Final Fantasy Hacktics

trukxlig123 is indeed correct, life render is a palette swap of jump, and works just fine on bangaa units so long as the 52 in the module is actually using an animation. In this case it was just shake head to fit the theme.
It also works for any race doing the same process, however during the last frames of impact the sprite glitches out and is split in multiple pieces until it calls for the landing one. I wasn't very interested in using the jump animation for anyone else though, so I didn't look for a solution.

Welp, been a while since the last post. I had to take a break from this due to some unexpected stuff coming up, and in truth mission rewards adjusted for the new items were annoying and killed most drive I had to get things done.
However I recently set up the missions up to exodus and did a test run through the main ones; even though I may be biased as hell I had a great time, particularly because I didn't even remember most changes I had done to formations and was surprised by most nasty stuff. Anyhow, point is I felt it was good fun and I want it done (so I can play it ), so first release should be imminent now, as I just have to finish side missions available from 8 to 15 (and these are a lot less than 1 to 8) and then bite the bullet and set up the damn rewards once and for all.

It's funny looking back how I actually believed formations would be the fastest thing to get done. Even when I'm not doing anything particularly fancy to them they still take a lot of checking to make sure they work as intended and sort of fit the power curve.

A positive side result of this is I there's not a lot of rushing and I think particularly story missions like totema fights are pretty cool. Story-wise development is done up to exodus, though given the ridiculous amount of side missions up to that point (with their rewards and battles to set up) I'll probably end the first release after ultima's battle which is when the shop first updates.
When that'll happen is anyone's guess!

Well I thought there might be some luck with the "unknown/unconfirmed" bytes the structures txt mentions, but those are just animation, description etc from what I can gather.
I guess this might be affected by the monster bank structure, and I have no idea where that might be.

Annoying stuff, but at least in my case I have room to move those skills assigned to morph slots, hope it's the same for you. Do mention if you find out anything about this.

Just looked into this since I'm pretty sure I've used every "morph" skill slot so far. The AI can use it so long as the player owns the monster related to the skill, but yes it looks like availability is tied to that.
There are a few skill flags that I haven't looked into yet and must be related to this type of stuff, among other things like the AI never using certain attacks unless they have 100% chance to hit. I'll check it out and see what I can find.

Open the rom with the AIO editor, go to the item editor, get to an item that doesn't normally have any skills (so skillset will be zero) and click the save floppy disk button.

Hm, was there any confirmation on the changes regarding exp gain? As in, someone using the 2x change found here successfully?
I've been looking into the suggested 12e658: e5 08 change, and it seems to just default to 100 or 1 exp gain scenarios, with a lot of moves not yielding any exp at all. From what I have seen playing around with other values, this seems to be the most common result of altering them- followed by no exp at all.

Just wondering in case it's known the change actually works before I put more time into it.

Yeah, just set to whole map targeting and quickness + effect 1 dependent delay, should apply them every time.
good luck!

I don't know about the specifics of turn order, but I remember the guide describes quickness as setting your reserve at 4096. Unfortunately it doesn't simultaneously modify counter since it sets a byte to force next turn, but there's the delay effect from suffocate which does reduce counter to zero.

I'm not sure if this would help thin down the possible values to keep track of, but it seems a skill that hits every unit on the field with delay and quickness might be of good use to force known values on both of those and find out which is which.

Very nice, I had been looking on my own for ways to get new units to apply for joining the clan- Llednar among them. I was going for a different approach with a different unit type being the playable Llednar, I still might try it that way so I can keep his boss skills boss-only, but this is quite impressive regardless.

And then I was coloring it and loaded the rom I thought "boy, this does look pretty good but I don't remember the palette being this desaturated" then I noticed I had somehow switched to TV mode, went back to LCDa and it became ffta: tropical edition.
TV - LCDa


Also thought I'd give the dogtags a shot now that I'm more familiar with TM; it takes goddamn forever but I guess it is doable, not sure if all 16 new jobs will have them on the initial release though, because 16 is a huuuge number.

