ALMA 4: Excalibur grants Forever: Orlandu

[pokeytax]

And on Line 25, "everything", does it mean that attached attributes are always active (Dancer S1 with attribute PA+1 learned means permanent PA+1 boost, regardless of job, secondary, and equipped SRM)

Yes. (If you want secondary+active+freelancer, just set all three of those to "Yes".)

[Lothgoradin]

I know y'all don't like hearing more requests but I figured this one should be fairly easy...can you add additional formulae to weapons?  This would allow such things as daggers that mug or a sword with 100% status effect.  I don't know how well this would work in game either but maybe it's worth looking into?

[Pride]

Its completely possible to construct a formula that is intended for a separate weapon, I'm currently taking request in my thread for formulas. 

[pokeytax]

I know y'all don't like hearing more requests

No, requests are great! They just belong in Pride's thread for formulas, or the Total Request ASM thread for general stuff.

FDC is working on a hack that will vastly expand formulas too, which is the reason I am staying away from them for now.

[formerdeathcorps]

I know y'all don't like hearing more requests but I figured this one should be fairly easy...can you add additional formulae to weapons?  This would allow such things as daggers that mug or a sword with 100% status effect.  I don't know how well this would work in game either but maybe it's worth looking into?

You can already kinda make both in FFTP.
If you want a dagger that mugs, change the formula of the dagger to 02 and have it reference steal gil as the skill.  (If you want it just to mug, change WP to 1 and do the same...it's hardly any different than what the ASM'd result would be.)  A sword with a 100% status effect is simply a sword that uses formula 2D (if it does damage) or the 100% status formula (if it doesn't deal damage).  Of course, FFTP isn't perfect; such a sword will not have reference charge (but that's easy to ASM in) and such a dagger can't mug at 100% (unless you want all spell procs at 100% but we already have ASM for that), but those are relatively minor, I'd think.

As for my formula thread...it's http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=6538.60.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Can I ask what the "couple ugly bugs" of 3.1 were?  I'm going to assume they're not things like making Attack not be a whore like I think they are, though I think from my talks with formerdeathcorps recently he found the part of the AI that needs to be fixed to make that kind of stuff work.  I think I also saw it posted on the forum somewhere, in his BATTLE.BIN thread maybe?  Don't know if you intend to take a crack at fixing that bit of the AI though.

Have you considered trying to rewrite the Equip X functions so that they each one can handle any combination instead of the two-table system that currently exists?  secondadvent was at least working on that at some point if he hasn't finished it (pretty sure he hasn't), so you could try finding him and bugging him for his incomplete work to finish.  It's a small thing sure since you can technically use ALMA-rigging for the same effect, but a proper fix lets you do it while having more Support Abilities left over for other things, and it's more intuitive than telling someone to use an ALMA nest.  It'd also make a nice separate release for people who aren't really in need of ALMA but want to make currently-impossible Equip X combinations, which is always good.

[pokeytax]

I think it was something like all movement abilities being enabled or disabled. You can't expect me to know what's going on with my own code! It was certainly nothing interesting with skillsets, sorry.

Rewriting Equip X is very low priority because it's doable via ALMA right now. But! Since I finally know where the equip bytes are in unit data, hopefully ALMA 4's scripting will let you do this easily. (Yeah, for my own purposes if nothing else, I do have to make another release, extending passives to non-standard classes like the RAD hack's, so I'll be cleaning up other garbage.)

[RavenOfRazgriz]

I see.

I figured it was low-priority, but it would be something you could do to say "Hey, I'm updating!" while you stare at the AI with a blank look on your face wondering how to make it handle having 5 skillsets at once.  Good to know you'll be adding RAD support and cleaning up other errors at least, though.

[LastingDawn]

I've been reading your findings in Formula Hacking and some of them are really strange, but great work! How did you find some of this stuff out? For instance that 0xAA Identity.

That 0xAA Identity has me scratching my head... the Jobs technically stop at 9F and 0xAA should be the start of the glitch jobs. Do you know anymore about this 0xAA dealing?

[pokeytax]

That 0xAA Identity has me scratching my head... the Jobs technically stop at 9F and 0xAA should be the start of the glitch jobs.

