FFTA: Doublecast 0.50 Beta

[Adel Novalis]

FFTA:DOUBLECAST

0.50 Beta

First of all I want to clarify something, the mod that I will present below I started it years ago as a personal project, but the advances were sporadic, even so the result was pretty good, the thing is that by a miscalculation I damaged the OS of my computer and I was forced to reinstall everything from zero, losing this and other projects even more important to me, luckily thanks to the only backup at my disposal which was on my smartphone, I could continue this specific one, but from a somewhat outdated version in which the voices of some new units are not the ones that correspond to them, but not having any other information regarding my mod, (use of free space and stuff) I was forced to continue this way, because the mod has many changes (I also did some things whose procedure I do not remember) and do everything from scratch would be a lot of work, there are still things to do, but I decided to publish the mod in an improvised way to not regret it later, I clarify that I will do my best to update it when I have availability, but I have my obligations like everyone, so I do not promise anything, and of course, you are invited to test and give your opinions about the mod.


Without further ado, I present Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Doublecast, a frenetic version that will allow you to make crazy and interesting combinations:

GENERAL FEATURES:

-Base and balance from FFTA Revisited (2.0 I think)

-All playable humanoid jobs start with the "Doublecast" skill learned except for one exception per race.

-All humanoid jobs have free access to the ITEM command.

-Modified and deleted objects.

-Range for the use of potions and similar increased (FFT style).

-Modified item prices and quest rewards.

-All playable classes can use shields and more variety of weapons.

-Some items are only reserved for enemies.

All jobs (playable and non-playable) have received changes, some slight, other jobs have massive changes.

-Many new, modified and removed skills.

-Both monsters and humanoids can be recruited by completing the corresponding quests (You can recruit monsters almost from the beginning).

-New playable jobs.

-Learning vanilla skills.

-Laws and cards.

-Combos

-Totema.



MONSTERS:

-New skills or vanilla modifications.

-Monsters can change to their variant trades (some from the beginning, and others after learning some skills), but these become more of a visual change, at least mostly, but the resistances and elemental weaknesses are kept.

-Monsters have access to all their abilities in each command variant.

-Monsters learn skills in the same way as the blue mage does ("Learning" passive), reaction and support skills are learned by default.

-You can equip accessories and armor to your monsters.

-When capturing monsters from your own team you create a copy in the monster bank without losing your unit.


ITEMS AND EQUIPABLES:

-Cureall becomes an item to farm.

-Holy Water becomes a farmable item.

Potion: now heals HP equal to your Max MP without damage to undead.

Hi-potion heals 50% of your Max HP without damage to undead.

X-potion heals 100% of your HP. no damage to undead.

Elixir works the same but without the undead damage.

JOBS:

Soldier:
-Passes to be called Dark Knight, now being a corrupted version of Paladin.

Paladin:
-Changes in his abilities.

Fighter
-Changes in his skills.

Thief:
-Massive changes to his skills, Stealth, much more offensive, standard unit to farm.

Ninja:
-Changes to his abilities, increased veil damage. new abilities.

White Mage:
-Esuna no longer heals all altered states, now only removes silence, toad and petrification.

-New ability called "Faith" removes Undead, Poison and Blind,

-Added Holy ability to this class.

Black Mage:
-Changes to his abilities.

Illusionist:
-Changes in his abilities, all his abilities lower magic resistance.

Blue Mage:
-Changes in their abilities (above).

Prism Mage:
-Passes to replace the archer, he is a mage able to use magics from the different playable races.

Hunter:
-Changes in his skills, much more versatile.

Warrior:
-Changes in his abilities.

Dragoon:
-Changes in his skills.

Defender:
-Changes in their abilities.

Gladiator:
-Changes in his abilities.

White Monk:
-Changes in his abilities.

Bishop:
-Changes in his abilities.

Templar:
-Changes in his abilities.

Time Mage:
-Changes in his abilities.

Alchemist:
-Changes in his abilities, he has an Elixir that he can use by spending MP.

Beastmaster:
-Changes in his abilities.

Morpher:
-Changes in his abilities, shapeshifting heals immobilizations and regenerates MP.

Sage:
-Changes in his abilities.

Fencer:
-Changes in his abilities.

Elementalist:
-Changes in their abilities.

Red Mage:
-Changes in their skills, new skill Ultima Magic, magic with 100% precision capable of lowering the resistance and magic attack to the enemy.

Summoner:
-Changes in his skills.

Archer:
-Changes in his skills, elemental shooting.

Assasin:
-Changes in their skills.

Sniper:
-Changes in his skills, more utility, new skills, stealth, Boost, Powershot, able to kill the weak with one shot.

Animist:
-Changes in his abilities.

Mog Knight:
-Changes in his abilities, more powerful and defensive.

Gunner:
-Changes in his abilities, more utility.

Juggler:
-Changes in their abilities, Curaga?

Gadgeteer
-Changes in your skills.


PENDING THINGS:

-Balance testing of some skills.