EDIT: well scratch that, it's not doable at all. Some parts of the letters on the dogtags are based on the background sprite they use. Maybe I can eventually make it look for the changed tags somewhere else, but modifying the image already there isn't an option as far as I can tell.

EDIT2: aand then I had to roll back to before I touched them at all. Apparently somewhere along the road the transparencies for certain animations broke and were crashing the game, here's a picture of getting TM to paste the title screen between roms https://u.pomf.is/ddveey.png

Today figured I needed to get comfortable with tile molester to fix some item setups since I have no clue where their sprites are called -this was quickly followed by confusion when attempting to get said tiles to even get close to align, mild desperation when I saw what the job dogtags look like and then joy when noticing the title screen was within the grasp of mortal men.

It was a bit annoying to throw together and space since the title doesn't load certain tiles, and the secondary/tertiary sets of shadows are literally embedded on the background image (and are compressed so they look like this), but overall I'm happy enough with the end result: https://u.pomf.is/wkesto.png

You can still see the "Final Fantasy Tactics" on the background but the huge beige ADVANCE was what annoyed me the most, so at least by now I won't try to remove it since it'd further distort the background image and I rather like it. Also don't mind the lack of colors and green square, I need to get used to the palette and the other is a marker for the version number.

What odd timing, just the other day I was playing with that same structure since I needed to change properties in some mission items. I noticed the sprite list, which made me look around for the structure where gear and consumables' sprites are stored, but I couldn't find any trace of it.
It's pretty strange they don't have that information in the actual item structure, I double checked the unknown values just in case and no dice.

Well, as it turns out the changes needed for the types of quest chains I had in mind were far trickier than expected, particularly in terms of restrictions.
Somewhat annoyed by having to postpone release again, but at least it lets me consolidate decisions so updating doesn't break saves later. Content plan for the "demo" would be the first 15 story missions with the ~40 extra encounters you'd have available by then; if I can confirm that changes to make new chains are functional there shouldn't be a lot of new problems arising since so such a great portion of work has been taken care of already.

With easter just around the corner I can't really guess at any release date though.

Figured I'd drop a small update. Although it took forever the items are now ready, and stat-wise etc I think the overall feel of everything is good- still open to changes but I think it's good enough for a first stab.

No progress has been done yet on formations because although items were finished a couple of days ago, when implementing the bases for new bosses and monsters I realized the way statuses were being applied (checking EV instead of res) made it impossible to have actual immunities, neither gear nor job resistance based.
That doesn't matter much for the player, since there's no sources of immunity on his side (and an overwhelming majority of humanoid/monster enemies will be the same) but it's important when making units that need to be dealt with in different ways, so as to let variety shine.

Luckily I found a system to have any skill effect check against resistance and immunities AFTER going through the EV check, which effectively allows me to have any effect be resistible, if need be. So I spent the dead hours I had for FFTA last couple of days fixing most skills for the new standard and all of that.

Hopefully the stuff surrounding missions and formations goes smoothly this upcoming week so the tentative release date can be maintained.

Ha, well the good news is I do know how to use pointers now, even if I'm rather clumsy with it still!
The even better news is I disregarded this knowledge completely when it came to this particular problem! What I realized was that I can just extend entries that demand extra size by cannibalizing the immediately adjacent ones.

One might think this would be unsustainable at any large scale, but given the raw amount of unused entries I have due to mechanical changes it certainly is holding up very well.
Or at least the ~110 items with changed properties were fitted quite nicely within the entries used for laws and law cards.

And among those 100+ items there's of course room for fun! https://u.pomf.is/geeapj.mp4

Haha, yes, since I don't know much about proper editing yet I tend to make do with relatively ugly tricks so long as they are not noticeable from the user's side .
For example all the new tooltips are actually just uncompressed tooltips that had been made redundant or obsolete by skill changes. Currently I'm trying to decide what to do with item descriptions however, as I'd like to keep the unused ones for general enemy-related use (monster descs, skills etc) and there's so many changes that single entries for each don't seem feasible.
Considering to make a few "generic" ones for certain items that share some characteristics but I like the silly flavorful descs so I'm not sold on that idea yet.