Sorry, that could be a lot clearer (I just changed it to XX). I just mean that if the character is a special and not a generic or monster, this is the job number corresponding to their base job instead of 80/81/82.

I've been filling it in from the old Gameshark FAQ and whatever turned up while hacking. Someone with actual formula hacking experience might be able to flesh out the temp bytes at the end; they seem to be used mostly in formulas.

[formerdeathcorps]

I've been filling it in from the old Gameshark FAQ and whatever turned up while hacking. Someone with actual formula hacking experience might be able to flesh out the temp bytes at the end; they seem to be used mostly in formulas.

Can you post exactly what you mean by "temp bytes"?  I can probably figure it out if I see what you're referring to.

[pokeytax]

http://www.ffhacktics.com/wiki/Formula_Hacking, very bottom.

AFAIK these are the bytes written to while damage, healing, etc. are calculated; the address stored at 192d90 (192d98 maybe?). Don't throw your back out, this is solely for future reference, but I'm guessing you know more than I do (all I gleaned was statuses while fiddling with Poisoned swamp).

[LastingDawn]

Hmm, I've been using this to try out a few experiments but it seems that the Skillsets are still extremely finicky if not completely game stopping, whenever I change those and give them certain parameters they don't appear to work, for instance the Charge skillset requires Ranged Specialty to be equipped, it's just automatically there no matter what's done. In addition if you mess with it extensively it will freeze the game when you go to take a turn in battle.

As for everything else, it seems to work well, oh just one little suggestion, the Mulitiplier's of an attribute don't appear in the Attribute Summary (which I must say is invaluable when dealing with the percentages) is it possible to put those in and see the effect of how much it is increasing?

Also do the Multiplier's work like the other percentages? That they don't effectively stack?

[pokeytax]

Do you have an .xls/.xml/screenshot of the spreadsheet showing your inputs? I'm guessing you have one already so that would help a lot (although it's probably some massive structural issue).

I will definitely add multipliers to the summary, thanks for the catch.

The multipliers, IN THEORY, should apply a minimum XAM. So if your class HPM is 100 and you have a HPM 120 and HPM 135 equipped, your HPM will be 135; if your class HPM is 140, your HPM will be 140. So you can stack, but only the highest applies.

The % boosts should stack multiplicatively but are currently rounded down at each step, so stacking several 5% items will not get you anywhere (unless it's HP/MP or something).

[LastingDawn]

Do you have an .xls/.xml/screenshot of the spreadsheet showing your inputs? I'm guessing you have one already so that would help a lot (although it's probably some massive structural issue).

I will definitely add multipliers to the summary, thanks for the catch.

The multipliers, IN THEORY, should apply a minimum XAM. So if your class HPM is 100 and you have a HPM 120 and HPM 135 equipped, your HPM will be 135; if your class HPM is 140, your HPM will be 140. So you can stack, but only the highest applies.

The % boosts should stack multiplicatively but are currently rounded down at each step, so stacking several 5% items will not get you anywhere (unless it's HP/MP or something).

Ah? So they won't increase it by 5/10/15/20%?True 5% PA doesn't seem like it would be that great, but at 10 PA base and a 10% bonus from two 5% that would be one more PA, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe I'm not quite understanding what you're saying?

Unfortunately I no longer do. All I had done to reverse the problem was copy and paste a clean skillset box into the current one and that fixed the problems once I repatched everything, but I'll see what I can do in replicating this...

Successfully replicated, this is what is there...



Crashes the game when a move is going to be made.

[formerdeathcorps]

http://www.ffhacktics.com/wiki/Formula_Hacking, very bottom.

AFAIK these are the bytes written to while damage, healing, etc. are calculated; the address stored at 192d90 (192d98 maybe?). Don't throw your back out, this is solely for future reference, but I'm guessing you know more than I do (all I gleaned was statuses while fiddling with Poisoned swamp).

Yeah, I've figured out most of the section (expanding on SA's work).  I figured I might as well type it up now since right now, my connection is very bad (read: no iRC) on my work laptop (read: FFTP, C# tools, movie/sound recorder, but no games or emulators).

