intro" help text after Gariland, little credit and explanation of some of the features.
Gave the UI a teensy tweak, you'll notice it, but I like it, my mod, nyeh! <3

Credits for the TLW Staff, 'cause without them, none of this would have been possible in the first place.
----------

Elric
Attack.out Rebuild, Spreadsheet & GUI
Worldmap Rebuild
WotL Event Additions & Fixes
Mod Organization
Vanilla Event Fixes and Jumps
ASM Setup, Application & Testing
Sound Novel fixes and Implimentation
Bugtesting

RavenofRazgriz
Initial Attack.out Rebuild, Spreadsheet & GUI
Initial Worldmap Rebuild
Sidequest Changes & WotL Implimentation

Xifanie
ASM - Altima Teleport
ASM - Event Instruction Upgrade Hack
ASM - Extra Abilities Effects Hack
ASM - Map 120 Edits
ASM - Unit Restriction & Guests in Randoms
New Game Plus Work (not yet complete)
Squashing some bugs

Angel/Toshiko
De-WotLize Dialogue in WotL Event Ports
Translated & Fixed Sound Novel Images
Title Screen & Lead-in frames from WotL Movie to Title Screen

Pride
ASM - Rumor Edits
ASM - ARH Lite - TLW Edition

Choto
ASM - 1E4 & 1E5 Become Adeptness & Sturdy
ASM - Barrage & Weapon Strike Rewrite
ASM - Extra Generic Class

Glain
ASM - Bravestory Fix
ASM - UWEntries

Twinees
Sprite Fixes & Edits

Valkirst
New Ashley Riot Sprite

FFMaster
WotL Opening & Intro Movie Ports

Nyzer
WotL Event Fixes

Celdia
Allowing merge of her ISIA patch for Consolidation.

Retrotypes
Several event fixes.

Bugtesters
Nyzer
HebrewToYou
Blue
Ansehelm
NinjaWeazel
Retrotypes

This mod has now been released in a completed form. You can find it HERE.


After a long struggle of not knowing what I'm doing, making hundreds of mistakes, I have finally completed my first mod for the community.
Also https://www.twitch.tv/caazan is nice enough to install this mod and is going to be streaming it on his channel. Check him out. I'll be watching as well, and I'd love to hear some opinions. He's the one who helped me settle on the Second Read name too! We were brainstorming names and I felt "Debarded" coming off of my rants about War of the Lions being badly-written Shakespearean nonsense wasn't catchy and didn't instill any sense of "Oooh, this sounds interesting" it felt... too technical.

_{Final Fantasy Tactics: Second Read}
"Mr. Coreander: Ahh, but have you ever read a book twice? Books change each time you read them."
- The Neverending Story 2

Final Fantasy Tactics is beloved by many, including myself ever since I was a child. So much so, that when my brother got in a fight, we broke the disc over my head. I'd bought WotL to play on his PSP, aaaand I lost it. But still, this game is near and dear to my heart and always will be. I liked War of the Lions' cutscenes, all the voice acting, but outside of those cutscenes where the dialogue was fairly easy to follow, they tried to retranslate the script far too hard. Every line felt like it was trying too hard to be Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe and as I've joked before, was so purple in its prose that it could literally choke a violet. So upon learning that I can actually change up the dialogue, I thought I'd try my hand at overhauling the ENTIRE game's script. Retranslating the translation.

This mod is built off of The Lion War 2.01 base patch. You will have access to all of TLW's features such as the Dark Knight Job, Rendezvous Missions, Transmigration, New Game+.

Features:
* Game dialogue overhaul.

* Characterization changes that try to flesh out
characters a little more and expand the world.
Such as Olan going to Ovelia and Delita not
as an accuser of "You killed my daddy".
He's playing his role as a guardian of
Ovelia and by extension Delita... from what...
you'll have to play to know.

* Scene changes such as Ramza blasting Algus
with a bolt of lightning for a very crude
comment about the Hyrals. More to be found
whilst playing.

* Minor character name changes.
Izlude is now Izurud. (Izurūdo Tinjeru is his translated name from Japanese)
Orlandu is Orland (Much easier to say in my opinion)
Vormav is Volmarv (A portmanteau of Folmarv and Vormav)

* Minor gameplay changes.
In scenes such as the "Save Algus" or "Kill All Enemies"
part in Mandalia plains, you'll be given a hint as to
what's what.
The Save Algus option will have (Hard Mode)
Kill All Enemies will have (Normal Mode)

You'll also be given some hints on gameplay, like
I feel should have been in vanilla.

