Solved: Job Name not Appearing in Formation Screen and Skills already Mastered

[ActionMan000]

G'morning/afternoon/evening everybody.

I've been poking in this forum for a while to get less bad at tinkering with FFT, but I've run into some issues that my Search-Fu has not been able to help me with.

Using the PSX version of the game, I've been working on learning how to create custom jobs/skillsets. The first issue I'm running into is the Job Name not appearing in all the fields in the Formation Screen. Right now, I'm playing around with Rad/Alicia/Lavian to see what

- (Alicia/Lavian) Open Roster screen, go to unit that has a new custom job. Job Name appears on the banner. Go to Ability Tab, and Skillset Name appears (in the area where you can set the reaction/support/movement abilities). I go to Learn, and the window that appears, there's no Job Name. I've been digging around in TacText, but I can't seem to find what I need to edit to get the Job Name to appear. I've tried placing these units with different 'unused' jobs (and linking the skill set I made to it), but the Job Name doesn't show up. The Skillset IDs I'm using for these are 4E and 4F in FFTPatcher - using the FFT Mod Helper spreadsheet, these are listed as Unused Skillsets.

- For Rad, I used Simon's job and the Skillset 4D. This job shows up in the Ability --> Learn menu.

- For all three of these custom jobs, they show as "Mastered" in the Ability --> Learn screen. In a battle, I have access to all of the abilities. I'm not sure what to do here, because in Abilities, I've given them a JP cost (higher than any amount of JP a unit can start with), so I'm not sure why they're all Mastered.

In TacText, I'm sure I always modified all three when I did anything, but I must have missed something. I've looked in Jon's Character Creation Tutorial to use the specific fields in TacText to edit, and from what I can see, I've modified everything he says to do in his guide.

I'm sure this is User Error, but I've been bumbling around for a couple days with no success. If there's a relevant link/post that I missed, a link to it would be appreciated.

All the tools and info here has been great, and I'm having lots of fun tinkering with the game. Thanks in advance for any help, and apologies in advance if I didn't explain something well enough.

[Jumza]

For names not appearing in certain places I would recommend two things,
1. Ensure you are using the latest FFTPatcher suite, the latest version is .494 https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7163.0

2. If the problem persists, I would recommend download the FFText Editor spreadsheet. Make your edits there, export the TacText file (Add-ins -> export .fftext), open it in the latest FFTacText (selecting no to open missing files from ISO), then apply. With this method make sure that you unselect 'Export Card.out 2' in the FFText Editor settings tabs.

If you are still having problems after that, there is something else going on!

For the skillsets having mastered abilities, it kind of sounds to me like you may be setting their skillsets in their ENTD entries, and maybe not in their Job's skillset field? Make sure the Job has the skillset set in the Jobs tab of FFTP, and that when those guys join that they have their primary skillsets set to FF <Job's>. The reason I think this may be the case is when a unit is assigned a skillset that is not their base job or a generic skillset, the game makes all the skills be autolearned.

[Nyzer]

That tutorial is twelve years old and wasn't even complete at the time. (Also took goddamn forever to find so I could even reference it.) This is very likely why it never got added to the Tutorial Link Index.

QuickEdit is an addition to TacText that came some time after that tutorial and should actually edit every entry there, not just one of them. There are a lot of duplicate TacText entries in the game that get used at different points, as you've noticed with it blanking out on you there.

When it comes to the sprite work, follow Celdia's tutorial, as it was actually recently updated to better cover what can be done with the updates to tools that have arrived since then.

[ActionMan000]

I appreciate the responses. I'm going to be diving back into it to see if I can find where I made errors.

I do have the TacText spreadsheet, and I can see my updated Job Names listed there, so I figure I must be missing a file entry somewhere along the line for why it's not showing up in the Ability --> Learn window. I think I'm going to try with a fresh copy of the file and start over since right now I'm just tinkering.

For spriting, the tutorials were invaluable. I've been able to add/update sprites for both battle and formation screens using the tools here. Celdia's tutorial and Gwain's XML edit are awesome.

[ActionMan000]

I did some more tinkering in a fresh ISO to try to figure out more with the Jobs system. I used Rad/Alicia/Lavian as my test subjects. I also used the Mod Helper spreadsheet to locate specific ENTDs that Jobs were used in. I have not modified or changed any Skill Sets that are linked to Jobs by the game itself.

I am using .494 of FFTPatcher.

I set Rad's job as 06 Arc Knight (used by Delita in a couple scenes)
I changed Alicia to Holy Knight (Agrias' job when she joins as a guest)
I changed Lavian to Dark Knight (Gaff's job when he joins as a guest)

In the ENTD section, I'm working in "110 Ch 2 Orbonne Monestary"

For the skillsets having mastered abilities, it kind of sounds to me like you may be setting their skillsets in their ENTD entries, and maybe not in their Job's skillset field? Make sure the Job has the skillset set in the Jobs tab of FFTP, and that when those guys join that they have their primary skillsets set to FF <Job's>. The reason I think this may be the case is when a unit is assigned a skillset that is not their base job or a generic skillset, the game makes all the skills be autolearned.