0x18C (Hit/Miss--01 is hit/00 is miss)
0x18D (Critical Hit--01 is crit/00 is regular)
0x18E (Miss Type--00 is hit/01 is guarded/02 is guarded [some other kind]/05 is nullified/06 is miss/07 is Catch)
0x18F (Item Lost--Potions/Break/Steal/Draw Out)
0x190-1 (HP Damage Halfword)
0x192-3 (HP Healing Halfword)
0x194-5 (MP Damage Halfword)
0x196-7 (MP Healing Halfword)
0x198-9 (Gil Stolen/Lost Signed Halfword)
0x19A-B (Reaction ID Halfword)
0x19C-D (Special Effect Halfword--for steal/murbol/Level UP/Level DOWN/Break/Elemental Null/Absorb/Weakness/Switch Team/Golem)
0x19E (SP Change Byte)
0x19F (CT Change Byte)
0x1A0 (PA Change Byte)
0x1A1 (MA Change Byte)
0x1A2 (Br Change Byte)
0x1A3 (Fa Change Byte)
0x1A4 (Status Change?)
0x1A5 (Equipment Destroyed Slot--FE means triggers weapon attack by default)
0x1A6 (???)
0x1A7-B (Attack Status Infliction)
0x1AC-1B0 (Attack Status Removal)
0x1B1 (Attack Type--HP/MP Damage/Healing or Status/Stats and Pseudo-Status)
0x1B2-3 (Last Received Attack [for Counter Magic] or weapon [for Catch] Halfword)
0x1B4 (EXP Change from Steal EXP)
0x1B5 (???)
0x1B6 (Attack Accuracy)
0x1B7 (???)
0x1B8 (???)
0x1B9 (???)
0x1BA (Copy of 0x0006--used in invite)
0x1BB-F (Inflicted Statii--factors in Random/Separate/All or Nothing/Immunities/Accuracy)

I know there's one halfword I haven't accounted for, the remaining HP on Golem (halfword since a Lucavi can use it and gain up to 65535 extra HP to buffer him).  Maybe it's stored somewhere in 0x1B7-9?

[pokeytax]

Thanks for that, I'm working on it now.

Ah? So they won't increase it by 5/10/15/20%?True 5% PA doesn't seem like it would be that great, but at 10 PA base and a 10% bonus from two 5% that would be one more PA, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe I'm not quite understanding what you're saying?

If you have 20 PA and add three +5% boosts you get 23 PA.
If you have 10 PA and add three +5% boosts you get nothing.
I'm just describing the kludgy way it works now - in a future update I plan to change to true multiplicative stacking, I agree that would be much better!

Wow that is great, 12% of the unit data filled in one stroke. Looks like 85% coverage or so now.

[LastingDawn]

Oh yes, I did have one more question. Say I have a skill which when learned gives me +50 HP available in the Squire's skillset. Can an enemy unit learn this as well and get the +50 HP bonus? Also are these bonuses beyond the Multipliers? So say I'm using a Wizard who has saved up a lot of JP in nearly every class and I pick up all of the "HP+" Abilities available to me. Would my HP jump from let's say.... 250 to 500? Or would it look at the HP Multiplier and see that it should be mitigated slightly?

And another question, when I would class change from the 500 HP scenario, would it still  look beyond the scope of the HP Mulitiplier?

[pokeytax]

Yes, everything applies to enemies (including specials, if you checked that box).

The order is: granted R/S/M => HPM => + HP => % HP.

So if you have HP of 200 based on class HPM of 100, and learn Toughness, giving minimum HPM 110, HP + 40, HP + 20%:

HPM is applied, increasing HP to 220.
HP + 40 is applied, increasing HP to 260.
HP + 20% is applied, increasing HP to 312.

When you change jobs everything is recalculated from the ground up. ALMA takes effect after equipment.

If you want Wizards to gain less HP from passives than Knights, you can grant them innate -20% HP and then bump up the class HPM to compensate. However, this will reduce HP gain from armor as well. Using HP +25% instead of HP +50 could work once the rounding issue is fixed. I'll think about customizing the order; I had to pick one to start but I understand everyone wants their own algorithm.

[LastingDawn]

All right. This all makes a lot greater deal of sense to me. Thank you for answering all of these questions, if I have any more I'll be sure to post. Can't wait to see the next version of your tools! Keep up the absolutely fantastic work!