Final Fantasy Hacktics

The community seems to use a lot of spreadsheets for editing things; I'm curious what the reason behind this is. I've tried searching the forums, and found good documentation on the standalone program tools, but the spreadsheets seem to each operate under their own logic and formatting, and I'm a little baffled.

• Am I correct in guessing they mostly just output xml?
• If so, is the generated xml generally intended to be copied into files, and placed in the folders alongside the FFTorgASM install, like the bundled ones?
• Is there anything preventing me from just hand-editing the xml directly? I know I might be crazy, and I'm sure there's unique and vital logic buried in macros, but I am so much more comfortable with code/syntax editing in a text editor than navigating Excel files, so I wanted to at least ask.

Thanks again, 🐝

I just came across a thread in the WotL modding section, that said in no uncertain terms that WotL modding is a bad idea, compared to the PSX version.

I wanted to mod WotL because I think the cutscenes are beautiful, and some of the extra content is fun, but after seeing the thread, I was wondering if support is still as rough as it was ~6 years ago when the thread was created.

Thanks again for the help! 🐝

In WotL, there are duplicate job entries in slots:

35. Chemist
36. White Mage
37. Black Mage
38. Mystic

Aside from an innate immunity to "traitor", they appear to be nearly identical to their normal entries at 4B, 4F, 50, 55. Unlike their "undead" variants, these duplicates each vary only in a minor tweak or two to C-EV and HP Multiplier (+/- 5), and a manual spot-check turned up only three references to them (ENTD's 00A, 00C, 02E) and all were in unnamed and (seemingly?) unused encounters.

Anyway, I was wondering if a consolidation patch might not free up some job slots for folks to use in patches? If not, I'd love to know if there's something I'm missing here. Thanks!

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*EDIT* - In reading further, and I am beginning to suspect that is that even were this an option, it wouldn't actually provide more player-usable slots, due to the existing hard limit on job-wheel space. That probably limits the usefulness of consolidating the slots, but I figure it can't hurt to ask, regardless.