* Major gameplay changes
The removal of Orland as a recruitable unit.
That's right. A simple change in the game's instructions
and I have removed the gamebreaking unit from the game.
He's too easy. There's no strategy involved. There's
no deeper thought into any of his kit. You just gain
a free Excalibur, high damage, innate Haste, and ick,
it completely breaks any tactics you had with the game.
You just slap as much PA boosting gear on him and he
wrecks the "TACTICS" part of the game. And you gain
enough "Hero" units as it is. Rafa, Marak, Meliadoul.
You don't need his broken ass! <3

* Upcoming features:
The finalization of Second Read with all the sidequests touched up.
Overhaul of unit names to reflect the script changes.
Edits to the Brave Story and things like Germonique's Account/Scriptures.
Second Read: Hardcover Edition, a companion and optional alternative.
Same Second Read script, new gameplay altogether.
It'll be my own interpretation of the Jobs and Abilities.
Planned features are making Hero Jobs (Holy Knight, Engineer, Divine Knight, etc.)
have a distinct identity as a base Job instead of "Squire+" due to their reactions
and supports being "Squire, but with different usable abilities" When the hell is
anyone gonna put Equip: Axes on Mustadio? Haha! They'll have reactions and supports
from other classes, but they'll hopefully be thematically fitting that you can keep
them at their special class instead of sloughing through Geomancer to get Attack Up
for Agrias.

File for patching here, use PPF-O-Matic and a CLEAN VANILLA ISO/BIN.
Do not patch on top of TLW2, you will probably break something.

Credits for the TLW Staff, 'cause without them, none of this would have been possible in the first place.
----------

Elric
Attack.out Rebuild, Spreadsheet & GUI
Worldmap Rebuild
WotL Event Additions & Fixes
Mod Organization
Vanilla Event Fixes and Jumps
ASM Setup, Application & Testing
Sound Novel fixes and Implimentation
Bugtesting

RavenofRazgriz
Initial Attack.out Rebuild, Spreadsheet & GUI
Initial Worldmap Rebuild
Sidequest Changes & WotL Implimentation

Xifanie
ASM - Altima Teleport
ASM - Event Instruction Upgrade Hack
ASM - Extra Abilities Effects Hack
ASM - Map 120 Edits
ASM - Unit Restriction & Guests in Randoms
New Game Plus Work (not yet complete)
Squashing some bugs

Angel/Toshiko
De-WotLize Dialogue in WotL Event Ports
Translated & Fixed Sound Novel Images
Title Screen & Lead-in frames from WotL Movie to Title Screen

Pride
ASM - Rumor Edits
ASM - ARH Lite - TLW Edition

Choto
ASM - 1E4 & 1E5 Become Adeptness & Sturdy
ASM - Barrage & Weapon Strike Rewrite
ASM - Extra Generic Class

Glain
ASM - Bravestory Fix
ASM - UWEntries

Twinees
Sprite Fixes & Edits

Valkirst
New Ashley Riot Sprite

FFMaster
WotL Opening & Intro Movie Ports

Nyzer
WotL Event Fixes

Celdia
Allowing merge of her ISIA patch for Consolidation.

Retrotypes
Several event fixes.

Bugtesters
Nyzer
HebrewToYou
Blue
Ansehelm
NinjaWeazel
Retrotypes

Loved this game since I was a kid, and I love that we have been gifted the tools necessary to mod this game's to our heart's content.
Well, as a sucker for this game, I once bought the War of the Lions for the PSP years ago before it was lost somewhere to annals of time and being moved from place to place for years.

So, I thought "I wanna relive the magic of this story and this gameplay", but the War of the Lions script is... so god damned flowery and overstuffed with Purple Prose I have - no joke - spent ten minutes trying to dissect what the bloody hell they're saying. I should not require a thesaurus and a dictionary pulled up just to understand a sentence.