-Further testing of AI for possible errors when using skills.

-Edit all enemy equipment with jobs, skills and items to balance the difficulty.

-Correct and add descriptions and help concerning the effects of new skills.

-Others.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

-Use mGBA, Visual boy Advance has bugs, the mod has not been tested in depth on android or others.

-Save game often for possible errors.


HOW TO APLY PATCH
1-Download the .zip file and extract it.
2-Start the included NUPS.
3-Click "Apply an UPS patch to a file". Another window appears.
4-Select a clean US FFTA rom and the .ups file and then click "Patch". A message appears showing success.


CREDITS
Darthatron
  AIO editor
  Text editor
bcrobert
  Nightmare modules
  FFTA notes
Sephiran
  Shields fix
Leonarth
  Skip intro cutscene and battles
  Missing weaponand skill animations for all playable jobs
  Manual unit sort
  Custom Names
  Morphing changes appearance to monster
  HP and MP go till 4 digits
  Stat variance and fixed level ups
  Steal shoes

Eternal, Darthatron, bcrobert, dck, Leonarth, rrs_kai, and the FFH community

[blaide]

Thank you for this, I am having so much fun with it, it is now my favourite FFTA mod.

One problem I've come across early on is the gunners HealShot does not do damage to zombies instead it heals them, I'm unsure if this is the case for all healing spells on zombies.

I can't wait to see further updates and I'll advise if I come across any other issues 😊

[Adel Novalis]

Greetings and thanks for the report, I'm glad you like it, and no, the "HealShot" is designed to heal everyone equally, there is an ability to turn your entire team into zombies, being so I did not want to detract from the usefulness of that ability, besides making the zombies a little less vulnerable. 

[blaide]

Thank you so much for the response!

I really enjoyed my firsy playthrough of DoubleCast, I would love to see some tweaks made if possible.

I don't know whether or not it was just me but I got to Level 50 realy quickly, theres something about this game that takes a lot of the fun out of it when I can no longer level up, it would be great if you could somehow increase the level cap to 99 or heavily reduce the EXP given.

I Love that you can get monster recruits but I never seemed to get non monster recruits other than using the "certain race wanted" missions, it would be great if it was 50% monster and 50% non monster recruits requesting to join

I dont know if it would be possible but it would be great if you could add a few more skills to the monsters like FloatEye being able to learn Aero or something random like that, to try to make every Monster viable, as I found no reason to keep the monster I had and just recruit the highest level version.

In the vanilla game the Gadgeteer class was probably my favourite and I didn't really use it much at all in this mod, I completely understand why changes had to me made as the vanilla version was way too OP, but it would be great if something new was brought to the Gadgeteer, like perhaps having Metronome style attacks where it picks a completly random move from the whole player pool to use, unsure if thats even possible but that would be cool, I found at times that there wasn't much point picking a different class as there was a lot of moves that did similar status effects it would be great if there was only 1 race that could immobilize an enemy, 1 race that could stop an enemy, and so on, it was sometimes a little too easy when numerous classes had similar status effects they could inflict, this may have been an issue with the vanilla game also.

I found later on in the game it seemed to get a bit easier, early on it truly was a challenge, but later on, clan battles and other missions the enemies only had a few moves they could use and early on a lot of the battles the enemies had sooo many attacks, unsure if this is due to the mod not being fully complete, however on the flip side of this I feel at times too many enemies had revive abilities and it did get quite tedious when everyone could just revive themselves and I was pulling my hair out with all the angel rings enemies had equipped.

I was really excited to try the new class "Dark knight" unsure if I was using it wrong but I couldn't get on with it and I was doing hardly any damage, I didn't see the need to turn into a zombie lol.

I'm unsure if you are able to make it so you can't repeat missions as this made the game a little easy, but still make it so no missions can be missed.

I feel like I've rambled on a little too much here, if I think of anything else I'll let you know, I really hope you continue work on this mod as I think it's amazing and definately the best mod I've played for FFTA, it was challenging but not completely unfair.

Kind Regards
Mya

[Adel Novalis]

Thanks for the feedback!

You propose several interesting ideas, the level thing I tried to apply some time ago but did not work well, my idea was to extend the maximum level to 99 but balance the stats of each job, in theory you can reach level 99 currently but I have only managed to overcome the level 50 with the editor.

 If you look at the monsters of the same race have the same stats, there is no superior version, except in certain elemental exceptions, it is more to choose the appearance that you like, although I could try to give more variety by adding more elemental affinities, and unfortunately there is a space set for the skills of each job, so I can not add skills, but replace existing ones.

Coincidentally the Floateye/Ahriman race has not received any change yet, I was thinking of making it petrify in area with the look, I could also put Aero as you say, it would look good.

In general my intention is that at least some of the monsters are more self-sufficient, that is, they can regenerate HP with some of their attacks, I did something similar with most of the basic elemental magic, which has an accuracy of 100% when having allies as target, this seeking to give more difficulty when aiming, but also useful for those who have some elemental affinity, as they could be healed with their own attacks.