And yes, I haven't set up the mission rewards yet but I don't intend to leave missable items since that wasn't very fun in the base game.

EDIT: Can't record a new one at the moment, so here's the first black monk skill that came to be https://u.pomf.is/cfyyxs.mp4

EDIT2: As it turns out the item restructuration is being a right jerk and although the numbers are in a place I like, there's still some work involved in getting the tooltips up.
I'll still probably get to start working on formations later this upcoming week, but it seems like a pretty bad idea to rush something as important as that, so it might well push release back to the 20th or something close to that.

The silver lining, I would say, is that so far the game doesn't require information other than what is readily available while playing to know what things do. This is a thing that I personally value a lot since I tend to forget and re-check things all the time, so hopefully I can play my cards right and have it stay like that.

EDIT3: Dear diary today as I had literally finished up the new generic tooltips for items I couldn't afford single entries for, a way to sidestep it altogether occurred to me.
Didn't want to sleep anyway.

Glad to hear the classes seem sound, here's hoping they'll live up to it when the release hits. Which come to think about it, should be next weekend (I hope).

Regarding the skill learning changes, I'd noticed the lowest amount of AP the game hands out is 10, and that paired with the limits on values would make it really hard to keep certain skills actually unlearnable. Instead I fiddled with how the game handles different AP costs and got lucky with how it handles 0 cost; as it turns out, skills that cost 0 are added permanently to the character's pool once he's come in contact with any item that teaches them.

After that I got lucky again and it turned out Darthatron had already unearthed the one source of AP I did not know how to modify, random battles .

There are probably problems with this. Main ones that you may not be able to steal those skills as they do not get a *Mastered sign, or that if all the skills of a given job cost 0, said job always has the mastered job star on the selection screen. None of this was of relevance to me though, as there is no way to steal skills and the combo rework that this change allowed added a minimum of one skill that can't be mastered to every job.

Regarding development this week, most of the time I've had for FFTA was spent on throwing together the new stat distribution and the new values/gimmicks on gear. While not terribly interesting, it certainly is necessary, but luckily I'm already getting some pretty good ideas for formations and how far I can push things with a couple new tricks. There's a lot more room for variation in enemy power levels with the rescaled humanoid stats, too, which oughta come in handy for the new monsters, bosses etc.

Thus as a slight deviation from tradition, here's a moving picture!
https://u.pomf.is/xtsqjn.mp4

Hope there's no problem doubleposting the updates, it's easier to keep track of that than huge edited posts:

Finished rewriting all the new tooltips for new skills, it's just over a hundred of them so I'm currently cleaning them up and making sure they make sense. New jobs are already fully set up with the exception of the job "dogtag" pictures, which I'm leaving for a bit later.

Hopefully over the weekend I can finish job growths and focus on setting items appropriately, really looking forward to the formations and new monsters development.

Not to break the tradition here's a picture, too !

Thanks Jumza, I can say I'm pretty hyped to see it released myself as well.

Lots of interesting stuff in Eternal's post, too. I'll try to address most of it.

@debuff accuracy:
This is more of an equalizing measure than anything else. I found the way the AI uses debuffs generally good, but they will very often go for shots that a player would never consider.
Since I know nothing about how to address this at at the AI level itself, the better way I found is to keep the incentive for positioning the player has and play with which status effects are available/ the mp drain on sustaining them or spamming them. The AI already deals well with this, but now they have a much lower chance of wasting their action.
Many status effects in LN are quite strong, but can't really be sustained without multi-character cooperation or are very conditional. And the odds of the AI landing a status that changes the way the battle plays out are much higher, which didn't happen much in vanilla.

As a tl;dr, the main goal is to have the player's characters interact with each others and the enemy at a more organic level, as opposed to having hard lockdown options where the player wins by default.


@no AP:
Ha, that should've probably been explained better yes. You master abilities once you touch an item that teaches it, and some cannot be mastered at all and need to keep the source if you want them (combos, double weapon, secret abilities etc).
It sounds a bit extreme but I think the reasoning is solid and hopefully it'll play fine.