This was helpful, and it did cause the Jobs to be mastered. FF <Job's> is the way to go here. Thanks!

When I patched my ISO with those three job changes, the Job Name appears on the character banner, and the Skill Set name appears in the Ability Window when in the Party Roster menu. However, when I go to the Learn submenu, all three jobs showed as "Squire" with all Squire related abilities. There was no job listed for the new jobs I assigned the three.

From here, with Lavian, I also changed her Unit in FFTPatcher. All three start with "## Generic <M/F>". When I changed Lavian to 3A - Celia (Never Used) - the job name came back blank in the Ability --> Learn submenu. The job is also Mastered, even with the "FF <Job's>" option in the ENTD.

I changed Lavian's Unit to 35 Female Chemist, and in the Ability --> Learn submenu, Chemist replaced the Squire Job (so I had two Chemist jobs in her submenu).

I changed Lavian's Unit back to 3A, then opened up TacText and when to the Unit Names submenu. 003A is a blank field, so I added some text there to see what would happen. The Ability --> Learn submenu still had the job name blank. I wasn't confident this would do anything since all the other text in here have specific NPCs, not Jobs.

When tested in battle (Dorter story battle), the unit has the abilities as per the Skill Set linked to their Job in FFTPatcher.

So, the Job in the Ability --> Learn submenu is linked to the Unit ID selected in the ENTD window of FFTPatcher. I'm not sure how to modify this to get the Job I want to appear so I can learn abilities. If I'm understanding spriting, I could change the Unit in ENTD to Gafgarion's. Doing this, Dark Knight appears in the "Ability --> Learn" submenu, and I can go into it, teach abilities, all that. However, if I modify the sprite, it's going to modify Gaf as well, which I don't want to do.

Do I need to shuffle more around? Have Lavian replace Gafgarion as the Unit, then move Gafgarion to a different Unit (say Celia (Never Used)), then update both sprites/Units? I don't care about Gafgarion's job name not appearing since he's temporary.

ETA: If I then change the Skill Set associated with a job, would I have this issue again? Or should I leave the currently linked Skill Set and change the abilities that come with it?

[ActionMan000]

Started with a fresh ISO, and kept my tinkering to Jobs 39, 3A, and 3B, using skillsets 2D, 27, and 1E respectively. I chose these skillsets because 2D is used by Rafa when she is a guest, so I plan on changing that to her skillset she has when she's a full party member. 27 is used by Gafgarion, but there's another Dark Sword skill set, so I'll swap him to that set. 1E is a Skillset assigned to Delita for a couple scenes, so I don't see an issue in using it for a custom Job since it never appears in battle.

I put together some abilities and assigned them to my chosen Skillsets, then in the ENTD 110, I updated Rad, Alicia, and Lavian with these changes. Aside from a couple graphics issues with the text, everything seems to be working. Job and Ability names are appearing where they should. I must have borked something up in my first run.

In TacText, I wanted to use the word "Thunderous" in one of my abilities, but the "Th" doesn't show up with the Ability name in the Roster screen. There are spaces to indicate something should be there, but the letters aren't showing up. I'm not sure what causes that.

So it appears that I was running into some User Error. I think I've dealt with the original problems I had, so I'll mark this as Solved. I appreciate the help!

[Jumza]

I'm glad your initial issue was resolved!

In TacText, I wanted to use the word "Thunderous" in one of my abilities, but the "Th" doesn't show up with the Ability name in the Roster screen. There are spaces to indicate something should be there, but the letters aren't showing up. I'm not sure what causes that.

TacText will often squeeze together common letter pairings like 'Th' and save them as a single character to save space, so it sounds like a problem with that! I would recommend joining the FFH Discord and asking Glain about it, he is the one that is currently maintaining the FFTPatcher Suite for us (and we're very lucky to have him!).

My only guess as to the fix would be to make sure you are patching the text last? Maybe you're overwriting some font data somewhere with an ASM hack or some other import.

[ActionMan000]

In my first attempt, I was using Jobs 8E/8F/92. I discovered that 92 was possibly a "Monster" job, which is why I all the options in the Ability Tab were greyed out. 8E/8F still wouldn't show text in the "Ability --> Learn" submenu, and the job always showed as Mastered, so maybe this was somehow set as another monster job?

In my latest go, I used 39/3A/3B as my jobs, and the name showed everywhere it should, I could edit the skillsets I assigned (I repurposed some 'duplicate' skillsets in the game), and all the names/JP costs showed up. I guess my error was trying to use Jobs that weren't good for custom job creation.