Currently you can recruit human races in their respective missions, but what you propose would also be an option.

As for the Gadgeteer and skills in general, the game has programmed all the effects of each skill, you can play with them and create skills by combining them but it doesn't program a new effect, like freeze or burn. So the variety in skills is quite limited unfortunately, however, it has always been my idea not to limit the effects available for each race, but to give them at least something unique to each one.

How ironic, the Dark Knight has been difficult to balance because of how strong he is, his flagship ability is "Dark Touch" which does damage depending on the amount of life you lack, in addition to restoring the same amount, that is, in critical state you could make a one-shot to an enemy with all the life.

His ability "Curse" forces you to target a nearby unit inflicting some damage, in return it reduces your HP by 90% and gives you 80 MP, the combo is Curse + Dark Touch.

His "Death" ability heals zombies and deals damage to everything else.

The opposite ability to "Dark Touch" would be "Holy Blade", which does damage equal to your current health, but takes 25% recoil damage, and also adds the "Regen" buff.

As I mentioned before, I need to add the descriptions for many skills, to avoid confusion, besides balancing the game to maintain or increase the difficulty, I must review each of the teams of rival clans, so that they are at the height both at the beginning and at the end of the game.

I laughed a lot at the angel rings I did that partly because players were abusing that item a lot.

Zombies give you the possibility to have a pseudo-immortal army, plus a specific feature that will be useful near the end of the game.

The fight against Remedi will be a nightmare, I assure you that he will make your units disappear (literally)

At the moment, there are a few things that I would like to see tested, and on which I would like some feedback:

-Use of the menu items, command "Drop" and "Draw Weapons".

-Performance of humanoid jobs in general.

-The theft of items from the thief to the units in KO.

-The special evolutions of the race Lamia and Sprite, is unlocked by learning all the skills of their respective races.

-The job "Prism Mage", is unlocked by learning all the skills of Blue Mage.

-Use of "Crystal" units to add pseudo-climates in some areas.

As a curious fact, the job "Thief" "Hunter" and "Ninja" were modified taking World of Warcraft, Monster Hunter and Naruto as inspiration, respectively.

Yes, It is possible to choose whether a mission is repeatable or not.

Believe me I still have plans to implement things besides leaving the game in the best possible state, such as improving the multiplayer experience with "elite missions", and if possible create a tournament style PVP map.

Once again, thanks for the feedback, any doubt or suggestion is welcome.

Kind regards
Adel

[blaide]

Thanks for the great response

I find with FFTA it can take a long time to complete with all the missions so you can find yourself getting to max level quite quickly, if you were unable to get the level cap up, maybe just reduce all EXP by 50% or maybe even disabling exp rewards on clan war battles.

Would it be possible to remove support and reaction abilities from monsters so you can make more room for action abilities, e.g. replacing Reveal from the Panther and replacing it with Fira, I feel that the monster skills could do with a big switch up to make it feel more fresh and also make it a little tricky as Skills like "Blaster" make it a little too easy, also I found the ability "Resonate" very rarely targetted anyone on the map.

Instead of having recruitable monsters would it be possible for changing some of the Nu Mou Jobs for example to a monster, e.g. Beastmaster turns into a Malboro, unsure if this would counter the problem of max monster skills for a spin on the Morpher job, just a silly idea.

As for Some more feedback.

*Use of items*- I loved that jobs had free access to the item command, a brilliant idea, and extending the range of potion was genious, I very rarely used items in the OG game, I didn't use the drop and draw weapons command unfortunately so can't comment on that.

*Performance of Human Jobs*- If I''m honest I wasn't a big fan on the human jobs, I felt they was a little underwhelming, the only job I loved was the Hunter, that's what I used for most of my playthrough with a few blue mage skills thrown in.

*Thieves- I didn't really use thieves in my playthrough, I wasn't a fan of theft abilities in this game, I thought you could easily manipulate the game with stealing everything and there wasn't many exclusive items that could only be stolen, I would have much prefered a job like "Speed Demon" rather than thief, a job with incredible fast speed and move and has abilities which enables him to teleport anywhere on the map and skills that make the enemies skip their turns.

*Prism Mage- I didn't experiment with the Prism Mage but I thought it was a great idea to have a red mage like job for humans but I thought the big requirement of "all blue mage skills" was a little extreme, unsure if it's possible but it would be amazing if all races had 1 or 2 super special jobs that were unlocked at a certain part of the game or when you obtained a certain item, like getting the item "Bangaa Tears" unlocks "Dragon Warrior"

I know with the current resources out there for FFTA there is only so much modding you can do, but I don't think we will ever recieve an official remake of this amazing game, tactical RPGs are my fave genre of game and FFTA is my favourite tactics game, the more mods out there the better.
I'm so happy that you will be continuing to work on this mod, I really can't wait for further updates.

Kindest Regards
Mya