@soldier:
Well breaks are range 3 and although the power and mind can be changed, MP damage and delaying enemies isn't a joke. Mug is a "ranged" melee attack on a job that can use greatswords, so I think it's alright.


@paladin:
Drop weapon has melee attack accuracy yeah. There are sources of draw weapon on every race, four of them without the item command, and characters can be very competent without a weapon in some circumstances. It's a strong melee debuff, but I think others like the evasion negators can be a lot more devastating.
A fun thing I learned when making decisions about drop weapon is that in vanilla you can use it with a greatbow .

Def and cover cost a bunch of MP because they can be used to protect a friend in a pinch. Although to be fair I was considering the permadeath version when I set those up. In general though, costs are set up so that the big skills aren't something you default into but something you choose over having other less costly skills available.
And yes, Saint Cross can be a bit silly, but damn if the AI doesn't use it just beautifully.


@fighter:
Yeah multi-knockback does work, you can even have three tiles kb but there is no animation that calls for the repositioning without dealing damage, so you get a 0 damage displayed and that's ugly .
It does have a problem though, knocking past solid objects or from one tile away of the map's limit freezes the game. I'm keeping it to see if I may fix that, though if I can't it may have to go.


@duelist:
Glad to hear so. DUE is the only source of disarm and drawing for moogles though, so it'll probably stay even if I don't love the same-race overlap myself.


@shaman:
The thing I like about confusion is that first you apply it, then it has to roll to see if it works every turn. Sure it's strong and veils are strong in general, but I'm more worried about earth veil chain-delaying than confusing enemies with ease.
Thanks to your comment I noticed the damage power was way off for veils though!


@white mage:
To be fair I feel white mages will be too dominant as they are. Mass healing is quite scarce and other sources of the effects they have, like resurrection and buffs, are far more restrictive. True that it leaves reraise in a weird place though.


@black mage:
One of my favorites as well! Took embarrassingly long to figure out how to set up mana infusion though.


@zealot:
Haven't really dedicated design of new skills much time since I started polishing descs and such, but from what I've seen they do use the basic ones well enough. The buffs are a bit too complex for the AI but restricting them to certain scenarios should do.


@archer:
Ha, it is one of the things I've wanted changed for a long time, initially it was meant to exorcise resurrecting undead but blocking resurrection of anything seemed a lot more interesting.
A word of caution though, the eliminated unit is gone. This is of no relevance used on the enemy, but using it on your own units destroys as if they died on a Jagd. I tried a combination of different targeting filters (KO'd and if KO'd check friendliness) and it doesn't work. So do watch out for that.


@dragoon:
Sure, it's just a matter of setting up parameters for a normal cone ability, then set the horizontal AoE to either 3 for a 9 tiles area, or 5, 6 ,7 etc for an increasingly large cone effect.


@defender:
Nah one was meltdown .


@monk:
I love monk classes so there's so favoritism here for sure. I think chokehold will be alright though, being basically a melee Mark that stops further status effects.


@templar:
Eh, still willing to give it a shot. It costs a bit and sure it doubles your speed, but doubling your speed now is comparatively a lot less ridiculous than it was in vanilla.


@dream strider:
I have doubts, but I hope the melee focus and high range on skills keeps it enjoyable. I think Slumber is the only source of player sleep though, because yeah sleep was pretty silly.


@red mage:
Geomancy is no longer a thing humanoids have access to (a bunch of passives that cheated the AI are unavailable) and sure enough I'm certain full map attacks will be a bit of a headache to set up in ways that don't either dominate the fight or become the most unfun thing to fight ever. I have some ideas for this however.


@elementalshift:
Huh, thanks for the heads up! It can be safely removed from the AI arsenal then, since it was never meant for them. Need to redo targeting so it only hits enemies.


Thanks for the kind words and the in-depth look at the changes thus far, hopefully in a couple weeks the entire thing can be put to the test to see how it holds up!
Also new picture!