Final Fantasy Hacktics

Hi. I'd like to hack FFT 1.3 and change Rad, Lavian, and Alicia to their mercenaries counterparts. However, the closest I've ever come to hacking FFT is I played with a gameshark (albeit extensively) to make some of my own custom classes using the already made moves.

I don't know the first step, or where to even begin, how difficult it would be compared to other projects, or anything. I'm sure it's possible, but like I said, I dunno how or where to begin, or if it's even in my grasp to do so in a timely manner, or even at all. Help would be appreciated!


Oh, and the other thing I'd wanted to ask was is it possible to change what status effects actually do? I'd also like to change the effects of oil to instead of increasing fire damage, to nullify all magic damage. The idea I'm going with this is I want to remove oil from everywhere in the game, and give it to Dicedarg as a self targeting buff, essentially giving him Runic as he so rightfully deserves.

P.S. I've never hacked anything in my life, so you will most likely have to explain everything to me as a child.

Edit: I just realized I posted this in the wrong forum. Sorry. Any chance a moderator could move it for me?

Start by downloading FFTPatcher from the main page download section. Start experimenting with there and ask more after you have gotten the handle of that.

Editing status effects would require knowledge of ASM hacking. Changing rad/lavian/alicia into custom classes and whatnot can be done with patcher, as cheetah suggested.

Ok, I've been looking over the patcher, which isn't nearly as intimidating as I thought it would be, and I've got a couple more questions:

1. How should I patch this: Over a clean ISO, or the existing 1.3 patch? If I do have to patch over a clean ISO, how would I go about converting that to 1.3 without messing anything up?

2. To change this, can you all suggest 3 jobs/skillsets that aren't used so I don't mess anything up too terribly bad? I believe Arc Witch would be a good start. After that though, I'm fuzzy on what would and wouldn't be ok to use.

1) always, always, always, ALWAYS patch over a clean ISO, no exceptions, dirty patching is icky and bad, and causes mucho glitches, so just don't do it

2) Arc Witch, Duke, the guest only versions of Agrias, Mustadio, Rafa and Malak, and the various "undead" jobs (not the skeletons or ghosts, but the undead versions of normal generics you fight at poeskas lake and yugo woods, as well as the undead knights that accompony Zalra, every one of these jobs can be replicated by just using a normal job and equiping the unit with a Cursed Ring, so you should fell free to overwrite any of them)

1. Open a patched 1.3 iso with patcher. Then patch any changes to that 1.3 iso.
There are a lot of changes in 1.3 that weren't done with patcher. If you patch the 1.3 changes that are only from patcher to a clean iso, you'll get funky results.

2. One of the developers of 1.3 would have to answer this. I believe they used up most the slots already on bosses and whatnot.

Ok, so how would I go about converting this abomination I'm making to 1.3?

And yeah, I'll probably use guest rafa and malak since no one cares about them anyway lol. What skillset should I give the Arc Witch? Again, I'm not sure which ones the NPCs use towards the end of the game.

the way you'd covert it to 1.3 is using the create .FFTpatch from patched iso function of FFTPatcher, this will create a FFTPatcher file that is identical to 1.3 in every way except for ASM hacks, to implement those in your own personal patch, you'll need to talk to our ASM'ers to figure out what you'll need in order to imput those manually (it sounds daunting, but the hacks have already been made, you just need to imput them in the proper place)

Arc Witch (and it's skillset) in 1.3 is on incredibly powerful god-mode level

just a heads up

i've seen the DD vids, I am aware, I just missed that the OP was asking for advice in spcifically making a 1.3-based patch

Hmm. I think I'll cancel this endeavor for now. It's getting too complicated, and at the moment I don't even know how to make LD's jobs anyway, not to mention the text editing, and said ASM hacks, (I don't even know what that means!) I'll probably tinker with it a bit, and still give them custom jobs, but for now this is going to be a bit much for me/ Thanks for the help everyone! If anyone else has this idea and has more success than I did please let me know!

ASM hack = assembly coding.
Basically editing the game's compiled code through hex.

Anyway, can't encourage you to give up so easily :) Shoot any further questions and we'll answer to the best of our ability.

Hmm...Well, I stand by my decision that recreating LD's jobs will prove too difficult at the moment. But what steps do I need to take to make the 1.3 patch work with the ASM hacking? Yeah, I have no idea how to word it, but basically what do I need to do to edit the 1.3 patch and it still work?

It should still work if you use Patcher to edit a patched iso directly. Haven't tried it myself, and of course there's always the chance of it screwing things up, so make a backup.

mmk. I'll test it now and get back to you. I'll go with a classic: Cure turns all enemies into crystals for 0 mp and 0 charge time!!!

Ok, I forgot to change the mp and charge time, and I couldn't figure out how to get it to apply status effects, but I did build a cure that cures all the enemies on the field and doesn't touch your units...Not that that would do any good. The point is, you can alter 1.3 and it'll be fine as long as YOU didn't mess anything up.

Now I'll hop over to the 1.3 boards and ask what slots are free, and try mu luck there, though I have a feeling I'm going to have to figure out sprite editing too. Damn it.