So then it occurred to me, "Do it yourself. Rewrite it yourself. Be the writer you wish you could have been on the script team." So for the past half-year or so, give or take a couple of months, I have started rewriting and rescripting a lot of the PSX's scripts and dialogue.
Trying to modernize it (Really? Knave? God it hurts to read some lines) while changing a few things in terms of story beats but keeping the core story intact while also trying to give a little more flavor to the characters. (I.E Tietra being the nagging, annoying little sister to Ramza by stealing his art supplies to blackmail him into watching the sunset with her)

For example:
Algus: If I were you, I wouldn't put much faith in Dycedarg being delirious.
Ramza: What do you mean?
Algus: If it were me, I'd let the lamb be sacrificed.
Delita: What did you say?!
Algus: Too poetic? Sorry, I forgot commoners are illiterate. I said she's not worth saving!
Delita: Fuck you!!!
[Slugs Algus' face]

And from the same scene
Algus: They're at Fort Ziekden. I heard it from your brother.   
The fortress is heavily guarded from the front, naturally and artificially.
Your only option is a rear assault. Best of luck with your little lamb.
God, I fear for your bloodline if you decide to sire a child with her.
[Ramza blasts him with a non-lethal amount of lightning before throwing him out]

And some minor things like Gustav Margriff being impaled not having an interrupting "U...ugh" there's a brief pause but he falls to the ground sooner, and during the scene where Delita strikes down Chancellor Gelwan, there's less time spent before he draws his sword and swings it before Gelwan pleas for his life and then tries running. I felt, personally, that little change gives a more grim light to Delita and how ruthless he's becoming to the nobility.
Other changes include introducing the mystery of the Zodiac Stones a bit earlier with Delita being saved by the Sagittarius Stone that Tietra had on her person (the how that comes to be I'll have to think of later) but also changing the Stone's backstory to help with the narrative I'm writing of the Stone fleeing Delita after being able to save him from Tietra's selfless wish for his safety (The Stones have different powers, they're not all universally able to revive the dead) to spare him being seduced by the Lucavi Demon locked within the Stone.

I'd love some feedback though, I've gotten up to the battle with Zalmo in Lesalia, nothing's finalized, it's all up to change with new knowledge of how to work the dialogue boxes and some of the scripting, but I'd love to hear some feedback.

If you want to check it out for yourself, I have two videos of a rougher draft of some scenes up to about the Algus expulsion from the Beoulve Manor
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSSHMWBS_J1oFJNaY4FyaUw here.

And if you want to check out the scenes up to Lesalia's fight in chapter 2, you can insert the EVT to an ISO patched with The Lion War patch by Elric and his team. Without their considerable work consolidating events like they did, I'd have to have worked a lot harder and I cannot thank them enough for letting us use The Lion War as a base patch.

TLW Credits
===============================================================================================================
TLW Staff
----------

Elric
Attack.out Rebuild, Spreadsheet & GUI
Worldmap Rebuild
WotL Event Additions & Fixes
Mod Organization
Vanilla Event Fixes and Jumps
ASM Setup, Application & Testing
Sound Novel fixes and Implimentation
Bugtesting

RavenofRazgriz
Initial Attack.out Rebuild, Spreadsheet & GUI
Initial Worldmap Rebuild
Sidequest Changes & WotL Implimentation

Xifanie
ASM - Altima Teleport
ASM - Event Instruction Upgrade Hack
ASM - Extra Abilities Effects Hack
ASM - Map 120 Edits
ASM - Unit Restriction & Guests in Randoms
New Game Plus Work (not yet complete)
Squashing some bugs

Angel/Toshiko
De-WotLize Dialogue in WotL Event Ports
Translated & Fixed Sound Novel Images
Title Screen & Lead-in frames from WotL Movie to Title Screen

Pride
ASM - Rumor Edits
ASM - ARH Lite - TLW Edition

Choto
ASM - 1E4 & 1E5 Become Adeptness & Sturdy
ASM - Barrage & Weapon Strike Rewrite
ASM - Extra Generic Class

Glain
ASM - Bravestory Fix
ASM - UWEntries

Twinees
Sprite Fixes & Edits

Valkirst
New Ashley Riot Sprite

FFMaster
WotL Opening & Intro Movie Ports

Nyzer
WotL Event Fixes

Celdia
Allowing merge of her ISIA patch for Consolidation.

Retrotypes
Several event fixes.

Bugtesters
Nyzer
HebrewToYou
Blue
Ansehelm
NinjaWeazel
Retrotypes
FFTTLW - ReScripted.zip